Earlier in the summer I was back in Scotland shooting for Glenmore Lodge , the plan had been to shoot the West Coast Classic Rock course, as luck would have it , the week we had booked to be there , the West coast was just pouring so , local knowledge and getting as far away from the rain as possible , we headed for the coast . The brief was to capture images of instructional climbing , aspirational climbing achievable on learn to lead courses and some more arty type shots for front covers , magazines etc
The Lodge are a great team to work with and Jon Jones and I have teamed up on many trips over the years to shoot images. I’m really glad for the link to the Lodge as its been very beneficial for my career and general profile in the Outdoor Photography world. Like many connections , it came about by quite a chance phone call , one thing lead to another , and I now seem to be there fairly frequently with the forthcoming adventure photography course as well
One thing that really floats my boat is using studio type skills in an adventure environment, using OCF and creating the sort of dramatic lighting more associated with more controlled settings. But with the right gear , and a bit of know how, there’s no reason why you can’t take this sort of drama into the mountains . My main lighting when I’m shooting is the Elinchrom quadra ELB400 and we’ll be using this on the course as well as the new hysync triggers.
As well as the action , there’s also the lifestyle people shots in the outdoors, with sponsors logos and any new gear clearly seen and trying to make the crags look exciting. I try and work with diagonals , and rather than following rule of thirds etc I often place my main subject centrally and compose around that to bring balance to the frame
On the adventure photography course we’ll be covering ideas of composition , different lens choices for certain situations , adding drama and interest to a shot , and of course, bringing in some strobes . We’re running it as a pilot to see what kind of interest there is and the technicalities of running this kind of course with the vagaries of the Scottish weather to deal with as well
As well as all the technical stuff to cover there’s also the artistic side of the image. For me , I would say that creating art is as much part of the process as is just getting documentary images of a climb or run etc. An image has to work on an emotional level as well as the technical aspects of composition and balance , and thats a difficult thing to quantify , art to one person is just a mess to another ,e.g. Tracy Emins work .
If you’re interested in the Glenmore Lodge course then I would suggest booking asap as there are only 2 spaces left as of last week. If you’re interested in any other aspect of photography then message me with your ideas and lets see what we can do
Thanks for reading , Best Wishes ,
Nadir