What a double edged sword this prompt has proven to be! On the one hand, one I can't resist because I have quite a lot of photos I'm proud of. On the other hand, the images that spring to my mind easily are those where I capture Cubling in a special way, pictures I'm not prepared to share on this space. So, I went back in time a bit to my old photos and despaired at my filing system, or the fact that the photos I'm really proud of come in the lowest resolution ever seen. You see, I wasn't one to switch to a digital camera until I bought my DSLR rather recently.So here are four very different offerings of photos I'm proud of. Before Cubling, I took photos of landscapes. After Cubling, well, guess what...
Since my first trip to Ireland, sometime in 1989, I've been mainly interested in capturing the northern light against dark clouds. It's been rather an obsession and my favourite photos have always been those where it seemed that the photo got close to what I saw. I'm fascinated by the colour, the way that a recent shower and the dark clouds give saturation to the landscape, which is then brought alive by the sunshine that so often goes hand in hand with a shower. It's so unlike the light I was used to, the hazy industrial light (or misty - humid on a summer's day) of home, where the weather changes rarely and the sky is eternally hazy and flat, while the sun stands high in the sky and rarely offers the warmth of colour I love in the north.
The first two images are taken with a film camera and were scanned, so the quality of the digital image is rather poor.
This is Orkney in the evening light:
And this is Ben Cruachan after walking up in boring and mind destroying mist all the way, only to be rewarded with the most amazing glistening sunshine at the top, with sprinkles of other Munros to be identified by their mere tops peaking out from above the clouds. The sky and clouds really are closer in Scotland:
So then, now to Cubling. One of the very first photos taken of Cubling is this one (and for the life of us Mr Cartside and myself can't agree on who took it, but it's a photo we both love to bits so what does it matter? At the time we both took photos with the same camera so there's no way we can establish who took it). A photo that had my first teacher of photography, who passed on the passion and many a camera to me (aka my dad), criticise me for chopping off her head. I loved that comment, because of course I particularly like the crop of the image. The comment was proof that I'd develop some confidence to try out something less conventional, which I've done much more of recently (and that includes switching off auto mode on my DSLR). I like everything about this image, the peacefulness of sleep, the beauty of my baby, the sun coming in from the window at the back, the moses basket, changing table and my home-made curtains in the background, while my baby naps in our bed, oblivious to our adoration:
And finally, a recent photo of her climbing a tree. I love hands and to get this image of her holding confidently onto the bark, the texture of her soft skin against the rough of the bark, was just magic. It's one of the first pictures taken with my new telefocus lens.
Needless to say that my mission in photography these days is to get the perfect image of Cubling. And again. I have a whole bunch of photos that I'm immensely proud of, and yet I don't tire of taking ever more photos. I'm not sure where this will take me once there's two to take photos of...
