Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

Our final day in Glencoe was overcast so we decided to take a wander around Loch Tulla. Not having been to this area before and seeing ‘Joes/Pauls/Davids/etcs’ tree, I thought we’d take a look around. Unfortunatley I got captivated by a great fern which was like a traffic light with colours from browns and reds through yellows to bright greens. So I could have wandered on and looked for something else but it did look very nice and so .. here is the shot. The big issue was wind and, no, I hadn’t had a curry or too many vegetables – the wind was only blowing slightly but there was never enough time between gusts for the movement to stop. I waited for nearly 30 minutes trying to get the right shot and, although the light was never quite right, I’m happy I did my best.

Because the weather was supposed to be changing from the north, we drove over to Kinlochleven to take a walk up the hill past Grey Mare’s Tail falls. The weather was still changeable but we could see a sliver of light in the distance and we walked up to a place where I had taken a picture a couple of years previously that I’d wanted to work on again. As we set up, I could see the band of light approaching and over the next forty minutes we experienced three weather fronts that varied from torrential rain to bright sunshine. The photographs below show a couple of moments within a twenty minute stretch. The challenge here was mainly dealing with dramatically changing light and also changing gradation of light. It wasn’t enough just to work out whether the light had increased or decreased, I was having to work out which grad I needed to change to. At some points it was impossible to take pictures as it was heavily raining locally and half a mile away was in intense sunshine.. I won’t say I succeeded in dealing with these dynamic conditions but I did get serviceable pictures (although I might need a drum scanner to service them properly).