New year’s resolutions are both a blessing and a curse. They’re a chance to make a strong commitment to something, and an excuse to tell everyone about it, creating a kind of social contract that might embarrass you into actually doing the thing you really want or need to do. They’re also an opportunity to put all your eggs into one basket and pile the pressure on yourself, creating the possibility, or probability, of catastrophic failure.
I normally try not to commit to anything too challenging for my New Year’s resolution. However, since Matt Payne came to visit last year, I’ve been enjoying getting out with the camera more often and, despite my own advice, I’ve committed to a 365 project. Every day, whatever the weather and however busy I am, I’ll get out and explore, find at least one interesting view, invest my attention in it, and take a photograph. It doesn’t have to be amazing or gather social media approval, it just has to be something I can genuinely engage with creatively.

So far, January has seen no catastrophic failures on that front. However, now that I’ve told everyone, I’m convinced my failure probability has jumped dramatically. In the meantime, I thought it would be good to share the best photograph from each week here on On Landscape.
I had no trouble selecting last week’s image. Joe Cornish had come to visit, and we were just about to sit down and look at the NLPA book when I got a phone call from a friend at the National Trust who said, “You have to get out now, the skies are exploding!” (or words to that effect).
I’d already been thinking about where might work well for photographing the aurora, and I knew I could choose between Loch Ba and Kinlochleven. I opted for the shorter journey, and I’m very glad I did. The location would only work with the aurora overhead and to the west, so I was delighted when it turned out to be one of the strongest displays for at least a decade, at least with clear skies.

The photographs were turning out nicely, even on an f/4 24–105 at ISO 640. We were disturbed a few times by the headlights of cars entering the car park, and although I cursed them initially, I soon realised they were throwing some rather lovely light onto a couple of trees. And hey presto, the 365 project image for the 19th of January 2026 turned out to be a very pleasant surprise.

Click here to download issue 343 (high quality, 80Mb)

Click here to download issue 343 (smaller download, 27Mb)