Tag Archives: arrochar alps and loch arklet

2011 has for me, photographically, been a bit poor. Due to work commitments, I have not been able to get out as much with my camera as I would have liked. I have also been a bit neglectful with updating this blog with new images. So I have finally got around to processing these shots from January this year.

Myself and Cameron decided to visit the area around Aberfoyle known as the Trossachs.  This was in the middle of January so it was still in the middle of that amazing long cold spell when temperatures were barely above freezing for 3 or 4 weeks.  As usual we decided to head up for the sunrise, which was around 7.30am which meant another 5am start for us to travel the 100 miles to where we planned to try and capture the sunrise.  The location we chose was St Johns Church on the banks of Loch Achray.  The weather forecast looked quite favourable, light winds and a high of 2-3 degrees C.

The initial thought was to get some nice images of the sunrise reflected in the still waters of the Loch with maybe some images of the church in it too.  When we eventually got there we saw that due to the weeks of low temperatures, the loch had completely frozen over!

Although that ruled out some nice reflections it still meant that I would get some sort of decent light hitting the ice of the loch.  The sunset wasn’t the best with clouds obscuring the actual sunrise but I did manage to get this shot with the sunlight tingeing the clouds in a nice golden glow.

Once I played around with a few different images and setups, I decided to shoot in the other direction.  This is obviously a bit later on and the cloud cover has started to roll in a bit more.  The view across a frozen Loch Achray towards Ben Venue is still pretty nice.

After spending a good couple of hours here, we then decided to head back into Aberfoyle.  This was to take a trip along what I would say was one of my favourite locations in Scotland, the small single track road to the Inversnaid hotel on the eastern bank of Loch Lomond.

Along it’s route the road passes numerous loch’s with wonderful views of both Ben Lomond and the Arrochar Alps.  You can also take a right turn halfway along it and end up at the northern end of Loch Katrine.  To my mind if you are in the Aberfoyle area, a trip along this road is a must.

The first stop on the road was to a frozen Loch Chon.  The branches of the tree stuck in the frozen loch along with the early morning sun striking the golden leaves of the trees made this image rather special.

Next we moved on to probably my favourite location along this road, Loch Arklet.  This man-made loch sits in a small valley so it has more than it’s fair share of still, calm water which means lovely reflections.  The only minus point is that the water levels were pretty low which can bee seen by the rocks sticking out of the water.  These are usually totally covered.

After a good while exploring round here we decided to start to head back home with a trip along the east side of Loch Lomond up by Balmaha. Our first stop was this small lochan which sat just off the road and made a good foreground to Ben Lomond behind.  The cloud cover had started to move in and the late afternoon light poking through the clouds behind me lit up the reeds and the trees on the opposite bank.

Another image taken around the same time but showing the light on the trees a bit more.  Note the large frozen patches all over this lochan!

Now back at Loch Lomond it was a chance to try something different.  The Loch was quite still so it was a good chance to use my Lee Big Stopper.  This image was a 3 minute exposure which helped still the Loch even further and give some movement in the clouds.

Of course, what do you do when you are waiting for the long exposures….you take a short video on your iphone!

As you can see it was a productive trip with a few images that I was happy with.  Now all I have to do now is make some time to get out more!