Sandwood Bay, Scotland
Just last weekend I spent some time in the beautiful Sandwood Bay in the highlands of Scotland. For those of you who don’t know, I live in Scotland.
A four mile walk into a lovely remote bay with ample sand dunes, expansive beaches and even the story of a ghost, it was a must see on my list for some time.
Doing a lot of traveling, it’s often easy to neglect your own country but I have to say that over the past eight years, I’ve become more and more appreciative of my home land. Nothing else seems to beat it (but I’m sure that’s just my own patriotism coming into the equation).
Anyway, these were all taken with the 5D, some ND grads and a good tripod. The evening light on Saturday was really beautiful and we’d just got there, so it was hard to find a vantage point while the light was fading, so I ended up running around the bay like a madman for a couple of hours. I like to work quickly – that’s where the excitement comes in.
But what are you trying to do with your photography? When you take an image, do you have a reason for doing so? i.e, what drives you forward?
For me, I think we go about our daily lives – living within a set of parameters that don’t give us time to think beyond that. I love going out side those parameters – just being on a remote beach late at night gives a different sense of perspective to my life. Listening to the waves crash, feeling isolated on that beach, I find that I’m aware of being in a different existence. I’m no hippy, but there is something rather compelling about spending time on your own in a beautiful, remote place. I also like to produce images that are a departure from the everyday, and shooting late at night or during nocturnal hours can provide that. Look at the last image in particular, the moon is in the sky, the light is low and the tide is moving in fast. I don’t often get to experience moments like this throughout my daily life, and that is why photography is so great. It gets you out there, not only to make pictures, but to experience an existence outside of the parameters of your normal daily life.
Hi Bruce,
lovely post, I really appreciated your words which nicely describe some of the great things about photography. I particularly enjoyed the second image. What kind of print quality do you get from the 5D? How do you go about printing them, and do the images stand up to the Mamiya?
Comment by mike — 15 May, 2008 @ 8:13 am
Hi Mike,
Good question! I’ve not actually done any prints from the 5D! I have many prints from the Mamiya, but I’ve since found that my market isn’t for prints – I manly seem to sell to publications and via stock. So I don’t do them.
But I would say that what I found with the Mamiya was that I can print very big, and that grain isn’t present in the images if they are done with a lightjet printer such as the Durst Epsilon/Lambda printers. So I feel that the comparisons on sites showing you film grain compared against digital is a moot point.
I stopped printing because it was expensive. I feel we are now in an age where printing is not much of a requirement, certainly here in the UK where there is NOT the fine art market that there is in the US.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 15 May, 2008 @ 8:39 am
Interesting Bruce. But what on earth do I hang on my walls then?! ;)
Comment by mike — 15 May, 2008 @ 8:51 am
Certainly none of my prints, that’s for sure ;-)
If you are a keen photographer, it’s common to have your best prints on your wall. My house is littered with them – usually printed up for exhibitions, and the remaining non-sales fill the walls of my home.
But I was talking about prints from a commercial perspective. There isn’t a market for art here in the UK, very unlike the US. I’ve done a few exhibitions and found that the time and effort involved outweighed any commercial side for me. Whereas I make decent money from stock and publications such as National Geographic, as well as writing articles. Doing it purely for a commercial reason, I think I would find that the ‘love would soon leave the building’. If you get my drift.
But this is just my own view point. But like I said, there’s no fine-art-photography market here in the UK.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 15 May, 2008 @ 8:56 am