A Dance of Ice and Fire

On remembering not to scout with the technical camera - yet again

This particular day must be the highest effort for a single image I can remember. I was on a road trip with my sister in Scotland and we spent a few days at one of my favourite places, Torridon. This particular day my sister and I decided to visit the Beinn Eighe NNR - the start of the beautiful and accessible ‘Beinn Eighe Mountain Trail’. Walking the full round hadn’t quite been the plan - I had remembered visiting here on an Advanced Large Format Photography Workshop back in 2007 and I remembered it being a fun place to make pictures. So I set out similarly equipped with my heavy tripod and full technical camera kit. After a couple of setups in the forest, I spotted the potential for this image on the trail - a log with wonderful colouring. I was playing with the concept of colliding worlds off and on at the time and I imagined a struggle between ice and fire on the log as I set up. A friend also later described the centre as like the eye of Sauron.

After that image we walked up the right-hand side of the path to the amazing ravine. And then for some reason we continued walking and ended up walking the entire mountain loop in reverse - so I was coming down the steep scrambly sections with my full gear. Fortunately I keep microspikes in my bag and was able to strap my tripod to the bag to make things easier to walk but it is not a recommended session to repeat! The walk is spectacular however and I repeated it a couple of years later - this time with the Fuji, not the Phase!

The good news was I still had the physical fitness to carry it off but the lesson I had to keep repeating afterwards was ‘do not scout or walk long distances with the technical camera’. Who was it who said that anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic - was it Edward Weston? Anyway, wise words when it comes to working with technical cameras!