Photographer captures forest

A collection of mysterious images of Scotland’s last remaining fragments of ancient woodland are to go on display in Perthshire.

The pictures, by nature photographer Peter Cairns, will be on show at the John Muir Trust Wild Space Gallery in Pitlochry in an exhibition called Northwoods.

Peter says his passion for the Great Wood of Caledon, a rich, vibrant forest which once stretched across much of the Scottish Highlands, is all the stronger because it is under threat.

He said: “Today it has reduced to just a fragment of its former range – yet within the wildwood that remains, there is magic.

“This is a place in which red squirrels forage and wildcats hunt, a forest over which eagles and ospreys soar.”

He said that images, such as a silver birch encrusted in hoar or a Scots pine silhouetted against a sunrise, were intended to depict how the remnants of the woodland make him feel, as a photographer and as a lover of wild places.

“Rather than focus on the wider view, I set out to capture the seasonal elemental mood of the forest through light, colour and texture,” he said. “It is their interconnectedness and that of all living organisms, which makes the forest complete.”

The Northwoods collection can be seen at the John Muir Trust Wild Space Gallery in Pitlochry until mid-April.