Winter in the Highlands

Photographing in winter can often be a miss rather than a hit. The weather here in Scotland can tend to be mild, damp and grey for days upon end. I'm quite frustrated at the moment because for the last month, we've had clear skies, beautiful sunsets and cold snaps abound. But now I have some free time to head off into the hills, the weather has turned very mild and grey. Not the kind of weather you want for landscape photography. So I'm house bound today.

So it was nice to head round to a friends house to get this image scanned in. It's a Large Format transparency and I don't have the means to scan it myself. We had a good chat about the state of photography and I thought I'd show you this image. It is a picture of the Buchalle Etive Beag, a mountain in the Glencoe region of the highlands. It was taken a few years back.

I'm a real sucker for this kind of light. Winter can provide some of the most beautiful light of the year. Those pink tones and blues are seldom repeated throughout the year. I just thought this image would make up for me not being able to head off into the hills. Until the weather improves, this will be my yard stick for what I would like to accomplish in the following weeks ahead.

I'll be up in Applecross on Thursday to meet Mark from BBC Scotland's Great Outdoor Show. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the dawn will bring something special. Until then.....

Interview with the BBC

Hi All, I'm off to the Isle of Eigg on Sunday to stay in a £10 a night caravan - no expense spared for me. This is part of my 2 week trip up into the highlands.

As part of my trip - I will be meeting Mark from the Outdoor Show (BBC Radio 4) on Thursday morning for sunrise. I'll let you all know how it goes and whether they decide to broadcast any of my musings.

Until then......

An old, but new Image

This is a shot of Duncansby Head, a location in the far north east of Scotland - literally only a few miles away from John O'Groats, which although is not the furthest northerly point in the British Isles, has the reputation of being so.

This was taken around 4 years ago. I forget when exactly, and it's been sitting at home along with a pile of other 4x5 (large format) images that I shot over the space of a few years with a very beautiful Ebony 45SU camera.  I just didn't have the means to get it scanned - scanning by a pro lab is ridiculously expensive here in the UK (see KenRockwell.com for more information on cheap scanning options in the US).

If it hadn't been for crazy costs of anywhere around £40 to £80 to get a high res scan of a single image, then I would maybe have percevered with large format, but I suspect that the reason why I gave up large format was simply because it didn't suit my temperament.

You see, although I may state that 'the camera does not matter', which is my efforts to get people to stop focussing on the 'gear' side of photography and to focus more on the 'emotional' aspects of it, the truth is cameras do matter.

Cameras in general, are a hindrance; a barrier between you and the image. If you have the right camera that suits your temperament, then it is less of a barrier. That's why I seem to always return to my Mamiya 7II system. I'm comfortable with it, I can work fast (at my own pace), and I'm very happy with the results.

Back to the image. I met up with an excellent photographer recently - Michael Stirling-Aird, based here in Edinburgh and he kindly offered to scan some of my large format transparencies for me. So I dug them out and what I found interesting was that this particular image really caught my eye, where in the past it had not. I can only assume that the reason for this is that I've completely forgotten what my aspirations were at the point of capture.

In essence, reviewing your work straight after a shoot is hard to do, because it's hard to be objective. Sometimes you need a little distance.

I've had around 4 years distance between shooting this image, and publishing it. I'm very happy with it now, and I can't remember why I rejected it at the time I made it.

Perhaps it was part frustration at trying to compose upside down (I remember not being able to achieve compositions that would otherwise have been second nature to me with my Mamiya 7II), I'm not sure.

Anyway, it just goes to show that every now and then, it's worth going back over your old images for a review : an old image will often take on a fresh meaning for you, when reviewed after you've given it some distance.

And that's just great.

Scotland - on landscape photography

What does landscape photography mean to you? Is it a verbatim recording of a scene, captured for posterity, or is it something more? In this podcast, I use a few select images from my Scotland landscapes to illustrate what landscapes mean to me, and why I chose to shoot them the way I did.

Please click on the image to play the podcast

New Portfolio - Sandwood Bay

I've just completed a new portfolio, this time of Sandwood Bay in Scotland.

I also have a few other portfolios in the pipeline which I will be uploading over the next wee while:

Morocco Portraits Los Glaciares National Park, Patagonia Torres del Paine '08 Workshop

In the meantime, please feel free to view my new portfolio.

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.

You don't need to spend £££ to make fine images

This is the first image I made and thought 'wow'. I was around 22 years old at the time and I didn't know very much about photography at all.

I'd just got my first camera for a year - a Canon EOS 650, which at the time was very sophisticated. It had autofocus and a really impressive built in meter. But I was always coming home with really crap shots.

And that wasn't the cameras fault.

Then one day, I learned something that changed everything for me. I discovered the magical qualities of light and composition. I'd never really thought about it before, but if you get great light, great subject matter and are able to compose a shot in such a way that it just seems to 'work', then you're potentially on your way to creating a very fine image indeed.

So this was shot on Agfachrome, which I bought cheap in a bargain bin at my local photo place, with an EOS 650 camera which you can pick up for around £60 here in the UK, with a wide angle lens on it.

That was it. Oh, and stunning lighting, an exceptionally thunderous August evening around 9pm plus some great subject matter. I'm going to give myself a little credit too - an operator that recognized a potentially good image and after some stumbling around a field searching for a good angle of view, was able to pull off a nice composition.

I took other shots that night and although they all have the same lighting, and subject, this one really stood out because the composition was just 'right'.

So if you want to make good photographs, you just need a tool that you are comfortable with and gives you good enough resolution that you are happy with (I have this printed up to 24 inches wide, framed in my home).

But above all else, you need a desire to get out there with what you have and make pictures. That's what it's all about really.