Photo walk on Scotland’s Isle of Kerrera

While up in Scotland on our sailing trip, we stopped off at the STUNNING Isle of Kerrera, near Oban on the west coast of Scotland. Wanting to make the most of our time here, I got Tim to drop me on shore and headed out for a photo walk.

My first subject was not far from here I was dropped off, in the form of some Terns. They were gliding around on the strong winds, and were a delight to see. Unfortunately, due to the location of the sun, I wasn’t able to get the images I was hoping for. The skies were incredibly bright, and the terns were flying high up, rather than in front of the small island opposite, leaving me with rather boring images.

I then started my walk along the coast, stopping to photograph some gulls.

I made my way down to another beach that was much more sheltered from the winds. Here there were Oyster Catchers and a gaggle of Canada Geese. I got nice and low down to take my images, tyring to get myself as eye level as possible with them. As the Oystercatchers moved along the shore, I was able to capture some images of them in flight, which I am really happy with.

Continuing on my walk, I saw a Whitethroat in amongst the long bracken.

I made my way to a track that Tim and I had walked to earlier, and headed off to my right, to see what was out in this direction. The track opened up into grazing land and I could see some rabbits up ahead. Dropping behind the bracken, I took some images, but unfortunately, they were all back focused. The rabbits didn’t stay long, as overhead there was a Buzzard, gliding in the evening thermals. I got a couple images of the buzzard, before heading back down the track.

At this point I was starting to feel a bit of pressure, as I had been out for quite a long time and felt that I hadn’t really seen that much, and the sun was rapidly setting. On my walk with Tim earlier, we saw some Highland Cows, and I really wanted an image of them, so headed out towards where we had seen them as I knew they would still be around.

This part of my walk was very fruitful, and I photographed my first ever Lap Wing, which was amazing, as well as a couple of Oystercatchers flying side by side, which is one of my favourite images from this walk.  

Nearing the cows, I spotted a Meadow Pipit on an old stone wall, as well as another small bird that I am still struggling to identify. It could be a juvenile, which is why I am struggling with identifying it, as this was taken on June 7th.

The Highland Cows and made their way up from the field and were grazing on the track. I am really happy with the first image I took, though in my head, I wanted a cleaner background, without the wall intersecting the cow’s head. Moving around, I tried to get a clean background, but this was proving to be very challenging as the cows were all bunched up.

I moved a bit closer, and so had to swap from the 200-600 mm lens to my favourite, the 70-200 f2.8. This meant I was able to use a nice wide aperture of 2.8 to help isolate my subject, which was one of the most adorable little calves, amongst the iris.

After this, I popped the 200-600 back on and started to head back to the boat. It was 21:15 at this point and even though June in Scotland is very light pretty much all night, the light was dropping fast and with an aperture of f6.3 at the long end, this lens isn’t really ideal for photographing at dusk.

This was the point where I really started to feel the pressure building. I am my own worst critic, and I felt that I hadn’t really got any decent images. To me, it felt that I had just been wandering around for the last 2 hours and didn’t have anything to show for it. From experience, this is usually something I feel when out with my camera, and it’s only when I get back to edit the images that I realise that actually, I did get some nice images. My confidence in myself is something that I feel I need to work on, and I feel that the more I am able to get out with the camera, the more confident I will get. I also think that photo walks are much harder than they appear to be, especially in a completely new area where you haven’t been to before. I think I should have given myself more time, so that I wouldn’t have felt that I was rushing around from one spot to another, not seeing as much as I wanted.

That being said, I continued my walk back to the boat, with the 70-200 back on my camera, as it was starting to get really rather dark, and of course, after walking for about 20 minutes, I saw an Otter, out in the bay fishing.

I was able to get myself as low as possible and even managed to swap onto my longer lens again, as the Otter was a good distance away from me. Due to the lack of light, I made sure to get video footage of the Otter, as I am able to use a slower shutter speed, and so a lower ISO.

The Otter didn’t hang around for long, but it was a pleasure to be able to watch it fishing, before it climbed up and over some rocks.

I made my way down behind these, to see if I could peek over and see the Otter in the next bay, but after lots of scanning with the camera, I had to admit defeat and call it a day.

The Otter sighting at the end of this walk was truly amazing, and really helped to get my spirits back up and end the walk on a high.