Last week I was in Scotland doing a photo shoot for Rab for their spring summer 2015 range of clothing . We had scheduled 2 days shooting but as i was in Scotland for a week i thought I might head out to the western isles and shoot some landscapes. That was the plan until a few days before i was heading out when I got a call , could I make a short advert for Rab Meco base layer and could I shoot it on Skye? Still all good , there was enough time to do that , even with the vagaries of Scottish weather and especially on Skye. Then the day before I was leaving , a call from Wild Country marketing team , could I go and get images of James Pearson on his ascent of Rhapsody E11 on Dumbarton rock. so , within the space of a few days , what had started of as a fairly low key trip to Scotland turned in to a full on media hit with some nifty timing and some very good luck with the weather needed.
Paul Tattersall was the athlete I was working with and we planned to meet at the Sligachan on the Saturday at midday, the weather gods were smiling on us as the 2 days we had planned to be on Skye were good forecasts with low precipitation. There’s a back story to this in that the whole shoot very nearly didn’t happen , but thats another story, we got on to the ridge by around 4pm , as most people were heading down and had a very atmospheric time filming on Am Bhasteir and Sgurr nan Gillean and got down to the Slig at around 8.30pm.
The next day dawned to clear blue skies but I was a bit alarmed that I couldn’t bend my right leg or walk ! something had happened to my R medial cruciate ligament the day before and I was in pain++, but with the weather closing in the next day , there was no option but to down the pain killers and man the **** up. We headed in to Coire Lagan and up onto Sgurr Alasdair and the along to the Inn Pin, Amazing day with the most incredible atmospherics and we were able to get some great footage of the ridge. I was shooting with the Canon 5Diii with the Tiffen variable ND and a kinoteknik LCDVF. Olly was along to help carry the slider and tripod and general good all round chap qualities.
The next day the weather on Skye broke , rain , wind , zero vis , the usual Skye that I’ve experienced a few too many times, so we headed for Gairloch , Pauls stomping ground to shoot the catalogue /work book shots . Thankfully Rab kit is bright , so no worries about it not popping in the images, we just beat the rain and got the first days images in the bag.
Joining us on day 2 was Murdoch jamieson , one of Scotlands strongest climbers and a new athlete to the Rab team. Looking forward to working with Murdoch in the future and we’ve got some projects planned for the winter, keep you posted.
So far so good , 5 days in and we had the film footage and the photoshoot done , now was there going to be a break in the weather for the Rhapsody shoot. James had cleanly lead the route 2 days before I was due to join them and the forecast was good : ) , was great to meet up with Hot Aches Chris Prescott who was happy to oblige on quadra duties , maybe the first time a quadra’s been used to shoot on Dumbarton rock?
James and his french wife Caroline are a super team to work with , the images are part of a media push by Wild Country so can’t share the images till they’re published but here’s an out take from the shoot as Caroline works Requiem
Been editing the film for the last week , its now on draft 3 so will let you know when it goes live,
Thanks for reading