Thursday 18 June 2009

Dirty Stop Out

If I find myself having to work for 12 hours solid I'm not particularly happy, if it involves staying up all night in the process I'm even less happy! But the prospect of having a long session of overnight landscape photography is a whole different matter!

So I find myself on the East coast of Scotland in June, where the sun sets after 10pm and rises at 4am, with a over an hour of subtle light either side too. In truth there's very little darkness, maybe a couple of hours.

I hatched a plan to visit Cove Bay near Hopeman on the Moray coast (also known as Cashach Cove). I hadn't been there before but had seen great photos from there, particularly by Joe Cornish in his 'Scotland's Coast' book and images by Ian Cameron. After soaking in the sunset I was to move on to Bow Fiddle Rock further down the coast at Portknockie for dawn and the sunrise. The last time I visited Bow Fiddle Rock was over the Christmas break, I was interested to see how the arch was lit in the summer with the sun rising behind it.

I set out at 7pm, laden with my Chamonix large format and Sony a900 digital, the Hasselblad also came along but carrying all three was impossible. I was also well packed up with some fine egg sandwiches and chocolate biscuits (thanks to the Mother (not quite) In Law) to keep me going through the night.

My plans were somewhat scuppered by the adolescent rave going on in Cove Bay, complete with marque and sound system (not exactly providing the best soundtrack to landscape phtography!). I must say though that the ones I encounter were surprisingly polite – I must be too used mouthy big city teenagers! I decided to stay at the Hopeman side of the bay and concentrate on compositions within the large pebbles and rock formations. The landscape here is quite chaotic, I think only repeated visits will uncover wider compositions – more to look forward to next time, I also think it would benefit from more sea – the tide was completely out. I made three large format images at Cove Bay, with a very golden light casting shadows on the rocks.

As the sun was setting, Cove Bay was cast in shadow and I moved around to the Hopeman coast where unusual rock formations are covered in crustaceans. I made a number of digital images as the sun fell out of site. It was perfectly safe to move around the rocks long after the sun had disappeared, I used the remaining light to produce some long exposure seascapes – no need for ND filters here, my 2 minute exposures were all natural!

I was back the car by 11.30 and ready to move on to Portknockie, half an hour or so up the coast. There was a golden band of light on the horizon as I drove east, this never disappeared all night. After a break for an hour with the egg sandwiches and a flask of coffee, I decided to head out and make use of the limited light for more long exposure compositions whilst trying to capture the vivid orange band of sky. The dynamic range was too much for one shot, the orange band rendered a pale yellow, the Sony's sensor also struggled with the colour, the only way to achieve an image closer to what I could see would be to blend two images and adjust the colours to match my memory – still away from home I haven't managed to do this yet but I'm sure I got all I need for a good image.

As the clouds above me cleared, the glow of dawn began to light up the cliffs at about 3am, I positioned myself facing the Bow Fiddle Arch and made some test images with the digital camera, I wanted to get a composition I was happy with so I could set up the large format ready for the optimum light. I decided that was on a rocky outcrop which would provide lead lines to the arch itself. Getting to the outcrop resulted in a wellie boot full of water – wish I'd remembered to roll them up!

I was rather amazed as I looked round at one point just before the sun was about to show itself, and be greeted by the sight of a line of photographers up on the cliff-top looking down on my location – I thought I'd be the only one mad enough to be be there at 3.30am! I'm sure they were most disgruntled to see that I'd already beaten them to my prime location, positioned right in their field of view! Early birds and all that! On chatting with one of them later I discovered they were a group from the Netherlands on a photo workshop.

It was all a bit of a rush to get a few large format frames exposed, there was a fair amount of jumping around from the shore to the rock, hopefully I'll have exposed them correctly, and in focus! Being the kindly gent I am I quickly packed up and moved out of the way so that the Dutch party might get some decent images without me jumping about mid frame!

I finally moved up to the cliff top to make another image of the outcrop I'd previously photographed at 2am with the large format as well as the digital this time, before returning to the car for more coffee.

Not content with 10 hours of photography, I called in at Findhorn on the way back to make a large format image I'd perviously done digitally which I wasn't completely happy with, although after this long awake I'm not sure how it's going to turn out – it really was time for some sleep!