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Behind The Image: Knoydart.

Updated: Nov 24, 2019

Every now and again, either when I'm injured or poorly, I find myself sat at the desk scrolling through my library of images in the hope of something that I've missed.

It's good to cast a fresh set of eyes over previously captured pixels, because at the time an image may have been deemed unusable.

You may have been in a rush to get images out to clients, it might not have been what you were planning for when you had the camera in your hand, the frames before or after might have been better exposed, or you just thought it was shit at the time.

Sometimes when scrolling through your Lightroom library, something can hit you smack in the face and make you wonder what the hell you were thinking to not edit it up in the first place.


The weather had been horrendous on a mountain biking photo expedition to Knoydart in Scotland, but overall I was happy with what we had bagged in the brief weather window we had, and so too were MSC Tires, using the below image in their Singletrack ad campaign. https://www.shop.terraventure.co.uk/collections/msc-tires



After being in the field for a couple of days, kit and bodies soaked, we raced down the final rocky descent to Inverie to catch the last ferry of the day.

We tried to make the most of the small periods when the rain did stop.



But just as we were approaching Loch an Dubh-Lochan, the sun dropped down below the clouds, casting everything in the most amazing golden light I had ever seen.

Rainbows sprang up everywhere, but unfortunately not where we wanted them.



I was a little further on than Sean, the rider I was with, so I quickly grabbed the camera from my pack in hope of capturing something bathed in gold.

I ran up the hill to a higher view point and as Sean came riding past, I quickly set my exposure shooting with the sun at my back and clicked away. As Sean carried on riding, I carried on shooting, not thinking about my exposure or anything else for that matter.



Now shooting in to the sun and rain, the front of my lens was getting soaked, so I fired off a couple of quick images, dried off my gear and stashed it safely back in my dry pack.



On first glance, I skipped right past this, the sky is over exposed, the rain makes it look soft, it's hard to tell there is a rider there and it didn't tell much of a story to me at the time.

But after coming back to it, I realised the simplicity of it, IS the story, leaving the imagination of the viewer to fill in the blanks.

The rain softens down the image adding to the atmosphere and the golden lit grass gives it an ethereal, painterly feel along with the layers of shadow.

As quick as the light came it went away, dropping behind the clouds out over the Atlantic.


I'm glad I returned to this image and happy with the simple edit I gave it, coming up with something different to my usual style, but please feel free to let me know what you think.


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