articles/Landscape/wilderness-page2

Britain's True Wilderness - part 2 of 1 2

by Paul Gallagher Published

First Exposure

As I left Inverness the sun was strong and it was actually warm on my back. I arrived at my first stopping point, Charlestown, on the banks of the Beauly Firth (which flows into the Moray Firth). Here I made the 'ice breaking' first exposure. This is, a ritual I always follow in which, after exposing the first sheet of film, I rather strangely relax into the day. It must be the process of setting up tripod, fitting lens, attaching cable release and metering, etc. Let's face it; no amount of packing could prepare you for a missing piece of kit out there. Where would you buy a cable release in Tongue! Not only that I need somehow to remind myself that my 'framing eye' will not let me down. That would indeed be a personal tragedy. From here I made the journey through the Black Isle, across the Dornoch Firth at Bonar Bridge passed Loch Shin and Altnaharra and onwards to Tongue, taking photographs on the way.

Using this as a starting point I intended to head south for the remainder of the trip and collect two main types of photographs - stunning beaches and monolithic mountains. Until now I have described the wilderness and remoteness of this place but not exactly what it contains; the beauty of the place is the main reason I came back. The beaches of Sutherland are the most spectacular I have experienced in Britain. There are no burger or ice-cream vans; no pay-to-enter, stylish, loo blocks; or sprawling car parks. Many of the beaches are found after travelling many miles down tiny 'B' roads with passing places, like the bulk of the roads in Sutherland. Places such as Balnakeil Bay, Smoo Bay and the absolutely awe-inspiring, Oldshoremore. These are coastlines where the water is turquoise blue and the sands are pearl white, with few footprints. On the small road dropping down to Oldshoremore I almost drove the car into a field at the first sight of it and ran along the footpath to the sands across the top of the dunes like a child. I was ecstatic but it was at this moment that I had to adopt a professional attitude and think out what I was aiming to covey in a picture.

Once again the weather was perfect for this type of photography - a light breeze, blue skies and the occasional white cloud. It is worth mentioning at this stage that a gloomy day on a beach when shooting monochrome also can offer some fantastic opportunities. Heavy skies and light sand offer contrasting tones in a print that you will not get inland in similar weather. I wanted to capture the vast, open, curved expanse of undisturbed white sand containing random patterns of seaweed and boulders. I had to capture the wonderful blue sky and headland leading out to sea that separated this environment from inland.

In The Kit Bag

Throughout the trip I made pictures using my 5x4, large format, Walker Titan XL camera, using a selection of Schneider lenses. This was supported by a Manfrotto 055MF3 Carbon Fibre tripod with a 405 Pro geared head which is a light, but wonderfully engineered, piece of kit for the perfect levelling of horizons on the ground glass. On Oldshoremore I set the camera to encompass all of these features I visualised. I chose a wide angle, 90mm Schneider Super Angulon lens, employed vertical emphasis in portrait format, and was able to tip the camera body forward, not too concerned about converging verticals, but to emphasise the tendril-like lengths of sea-weed at the foot of the image. I then used a Schneider focusing loupe to accurately focus all areas of the image including approximately 4º of lens tilt for maximum depth of field even prior to stopping down the lens. I use the superb, optical quality, Lee Filter System which, to date has always provided the best filtration results I have seen. I clipped the filter holder to the adapter ring attached to the lens and then mounted the 105mm linear polarizer and returned beneath the focusing cloth where I rotated the filter glass to render the blue sky as dark as possible to contrast the light sand in the image. I then fitted a light red filter into the filter holder to further increase the contrast of the final image. I then metered from the shadow side of the beach rock and the distant shadowed headland using a dedicated 1º spot exposure meter and placed these values on zone three (utilising the Zone System) to retain the darkest shadow detail. Taking into account the filter factors for both filters, the final exposure calculation was 1 second at f22 even with that bright sand! I then loaded my darkslide containing Ilford Delta 100 and captured the moment. This was of course one of only many I took at Oldshoremore that day.

Stac Pollaidh

Although there are many shots from the trip that will remain in my memory it was Stac Pollaidh which stands out. It was a dull start to the day as we drove from Lochinver to Ullapool, via the tiny road that winds passed Inverkirkaig and Loch Sionascaig. The views along this road are breathtaking and a full day here (or a week!) would not exhaust the image possibilities. Stac Pollaidh can be seen from several places during this drive and then tantalisingly vanishes behind low-lying hills only to reappear again with equal impact. This, in fact, was one of my many, incredibly dangerous, rear view mirror visualisations. Although I am at a loss to control it, I always look in my rear-view mirror to see what I am leaving behind and to take a glimpse of the view from the opposite direction. Essentially you should always stop and get out to get this aspect as a means of reducing the possible 'death factor' during the drive, but time was tight and it worked for me! As I was coming to the end of Loch Lurgainn my eye caught the cloud breaking above the mountain (in the mirror!) and it was a photograph I had to take. I used a yellow filter on the 90mm lens and once again tilted the lens approximately 4º, to snap the foreground boulder into pin-sharp focus. I used the boulder to give both a sense of scale and distance whilst leading the eye into the frame and beyond to Stac Pollaidh and the clearing cloud revealing blue skies above.

As I have mentioned there will be many times I will return to this part of the Highlands. Different times of the day in different locations, with differing weather and light, will display an infinite quantity of photographic opportunity. For this reason I will never tire of Sutherland and what it has to offer - I will always stunned by its beauty.

• Britain's True Wilderness page 1
  
• Britain's True Wilderness page 2
  

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