I decided to enter this year’s Scottish Landscape Photographer of the Year Competition in spite of my reservations to do so.
The pandemic, which we have all been impacted by to varying degrees during the past 12-15 months seriously raised questions in my mind whether to enter or not.
Putting aside the loss of life, the loss of livelihoods and the impact of so many other factors on our everyday lives, I really doubted the validity of such a competition. However, I was persuaded by friends that we do need to try and continue our lives as normally as possible and after a lot of soul searching I did eventually decide to enter.
However, there was no escaping the effects of the pandemic and the restrictions we have all been living under for so long. Like so many, I have not been able to travel freely around the areas that I once took for granted. I live in the northern Highlands of Scotland and I am surrounded by extreme beauty. As a professional photographer, I sought and was granted a certain amount of freedom of travel from the local police because of the nature of my job.
But despite this, I never felt comfortable whilst on location for fear of being identified as a tourist or someone who was flouting the restrictions placed upon us in Scotland.
Therefore, I was always incredibly respectful of my opportunities and wouldn’t have never have travelled if it was not sanctioned by the Police and my local MP.
This year’s Competition was very mindful of the restrictions on travel and relaxed the entries so that photographs taken in Scotland during the past 5 years would be eligible for entry. Normally, I believe, they only accept photographs taken during the previous 12 months. However, one condition of my entry was that I would only submit photographs taken in the last year. I wanted to keep my entries current and was fortunate that during a brief relaxation on travel restrictions I was able to travel extensively throughout the northern Highlands.
I always love driving through the Highlands and never take for granted the incredible beauty that I live and work within. But, my range of photographs were severely restricted during these times and therefore I decided to only enter 5 images for the competition. I never felt at any time that my entries were as strong as last year and I therefore had no hope or expectation that any of them would be recognised as worthy of mention.
I was fortunate, however, that 2 of them were.
This photograph taken at Durness was recognised and received a commended award in the seascape category. One of only 18 to be recognised in the thousands that entered. I am immensely proud of this image and love the composition which the curving walkway provides. I had hoped to capture the sunrise which was forecast and would have cast a beautiful soft warm light across the scene. I had also hoped to see the passing Orcas which was one of the reasons for the walkway being built. Alas, that didn’t happen either.
I used my Nikon D850 to take this photograph and fitted a 14-24mm lens with the intention of cropping to a 16×9 frame. By cropping to this size, it allowed me to provide balance to the image by retaining the walkway as the centre of attention but giving a sense of location by including a beach below and the drop to the other side. Fortunately, there was very little wind which allowed me set a shutter speed of 5 seconds and have no fear of camera shake. An aperture of f/11 provided a sharp depth of field throughout the image.
This image here was taken at Lower Diabaig, which is one of my favourite locations in Torridon. I was also fortunate to receive a recognition of this image which will form a part of the touring exhibition organised by the Scottish Landscape Photographer of the Year Awards of the UK during 2021.
There are alot of similarities in this image to that of the Durness Walkway. Both have a sweeping walkway which provides the lead in line and both have a very similar balance of composition. I kept the crop at 6×4 to this image to retain the balance I was looking for. You will also note, I kept the telegraph pole and wires in this image. It is an age old dispute whether such presence should be taken out of the scene, but I can honestly say, I prefer to keep them in. Besides such removal would have not allowed me to enter the image under the regulations which frowns upon such thing.
Below I have included the 3 images which were unsuccessful in this competition, but all of which, bizarrely have been successful in other national competitions. Which just goes to prove that photography is so subjective and that it is only ever one person’s opinion. There is no right or wrong.
I would like to thank all those in putting together a competition of such high standard under very difficult circumstances and I would like to congratulate all those who were successful in having their photographs recognised.
