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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.
After a week of nice weather at the end of April, May started with a spattering of rain and built up through the month. Working in the rain isn’t too bad occasionally, but going out day after day in the rain does get a bit tiring. I’ll admit to not travelling too far from the house or car for some of my 365 photos, but Thankfully, the rainy days were interspersed with some amazing blasts of sunshine which sent me scuttling out of the house, hoping that the rain didn't return until I found something interesting.
Early on in May, I was making the most of the low evening light, especially as the sun drifted so that it was sending its last rays through the glen about 20 minutes before sunset. We also saw the arrival of bluebells, and that usually means the arrival of midges as well. I don’t feel too bad about midges now I’m selling the latest in Highland tourist apparel - MidgeSpecs.net!
Joe Cornish visited at the end of the month and my new motivation saw us spending a bit more time wandering around together in the Glen in the amazing weather he brought with him (at least for three days).
At the end of April, I also bought a new lens from Lizzie Shepherd. It’s a Helios 44-2, an M42 mount lens that is famous for its swirly-wirly’s! Expect to see it in action in future months.
1st May
That low angled sun skimmed across the top of the bog myrtle and if you got down low, the fresh buds glowed orange against the tussocky grasses. This was handheld with the Sony 24-105 at 50mm and f/14. I tried to use the Sigma 50 f/1.4 on a tilt adapter for better focus but the flare wasn’t as nice and the sun had already moved enough to make the composition difficult. I wandered around for while (slightly rushed with the sun dropping) trying to find formations that created two things, an interesting and balanced foreground (without being ‘obvious’) but with a connection of sorts between foreground and background.
5th May
On a walk around the Ballachulish Peninsula, I saw a large clump of fern unrolling its stems and some sun and showers drifting about on the scene in the background. I dumped my gear and positioned myself as low as I could go to get the tallest frond against showers starting to land on the hill in the background. The combination of showers, blasts of sunshine, moody cloud and the epic outline of the Pap of Glencoe worked together well. 40mm at f/11 so that the background dropped out of focus a little (I did try f/16 and f/22 but movement was an issue and I liked the drop focus).