Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

One of the down sides of using a dark cloth is being unable to see around you when you are setting up a picture (this is no Leica M!). I had thought of this and had plans to have a ‘guard’ around if I were to take any urban shots (which I may do for one of our company buildings, more on that possibly later). What I didn’t take into account is that it can still be a little dangerous even at 7am in the middle of Rannoch Moor.. Here’s how it goes..

Being as I’m still excited about the great weather and being in Glencoe, I couldn’t help but get up early again for a Rannoch Moor sunrise. Charlotte was happy to let me go on my own (it’s strange with non photographers.. Going back to the same location and standing around for hours doesn’t seem to excite them) and so I drove up to Rannoch Moor 80 minutes before sunrise (just to see what it looked like). Well, at 60 minutes to sunrise, I tried a 30 second exposure on the digital and got this

Which isn’t quite enough light to take anything unless I wanted to try 3 or 4 minute exposures (and being as I had no clue what I was taking, I thought I’ll stick with the experiment). So, another 30 minutes later (30 mins before sunrise) a 30 second exposure got this …

Whilst undoubtedly better, it’s still not going to win any Take That View (or whatever the competition is called). So it’s off to the other side of the road and back to the nikky nakky noo lake…

after lining up the shot at the top of the post, and starting to get some Scheimpflug on, I heard some baying in the background.. Ah! Dear I thought.. how nice! I wonder if I’ll get to see any? Focus.. focus.. curse.. focus.. “MOOOOOOOO!!!!” to which I reply “ARGH!!” and nearly stand up and knock my Ebony into the lake. “What the hell was that?” I pulled off my BlackJacket and looked to my left and 40ft away is the scene shown below…

I very slowly (but quickly) got my 5D out and recorded the evidence and then just stood there and watched them whilst they merrily trotted around.. Absolutly gobsmacked, I found it quite difficult to get back under the darkcloth to finish the exposure – but I did … All I can say is it’s a good job I didn’t have a lens cloth hanging out of my back pocket 😉

Later in the day we drive around and try to get a shot of Castle Stalker (but the access was awful, it also stank) and went up to some falls on the way to Fort William (Inchree falls if I remember correctly) which were pretty dull (you can’t actually get to them). As a last jaunt out, I drove quickly up the road to Altnafeadh and took a shot of the river Etive and the houses nearby.. This was taken about 30 yards from the road and should be returning to me soon on a black and white negative (Fuji Acros).

and at the end of the day I saw