Slideshow from Skye.

Simonhi

Simonhi

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Simon
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Earlier this month I attended a photographic workshop with my favourite landscape and portrait photographer, Bruce Percy, on the wild isle of Skye.

I booked the course in February and due to the weather almost had my hopes dashed after the snow came down. I had already had a holiday cancelled this year due to the Icelandic Volcano so despite half the group not being able to get to Skye due to cancelled flights, I drove the 720 miles through snow and ice to get there !!!

We had the most amazing week, wonderful light, snow showers, storms and only a little rain. These are the best images I made, with some direction in both composition and editing from Bruce.

All images made using a Nikon D700, Zeiss 21 & 28mm Distagon and 50 % 85mm Planar lenses. Lee graduated and Pro Glass ND filters and SIngh-Ray Reverse Grad ND Filters used with Gitzo Systematic tripod and RRS ball head. All shots fired using mirror lockup and cable shutter release.

Rather than post tons of images I thought a slideshow with a bit of music would be a different way to view the images rather than me prattle on about each one of just throw up a load of them.

[YOUTUBE]vdkhW9Hli-Y[/YOUTUBE]

The video is 1080p, best viewed full screen for highest resolution.

I would recommend that anyone who wants to improve their photography skills take a workshop as it really does accelerate the learning process. As a photographic tutor, Bruce is a great mentor. It has been a great help to me, only picking up a DSLR a little over a year ago.

I hope you like the images, I felt very privileged to be there considering how many things were pitched against me preventing me from getting there.

Cheers

Si :)
 
Sounds and looks like a great trip, and it seems clear you got a lot out of it. It's the sort of thing I keep looking at and thinking about. Will be looking more closely now :)
 
Absolutely stunning stuff Si. Great to see that D700 being put to excellent use. Skye is such an inspiring location but you have done it proud. Bet you are really glad you managed to make it.

Some very interesting use of different formats too, portrait, landscape and square.

I like (In fact, I love) :love:

:clap:
 
Wow, thanks for the kind words Ali B.

I know you visited there earlier in the year and are an advocate of the D700 ( I think you got yours a few weeks before i bought mine) and the odd workshop or two.

It is only now, having been back for a couple of weeks how lucky I felt to have got there and been able to get about during the week. Climbing up to the Old Man of Storr for a sunset shoot and getting caught in a heavy blizzard half way up, using crampons, and feeling like "Why are we doing this?", then the blizzard clearing and getting an amazing sunset, then walking back down in the dark with head torches, felt like we'd just conquered Everest :) I'll never forget that !!! We only got stuck once at Glen Brittle and also didn't make Elgol one morning because of the ice, but we went back on day three and had such amazing light for the sunset.

I can't speak highly enough of Bruce, it's funny most people I have mentioned to about him as a landscape photographer have not heard of him or seen his work. He is a very cool guy, shoots on a medium format Mamiya 7II camera, almost exclusively using Fuji Velvia RVF50 film. I found his website through a recommendation in Amateur Photographer earlier the year in January, looked up his site and booked the LAST of only four places to the workshop in Skye, it was nearly booked out a year in advance !!!

Had such a good time I'm looking at doing Patagonia (Los Glaciares National Park) later in the year with him and possibly Eigg too in September, I would now like to do at least a week in the Hebridean islands in autumn / winter each year.

The different formats was basically playing with the existing 3:2 format that is produced by all DSLR (except possibly very high end Canon and Nikon cameras, I know the D3, D3S and DSX allow in camera cropping to 5:4) to show that most compositions in landscape photography work better as 5:4, 6:7 or square, and 2:1 (6:12) for panoramics. I know it kind of harks back to film days but I've gone back over old images and there are definitely 5:4 crops in them. I think 3:2 is too wide for most landscape images and too tall for portrait orientation. Trying to keep compositions really simple is sometime hard when shooting a wide crop with a wide angle lens, it just throws your background so far away it's almost disappeared !!!

Cheers again,

Si :)
 
Many thanks Jon, next trip is Tromso, Norway hopefully might see Aurora Borealis mid Feb.

Must get out locally again too, sunrise looked good this morning.
 
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