Sunsets, Mist, Milky Way

September is a month of change. It is the time of the transition between summer and autumn. With the sun lower in the sky, sunsets become longer and more intense and the combination of warm days and cool nights creates misty mornings. All of this provides fantastic conditions for landscape photography. In addition, settled weather can bring clear skies, which combined with longer nights can provide opportunities for night photography and capturing the Milky Way, which is at its most visible at this time of the year. This was certainly the case for the month just passed, when my photography focussed on sunsets, mist and the Milky Way.

​My photographic month started on a calm evening when promising signs of a sunset encouraged me to take the drive from Resipole over to Kinlochmoidart to see if I could capture an image that I had long had in my head. It was one that I hoped would show Loch Moidart from a different perspective. A perspective that places the viewer facing westwards out of Loch Moidart with Eilean an Fheidh as the main subject, but also including Riska Island and Eilean Tioram with its eponymous Castle.
 
On arrival, the conditions were perfect. High tide had coincided with sunset and with no wind, the potentially muddy Loch Moidart was filled with completely still, sky-blue water within which Eilean an Fheidh and its associated skerries were nestled. As the sun dipped below the horizon, there was just the right amount of cloud above the western horizon to catch the pink, red, orange and yellow hues that were finding their way up into the sky. These colours bounced off the clouds and down onto the blue tinged mirror-like water that surrounded the islands.
 
Two different images were created.
 
The first was a single frame whose width I filled with Eilean an Fheidh and Riska Island, positioning the drone such that the distant Eilean Tioram and Castle Tioram could be seen beyond and separated from the vertical face of Sgriobaid Dubh on the mainland. 

​The second was a 6-frame stitched panorama that gives a wider composition that also included the mass of Beinn Bhreac to the south of Eilean an Fheidh and the side of Shona Beag to its north. It was also wide enough to capture the Small Isles of Eigg and Rùm silhouetted against the orange glow from the sun in a gap beyond the northern side of Eilean Shona.

​A few days later, I awoke to a thin veil of mist over Loch Sunart and as I watched the colours intensify as the sun rose, I decided to go in search of mist over at Loch Shiel which, from experience, holds far more mist than Loch Sunart ever does.

​However, on reaching Acharacle, I found that Loch Shiel was almost clear of mist, except for a thin veil that I could see beneath the distant hills of Ardgour. The mountains were silhouetted against a sky that had been turned a deep, rich orange by the rising sun. After pausing for a moment to consider what to do, I decided to move on towards Dorlin and Castle Tioram with the hope of finding the mist I was looking for.

​Thankfully, the short drive to Dorlin paid dividends and took me to a landscape that was shrouded in mist. Looking southwards back to where the River Shiel meets the sea at Shielfoot, patches of mist drifted across the river and the low-lying ground to the west of it, while in the opposite direction, Loch Moidart was covered in a thick blanket of mist that obscured Castle Tioram from view.

​However, as the sun continued to rise, the mist covering Loch Moidart began to clear and Castle Tioram emerged from its soft white blanket while wisps of mist lingered over the island upon which it sits. The effect of this was to create a beautiful and mystical scene that was best captured from the air.

​The mist continued to clear and eventually Castle Tioram became visible from ground level, so I made my way along the shore towards it, eventually reaching a spot from where I could place it in the centre of the frame and capture both it and its reflection in perfect symmetry. The mist came and went, so I stood a while before pressing the shutter button at a moment when the castle was completely clear of the mist and the slightest of warm morning light was falling on its east facing walls. A satisfying end to a great few hours chasing Moidart’s mist.

With the promise of some clear skies at night, I returned to Dorlin later that day for some astro-landscape photography. When I arrived, a bank of cloud was gradually moving north-westwards, leaving a clear sky behind it. Forever the optimist, I was hopeful that it was only matter of time before I would find myself under a clear, star filled sky. Before that though, I took time to capture some iPhone shots of the spectacular sunset that was enveloping Loch Moidart, watching its golden hues intensify before fading to blue and pink as the sun went down.

​Continuing to make my way along the estate road that skirts the edge of Loch Moidart I arrived at the subject for the image I had in my mind. It was a boat house that I’ve passed countless times while walking the dog and one which I thought would sit directly beneath the cloudy core of the Milky Way in the hour or so after dark during August and September. The timing was ideal because it was only a few days after a new moon. This meant two things. Firstly, there would be no moonlight to drown out the Milky Way, making it clearly visible to the naked eye and more importantly, the camera. Secondly, there was a high spring tide at about an hour after sunset, bringing the sea level up to cover much of the foreshore in front of the boathouse and simplify the composition. 

​Whilst it was still light, I experimented with various compositions and, by using a compass to determine where the Milky Way would be when it was dark enough to photograph it, I settled on a composition that used the cobbled surface of the sea wall as the leading line to the boat house which I positioned in the bottom left of the frame at an angle that would see the Milky Way above it. By this time, it was about an hour after sunset and with the camera now fixed in position, I had about an hour to wait until it would be dark enough to photograph the Milky Way.
 
It may seem to some as being a bit of a long wait, but this is the time I enjoy most about astro-landscape photography. With the camera set up and fixed in position you are free to simply enjoy the moment, to watch the stars appear one by one and to pick out the constellations as they gradually reveal themselves. It is in this moment that my thoughts often turn to consider how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. Consider this – our galaxy, the Milky Way, may contain 300 million potentially habitable planets and there are a total of 170 billion other galaxies in the Universe as a whole. With mind-blowing numbers like these, there surely must be the possibility of there being life beyond Earth.

​As the hour passes, I usually take test shots at regular intervals to check the light levels until I’m satisfied that it is dark enough for the camera to distinguish the Milky Way from its star filled backdrop and then, with one press of the shutter button I take my final shot, pack up and walk away satisfied that I’ve captured the image that I had in my mind’s eye.