Oban with Richard Childs
Richard Childs
is a professional percussionist .. actually scratch that .. Richard Childs is a professional landscape photographer, and a very hard working, talented one at that. I met Richard during the Hebrides Light and Land course where he was assisting David Ward and he brought some pictures along which were instrumental in inspiring me to move to Large Format(tm). When we planned the holiday in Scotland and realised it would be good to stop off somewhere on the way up it allowed to me to spend more than a passing visit to his gallery in Oban.
I asked if he could provide some tuition on the Ebony in preparation for the holiday and he said we should go out an take some photographs near Oban.
The gallery is a real gem and is an upstairs room on the main road in Oban. If he can get the downstairs room which has a main street frontage, he will have something very unique in many UK holiday resorts (a ‘tourist’ gallery that actually has good art in it). Richard’s pictures are nearly all Ilfochrome enlargements of his 4×5 transparencies and are really worth seeing in the flesh to appreciate them.
We sat and chatted about where I might be developing bad habits and mostly discussed exposure but also some focussing, then we went out to Port A’Mhuillin, Isle of Seil where there were some fabulous slate and granite outcroppings with a great view over Easdale. The main picture is a digital version of the LF shot I took which has come back exposed almost identically (although I had to pull it by half a stop on the LF shot due to my inability to read a watch, reading 40 seconds as 80 seconds. The good news is that it could probably cope with half a stop more exposure anyway). Richard gave me an old Velvia RVP to try alongside my new Velvia which I will be sending for processing next week.
The other shot is looking over towards Scarba with the last of the live thrift in the foreground. I would highly recommend Richard as a good lead on a photography trip and a wonderful host in his studio.
