Foggy Warwickshire sunrise beats hundreds of spectacular snaps taken for Weather Watch photo competition

THESE spectacular pictures show the wonder of weather ranging from a blistering Russian blizzard to a misty English bluebell wood.

They are all winners and runners up in the International Society of Nature and Wildlife Photographers’ Weather Watch photo competition.

The overall winner from hundreds of entries was a foggy sunrise in Flecknoe, Warwickshire, captured by 52-year-old snapper Hamish Scott-Brown.

Hamish said: “I know there are the die hard landscape photographers who’ll camp up all night in a one man tent and get the ultimate shot - but I’m not one of them.

“I’d seen the weather was going to be a foggy day on that December morning.

“I simply drove out to the fields and sat waiting for the sun to pop over the trees while sipping on a flask of hot coffee in the comfort of the car.

“It was just one of those days where I got lucky and caught that rare moment.”

Phil Jones, from the Societies, said: “For this competition we asked to see all kinds of images that depict any type of weather, be it thunderous storms, blizzards or beautiful sunshine.

“Hamish’s image captured the theme wonderfully with the beautiful sense of feeling from the image as the sun is rising through the fog.”

Runner-up was 41-year-old former solicitor Antony Zacharias with his picture of the Penmon Lighthouse in Anglesey, north Wales.

He said: “I was enjoying the serenity of being alone and the peace of the isolated area - the only sounds being the lapping waves, odd gull and the regular clang of the lighthouse bell.”

Anthony also had a highly commended shot, a moody black and white storm brewing in Talisker Bay on the Isle of Skye.

Auroras also featured strongly in the competition, with third place going to Nottinghamshire’s Peter Jones with a picture of the northern lights in Iceland.

Nick Jackson’s portrait under the stars with an aurora in Abisko, Sweden and an ‘exploding’ northern lights shot taken the same night were both highly commended as was Anita Hummel’s capture of a misty valley near Freiburg in Germany.

Another runner-up was a picture of a tiny church in Russia during a blizzard.

Photographer Igor Sherman, 56, from St Petersburg, told how he braved the snowstorm to get to the Vuoksa (corr) River where the church is.

Also showing the power of the weather was the lightning strike captured in the Canyonlands National Park in Utah, by American Carl Crumley.

Slightly more serene, was Dubliner Kevin Grace’s shot of the Dolomites in Italy.

The 49 year old said of the highly commended shot: “It was taken in northern Italy at a place where my wife and I love to hill walk.

“It is a most beautiful and picturesque place and so, as an enthusiastic landscape photographer I am very drawn to the region."

Using a tree as a centrepiece got Gareth Norman highly commended for his night time shot of the Milky Way in Laughton, East Sussex.

The 37 year old IT contractor from Leicester said: “There were a few very fast moving clouds coming in between 12.00 and 1.00am which just looked great streaking across the sky.

“I’ve always liked this tree as it has a very strong character, and at this time the cloud direction was perfect, along with the lights of the distant villages."

He added: “This is a 30 second exposure which gives a visual of how fast the clouds were moving and also the great night sky with orion at the top right of the image.”

Finally, 59 year old IT consultant Ceri Jones from Reading got this classically English picture of bluebells in a misty wood in Oxfordshire which was highly commended.