We headed up Ben Rinnes today, to look for ptarmigan and mountain hare. Before that, a group of three were photographing red grouse in the morning. They were very lucky to have a grouse within two metres of them for a good half hour. At first it was apprehensive as they usually are, however the group left the van and the male started becoming quite territorial. After sitting and waiting for a while, the grouse came very close and the guys managed to capture some great images.
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At 11 o'clock we left the cottages for Ben Rinnes and made the summit at 13:30. On the way up we spotted some mountain hare and ptarmigan, but waited until we reached the top and ate lunch before stalking and photographing the subjects.
It was a task I set myself to try and make use of the snow fall in images. To do that I was using a slightly slower shutter speed than I would typically. This was shot at 1/80th of a second, to give the snow some movement and add context to the subject.
We spotted roughly 10 mountain hare from the summit to the top of the mountain. As there were 10 of us the stalking of the subjects was difficult but we managed to get within 15 metres, which allowed some 'in habitat' images like the one below.
Below I am going to create a few galleries of the other photographers' work from the trip so far. There has been little time to edit and so I will create more extensive galleries after the trip.
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Others Galleries
Eleanor Hilsdon
Others Galleries
Eleanor Hilsdon