Having friends to stay (as we did over New Year) is always a good excuse to get out and about and go exploring.

Inverness and the wider Highlands is cold and dark through the winter, but that brings out a gloomy and at times almost ethereally strange light.

Here are a few photos from Glen Affric…

…and from the New Year fireworks in Inverness (not as good as the ones I took three years ago, mind).

You can see a few others I took over the past few days here on Flickr – though a few were iPhone shots as I had stupidly forgotten my camera.

Hopefully I’ll be a bit more camera-active this coming year.