on landscape The online magazine for landscape photographers

The Significance of Time

Alexander McIntosh Weir

Alexander McIntosh Weir

A one time bank manager followed by 22 years as a pro wedding & portrait photographer; I'm now happily retired seeking to re-kindle an earlier enthusiasm for landscape photography, with the only pressure to succeed coming from within.

myweirview.com



I read an article propounding that 'photography is all about space and time' - as a landscape photographer, my exposures generally fall in the range of tenths of a second through to 30 seconds; or if I'm feeling particularly creative, I have been known to set the shutter to 'bulb' for exposures of multiple minutes.

We can all relate to seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years but beyond that our comprehension of 'time' becomes much more difficult. Whilst on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides I took the opportunity to photograph the local rock formations. I don't know too much about geology but I do know that the beautifully structured Lewisian Gneiss is the oldest rock to be found in Britain and at 3 billion years old it is also one of the oldest (although not the oldest) rock forms found on Earth. Three billion years old; well I really cannot get my head around that scale of time; human life is no more than the single flutter of a hummingbird's wings as measured against such unfathomable time.



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