Image of the Month

Sunset over Isle of Rum, Scotland.

It's all down to conditions. I even bore myself the number of times I say this to photo tour guests. You can go to the most exotic locations on Earth but photographically speaking, it all comes down to conditions. Weather - in all its manifestations - is what governs life on Scotland's west coast and predicting it is notoriously unpredictable. And so it was I came to be standing on a remote Hebridean beach waiting for conditions. Cloud structure, tide state, even moisture content in the air - they all contribute to the right - or wrong - conditions. If truth be told, I'd have liked more cloud and a bit thinner and a bit higher and a bit to the right and a bit...you get what you get and try to make the most of it. Conditions can be found anywhere, but Scotland has its fair share.

BEHIND THE LENS: Perched on a rocky outcrop in the half-light of dusk with an incoming tide needs a bit of care but so does the execution of these types of images. Shooting straight into the sun, I waited for a bit of cloud cover to calm the brightness in the sky and used a 0.9 ND grad over the top of the image. As the light was fading fast, a 3-stop ND filter slowed the motion of the sea over a 30 second exposure. It goes without saying that a sturdy tripod is essential.

View gallery of previous images »