Photographing the Trossachs

I really love trips away to different parts of the United Kingdom and even other countries, my first real trip this year (February-2025) was to the Trossachs around Loch Lomond.  So, first thing to say is it was absolutely freeeezing despite wearing long johns, thick trousers, wind sheeters etc thank goodness for the car heater and a hot flask of tea!   I was absolutely astounded that even in the middle of nowhere we met wild swimmers, no wetsuits, very brave people! 

I approached this trip in much the same was as I have approached trips in the past, referenced a book of the area and did some internet research.  The book I read was the ‘Photographers Guide to Scotland’ (with particular interest in the section on the Trossachs’).  Visiting different locations at the ‘right’ time of day is super important to get the maximum out of the prevailing light, sunrise, sunset, early afternoon etc… so there is a certain amount of location scheduling to be done.  The issue we had during this week was that there was virtually no light, it was very grey, windy, cloudy and generally a bit miserable!

Not to be defeated I still took maybe 300 to 400 hundred images over five days, Just for the blog I boiled it down to 3 portfolio pictures, shown here, let me take you through them…

The Loop of Fintry

The Loop of Fintry is a beautiful waterfall that’s out in the open, usually waterfalls are in deep valleys where there is no sky and limited light, this waterfall was around 30m of drop and surrounded in rocks.  I actually visited this waterfall twice to get the better conditions, although you wouldn’t notice from the photo.  The tricky piece with photographing waterfalls is getting the shutter speed correct, too slow and the water turns very milky and becomes a white mass in the centre of the image, too fast and the movement is lost and frozen, after much experimentation I went for 1/25th of a second.

Inveruglas Island

Inveruglas Island is a few hundred metres off the shore of Loch Lomond with, at the right angle, a great mountain backdrop with, in winter, a generous covering of snow.  Just behind where I took this photo is the Loch Sloy Hydro-Electric station, completed in 1949, workers included German prisoners of war.   From a photography perspective the trick here is to isolate the island from the backdrop which can be done in post processing but also in camera by lowering the aperture value.  Typically for this week the sky was grey and moody, oh for a little low-lying sun!

Loch Ard

Loch Ard is a beautiful more intimate loch with photogenic scenes including piers, moored boats, boat houses etc all along the shore. We parked up near Loch Ard Forest and explored the lake taking in the scenery.  I spotted this composition and almost discarded it as being a little messy, for sure there is a lot in it, but I eventually talked my way round to taking the shot, I love the rusty fence, green reeds and moss-covered tree stumps.

So that was my photographic tour of the Trossachs, very cold, beautiful scenery and in the end some good images….