Well, it’s arrived.
My 1st day of my 1st Workshop of 2022. I didn’t sleep that great, probably because I’m excited for the week ahead, partly because I was on my own in a strange place, partly because my phone kept pinging telling me there was a raging Aurora outside and to get out of bed immediately, but mainly because I was completely absorbed with David Grohl’s book – Tales of Life & Music. I absolutely love Nirvana for whom he was the drummer and the Foo Fighters of whom he was the founder and lead singer. Oh, how I would’ve loved being a Rock Star. The hours between midnight and 3am were lost in a haze of Smells Like Teen Spirit & Times Like These.
Two hours later I was downstairs making breakfast to the tunes of the more familiar Stone Roses and the Smiths. Back to David tonight.
Two 5am wake up calls on the trot – should’ve been a milkman (if they still exist)
A quick look outside to see whether the northern lights had waited for me but alas not. No overnight snow but a harsh frost due to the clear skies which I’m told by the University of Facebook had the skies dancing in varying shades of green whilst I was engrossed in my book. Ah well…..
Yesterday’s nerves have now been replaced with a sense of great excitement and anticipation for the week ahead in the photographer’s playground which is commonly known as Assynt. This is not dampened by glancing at my weather apps, which are all forecasting heavy rain for tomorrow. I’ve lived here long enough to know the weather systems here are very localised and to not get too downcast about the predictions
The weather systems move so quickly in the northern Highlands and can be totally different just a few miles up the road. One other tip I can pass on and one I have learnt by living in the Highlands, if the weather is terrible inland, just drive to the coast. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve done this only to discover a completely different set of weather conditions on the beach.
By the way, the weather apps I tend to use are the Met Office, the BBC, Dark Sky and Clear Outside. I find the Dark Sky by far and away the most reliable source of localised weather. That’s if you can get a phone signal in the Highlands whilst out on location.
If I’m going to the coast, I refer to the Tide Times app if this is relevant to my trip.
However, despite all of this and despite referring to these apps, I’m never deterred by them from going out. You just never know if they’re 100% correct and if they are, there may be a break somewhere, just a small window of opportunity when, if you’re lucky you get the chance to capture an amazing scene. An incredible sky, strong forceful light rays, a rainbow, a violent seascape, fog, mist, anything which will result in an amazing unique image. An image you captured because you could be bothered. An image you captured when others took the advice of the weather apps. The harder you work, the luckier you get!!!
The Stone Roses and The Smiths gave way to my listening to the last embers of the 4th Test Match from Sydney. Why I put myself through the torture of experiencing the pain of watching or listening to England struggling at cricket is a source of constant frustration. Worse still, to the Australians. But, as with life and photography, you have to experience the bad times to fully appreciate the good times.
It’s 8am and time to drive to Inverness to pick up my guests and get this workshop started. It’s pitch black outside as I scrape the ice from my windscreen and look forward with no shortage of trepidation to the drive through a darkened Assynt. I say that because I know there will be hundreds of stags lying in wait to play with my nerves. A game of dare to look forward to. On my drive to the cottage yesterday I couldn’t help but notice how many there were at the moment. They were literally everywhere was my final thought as I drove out of Lochinver.
Soon after leaving Lochinver, the beautiful light of a new day started to slowly develop. The soft blue skies with pink hues were simply gorgeous. Just after leaving Elphin heading towards Ullapool I drove past some spectacular reflections of the snow capped mountains in a still, perfect loch. Reversing 100 metres back to the spot, I was met by a welcoming committee of 4 fully grown stags. I just had to photograph them as I scaled a small hill. Upon turning back towards my truck, the full beauty of the scene struck me. It was perfect and I wouldn’t wanted to have been anywhere else at that moment in time.
A perfect opportunist photograph. No planning, pure luck. You can see I put a filter on the lens, but I decided I preferred the scene without the ND filter. Therefore, only my Kase Magnetic Filter was used in the final image just to saturate the colours a little.
This unscheduled stop was making me run late to meet my guests in Inverness at 10.30am. The drive to Garve was full of some wonderful wintry scenes and fantastic light. I would’ve loved to have stopped at 4 or 5 places to capture the scene, but today, my responsibility was for my guests.
Fortunately, the 2 guests who were able to travel were staying in hotels very close to one another which made the pick up so much easier. On the drive back to Lochinver, it was evident that both were very advanced photographers and wouldn’t need much technical input from myself. My workshops attract people who are at vastly different stages of their photography journey. Some require a lot more help and input than others and I sometimes find it difficult to get the right balance between helping too much or not helping enough.
But I’m really lucky with guests this week, there is a good vibe within the group and they love the cottage, which is such a relief for me. I don’t mind admitting, I was really nervous on how they reacted to the cottage but now I can relax on that and enjoy showcasing the most beautiful part of Scotland.
Back to the judging of my guests needs, I usually get it right but sometimes it can take a day or two and it’s normally, for some reason, when we sit down for the first editing session at the end of the first day. I guess this is when we can sit back in the warmth of a hotel and view the images without the “pressure” of getting the shot. My editing sessions are very relaxed and informal. They are a great forum for assessing each others work and inspiring others to look at scenes in a different way. We are all guilty – well I am anyway, of seeing differing scenes in the same way. To see how others view the same scene as me can really be an eye opener. I think the group benefit enormously from these sessions and it allows me the opportunity to see where I can bring extra value to the guests photographic education. Whether that be composition, focussing, exposure or to simply clean their sensor.
In these editing sessions, which normally only last an hour or so, I will cover the basics of Lightroom & Photoshop before moving towards some more intricate techniques as the week progresses. I am always careful to make it known that editing is a very personal thing and therefore, my editing classes are conducted in this way. Some of my guests have obviously booked on to my workshops because they like my photographs and in which case I will demonstrate how I edited an image to reach the final one which was published on my website.
I am a great supporter of the Nik Plugins and use the Color Efex Pro 4 on a lot of my edited photographs. I am not a great fan of over saturated colours and many will notice that I will take a lot of blue out of my edited photographs. I personally prefer this effect and I feel that the landscape in the Scottish Highlands certainly lends itself to this type of editing.
The image here is a perfect example of taking the blue out of the raw file.
After calling into the rented cottage in Lochinver at 13.30hrs we had just 2 hours before sundown. The day are so short up here at the moment. Therefore, we opted to go to the local coastline at Achmelvich. I have a soft spot for this beach as it was one of the first beaches I ever saw in the northern Highlands. It was bitterly cold with blue skies. The sun was so low and almost below the surrounding hills which limited us on our shot selection. Under these circumstances, the higher the better in terms of where to stand and where to photograph. Perched high up on the cliffs, we were totally exposed to the cold but it was a useful exercise. One of my guests wanted to develop her long exposure skills and with the sky being so blue, this was an ideal time to practice this skillset. It was also a great opportunity to showcase the Kase Magnetic ND Filters. I am a Kase UK Partner and I can’t highly recommend these filters enough. They are definitely a welcome addition to my workflow and so much easier to use when the weather turns lively. The results are superb.
The forecast for tomorrow doesn’t look good, but we will find something, of that I am confident. Great light is never far away in the Highlands. You just need to know where to go. The subject matter will definitely be there, we just need to compliment it with some beautiful light.
Before then though, after some editing and a supper, we will look to the skies and go searching for the Northern Lights. Guided by the alerts on our phones we will hopefully get lucky.
An eventful day, an enjoyable day and I can’t wait to show my guests more of Assynt tomorrow.
I hope you join me for Day 3…..