I organized a photo trip with friends in the beautiful Scottish Highlands a few years ago. We spent one week in the Glencoe region and a second on the Isle of Skye. The Highlands are truly a photographer's paradise. I relied mainly on the Landscape Photographer's Guide for both regions to plan the trip, having bought the eBooks on LPM's website.

Planning is a fundamental element for blue hour photography, and I decided to do this shot before leaving Canada. The night before the shoot, taking into account the weather forecast for the morning, I made my final plans. On September 19th, sunrise would be at 7:04. The time needed to climb the mountain would be about an hour, and peak blue hour is generally 45 minutes before sunrise. The time to travel from our accommodation in Broadford to the Old Man of Storr parking lot would be 47 minutes. Therefore, we would have to leave the house at 4:30 am to catch this image.

Once on the mountain, I spotted this large standing formation of rock. I walked further up to compose the image incorporating the curves on the distant mountains, the two beautiful lochs and the two lovely peaks in the foreground. I set up my tripod, camera and cable release. To compose the image, I used a 22 mm focal length. I wanted a long exposure to avoid using high ISO. Once again, I used the live time feature on my camera to perform a perfect exposure (ETTR). The shot was taken at 6:22 am, and exposure was 25 seconds. The planning and early rising were well worth the effort. I took another amazing blue hour image in this photographer's paradise, which I had also planned before leaving Canada.