The challenge of entertaining while being honest
And an insight into my photography
Once again, this isn’t the post I had planned for this week. My intention had been to follow up last week’s post How did Scotland’s land become so denuded? and write Part 2 about land use (and ownership) in Scotland, bringing it up-to-date. Major changes are happening now, mainly related to an explosion in speculative land purchase for the purposes of carbon trading. This is very close to home for me and a subject causing a lot of local angst, so it’s not an easy post to write. A combination of anxiety about how I frame it and busyness has led to procrastination, so you’ll have to wait for that one.
What has been preoccupying me this week (apart from world politics!) has been giving a talk to a local camera club. I was expected to fill an hour and a half, so made a Keynote presentation that I could talk to for the first hour. (Keynote is Apple’s equivalent of PowerPoint). I agreed its title a year ago for the club’s programme, hoping that it was vague enough to offer some flexibility when I came to prepare the talk.
‘Photography on the hoof’ gave me scope to share how I take photographs to illustrate walks guidebooks and travel articles. When I put the slideshow together I was able to include many images I have taken recently while researching four guidebooks in little more than 12 months. And, of course, that also gave me the opportunity to bring some books to sell to the audience.
I explained how my style is to combine walking and travelling with photography, which means I rarely go out purely to capture the perfect image. Instead I take what I can while I’m also engaged in research, which may involve noting details of a route or gathering information about a place.
The sort of work I do requires bold, colourful images that are inviting to readers who may come across them illustrating a walk or destination. So I try (frequently unsuccessfully) to do my research when it is sunny and am often shooting in the middle of the day when the light is high contrast. These are the times avoided by photographers who want to create dreamy or moody images.
It would be lovely to have the time to take more artistic photographs, heading out before dawn to capture the perfect light or detouring to a wonderful viewpoint. But deadlines mean that that is rarely possible. Instead I make the best I can of the conditions I experience while ‘on the hoof’, come rain, shine or gale force winds.
I shared the above image as an example of the weather I sometimes experience. Fortunately I didn’t need to submit this photograph to my editor as I had other far more inviting ones from a previous sunny visit.
Out of necessity I have made an art of making a publishable photo in unpromising places or weather. That has been aided by, over the years, honing my Lightroom skills to adjust RAW images in post processing to compensate for poor conditions.
Here are a couple of examples I shared where I ‘recovered’ photographs taken in dark shade, a problem I often encounter in the winter months – especially in deep Scottish glens – when the sun is slow in the sky.
Usually I don’t hang around for long waiting for conditions to improve. I’ve wasted time fruitlessly that way too often and it is normally more pressing to complete my research before dusk. Occasionally though I can see a burst of sun approaching and will wait for it to arrive.
The usual bugbear – a deadline – saw me researching a guidebook to the Lochaber area in November. One walk I’d planned visited Camusdarach, south of Mallaig in the west Highlands. This beautiful beach with turquoise water was made famous by the film Local Hero1. I was hoping to capture an image that showed this beauty spot as an enticing place to visit. But I encountered heavy black clouds and flat, grey light. The showers were blowing in from the direction of the Isle of Eigg, which kept disappearing and reappearing on the horizon. More in hope than expectation I waited for a gleam on the sea to approach and enjoyed five minutes of sun in which to create a usable image.
My talk was rather different to those the camera club usually has from award-winning photographers. They dazzle and impress with their best images, whereas I shared some of my worst! I hope I helped the audience by giving tips about how to compose and shoot images to make the most of both attractive and challenging scenes. I am not expecting to win any prizes with my photography, but thousands of my images have been published in the 25 years that I have been freelancing.
Scratching my head about how to occupy the last half hour, I decided to compose three short videos from walks where I had taken a tripod and shot some clips. Dozens of these had been languishing on my hard drive, so I quickly dragged them and a few still images into iMovie (another Apple app) and trimmed them into moving representations of my three walks.
This is one of them, about a walk around Kilmartin Glen in Argyll, one of my favourite places in Scotland. The video is a bit rough – I could do with learning more about videography and editing – but I hope provides a 5-minute introduction to a few of the delights of this peaceful spot.
Kilmartin Glen walk video
The control to view the video full screen is on the top left.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this digression into another of my preoccupations. Your feedback is very welcome - please comment if you have questions or thoughts provoked by this post. You are also very welcome to share this. The number of people who subscribe (for free) to my Substack is gradually growing and that is a great encouragement to continue posting weekly.
Notes
This BBC article gives more insight into Local Hero and its environmental themes. As it says, the 1983 film was prescient about challenges that we have experienced since: “Well before it was echoed in the incident of the Scottish farmer who refused to sell his land to Trump when he built his golf course, Forsyth's film implored audiences to conserve the environment, to stand up and fight for it, and to contemplate how easily it can be destroyed.” Some people in Scotland did stand up and fight in 2012 when Trump arrived here to bulldoze Menie Dunes, a Site of Special Scientific Interest. They included my friends Hazel and Dmytro, who – with the participation of local residents – produced this satirical video, Trump does Bohemian Rhapsody.
Another lovely article , and has taught me something I hadn’t considered. That fantastic photo on a great walk isn’t always possible to achieve when time constrictions and nature are involved.
I really enjoyed reading your post, Felicity. It is nice to see photographs taken in realistic daytime conditions, which is after all what most people experience. And I think there is great skill in being able to make the most of photos taken in less than ideal conditions.
I also take photos in whatever conditions I happen to find myself in. I am always out and about with my partner, who is not a photographer, and don't want to try his patience too much! I enjoy the editing process and turning a dreary grey photo into something usable is so satisfying :-)