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Tim Parkin
Tim Parkin is a landscape photographer living in Scotland who co-founded On Landscape magazine. Alongside his photography and writing he also co-founded the Natural Landscape Photography Awards, runs a film scanning business and is a judge for other international landscape and nature competitions.
I’ve mentioned before that I haven’t had much dedicated time for landscape photography over the last couple of years. That’s mainly because I’ve been spending a lot of time in the mountains, where photography was still happening, but usually as a secondary concern to whatever I was out there doing.
After Matt Payne’s visit last year, I realised I probably needed a project, something with enough structure to nudge me out the door more regularly. So I’ve restarted a practice I first tried about five years ago, taking one photograph a day for the whole of 2026. January has gone reasonably well so far, although a bout of Covid made me miss a day and also led to one slightly questionable “photo through the bedroom window” attempt, which felt a bit like cheating.
I thought it might be interesting to share how the project unfolds, so I’m going to post a monthly update with a small selection along the way. Each month, I’ll include eight photographs with captions.
Achtriochtan Snow Storm - 2nd January
A tourist vantage point, but one with so much photographic potential in the right conditions. Around 3 pm, a series of snow/rain bands was due to pass. I went to the edge of the lochan and I found a satisfying clump of reeds to provide a foreground ready for the front to arrive. Just as the squall was blowing in, I had time to capture three frames before the wind hit the water. Shortly after, the view disappeared and so did the feeling in my fingers.
A critical part of making this photo was finding a clean area of water in the foreground, which was just as important as finding a complementary grouping of reeds. I wasn't 100% successful; a couple of the foreground reeds stood out. However, a bit of contrast reduction in Photoshop/Lightroom did the trick. The same processing was applied to a couple of car headlights in the background. The key to post-processing this image was to enhance the contrast between the cool blues and the warm reeds/lower hillside.
