Mount Machhapuchchhre from Tadapani
Photo of the Day
There’s little better than being able to wake up, walk outside and see a view like this. That’s just what you can do if you’re staying in Tadapani, Nepal whilst hiking the Ghorepani Loop.
Here, fellow lodgers at the local guesthouses have woken early to watch the first rays of the sunrise hit Mount Machhapuchchhre also know as Fish Tail for its distinctive double-summit shape.
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The View to Lhotse
Photo of the Day
There comes a point on the Everest trail when you find yourself incapable of properly watching your step because of the views. The mountains that were already towering above you somehow find a way to become ever more dramatic and iconic. Their permanently snowy peaks inspire awe and before too long, you have to stop not just because the altitude has made you breathless, but the view demands that you pause to appreciate it.
Here is one such view as Lhotse, the fourth tallest mountain in the world, rises behind a stupa built as a memorial to Tenzing Norgay above Namche Bazaar.
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On the way to Everest, Above the Clouds
Photo of the Day
It’s been almost a year since I visited Nepal. That’s far too long for me to have a cache of unshared photos from that wonderful country, so I’ll try to rectify that over the next little while.
The highlight of the trip was standing with the Himalayas towering overhead. For this photo, I woke before dawn and hiked up from Namche Bazaar to a lookout point where I could watch the clouds roll up from the valley below. About a minute after taking this photo, I was enveloped in grey and couldn’t see a thing.
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Photos in the 2016 Scottish Field Calendars
2016 approaches and you’re going to to need some way to remind yourself not to scribble the wrong date on your cheques (if you still write cheques). What better way to do it than with some lovely images from Scotland?
A few of my photos are featured in two of the Scottish Field Calendars for 2016 including my image of Dunvegan Castle on the cover of the mini version of the calendar. You can preview/buy the mini calendar here and the regular one here. Below, you’ll find the images they’ve used.
And there are plenty more of my images of Scotland here and here.
Jordan Gallery Posted
Another long-overdue collection of images is finally live on my site. Please take a moment to browse my photos of Jordan here.
Though a not insubstantial time has passed since my visit, the memories are as vivid as could be. Here’s just a quick sample: Hiking in Petra, hitchhiking with some random moustached man whose car interior was totally and completely wrapped in cling film and who smelled like candy, floating in the Dead Sea, leaping from ledges into sand dunes and racing down them like a kid, getting pelted in the back with a stone by some seven year old girl (wtf!), getting chased by camels, balancing precariously on giant natural arches, walking in Moses’ footsteps, exploring medieval castles and forts, having an ibex steal a potato from us, eating some pretty great food, listening to the haunting, synchronised call to prayer alone on a hilltop beneath a roman ruin in Amman, rescuing a donkey from a cliff, etc..
There are plenty more memories to be shared in photo form, so please visit the gallery.
Scots Magazine Cover
Readers of the Scots Magazine can see a big version of one of my photos of Scotland’s Rannoch Moor on the cover of the June issue available now.
And for anyone interested in seeing more of my pictures from one of my favourite countries to photograph, check out this gallery of images from Scotland. And here’s a second one if you can’t get enough!
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Second Gallery of Scotland Photos
My photos of Scotland are some of my most popular, so I saw that as an opportunity to visit that magical land again (and again) to get more photos to share with you. Here’s my second instalment of photos from Scotland.
And as a bonus, my original Scotland gallery has also received a few new additions. Enjoy!
Crovie, Scotland
Photo of the Day
The tiny village of Crovie was one of my favourite spots on my most recent visit to Scotland. This former fishing village has only one walkway that is too narrow for cars, so everyone has to park at one end of the town. But even given that fact, apparently Tesco will still deliver groceries there! I saw a couple of delivery people carting a load of food up to the last house in the village while I was there. It’s not recommended that visitors drive all the way down the steep slope to the village, so they did a good job to get there.
The quiet row of houses is a magical place.
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Dunnottar Castle
Photo of the Day
The sun rises behind Dunnottar Castle in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
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Bow Fiddle Rock
Photo of the Day
The sun rises behind Bow Fiddle Rock off the north Coast of Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
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The Banff Springs Hotel
Photo of the Day
Being only an hour’s drive away from my childhood hometown of Calgary, I’ve had the chance to visit Banff numerous times. On my most recent visit to Calgary, I stopped there briefly with my family and I asked them to stop at a place I had never actually visited: a little corner on the edge of town called Surprise View. There, a great view of the Banff Springs Hotel greets anyone with time enough to stop.
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Sunrise from Jabal Umm ad Dami
Photo of the Day
One of the highlights of my five-day stay in the desert of Wadi Rum was a morning ascent of Jabal Umm ad Dami, Jordan’s highest mountain. In pre-dawn darkness, my guide and I clambered over the rocky terrain to reach a ridge partway up the mountain where we stopped for some breakfast and waited for the sunrise. We were treated to the scene in today’s photo of the day.
My guide, Sallah, had a potato we had baked the night before in the embers of the fire and was going to heat it up for me, but I had already had enough food to keep me fuelled, so he left it on the rocks where we could pick it up on the way back down. After reaching the summit, admiring the views and starting back down, Sallah found some ibex tracks and was trying to see which way it went as we approached our breakfast spot. Much to his confusion, when we arrived, the potato was gone. There were no ibex tracks leading directly to the spot, but there no other markings and he couldn’t think of any other animal that could have taken it, so he concluded that an ibex stole our potato!
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Glen Affric
Photo of the Day
Glen Affric is sometimes described as the most beautiful glen in Scotland. Since I haven’t seen them all, I can’t officially comment, but if there are glens that surpass this place in beauty, I want to see them.
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Dusk at Eilean Donan Castle
Photo of the Day
I’ve posted a few photos of Eilean Donan Castle here so I won’t bore you with my waxing poetically about the beauty of the place. Here’s a panoramic image that should speak for itself.
Click here for more of my photos of Scotland.
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Fingal’s Cave
Photo of the Day
The jewel of the the uninhabited island of Staffa is Fingal’s Cave, a giant sea cave formed entirely from hexagonal basalt columns. The small island is west of the Isle of Mull and attracts visitors mainly for this natural wonder.
Tempestuous waters jostled our boat while we attempted to moor, but expert guidance from our boat’s crew allowed all of us to safely hop onto the jetty so that we could make the short walk to the cave. The basalt columns formed by ancient volcanic eruptions serve as the pathway to the cave and you almost feel like you’re walking on a giant batch of french fries.
Once we arrived at the main attraction, the high tides pushed waves into the cave where they thunderously crashed against the walls. That awesome roar from the waves was quite a show and easily made up for the choppy seas we faced getting on and off the boat.
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Blackrock Cottage Panorama
Photo of the Day
Scotland’s dramatic vistas attract landscape photographers in swarms. The dependability of certain spots is clear when you scout out locations on Google Maps: you can often find photographers with cameras set up on tripods pointed at prime locations on the street view.
The Blackrock Cottage, just east of the entrance to Glencoe, is another one of those iconic views that every photographer has to grab if they’re anywhere nearby. On a trip into the highlands, you pass within a mile or two of this picturesque home, so of course, on the way up I had to stop and try my luck.
I tried to put my own spin on the oft-photographed view by making it into a panorama and capturing a little more of the stark surrounding countryside and not just the cottage with the imposing peak of Buchaille Etive Mor in the background.
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Ardnamurchan Point Lighthouse
Photo of the Day
Recent adventures to Scotland took me to the Ardnamurchan peninsula which features the most Westerly point in mainland Great Britain. Narrow, winding roads rise and fall over the stark, wavy landscape to reach Ardnamurchan point which features a picturesque lighthouse as seen below.
This shot required manoeuvring over a rough terrain full of tiny creeks, slippery stones, and tidal inlets as well as around sheep that looked unhappy to have me in their presence, but those rocks in the foreground along with the long exposure of the turbulent water gave this photo more texture and depth than I might have gotten from a more accessible location.
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Over Eilean Donan Castle
Photo of the Day
I’ve recently returned from another great week in Scotland. They all seem to be great, but this one even had the weather contributing to the quality of life. Sunny skies have browned my arms while hiking through gorgeous glens, trekking up and down hills overlooking lochs and castle, and spotting just about every bit of wildlife that the UK seems to have on offer.
One of those lochs and castles visited was the magical Eilean Donan on Loch Duich. It’s one of my favourite places in the world and I keep hoping I get to be in its neighbourhood every time I go up to Scotland.
For today’s photo of the day, I embarked on a little trek that quickly got a lot longer than anticipated when I was struggling to get the view I wanted. Driving up the tiny country road that provides views above the castle wasn’t quite good enough for me, but I couldn’t find an accessible path up to the hills. A couple miles of driving, a hefty climb, and then a couple of miles traversing steep slopes back to almost where I had started and I wound up in the spot I wanted just as the sun was descending.
The result is below showing the sun touching the mountains in the west while the colours sweep across the panorama of the lochs and castle below.
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Meteora Valley
Photo of the Day
My gallery of photos of Meteora, Greece is now online and in celebration of that fact, today’s photo of the day shows the Roussanou Monastery perched on a cliff overlooking the valley in Meteora.
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Millstone at Longshaw Estates
Photo of the Day
Autumn colours add magic to the forests surrounding Longshaw Estates in the Peak District and the abandoned millstones hiding beneath the trees.
More of my photos of the Peak District and the English midlands are available here.
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South Stack Lighthouse at Dusk
Photo of the Day
Here’s another shot from last Easter Weekend. This is the South Stack Lighthouse on the Western Coast of the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales.
Giant cliffs loom over the rocky peninsula where this beacon shines out into the water and when the light spins around, it casts an eerie glow back onto the land. My camera didn’t pick up the light returning back to the land and though I probably could have done a longer exposure to show the spotlight’s streak upon the cliffs, I thought it would have started looking pretty artificial, so I went for this classic view of the lighthouse at dusk instead.
Please visit my Wales image gallery to see more photos of North Wales.
Click to see the image on a black background:
Llynnau Mymbyr to Snowdon
Photo of the Day
Last weekend, good weather and an even better hotel deal prompted a last-minute trip to North Wales. Among the many gorgeous spots visited was Llynnau Mymbyr, a pair of lakes nestled in the mountains of Snowdonia.
This photo takes in the view westward across one of the lakes to Snowden, the highest peak in Wales still covered in its winter snow.
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Vinales, Cuba
Photo of the Day
The energy of the Cuba’s capital, Havana, is relentless. Overwhelming sound and life inhabit every street. If you want to escape and take a little rest from it all, there’s probably no better contrast to Havana’s high pace than the tranquil Vinales Valley in Pinar del Rio province where giant limestone mogotes tower over placid farms and a small town that serves as a base to explore the region’s natural wonders.
This photo is the classic view of the Mogotes of the Cordillera de Guaniguanico mountain range at sunset. This viewpoint at the Hotel Los Jazmines is a popular spot for good reason – it’s the perfect place to take in one of Cuba’s most iconic landscapes.
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Roussanou Monastery Above the Clouds
Photo of the Day
To mix things up a little, we’re going back to Greece for today’s photo of the day. This one is the Roussanou monastery in Meteora, Greece.
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Darby Sawchuk is a Canadian-born photographer who currently resides in Manchester, England. He has travelled to over 40 countries and is always adding more to the list. He creates stock for multiple agencies and is available for assignments.
+44 0790 992 8932
