Daniel Stunell

Top half of the photo shows grey and white slightly broken cloud. The bottom half shows serried ranks of hills receding at lighter and lighter shades, with, in the distance, the grey waters of Loch Lomond running towards us on the left. A moody mountain view.

Looking south towards Loch Lomond from An Caisteal. #Scotland #scape

#mountains #mountaineering #landscape #photography #EastCoastKin

A small river splits around a boulder and falls in two cascades that join at the bottom. Slightly long exposure to get the water to blur, but this puts most of the shot in shadow... one day I will learn to exposure bracket. Sunlight catches some foliage in the top left corner however.

Balquhidder, #Scotland, for #WaterfallWednesday.

#waterfall #river #water #photography #EastCoastKin

A small but tough (and probably pretty old, given growing conditions here at ~600m) tree grows out of the top of a large cleft boulder on the right of the picture. It's bare branches as this is an early March photo. In the background is hillside and crags typically of the Scottish Highlands

A test of time. A doughty upland tree grows from a cleft boulder.
A twofer for #ThickTrunkTuesday and #RockinTuesday.
In fact this perch has seen this tree through, free from early-life predation from deer and sheep, on an otherwise bare hillside.
#trees #mountains #Scotland #photography

A mountain face dominated by white snowfields (icy nevé in reality) and dark snow dappled crags catches the sun and dominates the bottom two thirds of the frame, against dark grey clouds above. Taken from An Caisteal - it was too late in the day to go on to climb Beinn a' Chròin too.

Beinn a' Chròin, near Crianlarich, #Scotland. #MountainMonday

#mountains #mountaineering #snow #winter #clouds #landscape #scape #photography #EastCoastKin

The bottom half of the photo shows four tiers of mountain silhouettes with progressively lighter tones. The sky is grey cloud, with lighter tones to the left and snow squalls to the right. The furthest tier of mountains has sunlight making the snow squall glow in front of it.

The Arrochar Alps seen from Ben Ledi during snow squalls this weekend. Winter not done yet.
#Scotland #Stunday

#snow #mountains #mountaineering #clouds #landscape #scape #photography #EastCoastKin

Not my creation - just sitting there waiting at a river ford.

Two cairns comprising single stacks of stones on a larger boulder, with pine trees and blue sky with clouds behind. The cairn on the left is a single pillar, while the one on the right gets wider and has two columns for a stretch at the top to create a stone window balanced precariously. Photographed as seen - I had no part in the creation!

I learnt last year the French for 'cairn' is <cairn> (masculine), which surprised me given I thought the word had a Gaelic origin. Anyway, here's a particularly ambitious one for #RockinTuesday. Parc National des Écrins, #France, September.
#mountains #mountaineering #photography #EastCoastKin

In the background a (slightly over-exposed) rocky mountain dominates - looking closely in the shadow to it's right you can just see the snout of a glacier. The sky is blue with some white clouds. The foreground is a shaded nook on a mountainside, with bare boulders, pine trees, and a small pool mirroring the sky and mountaintop opposite. Late afternoon light.

A stunning location, but a photo it would possibly be good to retake with an improved understanding of exposure bracketing... Parc National des Écrins, #France, September.

#MountainMonday
#mountains #mountaineering #nature #photography #BlueSkyMonday #EastCoastKin

Close up of a single snowdrop flower, in focus (mostly!) with further (deliberately!) out-of focus snowdrops in the background, which is otherwise green bokeh.

Snowdrops. #stunday

#flowers #snowdrops #nature #photography #Scotland #EastCoastKin

A go board sits in the centre of the image, with a bottom corner towards and with first moves played around the edges of the board. On the nearside right, a colourful metal dinosaur/rhinoceros ('Dinoceros') faces the board with a pot of white stones to his left. On the topside left, Dinoceros is faced by an orange soft toy alien ('Olof'), with one hand in the pot of black stones. They are on the floor which is a striped rug.

A classic battle of wits and strategy from the archive.
#AlphabetChallenge #weekGforGames

#go #igo #photography #EastCoastKin

This is an excellent idea for overall access, with the ski station and parking in Glen Coe Village / Ballachulish making logical end points. The Sherpa bus on Snowdon/Yr Wyddfa in Wales is a (much busier) model, but passenger numbers in Glen Coe possibly make it viable.

A long exposure of a small stream drops in the centre of the shot with a variety of ice formations formed both by splash and spray below and icicles trickling down to the sides.

Water and ice detail for #WaterfallWednesday. Near Stob Chabhair, Crianlarich, #Scotland.

#waterfall #ice #winter #mountains #mountaineering #landscape #scape #photography #EastCoastKin

Two winter tree skeletons side by side against a dark night sky lit with white foggy light on the horizon (full disclosure, this is actually from floodlights at the football stadium on low mist, not some wondrous natural effect). The silhouettes show the trees branching expansively away from each other, but extending only minimally into the space between them, reflecting their quest to grow into light during the summer.

Winter silhouettes show how these two trees have grown up together shaping each other. Tristan Gooley's 'How to Read a Tree' was one of my best reads last year: I don't look at trees in the landscape the same now.
#ThickTrunkTuesday #trees #nature #books #winter #photography #EastCoastKin

One factor I suspect is working society is built around an early/intermediate schedule. So as a night owl you are constantly overriding your natural body clock to fit in.

Black and white photograph from the bealach between Stob Chabhair and An Caisteal. Top half of the photo is grey cloud. Middle distance on the left is white snow-covered mountain side with a speckle of black rocks and crag. A nearer middle distance has similar terrain at the same altitude as the photographer. A white snow slope (of beautifully icy nevé!) is in the foreground on the bottom right.

Beinn a' Chroin, Crianlarich, #Scotland, for #MountainMonday. The day started sunny but was very monochrome by the afternoon, so I went #B&W. It removes colour a bit - but not much!

#mountains #mountaineering #winter #snow #landscape #scape #photography #EastCoastKin

It's extremely 'remote' in modern terms, but in a more populated Highlands where travel on foot would have been the default, it would probably have been a reasonably well-trodden pass between two glens we think are far apart in a car-centric world.

I suspect it's somewhere in between. I don't think 'AGI' will happen. I think we're in a classic economic bubble. LLM outputs are probabilistic associations not 'intelligent'. But that doesn't mean we won't all be working (or not) very differently in a decade, in societies struggling to keep up.

A narrow torrent of water slices down through a cleft in the rocks from top right to bottom left with a slightly long exposure. Dark steep mossy walls provide foreground on the right while bare tree branches frame the left and the bottom of a tree trunk above the falls occupies the top left.

Alva Glen, Clackmannanshire, #Scotland, though the angle for this shot is somewhat off the beaten path, for #WaterfallWednesday.

#waterfall #water #photography #landscape #EastCoastKin

Sandy Island, New Caledonia - Wikipedia

It didn't 'last' quite as long as Sandy Island then...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_I...

The sun has just dipped below the horizon on the far right. The horizon line is the top of a flat cloud sea (around 800m) as seen from a mountain at around 1000m. A few further summits emerge as islands, and a shadowy 'shore' from the mountain I am on fills the very bottom of the photo. The top two thirds of the photo are a sky fading from an orange horizon line to dark shades of blue grey. It really is like looking out to sea with islands, it's just that it's clouds!

Sunset above a cloud sea. Ben Lawers, #Scotland. Sadly not representative of recent weather! #MountainMonday.

Possibly still light enough for #BlueSkyMonday too, though getting a bit inky.

#sunset #mountains #mountaineering #clouds #inversion #landscape #scape #photography #EastCoastKin

Some lovely photos and changes we all struggle to process. I didn't grow up in Scotland, but as a winter mountaineer, the change is evident to me over time too.

Not very appealing to refuse to make the hire either though is it?

Was thinking exactly this. Do they have tinned tuna?

Tree outline with a fountain pen and lines of dots on notepad paper.

B&W on this occasion. I can't articulate why. But I do like these side by side comparisons. Maybe I'll figure out my reasons one day.

Yes, it's an absolute classic book, and such a distinctive landscape, even within Scotland. This photo is looking pretty deep into the spaces between Braemar and Blair Atholl. Not the highest or most conventionally dramatic part of the National Park, but perhaps the least frequented.

A wide photo showing a wide glen running away through large rounded shadowed hills slightly left of centre. The sky has dark grey cloud with a lighter band at the horizon. Low angled afternoon sunlight just slants through on the right, but overall this is a gloomy sombre picture - the sun does not get high at this time of year and if it also cloudy it is never really bright.

Midwinter light in the #Cairngorms, #Scotland. Taken on the winter solstice - a walk that ended, predictably, in the dark. If I could photo edit, it might be a better photo, but here it is for now...

#scape #landscape #mountains #mountaineering #photography #winter #EastCoastKin

Good to see we don't just get mountain days like this in Scotland!

Two marmots mid picture, the first facing right, and the second directly behind facing left so only the head shows. Foreground is grass and pebbles, with some long grass partially in the way of the marmots; background is boulders.

Taken *in* the mountains but not a photo *of* mountains today. Iconic #marmots / #marmottes in the Alps this summer.

#France #wildlife #nature #photography #mountains #mountaineering #EastCoastKin

Thanks for sharing both. I think I prefer colour on this occasion, but I'm B&W curious, and it's great to see two versions side by side.