The Dawn Before Christmas

Dawn is an overstatement of course, because the lucky thing about winter at northern latitudes if you're a photographer is that dawn is so late in the morning that you can still enjoy a lie-in and watch the sunrise, too.

We arrived at the lodge (but really think more like condominiums) after dark so we couldn't see anything about our surroundings until the next morning.  I went out around 9 a.m. to see the loch and to see if by chance there might be a sunrise.  

When we learned a week earlier that we would be going to Scotland for Christmas the forecast was for nothing but rain, so I was feeling really thrilled not to be rained on...much.  A few little drizzles fell from the sky.  I just kept walking down the road looking for a good spot to stop.

I climbed over a low, crumbling stone wall to this little beach because it had a great view of Ben Lomond, the snowy mountaintop in the distance.

I have dreams of being able to climb things like this when the kids are older.  Although of course, you can't see the mountaintop if you climb it, which is always a drawback.

KJ bought a gadget for our tripod to hold our phones, and after deleting Angry Birds Transformers I had sufficient space to do a timelapse video.  It was nice because the sun finally came over the hills and out of the clouds around 10 a.m., and you can see the light start hitting the mountain.  That was my first successful timelapse with my phone.

I loved all the forests of fir trees we saw in Scotland.  The skyline always looked like it was full of Christmas trees.

The sunshine didn't last, so these shots were nice to have.

I took the above picture because when I looked across the loch at the sun on the trees I thought of the line from The Emperor's New Groove:  "When the sun hits that ridge just right, these hills sing." My head is full of these quotes from animated movies.

The sun didn't last for long, but it was beautiful while it lasted, a beautiful way to start our stay at Loch Ard.