Shooting the Shooter - UK Edition
Fortunately, for once I took more shots of Ann making images than she made of me. However, we start with one of me from the Isle of Sky. Unbeknownst to me, Ann not only made landscape shots from inside the bimobil (while I braved the cold and wind), she made one of me making one of the first pictures I made on the Isle.
Little did we realize that this first view was going to become very typical of our stay in Scotland. We’re highly confident Scotland has lots of mountains, we just didn’t see the tops of too many of them.
My first image of Ann was during our 1-day workshop with Simon Booth. Actually, if you look carefully, it’s of both of them.
It was taken in the quarry where I made the vertical composition of the quarry wall (off to the right - I think I set my tripod up on the boulder you can see through the ferns on the right side of the photograph). Simon was walking Ann through a series of photographs of ferns, here, shielding some harsh light from hitting the ferns.
My next photograph of Ann was during our wonderful walk around the lake while the rest of Glencoe was socked in with fog.
Ann learned that floating docks actually move and that long exposure landscape photography isn’t precisely sharp as a result. Regardless, at the size you’re looking at on a monitor (or phone or iPad), the resulting movement isn’t visible.
I took the next few pictures during our workshop. On one of our stops, Ann and I opted to go by a flowing creek (instead of photographing the big falls) and were both rewarded with some nice, more intimate falls that make for better images.
Although Ann claims to have struggled with figuring out how to adjust the various variables (aperture, shutter speed and ISO) to get the water the way she wanted it to be, she did a mighty fine job of it if you ask me. The texture of the water is lovely, giving a delicate sense of motion, while not appearing as textureless white cotton.
The last couple photographs came from the last day of the workshop at our last stop. We had a choice between a lake, a river flowing from the lake, or the hillside beside it to explore - we only had about an hour there. I decided to go up the hill and kept going higher and higher, making images along the way, before I stopped at the top. From that view, I could look down and see Ann below me.
Her image is of the landscape feature that led me to keep climbing from the instant I first saw it. This was the closest we’d gotten to one of the dry stone walls as it made its way up from a valley over a ridge and it made a beautiful element cutting through the landscape. The trees and natural rock surrounding it were appealing elements for a photograph.
A few moments later gave me another opportunity as Ann had started working on another image (as time was running out on us). What I like about this pairing is that it shows the way it goes sometimes. You see - she didn’t make that image. She couldn’t compose an image in that direction that satisfied her, so she didn’t press the shutter.
What Ann did instead was to rotate the camera to the left where there was an image. And that was the image she made.
That’s it from the UK Edition of Shooting the Shooter.