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Second light
Joe Cornish has a big following among landscape lovers and his previous book, First Light, was a great success. But for those of you whose exposure to this photographer is limited to the first episode of A Digital Picture of Britain, in which he struggled to capture the grandeur of the great outdoors on a camera phone - and who wouldn’t - here in his new book is the proof, were it needed, that Cornish is firmly in the premier league of colour landscape photographers. His subject this time is Scotland’s coastline which, thanks in particular to its convolutedly rugged western stretches, sea lochs and hundreds of off-lying islands, represents almost 70% of the UK’s borders with the sea - over 6000 miles at the high tide mark. The book tours clockwise from Dumfries and Galloway in the south west, the southern coast of which is on a latitude below Carlisle and Newcastle in England. The lion’s share of the book is taken up with the tortuous trip up the west coast: from here (the Mull of Galloway), to Cape Wrath on Scotland’s north west tip, via the whisky islands of the Southern Hebrides, Skye and the Small Isles and the Outer Hebrides. Like all the best landscape photographers, especially those who photograph in colour, Cornish is not averse to rising early, or photographing late into the dusk. He usually works with an Ebony 5x4 wooden field camera shooting on Fujichrome Velvia, and employs neutral density grads where necessary to balance exposure in-camera. The imagery is a mix of wide vistas, details of sea-worn geology, and littoral algae, lichens and maram grass. Full use is made frequently of the camera’s movements in tilting the plane of focus from the vertical to the (almost) horizontal, extending the apparent depth of field throughout the frame. The results are unashamedly beautiful and dramatic; perhaps not a very fashionable approach to representing the landscape, but Cornish sets out to celebrate this natural heritage and capture the essence of what, in such places, lifts the spirit. Indeed, in his commissioned work, his role amounts to that of an advertising photographer. There are copious field notes at the back of the book which explain the inspiration behind each shot and the concerns of composition, lighting and technical issues that had to be resolved. Joe Cornish puts it well when he describes his subject matter as “nature’s art”. And in the geographical area he has chosen for this book he admits he was often spoilt for choice. Yet even the most promising raw material takes an artist of talent to summarise it in a single carefully crafted frame.
Scotland’s Coast is published in association with The National Trust for Scotland.
Scotland’s Coast: A Photographer’s Journey, by Joe Cornish, is published by Aurum Press, £25, ISBN 1-84513-079-0.
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