Solitude

Solitude, originally uploaded by Bexley98.

God I’ve been lazy about posting…sorry.

To be honest there hadn’t been much to photograph recently. I’ve been playing with textures and toning as you can see on my flickr page, a few shots of the beach came out nicely but apart from that there wasn’t much.

Then last week I went camping. I try and camp at least once a year and always want to get away more often. This time, the wife and I went north, about 20 miles past Lairg in Sutherland to Strath Naver.

Sutherland is a barren, mountainous place and was the area most affected by the infamous Highland clearances. It is stunning and if you ever have the opportunity to visit, just go…it’s one of the last true wildernesses in the UK and one of the least ‘touristy’ parts of Scotland.

So there was plenty of photographic fodder, we hiked about 8 miles away from the road and fished a chain of hill lochs. The weather was sunshine & showers, incredibly cold in the early mornings and most interestingly of all it’s the breeding season for deer. Every night at sunset the stags would start bellowing and this would typically go on most of the night…ear-plugs are essential!

Despite their size and the fearsome noises, they stayed away from us. They only get vicious when cornered and are surprisingly timid. Due to the lack of a long lens, I couldn’t get any really good shots of them...but just being there was special. I’m really pleased with some of the landscape shots I took, if you’re really interested you can see the lot here or a few selected highlights here.