En route to my Highland wedding

Virtually all my blogging of recent weeks has been about weddings and photo shoots so just to mix things up a little I thought I’d post some landscapes that I photographed last Friday on my drive up to Torridon for Amy and Andy’s wedding. I’ll no doubt blog the wedding itself next week.

It’s been a while since I last worked this far north. I recall a few years ago I got the opportunity to take a new car for a drive around these parts of the Highlands for a magazine shoot. The car was a Vauxhall Vectra GSi, a limited edition road going version of the successful BTTC model. The photo brief was to portray this as a real drivers car so I utilised the twisting, sweeping Highland roads to try and produce that feel to the images. My personal favourite image from that shoot (and not just because it earned the most money! lol) was the second photo shown here with the narrowing wriggling road temptingly weaving it's way off into the hills and forests.

On Friday I set off nice and early from Edinburgh and stopped for my lunch in the exact same position where I’d taken the GSi image. At the time of taking the original photograph this was a very ill frequented and little known location, however, I noticed now that there are several large tourist sign boards advertising the famous "Kinlochewe View", hmmm, not sure if I’m to blame for this!

Anyway it’s quite interesting comparing the two photos and seeing the difference in the look of the landscape between the original which was taken in the month of August and the latest one taken on Friday. Of course mid day is not the best time in the world for taking landscape photos, in fact it’s the worst, but as I wasn’t getting paid to shoot these well 'beggars can’t be choosers' so they’ll just have to do! lol

For me the best landscapes in the world are to be found slightly to the south and west from here, the area around Loch Carron down to Eilean Donan Castle, but from Achnasheen across to the Torridon Hills comes fairly close. Once you pass Kinlochewe you are weaving through the mighty peaks of the Beinn Eighe Nature Reserve along the narrow single track roads where the passing places are a must not just for negotiating on coming traffic but more often for taking in the superb scenery. In truth you don’t get much traffic on the roads around these parts anyway - one of the reasons we took the car up here for the shoot a few years ago.

I was due to meet Amy and Andy at the Torridon Hotel later in the afternoon for a pre-wedding meeting. I’d never met them up until this time as they’d found me online after apparently typing "the best wedding photographers in Scotland" into google. So thanks google for that! Hopefully they will be kind enough to do likewise for phrases like "best wedding photographer in Edinburgh" and "totally, utterly awesome wedding photography in Edinburgh and throughout Scotland" ;)

It was an absolutely beautiful sunny day with temperatures getting into the late 20c's. I drove with all my windows wound down and frequently brandishing my camera out of them and towards the hilltops. The midgies very kindly left me alone too which was good of them!

Landscape photography is quite different from weddings and portrait photography as for virtually all of the images you are using very small apertures to give what we call good depth of field so that pretty much everything in the photo is sharp from front to back. With some wedding photographs this is needed too especially when you are wanting to showcase the setting in which the couple are in, but for most of the photographs you will normally be doing the exact opposite and using wide apertures to give limited depth of field. This has the affect of throwing the backgrounds out of focus and thus laying emphasis on the couple themselves. These images look particularly striking when used in conjunction with the fashion lighting. Anyway you’ll be able to see a good selection and variety when I blog the wedding for next week.

As well as meeting up with Andy and Amy I also carried out my usual recce of their venue which was the elegant Torridon House Hotel. I actually visited here on my previous trip so I was already fairly familiar and knew that they served good coffee! Ps…their cakes and pastries are quite nice too ;)

When I’d finished up I headed back to my digs in Kinlochewe, which is just 10 miles away, and a well deserved evening meal washed down with a wee dram of Clynelish. I was up early the next morning for a quick double check of all my equipment, a full Scottish breakfast, and then I was on the single track road back to Torridon. Check back next week for the wedding pics. (Remember you can click on any of the photos to open up a larger viewer so you can see the images at a bigger size)