Fresh Snow in Bridge of Orchy
On one morning during my stay at Bridge of Orchy in Scotland I awoke to find everything covered in soft, white fluffy snow. It was a sight to behold. There was only the occasional muffled sound of a car on the normally busy A82 due to the still lightly falling snow. With little to no wind the trees were laden with perhaps 2 - 3 inches of snow and their branches bent over under the weight. It was definitely a photography day!
After a hurried breakfast the hills remained wrapped in cloud. Clearly there was nothing to be gained from plodding up a hill today! An easy day :-)
Snowy Trees
The trees from the hotel window on the far side of the car park caught my attention but it felt like cheating to photograph so close to 'home' rather than hike along a track or up a hill for hours! Cheating or no, that is where the day started - in the hotel car park! The tarmac was nicely buried under as no car had yet disturbed the snow so unless you knew it was a car park you would never know!
So the first photograph in this post is off the trees at the end of the car park. I was drawn to their shape; the tree that rises and curves from near the centre towards the left and the taller and straight tree to its right. As on previous days, there seemed little reason to consider colour; the scene was just shades of grey!
By the time I'd finished photographing in the car park the wind had risen slightly and snow was starting to drop from the trees. It was time to pack the camera away and follow a small winding path that led through the trees down towards the river and several tall Silver Birch trees. Here the ground was more open allowing sufficient distance between the camera and trees to avoid problems with converging verticals and the need for post-capture corrections.
Snowy Silver Birch
Readers of the preceding post in this series will know I like Scotch Pine trees. But I also like the Silver Birch as they are never seem too large and have wonderful detail in their silver and black trunks.
One of the Silver Birch's stood a little way from the others; it forked at ground level and had a nice bit of negative space to it's side. Perfect! This one will almost certainly make its way onto one of my 2020 Christmas cards.
After finishing with the trees I headed up the road, thankfully the snow barrier hadn't been closed, to Lochan na h-Achlaise but more on that in the next post!
Andy