Unlike last year when we were knee deep in snow by the end of November, the winter weather has been stuttering between light snowfall and very mild conditions, which has made it difficult to plan trips onto the hill for landscape photography. However, as part of my on-going 2020VISION assignment to cover the uplands of the Cairngorms National Park, I headed for the hills one afternoon mid-month with a short window of opportunity in the weather. Heading up from the ski centre, low cloud shrouded Cairngorm summit and any hope of long views seemed remote. But I kept the weatherman's faith in a clear afternoon and plodded on to an unnamed cairn at 1141m. Blue sky was now visible through the cloud and by the time I reached Stag Rocks the sky was clear to the east and the views across Glen Avon to Beinn Mheadhoin were stunning. I had planned to reach the crags to the west end of the glen to give me a view down onto the loch but the sun was dipping quickly towards the horizon and low cloud continued to cast the landscape into shadow. I decided to stick where I was and as the sun intermittently lit the foreground, I grabbed the chance to secure my first mountain landscapes of the winter.