Buttermere

Buttermere sunrise

Buttermere in the English Lake District is another of my favourite places.  One November a while back, I spent a few days there and had some beautiful weather.  The photograph to the left was captured in the early morning as the sun rose.  It was one of those winter mornings where the air was absolutely still, clear and a light frost covered the ground.  The grey stones on the beach had a slight white colouring and a mist hung over the mirror-flat lake.  It was a very peaceful and tranquil start to the day.

However, us photographers are a fussy bunch!  I would have preferred a few small clouds in the sky lit by the early morning light.  But I guess I should be happy ;-)  A few years later I spent a week at the excellent Bridge Hotel only to have a week of foul weather separated by very brief sunshine.  It was not a good week.  But that's landscape.

This year I had the pleasure of spending a week with Tom Mackie in Lofoten.  He has a very well known and lovely photograph looking towards the other end of Buttermere also with the surrounding hills reflected in the mirror-flat lake but with a red canoe moving through the photograph.  I first saw that photograph many years ago and assumed it was staged.  But I now know it wasn't.  Pure good fortune. :-)  And that is one of the joys of landscape; Exceedingly rarely do two photographs ever look the same.