Talisker beach with a Hasselblad
After a year of long haul travel for commercial shoots, when I found some time to take a holiday in September we decided to stay closer to home and headed up to Scotland. Anticipating some beautiful landscapes I packed the Hasselblad 503CW, 60mm, 80mm and 120mm lenses, couple of film backs, a small Gitto tripod and a bunch of Portra. I also had a set of Lee Graduated Neutral Density (GND) filters at the ready, all packed into a Wandered PRVKE 21 bag.
If you’ve never been to the west coast of Scotland before then all I can say is GO! The landscape is simply sublime, with a quiet, rugged beauty out of all proportion to the modest scale of the mountains.
We had 4 days to explore the island and the weather was particularly warm and clear for late September. On our second evening we hit up Talisker beach for a walk, a few kilometres down the road from the famous distillery and not too far from the AirBnB we were staying in.
We drove along a single track road across the moors (most roads on Skye are single track, you get used to it!), parked the car at the end of it and walked for about 20 minutes. We arrived at the water around 7pm and the sky was turning a beautiful pink as the waves lapped gently on the rocks.
I decided the headland on the north side of the beach made for the best horizon line, and headed down to the rocks at the water’s edge looking for an interesting foreground. Stepping over slippery rocks with a heavy camera on a tripod hanging over your shoulder definitely gets the heart rate going occasionally. I made 3 frames in the end, all shot on the 60mm at f/16 and an exposure of around ½ second:
I’m quite pleased with the results, but think the first picture is definitely the strongest. Something about how the rocks and seaweed in the foreground create a diagonal, coupled with the dark line in the sea made by the small wave make the composition more satisfying to my eye. What do you think?
One of the nice things about shooting on a medium format film camera in this instance if the fact that I only made 3 frames. I know that if I had been shooting on digital I would have made 20 or 30 different compositions. It’s refreshing, as well as good discipline, to have to make decisions there and then.
We spent a couple more days on Skye and then a couple more on the mainland near Torridon before heading home. Here are a few other worthwhile photos from the trip:
