Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

Back when Paul Arthur, Dav Thomas and I met up at the Light and Land beginning large format workshop in Bamburgh, we talked about going on some sort of photography trip together. I’m sure a lot of people do this “Wouldn’t it be nice to… ” sort of thinking but in this case, Paul actually organised something for us and got a couple of extra participants to come along, Tamara Kuziminski and Jenny MacLennan. Not only that be he got the accomodation, ferries and more accomodation in Skye and a stop in Glencoe sorted too!! Pete Bridgewood was going to be going at one point but chickened out because of a perceived risk of anaphylactic shock through exposure to Velvia (well ok, he couldn’t get the time of work) Richard Childs jumped in to bring the camera count to five large formats and a medium format! This was one of the interesting aspects to the break, a rollback of film photographers (collective noun alternatives gratefully accepted). Because we only take about four or five images in a day, we spend a lot more time really looking for subject matter and we’re quite unlikely to get in each others way.

We were also expecting some more company on the holiday as we found out that Bruce Percy was running his first Eigg workshop on exactly the same day with about 8 participants. This would bring the total of photographers on the island to 15 – making the island a stunning 20% populated by landscape photographers!!

You’ve seen my planning for the holiday, with the goal of camping up the Sgurr, but unfortunately, like most plans, it didn’t survive contact with the enemy; The enemy in this place being the dreaded lergy, possibly swine flu who knows. Whatever it was, Paul had it on the very first day as he drove me and Tamara all the way to Glencoe. We had a wander around near the Clachaig where we were staying but without much time and with little sleep, we were still in ‘getting into the groove’ mode which meant Desperately seeking ‘Compositions’ rather than Susans. It is strange how it takes some time for your brain and perception to start seeing the world in photographic terms (Wow, the colours in the fern around that tree and how the break in the path create a flow through the fram) rather than ‘object’ terms (i.e Must avoid tree, path goes ahead, feel wet). I think one of the skills that becomes developed as a photographer is being able to switch into this mode more quickly.

Anyway, the next day we had to get to the ferry to Eigg for about 10.15, which would have been fine apart from Paul and Tamara leaving the Morrisons in Fort William at 9.30 and the satnav saying we were going to get there at 10.30! Well Paul was having none of this and despite being flu’d up to the eyeballs and doped up to the gills, he made it to Mallaig with ten minutes to spare.

The ferry was a chance for Paul to collapse and this was pretty much the end of Paul for the next three days. However, I still had a day of well being left and so for the first evenings shooting we headed off to what Richard Childs has called ‘The Angry Place’. I was a little overwhelmed by all of this and only made one photograph that evening as for most of the evening I was just staring, gobsmacked at the geology and the beauty of the sunset (I left my 5D running some video as the sun was setting). Richard was making this at the time (you can see him perched precariously in the video).

Overall a slow start to the holiday with only a single casualty, but most enjoyable. The only difficult bit was following the road from the house to the coast which was only 10 minutes but passed through a bog beyond bogs and down a near vertical grassy cliff (think sheep tracks only). The sheep tracks were easy to find in the light but coming back in pitch black with no headlight (still packed up) was interesting to say the least. Good job I had my waders on (more about them later).

I’ve created a short video of the highlights of the trip which I’ve embedded here.