We are on the Trotternish Peninsula. This is the highest point here and it is quite
famous. It is very Lord of the Rings-looking. It has been photographed a lot. Always, with
things that have been photographed a lot, you have to work a little bit harder to get
something. There are two hundred postcards of this but not on a day like this.
So the weather is helping us.
It could be 75. The 55 is too wide.
They always say: Why do you have two assistants?
If one falls off the mountain, I have a spare.
That's it.
I'm usually traveling with a team of three or four people, it gets quite expensive to
do a trip like this. You can end up spending 35-45-55.000 dollars easily. But if I do a
trip like this, I'll do it properly. I'm not going to walk around with an iPhone and do
it. I'm going to walk around with a serious piece of equipment.
We have got connection here.
Yep, I'm in.
We're pretty good here.
Keith, be careful.
This kind of shot you have to be careful with,
if it was a nice sunny day with nice big white clouds and blue sky, it's
a little bit harder to take it away from being a postcard. So here, you need that atmosphere
and the moisture that's there. You need that dimension there.
If I was coming here 25-30 years ago, I would run around snapping everything.
Now I don't do that. I'm probably in the region
of five shots today which can still be a lot.
When you get to my age, you kind of figure it out a little bit.
You know that you have it or you don't have it.
But there are always surprises.
A trip like this from two weeks 16 shots would be very good.
That would be pretty good.
This is definitely for me a black and white shot.
So rather than desaturating it,
the Achromatic back is the right thing to do.
I always had a philosophy about black and white
that a black and white shot was not just that you changed the film, but very often
it was a vast change in the lighting, especially in the studio where you can do
black and white lighting to color lighting. You should be thinking black and white,
you should be thinking color. I'm going to do the colors of reference to know what the color
is in case I can work with the computer later and add that color. A lot of the philosophy
when I work with the computer are more going back to when I did the same kind of things
by hand and by inks like you used to do color postcards.
I'm not going to shoot the whole thing. I just need one hit on the overall color.
Do you want me to match your ISO then?
Yes, sure. It is just to get a reference. Almost like a snapshot of it. I have got to
check that flag again. Definitely, we have come down, Keith. Now Julia, I have a fine
mist between me and the rocks. I could shoot this in film and it would still look pretty
good. I would need my 8 by 10 to do this, to get what I need out of it. And doing this
at an 8 by 10 would be a real drag, actually. Therefore this camera is giving me the quality
I need and has portability because this kind of shooting demands that it is very sharp
and has the quality.
When I photographed Steve Jobs, he came in and he said:
"Oh my god, you're still shooting film?" This was 7 years ago.
I said, I don't feel that digital is quite there yet.
And he kind of thought about it and said: "You know, I agree with you."
And then he pointed his finger at me and he said:
"But we will get there. We are going to get there."
And I said: "I'm sure and I don't question that."
And here it is.