Old Man of Storr Isle of Skye

The road up to the Old Man of Storr from Portree was impassable for our little car for probably 3 or 4 days. Especially when you're going to be the first person on the road after a freezing snowy night as I wanted to be up here for sunrise. We attempted this journey the day before this picture and failed. Worried that after  a 450 mile journey to the Isle of Skye I was going to fail at the last hurdle and not get the shot I wanted. This motivated me to get up at 4am the following morning and walk this journey. I walked along the road that had quite a covering of snow which confirmed to me that walking was the better option. This 7 mile journey to the Storr car park took me 2 and half hours and I only saw 1 vehicle on this road in that time.

Arriving at the car park at 7:15am it was time for the extra 1 and half miles up the side of the mountain. With nobody here I had it to myself and the footpaths were footprint free and covered in snow. This made the path hard to distinguish. On the lower parts of the mountain it didn't matter so much but as I got further up the snow got deeper and keeping to the path became increasingly more difficult.

Once near the Storr I was almost ready to cut my losses and get a shot within close proximity of it but this was not the shot I wanted. I needed to be further up at the viewing part. So I persevered climbing through what appeared to be snow drifts that came up to my waist/chest (which was probably stupid) to finally get to the top. This took longer than expected and I thought I was going to miss the sunrise but the sunrise was late due to a small cloud bank on the horizon. Which means I was just in time for the light to capture the shot that I wanted. I was the only one here on this particular morning, I had it all to myself. Sometimes I am the luckiest person alive.

18/01/24

Sony

A7RIII

37mm

Full Frame

f/9

1/250

Second

100