Image of the Week (February Week 2)

Generally the weather this week in Skye has been poor however, there were a couple of days of bitterly cold but bright weather. There was also a new fall of snow on the Bheinn and other Red Cuillin neighbours as well as the Black Cuillin.

My thoughts are turning to the exhibition in May and starting to produce new work. So I went out with renewed energy to try to capture the Ephemeral Hiddenness of Skye. My aim was to produce some new monochrome images to give a sense of the inhospitable and unforgiving landscape of Skye.

This first photograph is an image I submitted for my final module portfolio for my MA. I cropped it as a square and worked on the light and shade to give a sense of what it is like to be among the Black Cuillin:

I also returned to one of my favourite spots in the Red Cuillin where I took this shot a year ago:

It is interesting to compare images over a period of time.  This year the snow extended further down the Cuillin and the conditions on the peaks were more turbulent with the snow being blown from the ridge:

I cropped the image to a square but I am not sure it works because it has removed a sense of the landscape.  I then cropped a similar image in a different way to emphasise the horizontal lines of the hills and focusing in the near ridge:

Again I wasn’t satisfied so I went back to the drawing board to see if I could improve the images and this was the outcome.  I returned the following day to the same spot and  was attracted by the lines coming from the ridge of the Bheinn on the right.  As I watched a snowstorm started to obscure the mountain ridge in the background and gave an ethereal feel to the scene while still retaining the patterns of the snow on the scree:

As with all my images of the week there is still more work to do but I feel I have captured some of the atmosphere and experience of being in the Red Cuillin on that day.