Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

We woke on the Saturday to rain. Intense rain. The forecast said even more rain. The day was essentially a write off so we decided to visit a local gallery to have a look at what the residents were doing. First up was Wood Rising which, despite having one of the most sexually suggestive names for a gallery, is acutally a landscape photographer specialising in photographs of Skye. Whilst we were generally of the opinion that his photography wasn’t earth shattering, it was certainly worth the visit and the gallery itself was very impressive. Paul, Tamara and Jenny then split for home leaving just me and Dav who decided to take a look at the Three Herons gallery which I had visited on an earlier trip.

Three Herons is bascially a front room and a kitchen of a small cottage in Broadford owned by Ken and Polly Bryan. Polly works in textiles (although isn’t doing so at the moment due to health reasons) and Ken takes photographs. The kitchen is also a mounting station with an Epson 4800 printer in the corner and the front room has prints stacked up all over the place with a left handed acoustic guitar in the corner. Ken’s work is primarily in black and white but there is a fair amount of colour. Have a look at here for an example. I bought a very minimal print of trees in a thick fog (which Joe Cornish later revealed as one of his favourites).

Leaving the gallery to blue skys, we were a little sad about this being the end. A particularly nice view on the road to the Skye bridge had us back in walking gear and wandering though a pristine area of coastline right next to the road ..

This area was amazing – it was obvious no-one had trodden here for years and the lichen and plant life was overwhelming. We walked about half a mile up the beach, stopping to take photographs occasionally, until I asked Dav how long we’d been there for, expecting him to say an hour or so. Nearly four hours! We’d been battered by rain and sunshine, weather fronts flowing in and past every half hour. As one weather front came through, I managed to take a large format shot in 20-30 mph winds and pelting rain. Exposing a transparency betweem bursts of rain, I captured the next rain front crossing the Cuillins with some stunning geology in the foreground.

Obviously too late to drive all the way back to Yorkshire now so we decided to stay and figure out what accomdotion we could get in Glencoe in the way back. After a couple of hours and a glorious drive through Glen Garry we got to Glencoe only to find that the only accomodation available was a four luxury room at the Ballachulish hotel where we sat drinking Malt Whisky with the film crew for the last Harry Potter movie. Now that is how to finish a holiday! Thanks to everyone for making it such a fun time!