Returning to Fine Art on the Isle of Skye

My visit to Scotland in December was a first step along the path back to expressive photography, what I call fine art photography. The desire to create art had been knocked out of me for a long while; with this image I felt that urgent need to express and communicate that Joel is describing.

The experience of the Storr on the Isle of Skye is probably best described as “epic” under any circumstances; that word was certainly applicable on the particular day we visited. The winds were howling-the sleet was actually blowing up the side of the mountain, and I was knocked to the ground twice on my way back down the trail. As I was sheltering behind the rocks at the top of the trail waiting on a break in the squall, I was seriously questioning my judgement in being there at all at that moment. But I did have my camera.

To quote Joel Tjintjelaar once again, “Fine art photography was and is intended to be a way of communicating experiences, mostly emotions, …through the concrete and aesthetic form.” The subject matter in a fine art photograph is not the object or the scene, it is the communicated experience of the photo. This concept has not resonated fully with me in the past, but as I return to creating fine art images, I find myself drawn to this ethos, although I am too literal-minded to fully embrace the concept that the objects in my photos are not also the subject matter to some degree.

The drawing (or engraving) of the pinnacles at Storr by J. Stewart is in line, I think, with my view of fine art photography. As the caption states, Stewart exaggerated the view of the pinnacles in order to convey to his audience the experience of looking up at this incredible wonder of nature. My goal in creating fine art photographs is to communicate that experience-in viewing my photos, I’d like for you to catch a glimpse of what it felt like to be blown to the ground by the wind at the base of this massive pillar of ancient rock while being pounded by rain and sleet.

Although many of the photos taken on that hike were blurry because of the gusting wind, I did get several sharp and in focus that captured the conditions. In reviewing the images, I particularly liked the expansive view captured in the 16mm wide-angle shot that shows the snow-capped summit of the Storr enveloped in mist and cloud; the pinnacles, however, are far too diminished in this wide-angle perspective.

Fortunately I also captured some closer photos of the pinnacles, such as the 40 mm image in the center above. Using a technique known as focal length blending, I combined these two photos so that the pinnacles have the same dominance over the landscape in the image as they do when seen from the trail, just as J. Stewart exaggerated the view back in 1819. In this case, I had to reduce the size of the 40 mm photo for blending to about 60 percent, so the pinnacles appear about 50 percent larger in the blended image.

At this point, I was happy with the foreground of my image and the portrayal of the landscape, but the sky was a serious problem. The heavy gray clouds of the passing squall create a sky that is formless and solid across the entire upper half of the image. This sky was nothing like the dynamic and powerful storm clouds that had been hanging over my head all morning.

Replacing the sky in a photo with a sky photo from a different location is something I can honestly say I have never done (and do not plan to start doing). What I have done, however, is blend photos of the same scene captured at different times; typically this has been a twilight or blue hour blend to combine the beautiful pre-dawn colors in the sky with the first rays of sunlight on the landscape just after sunrise.

In this case I pushed the boundaries a little further and used a photo of this same landscape, captured from almost the same location, by my step-dad Joe on his first trip to Skye in July 2024. The sky in Joe’s photo was full of drama with the broken clouds from passing rain showers swirling over the landscape of the Storr. It was a perfect match for the image I envisioned.

Once I had the three photos blended together, I created a neutral black and white conversion of the image as the starting point for my fine art photograph. The image was processed using the B&W Artisan Pro panel in Photoshop.

This image is the second in a series of black and white photos I am creating from the Highlands of Scotland and the Isle of Skye. Check back soon for more…