Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

OK So here are a couple of quick blog posts about the last two days of my Glencoe trip – how far behind am I getting? Well I want to start writing about Northumberland soon so I’d best do this quickly. I’m finally feeling pretty much over my wierd illness (a couple of falling downs and a missed hoar frost in Northumberland were the last manifestatons I hope).

The day after going to Robbers Falls we went out with Richard Childs on what must be the wettest photography trip I have ever had the pleasere to go on. We walked up the back of Ballachulish but with 20 minutes of arriving I was sheltering my camera under an umbrella and sitting waiting for the rain to lessen. It didn’t. In the end, the water was bouncing off the floor and hitting my camera about 1 foot high. We decided that this was stupid and so I closed up the camera, thinking it was a little stiff, and we tromped our way back to the flat.

We sat and discussed, well.. loads of stuff, whilst I unpacked my camera to dry it out.. so I extend the bellows.. or rather I don’t extend the bellows because it’s completely seized up.. Of course I was completely relaxed and said “Oh I’ll just wait a few hours, I’m sure it will dry out and un-seize”. Or that’s what I should have done.. as it was I started forcing things and then worried when it started making gear grinding scrunchy noises..

Fortunately a few hours later all was well again.. The moral of the story is – if you are going to get your camera wet, slacken off the screws on either side and if it gets wet in the field, wipe down the runners before closing the camera (a little bit of lemon oil wouldn’t go amiss I don’t suppose).

The next day Charlotte and I went out to the same Glencoe valley as our twighlight shoot so I could scout some more ideas. This is where I took one of my favourite shots of the holiday and learned a couple of lessons. The first lesson is that for an overcast day, three stops of grad is nearly always too much.. I had placed the highlights in the foreground at the same tone as the highlights in the sky (both at about +1.5) which just looks wrong, wrong, wrong. I should have used a two stop grad and placed the highlights at +0.5.. Anyway.. The other big lesson is how much just a little bit of light can make a difference. I thought I’d learned this one doing my ‘Behind the Clachaig’ shot of the wall up the Pap of Glencoe but in this case the light is just a highlight in the distance. The shot in the previous post shows the first frame where I’ve waited to highlight the gap between the sisters. The shot below shows the moment about 30 seconds later when the highlight has lit up the face of the mountain and the outcrop beyond. Unfortunately the foreground light has dissappeared in the meantime which makes the whole picture really dull. I have the last two frames being developed at the moment so I’ll try to post a final comparison when they come back. What I’m really pleased at is the structure of the composition and the way it moves your eye around. What I hadn’t realised is just how much some subtle changes in light can enhance or cancel this effect.. (forgive the crap scanning on the picture comparison)

That afternoon we went to the lochan again for a little walk and met a nice Gentleman who used to be a rescue helicopter pilot and now took landscape photos. He was recounting how he keeps on going to places that look amazing from 100ft but he are completely bereft of ground level vantage points.. It reminded me of how when you are driving and you see a great view but when you stop you realise that the view is blocked by trees wherever you look. What has happened is that your brain has built a composite view whilst driving along and ignored the trees wizzing past..

What I really wanted to capture whilst I was walking around the lake some fungi and mosses.. The nice gentleman pointed my at a great big Fly Agaric (whch I’m sure you’ve seen in the ‘subject’ gallery) but I was looking for a mini landscape of star moss and finally found some where I had a view of the lake in the background (an exposure chalenge!). My main concern was the magenta-red colour of the pine needles as a colour contrast off the bright, almost lime green. Not a classic combination but hopefully the composition makes up for it. Whilst I was there I also took a quick picture of the Pap over the locan which I include on the right. I set up for this shot with amazingly still water and just as I was about to take it, a woman came up with her dog, said hello and then threw a tennis ball into the water for her dog to fetch! The only nice thing was that the dog obviously had better manners than the woman and he refused to jump into my composition.. I did thank the dog (at which point I think the woman got the message).

Only one more day of Glencoe to write up and then onto Northumberland!!