Old sheiling beside loch gruinart on islay


Carrying on from the theme of my previous entry here are three more of the images I would include in that list of shots I am 95% happy with.

Back in April 1995 I came across this old shieling nestled among the dunes beside Loch Gruinart on Scotland's Whisky Isle, the Isle of Islay, the dunes around the ruin were covered in wind blown marram grass which I thought would make a good foreground and luckily this little mound provided some elevation. Back in those days I was using a Bronco ETRS 6x4.5 medium format camera fitted with a Zenzanon 50mm f2.8 lens. I had also brought along my battered old Benbo tripod which allowed me to choose a slow enough shutter speed and to get some movement in the grasses but not get buffeted by the strong wind. The film used was Fuji Neopan 400 which was exposed through two filters a red plus a neutral density for 1/30th sec at f22 and then developed in Rodinal. Back then a roll of 120 film would only give you a maximum of 16 frames so exposures had to be made sparingly. The image above was copied digitally from one of my old prints which had been made on Ilford Multigrade paper then split toned sepia and blue.

Although it had been part of my "Ilford Printer of the Year" panel, was printed in the book "Landscapes Developing Style in Creative Photography" and had been hung in The Photographers gallery in London, my greatest pleasure came when I sold a copy to a Parisian theatre company so that they could project it as a back drop to a play they were presenting.

Kentmere Cottage

My second image also copied from and old print but taken some time earlier was not only part of my "Ilford Printer of the Year" panel, but was also used as a double page spread in the 1996 "Photography Year Book" and a copy had been hung in Ilfords offices in London.

We have passed this old cottage on many occasions over the last fifty years when walking in and around Kentmere. Sadly the tree has long gone and the cottage sanitised losing most of its character, so too has the old guy who lived her and who like others in the dale loved a chinwag as you passed by. This image for me says all that I remember and loved about the Lakeland of my youth.

Also shot on the Bronica ETRS and 50mm lens but this time the film used was Ilford FP4, exposure was most probably 1/125th at f8 and handheld.

LAST TREE IN GLEN CLACHAIG

Another copy of one of my favourite prints, Last Tree was taken in spring of 1994 on the Inner Hebridean Isle of Mull. A handheld shot made again on my Bronica ETRS and 50mm wide angle lens. This was the result of a bracketed shot around 1/60th and f8 made using Agfapan APX 100 and developed in Rodinal my all time favourite film developer combination. The essence of this shot was to render the tree in silhouette but retain some of the detail in the foreground so an incident light reading was made using a Weston light meter. No tripod again as this time the walk was the main point of the day the objective the summit of Ben More seen here on the right.

I used "Last Tree" as the main subject of a four page article for Photo Technique on how to previsualise monochrome landscapes and how to utilise Ansel Adams "Zone System" to produce the print. A copy of the print was also used as the front cover of the 1995 edition of "The Yearbook of Creative Monochrome"