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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.

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The first major challenge for a 365 photography project in the Highlands definitely comes when the midges appear. Prior to this, I spent some lovely evenings wandering up and down the river or walking in the long grasses on Rannoch Moor with my only worry in finding a composition. At the start of June, just after a lovely dry spell, the first rain brought with it a plague worthy of Exodus itself - yes, the midges have arrived. Within days, my sunset walks had to begin with a few minutes spent applying a thorough coating of Smidge. Once I got there, the moor was unwalkable without a midge net. Those long, unhurried evenings gave way to rushed compositions grabbed between swarms, with one eye on the light, one on the back of the camera and the other on the cloud of midges looming above my tripod. I exaggerate (a little), but the process does put a bit of a brake on my fun. And also, sometime in June, the Gulf of America starts to send us its leftover storms, and the West coast gets battered by front after front of occluded fronts (big, grey, and wet, like a deerhound emerging from the Loch). At least the tourist influx isn’t peaking yet (that’s in the first week of July).

And so keeping the momentum going felt quite hard this month. However, the lush spring growth, early flowers, changeable weather, and turbulent light often provided variety, so some days were disappointing, but others offered plenty of interest. I had to remind myself that this is a long haul, and sometimes the photographs would be less about moments and more about depicting changing moods. And like any other skill, the more I did this, the better I got at it - not just the photography, but the motivation and ability to find interesting opportunities with limited time.

The end of this month also brought a dental challenge that provided a continuous distraction. A broken root on a front incisor meant a bit of pain and then a two-hour operation for a dental implant (including a partially broken jaw, gum surgery and a week of postoperative pain). Fortunately, Charlotte was there to look after me and kick me up the arse when I was feeling unnecessarily sorry for myself! Thanks Charlotte!!

2nd June

Where Ballachulish meets Loch Leven, there is a peninsula made from the waste slate produced by the quarry. The workers used some of this slate to make sheds in which they stored small boats used to catch salmon (when Loch Leven had wild Salmon - that’s a different story). The location is referred to as Rudha Na Glas-lice or “Point of the Grey Mare”, which probably refers to a myth about a grey horse which would arrive with the mists that float on the Loch (see more here). The sheds are in poor repair now, but that makes for some interesting blends of slate and lush spring greenery. I knew I wanted to try to fit all of the sheds in and the point in the distance which dictated positioning to some extent. Then the beautiful spring greens of the fern told me they wanted to go in the corner, which meant the shed became a great leading line toward the promontory in the distance.

4th June

Over the last few weeks, I’ve spent a bit of time looking at George Washington Wilson’s photographs of Glencoe and comparing them with some of my photos. One of the classic Wilson photographs is of Ossian’s Cave in Glen Coe. When I was out scouting the location he took this from, the light was not right for rephotography, but it was too good to miss for the 365. Light was raking across the front of Aonach Dubh, highlighting the birch-clad terraces below the cave.

I’ve included a matching crop of the Wilson photograph for comparison (not taken from exactly the same place). It's really noticeable how few trees are on the terraces in the Wilson photograph and how much bare rock there is compared with the current state. In other photographs, there is a lot of more scree and rock fall as well. I'm not totally sure why this may be yet, but I'm trying to find out the climate records from the period to see if different winters may have made a difference, but my friendly National Trust ranger says it's more than likely sheep grazing.

8th June

A couple of years back, Charlotte and I walked the North side of Loch Leven from Kinlochleven up to the entrance to the new hydro scheme at Bun Nathrach. Along the way, we were surprised to see that the Thrift (Sea Pink) growing on the rocks at the edge of the loch was mostly underwater. As this is a tidal loch, that means it can survive being completely underwater every day. A little research showed that it can guide salt through its roots and store it in its dying leaves. It can also thrive in heavy metal environments - no, not AC/DC, the sorts of heavy metals that an aluminium smelting plant might leave in the surrounding waters.

We came back to check it out a few times, and I put a marker on the calendar to remind me to revisit it the following year. This year, I was lucky to go when the thrift was in peak condition, and I played around getting the scene/context in a photo and also some detail of the thrift showing the flowing water around it (about a 0.5s exposure using a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 on a tilt adapter).