A mesmerising spectrum of colours are painted across the sky as the Aurora Borealis puts on an extraordinary show over the west coast of the island. Decent foregrounds are hard to find at night on the open expanses of empty sand that characterise that coastline, so with this image I used a small stream running down to the sea as my subject. The smooth flow of water around the sand and stones created a nice reflective surface to pick up the glow overhead. This was taken at 20mm with the belt of Aurora activity passing directly overhead. I get goosebumps to this day thinking about this experience – it was life affirming stuff!

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Tags:   Isle of Man Isle of Man photography Landscape landscape photography astrophotography astro Aurora Borealis Northern Lights

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Glen Dhoo is a beautiful, secluded valley in the upper section of Ballaugh Glen that really rewards photographers the longer they linger and explore. It’s very much the kind of place where you will often have the entire landscape all to yourself as it’s well off the radar of many people. This is a telephoto 5:4 crop image taken at around 120mm framing the trunk of a huge lone tree together with a dry-stone wall snaking away into the distance. The covering of snow contrasts strongly with the burnt orange of the old decaying bracken spread across the valley floor.

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Tags:   Isle of Man Isle of Man photography Landscape landscape photography Winter Snow telephoto

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A giant rusting cog from an old piece of farming machinery sits embedded in the snow on a cold winter’s day up in the Manx hills. The out of frame sun added a nice diffuse glow into the top left corner of this image which added an effective counterbalance to the dark and angular form of the iron cog. The biggest challenge with snow covered scenes like these is ensuring that the scouting process to find the compositions doesn’t inadvertently end up destroying your actual shots with footprints through the snow. The goal is simple – minimise the number of footprints and make sure they only occur in spots you don’t intent to capture. It’s surprisingly difficult to do and results in what must be a bizarre alien like walking method, that thankfully more often than not, no one else is around to witness! 😅

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Tags:   Isle of Man Isle of Man photography Landscape landscape photography mono black & white Winter Snow

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The crumbling ruins of an old Tholtan in a frigid Tholt-Y-Will glen with the peaks of Slieau Dhoo and Slieau Freoaghane catching breaks of winter sunlight through the clouds. The snow and ice seem like a distant memory now with all the windy, grey and damp weather lately, but hopefully the winter gives us a little more of the cold stuff soon ❄️

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Tags:   Isle of Man Isle of Man photography Landscape landscape photography Winter Snow

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A crumbling tholtan ruin and lone tree situated high up in magnificent Glen Dhoo exposed to the winter onslaught with a mix of snow and rain lashing down over the valley. The conditions when shooting this were absolutely appalling and it was one of those rare moments where I genuinely feared for my camera equipment. The air temperature must have been close to zero but most of the precipitation was falling as rain, very heavy rain at that! I was totally soaked down to the skin by the time I was finished and my camera geared for all intents and purposes, may as well have had a bath such was the soaking that was experienced.

I shoot with a mirrorless Nikon Z7 camera which is a 7-year-old body now but still going strong. Conditions like this goes to show the value of proper professional level weather sealing on camera gear, especially for avid landscape photographers.

This photo was an impromptu unplanned image that I captured before declaring defeat and hiking back out of the valley. It turned out to be my favourite image of the day because it perfectly captured the conditions and the desolate isolated atmosphere of this hidden valley. A bone chilling but wonderful photography experience!

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Tags:   Isle of Man Isle of Man photography Landscape landscape photography Winter

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