Familiarity Breeds Contentment
Glen Etive, January 2024.
There’s nothing better than travelling to a far flung destination and on arrival it feeling like coming home. That’s exactly how I felt last week when I stepped out of the front door of our accommodation deep in the bottom of Glen Etive on the first morning of a week away with some talented friends. Making repeated visits to the same area is very much the antithesis of the current list ticking trend in photography. A pattern driven by social media where a huge number of photographers/influencers circumnavigate the globe to stand where thousands have already been to attempt to make an image that can only be made more original than it’s predecessors through stronger and stronger post processing. It’s not a method I would feel comfortable pursuing because first and foremost I enjoy discovering new scenery more than anything and so much overseas travel wouldn’t sit right with me. There are of course a few places around the World I would love to experience first hand if only for the joy of standing before such wonder. Following photographers like Ben Horne, William Neill, Eric Bennett etc it’s great to see a body of work from a limited range of locations ( all of which I’d love to see myself) grow and develop over many years. While I haven’t lived there for twelve years now I still feel the greatest sense of excitement, awe and understanding for the landscapes around North Argyll/North Lorn and particularly Loch Etive in Scotland.
Of course I’m particularly fortunate to have had a prolonged visit of 416 weeks to the North Argyll/Glencoe area starting back in the summer of 2004. I’ve been back quite a few ( not enough) times since and every time I have been able to slot straight back in on day one of a visit, no acclimatising needed, no days lost trying to work out where to go and absolutely no need to reference anyone else’s work to find locations to suit any conditions. This last week for example the very best place to be on Wednesday with torrential rain and gale force winds amplified and made more unpredictable by their interaction with the ridges and valleys of Glencoe was on a tour inside Ben Nevis Distillery;) Seriously though, there will always be a location that works no matter what the weather, the old adage ‘there’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing’ applies to camera protection too so best to pack multiple plastic bags, lens cloths and kitchen towel etc to keep my camera dry. Wind is the biggest disruptor for the landscape photographer so I go and find some woodland in a protected valley, that protection will be the reason the trees are thriving there.
And it’s far more than knowing where a viewpoint opens up, a boulder sits overlooking a vista, a tree stands out against the sky or river changes direction. It’s about building up an understanding of how the light plays and interacts with the landscape in a specific place throughout the seasons. The deep valleys and often closed in feel in North Argyll create a totally different mood to those of say Assynt, Sutherland, Ardnamurchan or the islands where the proximity to the open sea and the space between the hills allow more light to flow through the landscape. The Welsh mountains feel completely different again and despite knowing them well I was caught out by their own characteristic light when I visited once from Scotland. A mountain landscape in Wales is not the same thing as one in The Lake District is not the same as one in Scotland and all down to the complex interaction of the terrain and the climate. Glen Etive can fill with evening light in Winter but at other times of year it drops into shade long before the sun sets, Glencoe on the other hand catches light on the crags of the Aonach Eagach in Winter but running East to West it can fill with warm light in the late Spring and early Autumn when the sun sits high enough to lift it above high ground at either end of the valley. Loch Etive can often act like a reflector and light up the underside of heavy cloud amongst the mountains thanks to the fact that it wends it’s way out to often clearer skies to the West. Mull, Morvern and Ardgour all play their part in that they often create the weather that then crosses Loch Linnhe to plough over the ridges and deep glens to the East. All of this accumulated experience helps inform decisions as to where to head to have a successful day out with camera and takes an enormous amount of pressure off, particularly when I’m guiding other photographers, either casually or on a workshop. I’ve always wondered why and how some photographers lead workshops to locations they barely know, sometimes even making their first visit to the area on a scouting mission a week ahead of the tour! It really sounds like the perfect recipe for an anxiety attack to me.
It’s probably a good idea to have a few favourite areas to focus attention on to provide some variety. Beyond my local Shropshire Hills area, this year I intend to spend much more time in North Wales and having just returned from the Glen Etive area with a handful of strong images I think my book project on the area should take precedence, I have after all been talking about it for years now and I know some of you would like me to produce books. With no gallery to showcase my work a series of books makes more sense than ever.
Anyway, I’ve saved what I think are the better images from the recent trip to Scotland for the slide show below. If you fancy a very mellow five and a half minutes please go get yourself a cuppa and hit the play button below. I’d love to know having watched it whether you’d like more content like it so please let me know in the comments.
Many thanks for watching. See you again soon.