Actually there was lots of stirring on Rannoch Moor with a temperature hovering at around -2ºC and a wind chill of close to -10ºC on this decidedly breezy morning at 3.30am, it was freezing. I arrived at about 3 ish a.m. in the dark and parked up, the mission to photograph the Milky Way over the moorland, as it turned out it was one of those mornings that kept on delivering.
First issue was finding the spot that I’d visited in the daylight believing it to be ideal for my purposes, however stomping across a frosty half frozen moor turned out to be problematic, by the light of a head torch it all looked the same. I eventually settled for a spot close to a small boat house as time was moving on the the window of opportunity, that of Astronomical Twilight was rapidly closing.
Grabbing my down jacket and camera friendly gloves I proceeded with preparations, first levelling tripod as this would be a multi shot panorama and doing a couple of test shots to finalise settings and alignment. It would take 10 shots altogether with 5 shots stacked for each of the 10 shots taken to improve low light quality, 50 shots in total.
Milky Way over Rannoch Moor
After some miscounts and extra shots to cover my forgotten counts together with extra shots taken as for shot 10, lorries with there super bright lights messed up some of the shots, success was at hand. Of course at the time you don’t know until to get to stitch everything together, back at the computer.
The stormy conditions gave me some other images that I hadn’t counted on with clouds racing by on the strong wind.
Storm over Rannoch
I was slowly making my way back to the car and deliciously hot coffee but new compositions kept catching my eye.
After a brief warm up and some coffee in the car I made my way across to the other side of the road where the sunrise was starting to look quite juicy.
Meall a’ Bhuiridh
Stob Ghabhar
The image above of Stob Ghabhar caught the early sun just right as there was a brief lull in the wind giving me beautiful reflections on the water. Just after this there was a little wildlife shot a stag taking breakfast.
All in all it turned out to be a great outing coming home with more than I could have hoped for, it was definitely worth all that stirring to keep warm in those chilly early hours. :)