After a smashing Christmas and New Year where we spent 4 nights of photography and R&R at the Kingshouse Hotel in Glencoe, January was soon upon us, and it was time to plan my photography activities for January 2026.
2025 had been the most prolific year for me to date, photography wise as I had visited the most locations in one year and taken the highest number of photos in one year. My goals for 2026 were to at least match this target but ideally improve on this.
I had taken the decision at the end of 2025 to change my camera system, the reason for this was that I wanted a larger megapixel sensor.
Don’t get me wrong, the Olympus system and specially the OM1 MK II camera is an excellent bit of kit, but I made the decision that I would prefer a larger sized senor, hence the change to the Fujifilm X-H2 camera and a suit of lenses, this change was to be funded by a mix of purchasing new and trading/exchanging my current Olympus gear.
So, the second week of January saw the new kit arrive, first thing was to update my insurance cover, after all, you never know when you are going to need this!
During the next couple of weeks, I was using the camera in and around the garden to build up my knowledge and muscle memory for the new camera as there were some considerable differences.
It suddenly dawned on me that January was nearing its end, and I had barley used the camera in anger, there were justifiable reasons for this, poor weather conditions, lack of enthusiasm on my part, but the main reason was that family considerations had taken precedence, and quite rightly too.
So, come the end of January I had the grand total of two photo shoots to my name, not the best start to the year, but hopefully we can improve on this.
The Aurora Borealis Super Show
The first time the new camera system was used in anger was on the night of the 19th of January, the night of the amazing Aurora Borealis show.
I received updates of an impending show of the northern lights at about 6 pm, we waited a hour or so just to check if there would be any sign of the aurora borealis, with further updates arriving at 7 pm and 8pm.
I was lucky enough to witness the Northern Light show in May 2024, but Carole had never seen them, so tonight the two of us would go out to see if we could see this magical nature show.
We live near the coast, and upon leaving the home there was a slight covering of mist outside our house this didn’t damp our enthusiasm as we headed for a high viewpoint at the far end of the town which has little light pollution.
Disappointingly we arrived only to find that the mist was preventing any sighting of the northern lights at this location.
So, we decided to drive 10 minutes out of town to higher ground, in the hope of getting above the mist, and by a stoke of good luck we achieved this, so I parked up in a farmer’s field gate and set about trying to find the Northern Lights.
Once our eyes become adjusted to the darkness, you could see faint colours in the sky, so it was time to grab the camera.
Carole was using her phone to capture the colours, which were very visible on the back of it, she was sounding like a kid in a sweet shop, very excited at the show developing in front of us.
Once I had set up the camera properly, the colours in the sky were amazing, nature at its best, the depth of the colours were deeper that my previous experience of seeing the Northern Lights.
I was using a tree as foreground interest, shooting upwards to capture as much of the sky as possible.
The only downside of being at this location was when a car passed us, the intensity of the headlights was overpowering at times, a small price to pay though!
When we got back home, we saw that social media had gone ballistic with photos of the amazing nights show, a night not to be forgotten for a long time.
Red Squirrels
The last week of the month had me contacting Lorraine to enquire where she had taken some exceptionally good photos of Red Squirrels, she agreed to show me where they were, this are an animal that I have always wanted to photograph.
It was a bitterly cold afternoon that we headed for the location, there were two photographers already present, we introduced ourselves and had a chat about what they had seen during their stay.
I was amazed to see that a squirrel was running around our feet within minutes of arriving, but they are dammed quick little blighters when they take off.
We put some more food out and settled down for the squirrels to appear, in the meantime, I began shooting the little birds that were about, Blue Tits, Great Tits and Nuthatches were the most common birds to see.
The squirrels were soon darting from the surrounding cover to grab nuts then taking off, this made trying to photograph them very difficult as you had no idea from where they were coming.
It seemed that the longer we were there, the squirrels were becoming more comfortable with us being there, as they settled down to eat the nuts within sight of us, this greatly helped me get a few shots of them.
I spent a very enjoyable two hours here, and the time flew by, unfortunately, I had another appointment and needed to leave to be somewhere else.
I will definitely be returning to the location to try and get some better shots of the squirrels but thank you Lorraine for showing me the location and the photography advice during the day.
This wraps up my photo journey for January, not the busiest period, or the most adventurous, but it was a start, onwards and upwards in to 2026.
Thank you for taking the time to view this news post, stay safe, and see you on the next one.
