More Beginnings
On remembering another origin story
In 2007 I started what turned out to be an annual winter January visit to Scotland with my friend Dave Tolcher. The year before I had attended my first workshop - with David Ward and Phil Malpas - based at the Kingshouse on Rannoch Moor. I came out of that workshop with two key learnings. Firstly a much better appreciation for the art of composition and how I could control that aspect of my photography. And secondly, a realisation that I wanted a piece of that amazing camera that David Ward was using - a Linhof Technikardan.
He had explained to me how it worked as I watched him set up an ice detail in the frozen river at the top of Glen Etive. I think I took in about 5% of what he told me. Then that evening after dinner he did something that changed my life for ever. He put a 5×4 transparency he had made from Norway on a lightbox and showed it to me. It was extraordinary. My jaw dropped. I was hooked. Hooked on what I was later to realise are called the dark arts of photography - view cameras.
So after having picked up a Wista initially as a 5×4 learning camera and attended a memorable workshop with Joe Cornish on Skye, I had the big decision to make. Metal or Wood. Joe shot with a wooden Ebony whilst David worked with the metal Linhof. I ummed and ahhed during November and eventually traded in my Wista for a second-hand Linhof Technikardan 45S.
So I was armed with that and three lenses - a 90mm wide angle, a 150mm standard and a 240mm short tele - when I went to stay at the Kingshouse again a year later. The trip was significant for me because of the impact of these two images.
The first is the alternative image - not because I like it (in fact I hate it!) but because of what I did. At the time I was simply under-confident. Dave and I had visited the top of the moor for dawn each morning because that is what you did. I dutifully joined him every morning and set up my camera in the cold to freeze and burn film on a weak ill-considered generic composition of the lochan and the mountain behind. It felt like I was doing it because I was doing it. Then on the third morning as I set up once again in the freezing dark, something in me clicked. I stopped setting up my camera and wandered over a few feet to the right. I saw a rock and a curved line in the ice and through my Linhof viewfinder set for 90mm I realised it made a lovely composition if I set up deliberately close to the rock. I picked up my camera and moved.
As it turns out I slightly over-exposed the reflection of the sky - the grad was misplaced and my calculations were out by a third of a stop. Also the film was Velvia 100 which coloured the whole scene magenta! But that wasn’t the point. I had gained the confidence to take control of my compositions. That picture of Black Mount in the pre-dawn light remains on my wall today - I actually mostly blank it out - but it serves as a reminder to me that to make a photograph should always be a deliberate, independent act and that images are constructed, not found. The ultimate expression of human independence and creativity in fact.
The main image was made either the same day or the following - I forget which now. I was photographing in the River Etive in the ice and I spotted this fabulous rock formation. I set up my 240mm and made the image. When I got this back on the lightbox, it was the first image to really surprise me. And it gave me the self-confidence to trust my own abilities to find independent compositions. The steep learning curve I was on for the next few years had well and truly commenced.
I continued to visit and stay at the Kingshouse most winters - a tradition that continues to this day. However I look at those two winter visits as foundational beginnings for me - they set the cameras I used, taught me how to compose and gave me the self-confidence to act like I was in control.
