A VERY TAME AND BEAUTIFUL WALK IN THE WOODS

This week I would like to discuss how you can go with the flow when circumstances alter the expected path of your vacation. It is important to take the new opportunities presented by what at first might seem to be a crimp in your well-planned activities. I came down with some virus on Skye, and at first Fran almost contemplated somehow coming home to Portland. I nixed that , but I was pretty out of it for a few days, and the opportunity for medical attention on Skye was pretty nonexistent. There are only two hospitals on the island, and the only one that is open full-time was forty-five minutes away. There is no ambulance service. Our landlady Jeannie was nice enough to let us use her landline since cell phone service was not available at the cottage; she gave us her daughter’s number if we needed to negotiate with the National Health Service. You cannot be admitted to hospital without first seeing a doctor on Skye. In any case i eventually recovered, but Fran put me on a pretty severe diet of what we could do for the next few days. There was to be no more hiking without extensive vetting for any prospective walk once we realized that everyone else visiting Skye was either more than thirty years younger than we are, or a long-time mountain climber.

                WE FOUND THIS HIKE ON THE EDGE OF UIG HARBOR. UIG (THAT'S IG) IS COMPOSED OF A FERRY TERMINAL, ABOUT TWO DOZEN HOUSES, A SMALL GROCERY STORE, AND A VERY BAD HAIRPIN TURN THAT WILL HIGHLIGHT ANY ROAD TRIP BEYOND THE TOWN

Fran found a website called “Skye for All” which promoted walks that could be taken by anyone, including disable people and even those in wheel chairs. Of course my ego was crushed, but that was the way it was going to be until I noticeably improved. Of course since this was Scotland, we soon realized that wheelchair access was clearly aspirational, but these walks in the woods were well within our capabilities. What was even more important was that these walks provided some wonderful photo opportunities in parts of Skye that would have never appeared on any tourist’s typical bucket list. Instead we were on walks that were mostly for the natives out for a constitutional before dinner.

                AT THE EDGE OF THE WOODLAND WAS AN ARM OF THE SEA, WHICH PROVIDED ALL THE GRAND LANDSCAPE FOR THE HIKE. THIS PANORAMA WAS STITCHED FROM HALF A DOZEN SHOTS. ON INSTAGRAM, AN IMAGE LIKE THIS IS REFERRED TO AS "SKY PORN."

Thus we found ourselves on a walk in “the woodland”, which is how photographers describe a forest that only they would ever travel to because they can take photos in peace, away from an epic location. These places are few and far between, because after two thousand years of cultivation, there are very few forests left that are neither parks nor wilderness. In Southern England there is even a place called the “New Forest” which really confused me until I realized that it had literally been create because almost all of the old forests were gone a long, long time ago.

                                                                  TEXTURES AND COLORS CAN BE THE SUBJECT

The woodland is thus a well defined photographic subject in the United Kingdom. It is not for the faint of heart, not because it is dangerous, but because it is just very hard to compose an image in a place that seems almost tailor-made for photographic frustration. Photography is not an additive art, but one that requires you to rigorously simplify and organize the natural environment in order to make any sense of it. There are very few places that are harder to simplify than the naturally organic and overwhelmingly complicated environment of a forest, or excuse me a woodland. It pays to try to restrict your frame to a well-defined tiny portion of the forest, any experienced photographers will spend a lot of time moving around so as to try to even eliminate any overlapping of adjacent tree branches so as to reduce the confusion.

                THE BLUEBELLS ISOLATED FURTHER AGAINST THE OLD STONE WALL THAT HAS LOST ITS WHITEWASH

Even if you don’t get that anal, it’s really hard to simplify the woods. Photographers reveal in the presence of fog, since that really reduces the view of anything beyond your chosen subject.   But of course a brief visit to the woodland will probably not present you with fog, despite its ubiquity on You Tube. Another strategy is to find a subject that can organize your image - a stream, a nurse log, or if you are in the United Kingdom - bluebells! Bluebells typically carpet the woodland in British photo magazines, and I despaired of actually ever seeing such scenes in real life. But there we were, and so were they! My mission became how to best isolate the small fields of flowers between the trees, and let them organize my images.

                                               IF YOU CAN'T FIND SOME BLUEBELLS, YOU CAN ALWAYS USE A STREAM TO ORGANIZE YOUR IMAGE. AN INTIMATE LANDSCAPE LIKE THIS COULD EASILY PRETEND TO BE IN OREGON RATHER THAN ON SKYE.

                                                                 OR JUST LET THE WOODLAND LIGHT BE THE SUBJECT OF YOUR IMAGE

This small selection of images shows how you can adjust your expectations when life intrudes on your vacation. Eventually we again graduated beyond wheelchair paths, but I never ventured beyond what I felt comfortable in doing; Skye is so beautiful that you rarely have to concentrate on “the shot” that is all over the web - frequently you will find almost as spectacular a view by just turning 180 degrees away from what everyone else is going after. The woodland will stretch your compositional muscles farther than any rendition of a world-famous viewpoint. This last image was composed by Fran on her iPhone, and only my ego would find any real differences between her version and mine. Once she got over the idea that post-processing was “cheating”, she realized that a little work beyond pushing the shutter really elevated her snapshot into something she really could be proud of - and look at those bluebells!

                AFTER A CROP AND A LITTLE POST-PROCESSING, FRAN'S IPHONE IMAGE CAN STAND UP TO ONE FROM A PROFESSIONAL CAMERA. WHILE IT MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO BE ENLARGED FOR THE WALL, IT CERTAINLY WORKS FOR THE WEB. IT'S NOT ABOUT THE GEAR, BUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER - EVEN IF SHE PROFESSES TO NOT KNOW WHAT SHE IS DOING. SHE MOST OBVIOUSLY DOES.