Behind The Scenes – Going The Extra Mile

For this blog I decided to talk a little about the process behind getting ‘the shot’. Sometimes people think it’s a case of getting out the car, point, click, back in the car, and away. We’ve all stood in a layby and used our phone to get what looks on the screen to be a strong image. Is it really that easy to get images which will look great in print? Well, generally, no, this is not the case. For my book, I wanted to get angles and scenes which were not obvious. Not the images anyone can get, so this involved getting wet, dirty, and putting the effort in to get to the right spot. Some days I walked for miles, up hills, along valleys, across rivers and whatever else it took to get something a little different. On other days I was faced with testing weather conditions, and on occasions had to abandon, and other times, sit it out in the hope of better light.

The first photograph I want to talk about, was taken at Loch Ness. I wanted a dramatic shot of Loch Ness. Not the standard Urquhart Castle or Dores Beach shots, but something to capture the character of the area. Unfortunately when I got to my spot down past Dores, the weather turned pretty nasty. As you can see from the shots off a video I took on my phone, it was blowing a gale and bucketing down. The car was only five minutes away, but I had a feeling that the light might be really good once the rain passed. I was under a tree, with a scarf wrapped around the camera to attempt to keep things dry.

Five minutes later the rainclouds broke up a little, and the sun broke through, providing me with a dramatic scene, topped off by a lovely double rainbow. It was definitely worth getting cold and wet for, and five minutes later the sky had cleared up and the drama was gone. Patience and preparation did the trick on this occasion.

The next shoot was more about the lengths we sometimes have to go to, in order to get the shot we want. Some might give up, others, like me, will go the extra mile, risk falling in icy water (yes did that as well) and generally put the effort in to get to whatever spot we feel will produce the best image. I had never been to Plodda Falls before, despite being very near a few times, so decided it was definitely worth a trip to increase the chapter on the Inverness area.

It’s a fair drive to get there, and then a bit of a trek down to the falls. Once you get as far as the path takes you, you realise there’s actually not a great angle to capture the falls. The viewing platform is great but impossible to take a good photo from, and further down is much the same.  Looking at it, it was clear that the rocky area across the water was the spot to be to get the best image. However there was no obvious way to get there. It looked like there should be a bridge or path, but nothing. On top of that the water was looking fairly deep and quite lively. Getting even to the waters edge was tricky, as there’s no path, and it had been very wet, so I had to hang on to branches to get there without falling.

There was, what looked like stepping stones across the water, but the water was about knee deep, the rocks were very wet and slippy, and most certainly far from flat. I also had my notoriously awful walking boots on, which were the equivalent of roller skates on wet surfaces.  Decision time. Well, I’d come this far. Might as well give it a go. Skipping across the rocks was hard enough, but I also had camera and tripod and a massive rucksack on my back. I decided to pack the camera away, and use the tripod as an improvised walking aid. Even with that, it was really tricky, and I still don’t know how I got across, but I did, and boy am I glad I did. One of my personal favourite sets of images from the entire book. Probably the trickiest spot to get to of the project as well, but I was so glad I did.

So, there we are. It’s not all as glamorous as it seems, and sometimes you have to go to extra lengths to get what you need. Over the last year I have been in places I’d never have expected to be, been soaked many times, stumbled upon a naked man in a waterfall, been savaged by ticks and midges, but survived and definitely ended up with better images than would have been possible without the effort.