Harris

This week I almost sold my Hasselblad kit. It's caused me so much grief, but I think when I consider how hold it is - over 20 years old, It's just really needing a good service!

I think what's swayed me from dumping the entire outfit, is that the compositions I'm doing in square are very enjoyable to make, and I think it's led me to do thing that are a little bit different from how I would approach a landscape with a 4x5 aspect ratio camera.

This is a big talking point on my workshops. I detest the 35mm 3:2 aspect ratio. It's far too letter box, and either too narrow and wide (landscape), or too tall and thin (portrait mode). I love 4x5 because it works so well for distributing objects around the frame. I've said it here before - the Mamiya 7 camera is not a 6x7 camera - it is a 6x7.5 camera - so the aspect ratio is exactly that of a 4x5 camera.

But square... ahhh, I love it. Although it is not for every single composition and I sometimes find myself grappling with a particular location because I know it can't work, won't work with the aspect ratio of the camera I have in my hands: which goes back to what I've been saying for a long while - walking around with a dodgy aspect ratio is going to kill your compositions. I believe that many of us, if we were given a 4x5 or 6x6 aspect ratio to work with, would do so much better in our compositions.

Well I'm rambling now. I really intended to show you the above shot of Harris, it is one of the first images I made on this beach, before I reached what I felt was my ultimate composition:

I just find myself never stopping at one composition on a location. I'm aware there are always other ways to view the same story, different points of view of the same scene. But I do love the first image you see in this post. I think it's ok to have many different views of the same scene, some that are more dramatic than others, and to love them all.

St. Kilda

From the main isle Hirta, that makes up the group of islands known as St. Kilda, this images was made looking out towards Boreray, Stac Lee & Stac an Armin.

I visited St. Kilda in May of this year.

Due to the low cloud that would hug the island for days, and the nesting Skua's, we couldn't actually get anywhere much. The wind and low visibility made for an impossible trip to the other side of the island (it's also amazingly very steep). But I think it was the birds that scared me the most. They attack you by diving right towards your field of vision with claws out in front. It's a very menacing pose and a good defence mechanism for keeping predators away from their nests.

Myself and my friend managed to get to this spot however, which isn't far away from the small Historic Scotland camp site (yes, there's a camp site there - shhhhh, I didn't tell you!). There's a very obvious dip that I found. It's not until today that I've noticed it's almost an exact compositional version of Joe Cornish' image (page 72) of his beautiful book 'Scotland's Coast'. I think this is interesting because I'm wondering if the reason I made this was a response to a subconsious memory of his image, or because it's one of the very few opportunities in this area of Hirta to make good compositions? I know for certain that I did not set up to copy - I much prefer to go to a location and find my own interpretation, but sometimes there isn't much of a choice, and certain landscapes dictate 'tripod-hole-syndrome'. So apologies Joe for making a similar shot - it was not my intention :-)

I've wanted to come here for a very long time. It is a fascinating place and my friend Chris had been reading up about the entire history before we got there!

Happy holiday memories (I still have dreams of my scalp sailing away in the claws of a very large bird).

Looking for the essence (part 5)

There's this fabulous little canyon on the Isle of Eigg with a waterfall at the back. I take my students on my Eigg workshop to this location, even though it fits only one person at a time because as much as the location is extremely limited (you can't really move much), you'd think there's only really one shot to be made in here. But last September, I 'captured' Iain on my workshop in here. I'd been trying to catch up with Iain, but felt he was a little too shy to spend time with me. So I managed to corner him in this little canyon and we spent maybe 20 minutes working on a shot similar to this one (my shot was taken after Iain had finished making his).

I loved my little 20 minutes with Iain here, because it was one of those moments where there's really something to impart. A very clear message can be reached.

We started off by making very general images of the canyon but I'd noticed that further inside there was this beautiful sandy coloured warm looking rock. It seemed to be shouting out to me - 'I'm here - take a picture of me!'. The reason why it stood out so much was that it's colour was very much outside the palette of every other rock there. I felt it would make a very strong compositional element - it would be the focal point of the shot if we used it correctly.

I know that Iain got a lot out of this little bit of time together as he thanked me and said it had been really useful. I was just so delighted that on all my times in this little canyon, a golden rock had surfaced and was so much there on it's own, it was a great feature (or device) to use in a composition.

I think Iain had said to me that he hadn't noticed it when we'd gone into the canyon, but it was, for me, perhaps the one thing that jumped out. I think there are two lessons here - exploring a location, even one as tiny as this can help you find things you never saw upon first encounter, and your final images may be stronger as a result. The second lesson is perhaps to realise that repeating the same location on different trips may yield new insights, new finds. I've certainly never seen that stand-out rock before.

I think I've taught myself over the years to think about 'separation'. Looking for objects in a scene that have a presence, either because of the light that is being cast upon them, or more unusually, because their colour makes them stand out a bit more.

I'm looking forward to going back to Eigg this September.

Storm over the isle of Rum

Back to that 'essence' topic again. As I work through the bunch of transparencies lying around, i'm aware that I just seem to be interested in those which impart a sense of mood and that have an 'elemental' aspect to them.

I do a couple of workshops on the Isle of Eigg each year, because I feel it's a great place to study the same landscape time and time again.

What I've noticed over the last three years of visiting Eigg, is how the light changes so rapidly there. Mood and drama come and go so quickly. It's very hard to impart that with a wide angle lens sometimes. The isle of Rum is a big presence on the landscape and often the mood and changing light happens in and around the Cuillin ridges of this mountainous island. I've just never really managed to capture it because it's so easy to go wide angle all the time.

Well this shot was a deliberate effort on my part to look beyond the immediate beach, and take advantage of the rain in the distance.

Rain is a beautiful thing. It's atmospheric properties can't be overstated I feel. Rain can be used to veil subjects - to conceal them, turning them into opaque tones of mystery.

They have a saying on the isle of Eigg.

"If you can't see Rum, it's because it's raining, and if you can, it's because it's not raining - yet'.

That's one of the many reasons why I love Scotland's landscape. It's moody, it's changeable, it makes for surprising gifts in the way of fleeting light. It's also a challenge at times, and when things do conspire to provide a beautiful moment, the moment is more enjoyable because you know, deep down, that it's rare and something to be absorbed and enjoyed greatly.

Music and Images

Once upon a time, I lived and breathed writing music and, I always felt that if I were forced to define myself, I'd have said I was a musician.

Please click on the image to play the podcast

Things change, and over the past decade, I've had to accept that a life in music is not for me. It seems that Photography was always there, sitting in the side lines, waiting for me to sit up and listen. So these days, I now fully accept that photography chose me, and not me it.

But I'm still deeply passionate about music, and I listen to it all the time, whether it's with my Sennheizer HD-25 DJ headphones, or through some of my home hi-fi. Music is the background to my life. So I've been thinking for a while, that i'd love to do a project that could incorporate my first love in a more prominent way.

As some of you know, I have a podcast available on iTunes, and this has been a great outlet for me to use my musical abilities, to set a backdrop for my own music. It's been a lot of fun to do.

But i've been thinking of something a little grander in scale. I would, for instance, love to pay music back. Whereas music has been the backdrop to my life, then would it be so strange to think of putting together an event where my images of Scotland become the backdrop to some of the music that I love?

It's very early days.... and I may be speaking out of turn here. But for the past few months I've been thinking of putting on a show where I invite some of the most contemporary Scots musicians to play their music with my own photography as a backdrop. I'd seriously love to do it, and I've begun talks with a particular outfit that I'm very keen on. It may not happen, but I've discovered over the past few years that an idea can become something real. My book, for instance, was once just an abstract thought. A dream. But with a bit of focus and attention, dreams can become real.

I just mention this all to you, because, despite the reality that if anything comes of this, it will take a year or two at the very least to get funding and organise it properly, the main message is that you should follow what inspires you. For me, inspiration for my creativity (I make no distinction towards photography, as I feel that as a creative person, the medium can change over time), can come from anywhere. I deeply love music, and there are some very contemporary musicians in the Scottish Folk scene that I'm particularly drawn to. They summarise for me, the moods and the feelings I have for my own back yard.

Maybe it's time to put those feelings to good use.

Last day of Skye Workshop

This post was written on the last day of my last workshop this year. I never got round to finishing it, but since I've just scanned the image below, I feel it's fitting to include the posting, post event, post posting if you like. --

Today is the last day of my last workshop of 2010, and I can't help but feel rather reflective about this year and just how it's gone.

It's been a bit of an amazing year for me. I've done quite a lot of workshops, I've met a load of really nice people on my trips and I feel I've expanded my life in a direction that I never really thought I'd go.

One thing that has been incredibly inspiring is just how positive a lot of the participants can be. They want to get out there, to experience the landscape and will do anything in their power to get to a workshop - even if the weather here in the UK is trying its very hardest to make sure the trip doesn't go ahead. I've also had a lot of encouragement from participants who believe in what I do, and for that, I can only thank them.

So I end today's last workshop with an image from Elgol. I spent a bit of time with Simon trying to express how using a rock in the foreground of a wide-angle shot will not work by using any old rock. What we use or choose to put into our frame should be elegant, have some form of symmetry to it, or as Simon says, it should be a 'pretty rock'. I think it just has to be 'special'. So we spent a bit of time with what I felt was a 'special' rock and I used it to compose the shot you see above of the Cuilins of Skye - only the second time in my life that I've seen them with snow on them.

End of season Workshop

I'm on the isle of Skye right now, half way through a workshop and we're having some terrific weather. Which is in some ways, surprising to most people here in the UK because England is mostly buried under some of the worst snow and blizzard conditions we've had for a long time, and Scotland, particularly the east coast, is inundated with terrible weather too.

But Skye and the north west, has got off lightly and things here are really great. We've had some beautiful mornings, and we even ventured up to the Storr yesterday evening for sunset. The main image is by Simon on the workshop. We've had some long distances to cover as Skye is a *big* island, but we've managed to get to Elgol and a few other nice locations on time for sunrise each morning.

I think it's interesting that winter often gives the best light here in Scotland, but for some reason, we seem incapable of dealing with any thickness of snow that comes our way. It's surprising really as Switzerland, Germany, etc, treat this kind of weather as the usual and everything continues as usual.

I'd like to finish this posting by saying how much of a terrific year I've had running the workshops. It's fitting to find that Outdoor Photography magazine here in the UK have chosen one of my Skye images to adorn the cover of their Christmas edition, while I finish off the year with my last workshop on Skye too. I feel this is a nice way to have closure on the year and it makes me feel encouraged about the year ahead.

The Drongs, Shetland

I was up in the Shetlands a few weeks ago. Jon, one of my participants from a workshop last year kindly showed me around for a few days and then left me with his car. Which was very kind of him.While driving past the Drongs on several trips, I found them just too far away to make a picture of, but in my mind's eye, I visualised the image you see here. This all came about because I parked Jon's car  and hiked in to the tip of a peninsula. Being high up, I was able to get this shot - it's a 6x7 image, shot in portrait mode and the top part of the sky cropped. I shot it with my most powerful telephoto for my Mamiya 7II - a 150mm lens, which equates to 75mm for full frame 35mm shooters. I'd like to get the 210 lens for the Mamiya again, but feel it would make the entire outfit I own much more of a drag to carry around. I had to return to using a tiny LowePro bag with just the Mamiya and three lenses in it because the airplane flight was very restrictive in what I could take. It's been a revelation going back to such a small bag and very little to carry.

There's some amazing scenery on the Shetlands and Jon has been suggesting I come back in winter time, which I'd love to do as I find winter light my favourite kind of light, but this shot's got some special light too - I think it was made around 9pm.

Outer Hebrides

Last year I spent a week on the isle of Harris. I didn't quite make it to Barra, Eriskay, Berneray or the Uists. So this May, I will be heading out there for a few weeks to photograph the islands I missed out on last year.

I've travelled a lot. I've been to many countries and many exotic landscapes around the world. It's been an incredible journey. If anything, what I've learned is a deeper appreciation for my own country. Scotland is incredible.

I feel that my own photographic projects for the next year at least, are going to be Scotland centric. I know that this trip to the Hebrides is only one of many to come over the next few years. There's simply so much to my own country and I can't wait to get out there.

If you want to join me, I'm conducting a photographic workshop on Harris at the end of May. More details here.

Skye Portfolio

Well, I know this must seem like I'm pumping out the photos at the moment, but it's not often like that for me.

Skye Portfolio

So to get to the chase, here is a new portfolio from Skye.

There are often spells of what seem like 'inactivity' to others, but for me, it's actually the opposite - if you're seeing me on the blog a lot, it's because I'm not out shooting! And if you don't hear from me on my blog for a while - it's because, well, you know - I'm out there practicing what we all love to do when we get some time.

I was up in Skye about a week ago for 3 or 4 days. I'd booked another trusty camper van for the trip, and almost didn't go. So bad were the weather warnings and advice not to leave home unless it is absolutely necessary. So I went!

The weather was pretty mild, but the landscape was still arctic. For those of you know know Skye well, the river at Sligachan had around seven inches of ice on it. I wasn't quite sure sometimes if I was standing on the ice or firm ground while roaming with my camera.

Skye Workshop

So you won't be surprised that I'm now offering a workshop to Skye for this December (3-8). This trip is strictly limited to 4 people as I thought it would be nice to do a much more intimate group size. The hotel we will be staying at is not far away from the Storr, and caters for 5 people max.

As I type, it looks like there is now currently only 1 space left on this trip, so if you're interested in coming, email me for more details.