Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

Ah… a better day! We headed up to Glen Nevis in what must be the worst weather for photography. Blazing hot sunshine without a cloud in the sky! Well this is a ‘holiday’ despite my obsession with photography and so I settled back and enjoyed the hike up the chasm into Glen Nevis, what has to be one of the most wondrous hanging vallys in the UK . My dad has rediscovered his enjoyment of photography recently and we pottered around taking pictures here and there with our digital appendages but it was way too bright even in the shadows..

As we got to the top of the valley, we found an amazing amount of quartz in the granite which had been scoured by glaciers and polished. One particular block of quartzite followed a line that was continued by the river down to the end of the valley and, despite the light, I had to try to make some sort of photograph. If anything, it was a good opportunity to try out Pro 160 negative film. So I took the picture above with digital and I’m still in the process of processing the results from the Pro160. I don’t think shot can ever look great but it’s definitely a composition I will be coming back to.

The shot was taken on my 80mm Schneider SSXL at f/32 and needed a compound tilt to get the focus along the rock correct. The first film I’ve got back was taken rated at 100 iso and the highlights on the rock are burnt out slightly.. I did take another couple of 160’s so I’m pulling these slightly to see what the results are like.. I also took a provia exposed for the grass to try to get a colour reference.. I’ll post again once I get these back and have a chance to post process.

We’ve all done it. We know the location from a thousand photographs and we’re hoping to see something new that will say something different about the location. And if any location epitomises this, Lochan Na h’Achlaise must be up near the top of the list. The classic shot is of that certain tree, typically shot with the Black Mount in the background and with the reflected sunrise and morning mists.. I was hoping to make something more of some of these different aspects, especially the mist, colour of light and the rocks exposed because of the shallow water. I’d convinced my Dad to come with me (despite many complaints about the early hour) and I was hoping he would see some of the amazing sights I think a lot of us have experienced there..

So, we’re up in the early hours and I take my dad over to the obvious location to take some shots and whilst he is shooting away, I start to find a composition out of the group of rocks at the foot of ‘that tree’. The technical setup is really simple with my 240 Fujinon A; f/16 for 1s and a few degrees of back tilt.

One of things about Lochan Na h’Achlaise is that there is a particular pattern to the light and mist (at least every time I’ve been there). Firstly, the mist is in clumps, clinging to the islands before the sun rises. At this time the water is incredibly still. As the sun begins to rise, the mist moves around a little, still with totally clear sections here and there. After a while the movement starts to create texture on the water. Very soon after this the mist starts to spread and that is the end of the totally clear sections. From now on the mist spreads out and thins and the colour of the light declines. Minutes later and the sun rises and starts to warm the land, the mist rises a lot and there is no chance of really great photos. This mist is then around for the next 20-30 mins and will only clear once the sun comes up. What you have is a window of opportunity of about 15 mins before and 15 minutes after sunrise where the air is still, the mist is playing niceley and the colour is at a peak. Most people arrive at the lochan just after this.

So I knew I only had a few moments to get another shot and the tree was looking so inviting and from the angle I was at, I could see the islands behind the tree being hidden in the mist. Soo… I said what the hell. I’ll take a go at it.. On goes the my Nikkor 360 T-ED and f/32 for a second .. The results are embarrasingly good (not as in it’s amazing but that I’d like to show it off but it is that tree! ah well, I’m sure I can cope). So .. here it is..

and a couple of pictures of my camera taking these

The two weeks we’ve just had in Glencoe have been possibly the most enjoyable we’ve had despite the weather being very unpredictable (two sunny days, two overcast days and the remainder had rain every day). The reason for this was a mixture of being a lot happier taking photographs in any conditions, being prepared for those conditions (thank you Paramo!) and being willing to stay out all day under all but the most persistent downpours (we were meant to spend a day out with Richard Childs but it rained in torrents for two hours, after which we retired to the cabin for coffee and watched the rain out of the window). I should say that even thought most days had rain, all but one of the rainy days was interspersed with sunshine to good effect.

The thing about having ‘difficult’ weather for photography is that I had to concentrate more on the composition more than just pointing at some nice light. Some of the pictures I thought were good will suffer from not having “luminous light” but for me the acheivement is about how well I coped with what was given. I’d like to think I did OK in most cases and in a couple of cases I’m really happy.

I’m going to be posting a ‘daily summary’ (much like my last Scottish holiday) with a few notes on what my thoughts turned to on each day..

So, how was the first day? Well Charlotte and I got up earlyish and went over to the famous Lochan Na h’Achlaise with the goal of having a good wander around. In the end we did a lot more than that, we ended up circumnavigating the shoreline of the lochan and wandering around a few tributaries. There were lots of interesting places but the by the time we got to them, the light was unflattering. Toward the start of the hike though, I saw that the sunlight and the white clouds were creating a diffuse highlight on the lakes surface and the ripples were bouncing off the rocks to create rings. After wandering up and down the shore for a few minutes, I found a suitable composition that made a feature of this (not a too strong one however) and that receded toward the horizon in nice curves, The picture was intended as black and white but I wasn’t confident that it would be good and hence did not take a large format shot. Now that I’ve seen the results, I wish I had.. This has convinced me that I need to learn to see better in black and white and possibly to buy a couple of black and white filters (I ended up using a yellow filter on this shot but only in Potatoshop). The result is a subtle shot but one that I find quite pleasing and reflects the morning very well..

Just for future reference, at the north or northwest end of the lochan there are many tree stumps that are slowly being exposed out of the peat. I intend to return to these next time I’m up in Glencoe. I’ve added a ‘refererence (i.e. crap) shot to show an area at the west north west corner…

I was a little disspointed in the day’s outing in some ways.. I was hoping for some ‘amazing’ light in the morning which didn’t occur and I was looking for a great composition which maybe occured(?) but really I think I was trying too hard to see; I wanted to get ‘into the zone’ too much. In the end we went home (after emptying boots of water) and met up with my parents who were staying for the first few days of our holiday, hoping that the next day would help my head to get back in the right shape.

It’s been a quiet couple of months between the start of July and now. I feel as if I’ve wasted these months without getting anything of interest. It hasn’t been that I’ve failed to go out, it’s more that the opportunities to go out have tended to be during the middle of the day on sunny days; never a good situation for great photography in the first place, but I’ve also typically been in company when the opportunity to linger hasn’t been availble. The times I have been out have produced some pictures that I like, particularly the Yorkshire Swampland shot (which is a bit of a work in progress – more to come soon I hope).

I did manage to get a last couple of trips in over the last week, one to Northumberland to see some of my wifes family and Charlotte and I went to the Valley of Desolation this Sunday morning at 6am.

The Northumbeland trip was more of an introduction to the location by David and Elaine who live in Sunderaland and who made us feel very welcome. They took us up to Craster to see Dunstanborough castle, where I shot a picture of the keep – royaly screwing up two sheets of film in a ‘shorten the exposure length to compensate for ND filters’ fiasco, and to the pier in Sunderland where I shot a quick DSLR picture in homage to Melanie Foster. A quick aside, Melanie has an exhibition at Richard Child’s gallery in October called “Inspired by Nature’s Light”.

This weekend Charlotte and I went to the “Valley of Desolation” which , despite it’s name, is quite beautiful. The morning brought a long lasting mist over the whole of the North that stayed around all day but which was very good for shooting detail shots and also for making Yorkshire look like a New Zealand swamp. Perhaps I’ve got a new project on “How to make Yorkshire look like anywhere in the world”

Taking the first shot for this post made me realise how difficult it sometimes is to be ‘creative’ with the balance of light in a picture. I’ve spent the last year learning how to control the light in a picture with grads and centre filters and shift or rise/fall but I haven’t really thought about when ‘not’ to do this compensation or when to use these techniques to creatively increase the contrast range in a shot. Although the example of the Valley of Desolation shot has come out well, I do feel that I could have let the top of the picture lighten up to create a more shadowy foreground. I suppose this is about ‘pre-visualisation’ of the desired contrasts within a picture and these thoughts should come naturally but, like most things in life, I end up thinking too much about them. I shall have to add to my ‘checklist’ to think about the overall large scale contrast within a picture and what I can do to control/enhance it.

Why am I moaning so much..? well it’s really born out of excitement of what is to come rather than dissapointment with what has passed.. It hasn’t really been that bad of a summer rather I haven’t made enough effort to just ‘get out and do it’.

The next couple of months should be a little different however. Light and Land’s Discovery Day is next weekened where I’m hoping to catch up with a few acquaintencies and to listen to some, hopefully inspiring, talks. Our holiday in Scotland is coming up too where we’ll be spending two weeks in Glencoe where I’m hoping to meet up with Richard Childs (please try and get to see Richard’s gallery in Oban if you can!!)

I’ve posted previously about a comparison between drum scanners and Epson flatbeds. The fact that the drum scanner trounced the Epson was not really in contention but recently I had the opportunity to get a scan from a modern Imacon scanner (owned by Joe Cornish) and from a Howtek 4000 drum scanner (re-badged Crosfield Magnascan 200i I believe, and owned by Dav Thomas) using Silverfast Ai v 6.6 & Kami SXL 2001 fluid both using the same transparency that I had previously had problems with using my Epson.

I knew that the drum scanner was going to provide a better resolution scan than the Imacon but I was more interested in how well it scanned shadows and was it immune to some of the artefacts that I’d seen from the Imacon and the Epson. These artefacts were halation and chromatic abberation.

Halation, a glow around high brightness areas that impinges into darker areas. I have seen a small version of this, a few pixels on a 2000dpi scan, and also a larger version that spreads 2-300 pixels. In photographic terms this is similar to flare and I imagine it occurs in a similar fashion. In the example scan you can see this in the area around the cliff edge and also at the top of the worms head island.

Interactive Example of Halation

Chromatic abberation is evinced as a red and blue borders at opposite sides of a high contrast edge. In the scan you can see this the worst around the white lichen hot spots at the bottom left of the picture but it can also be seen at the top right of the cliff top and also as a strange colouring in the sea where you have a highlight off the wave top right next to a shadow from that same wave. The image at the top of this post shows one of an example of this.

Interactive example of Chromatic Abberation

In comparing these results, it should be kept in mind that the drum scan took 5 mins of mounting and 1.5 hours of scanning wheras the Imacon took 5 minutes to do both.

Here is one of the clearer examples which shows what happens if you want to pull detail out of shadow areas..

Interactive Example of pulling shadow detail – look closeley at the twig bottom left

Click on the many links on the left hand side of the Interactive Example to see more crops.

In conclusion it seems that the best way to scan images is to get a drum scanner. However, there are many other factors at play here. Wet scanning is messy and a lot of people are uncomfortable exposing transparencies in this way. Also, the whole process is a lot more time consuming. Finally, the amount of room a drum scanner takes up can be 10x as much as an Imacon. Realistically, if you want to scan more than a couple of photos a month and you have the budget, an Imacon will always be a better choice. However, for those with limited budgets, excess time and who only process a few images a month, a drum scanner will produce stunning results.

Well maybe… I haven’t been out a great deal recently but I did get to visit a local reservoir with another local photographer, Jason Theaker. The weather looked decent and so after a short walk spent discussing the positive and negative sides of entering photography competitions (and the vagaries of the first round selection), we arrived at the banks of Lindley Wood Reservoir where we played around at the edges where birch and oak trees threw branches down into the water. The main photograph is one taken with my digital camera (I still haven’t had any large format developed for about two months – I must think I’ve got a right load of crap to wait this long). I quite like the result in that it transforms what is possibly an unappealling location into something a little magical. The quality of the light on the water needs to be seen at a higher resolution to appreciate.

So.. I’m spending far too much time working on websites and far to little time outside. The weather isn’t doing me any favours either, I bought a couple of cloud spotting books recently to try to understand why it’s so bloody awful (occluded fronts suck for photography is one of my observations). A very good visual resource can be found here. From what I’ve read, the area in front of a warm fronts should be quite interesting for photography.

I’ve also been to see the Ansel Adams exhibition in Walsall and I have to say that despite the some of the prints being amazing, the exhibition in general was a bit of a let down. There is very little extra information and the pictures are not displayed in the best of conditions (although it is in a light room which makes viewing OK). What struck me was the balance of the images. They are not ‘in your face’ (although moonrise might fit in that category) and carry the subject matter with a subtlety that surprised me. Overall I was very happy to have gone but disspointed that the curators could not have made a lot more of it.

Another aside about the Ansel Adams exhibition is the choice of pictures. Supposedly these were the pictures that Ansel himself wanted to display to best represent his love of photography. What we have is a little bit of a mish mash of great pictures with (in my opinion) slightly dull shots of buildings and people. Of course, this is the clash between what we like in our own images and what other people like. I think that these differences contribute more to what we think of as ‘style’ than anything overt. If we are picking compositions out from a landscape, we will obviously choose things that we like and hence, if our tastes are consistent (which isn’t a given) then what we like contributes greatly to our ‘style’. This conclusion also serves to emphasise the need for us to be good and consistent critics of our own pictures (for example, if we change our mind about a picture because everyone else likes it then we will obviously be absorbing other people’s styles).

I was discussing these themes with Mr Ward recently and I think we are both of the opinion that if two people like or dislike the same thing about a particular photograph then it probably says more about the two people than it does the photograph (my words, not David’s).

Anyway – back to website building and flip flopping between dismissing competitions as a ludicrous idea (as a self preservationist anticipatory response to not winning) and thinking competitions could be a great way of gaining exposure (as long as I win). Why I do this to myself? It’s the balance between self and ego that makes showing pictures to other people so addictive and yet so disturbing.

Bye for now – Oh.. and next post I’m going to be comparing scans from a Drum Scanner (my friend Dav Thomas has recently bought one for £250) an Imacon (Joe Cornish’s) and an Epson v750 (mine). The results are very interesting…

I’ve just come back from a quick outing to the Dales and although I really enjoyed it immensely, I kept on asking myself “What to shoot?”. It wasn’t that there was a lack of subject matter; The place we went to, Warrendale Knotts, was extraordinary and put Malham to shame in some ways but there didn’t seem to be an ‘idea’ out there…

The three photographs I came away with (first one with the Ebony but not developed yet) were OK and portrayed what was around me but they didn’t have a visual story (for want of a better phrase) to lead me into the picture. I started to think why I thought like this, why did I think something was missing.

The only thing I can think of is that I didn’t see either a strong actual subject or a strong compositional subject. These two things are what excite me when I find them in the field. The actual subject would be something like a tree or an erratic boulder or a waterfall, etc. The compositional subject would be a strong suggested shape or interlocking of shapes or a pattern that repeats in a geometric fashion. My favourite photographs combine these two things together, for instance my recent shot of the English Stonecrop where the composition shape was a flow across the frame and back, using a visual metaphor for a waterfall.

With the location I was in at the weekend, there was no actual subjects that were enough of a focal point to support a picture on its own. The rocks formations were nice but there wasn’t a main attraction and a supporting cast (e.g. Old Man of Storr or the Quiraing) so the strength of the actual subject wasn’t that great. It was also difficult to combine the elements into a strong geometric/compositional arrangement. This left me with trying to balance weak subject matter with subtle arrangement to create a coherent whole. Now I know this can be done as Christopher Burkett and Eliot Porter or masters at this, but I have difficulty visualising these types of composition in the field.

At the moment I’m using my 5D as a finder still and walking all around an area (in this case the crags that appear in all three shots) trying to find suitable arrangements. I’ll then take my compact flash back to Charlotte (who has either fallen asleep at this stage or is happily reading a book) and look through the pictures to choose a ‘best’. So in this case I chose the second picture as the one I would take with the large format camera.

When I returned, however, I thought that the second picture here is probably the better composition. I didn’t think it would work as well whilst looking through the finder because of the scree in the left hand corner of the picture. Now I’m not so sure, I quite like the ‘more complete’ view but feel the first picture has more compositional interest . feedback welcome!.

And finally, just to take up a point that David mentioned in his recent heretical support of the digital phone camera, I took this shot whilst walking back where the light literally appeared out of nowhere and was gone in a minute. The picture isn’t great (Thistles are difficult plant in many ways) but it was visual feast at the time.

I’m trying my best to work out ‘field tactics’ for finding compositions and the main thing at the moment appears to be about finding a base camp and then scouting around with just my SLR, feeling free to photograph those things that interest me. This does mean carrying around far too much gear though, perhaps once I get a mini GND kit for my Ricoh I’ll try to sacrifice the 5D.. The problem I have with the Ricoh though is that using the zoom becomes too much of a concious decision. With the 5D, I look through the viewfinder (I’ve cropped it to 4×5 btw) and with my right hand on the zoom , I can wander around a composition whilst dynamically changing the focal length, playing with perspective as part of my experimenting. With the Ricoh, the feedback loop between thinking about zooming in and it actually happening is just too slow to stay in the sub-concious.

I have looked around for 1.6 crop factor SLR/Lens combination that would be a lot lighter than the 5D but there aren’t many lenses that do the same as the 24-105 (I’d need a 16-65 lens at least.. preferably a 12-80 to get a decent range..).

Actualy I’ve just this second had a browse around and discovered what may be the perfect compromise.. Sony have a 16-105 lens for their 1.5 crop factor cameras. This is 96-630mm equiv in large format terms.. Hmmm… more thinking needed.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been busy sorting a bit of a mess out in my work life and hence my mind has been a little preoccupied. I have been out a couple of times though, the first with a photographer whose work I very much admire, Jon Brock, and also out with Charlotte to Saltwick Bay.

Jon and I went to Twistleton to wander around the same location that myself and Nigel Halliwell covered a month or so back. We took a different route around though and went slightly further into the Keld Head Scar area. There is a lot of potential around here but this time I couldn’t find anything that jumped out at me. I was using my 5D and the Epson viewer to assess the ‘note’ pictures I had taken and there is definitely some mileage to be had with this idea. The 4″ screen on the Epson is just enough to allow an assessment of colour and texture where the screen on the Ricoh or 5D are not quite enough. I did take one picture but haven’t sent it off to be developed yet.

The following are two pictures from that day, the first from my Ricoh and the second from the 5D.

Jon was a very nice guy and I enjoyed working on location with him. We had similar ideas about when to stop, when to work an area hard and when to move on to a new area. It was good to discuss ideas and the potential of features depending on weather and the time of year. We both agreed that this area could be very nice for winter sunsets as the sun, which descends behind the end of Leck Fell, will shine down the valley to highlight the edges of the scar and Twistleton opposite.

The second outing was with Charlotte last weekend where we both committed to going out for a walk at Saltwick and despite the storm and flood warnings we still went. I can’t say it was the most productive day (apart from the fact it tested out my new Paramo coat which passed with flying colours – it’s the Pajaro but mine is a secret grey version, just so i’m not mistaken for a twitcher). I did find some nice pier posts and took a quick photo of the red stones at the start of the slate bed at the nab end. Driving back we saw the most amazing ‘eye of the hurricaine’ effect over Hole of Hocum. Bright sunshine over a 5 mile area surrounded by black sheer clouds and lightning – unfortunately there was no real possibility of photographic location (and Charlotte was asleep in the passenger seat).

I’ve been out a couple of times in the Otley Chevins recently with Jason Theaker who lives nearby in Otley and is also an excellent and creative landscape photographer. We met up to have a chat about online photo communities for a secret project and also just to generally have the normal gossip that photographers have when they get together. Except it wasn’t the normal chat that photographers have; we ended up talking a lot more philosophy and creativity than cameras and software. Fortunately we weren’t too far apart in outlook otherwise the 5 hours we spent talking would have been a lot less enjoyable. Whilst walking around we passed a wonderful field full of grasses and mulberries that I then returned to with Charlotte one evening. I haven’t taken any ‘proper’ pictures of it yet but the textures and tones suggest that there must be something in there..

Well Cornwall seems to have been mostly successful despite the weather. I experimented a fair bit with Pro160 (example below) and took more pictures in bright light than I would have.. I even took some pansy-girly flower shots!

The shot at the top is the one I thought would come out best and is one of my favourites. The colours have come out a lot nicer than the digital shot (and obviously the detail is immense). I have captured an ant posing somewhere in the shot though – see below..

The other shots I quite liked are below. The sunset and dusk shots of the Valerian work and prove again how resistant large format lenses are to lens flare (i’ve followed the first one up with an SLR equivalent). I’m quite proud of the Strangles shot.. I was after a brutal, harsh shot and was purposely working with small depth of field to create a little more tension.. The place I was standing must have only been created in the last few weeks as the rock was so clean it couldn’t even have been rained on. The salt rime was also very recent. I didn’t stay around too long.

My final shot is a work in progress of the magenta and turqoise stripes on the stretch of coast between Rock and Polzeath called Greenaway. I really wanted a rainy overcast day to make the most of this but all I got was a suntan

Finally, I’ve got an interesting (possibly) comparison of Pro160 and Provia. I took a shot during the sunset over the dunes with both and when I got back I tried to make the Pro160 have the same colour tones as the Provia. Here is the original Pro160, the provia and then my attempt to match the Pro160 with the Provia colours.