The Four AM Alarm
On why a landscape photographer's most important piece of kit is a flask and a stubborn streak.
Four in the morning, in a layby in Glencoe, and the alarm I set the night before now feels like a personal insult from a past version of me who clearly hated sleep.
The unglamorous bit
Everyone wants the sunrise photo. Far fewer people want the part where you peel yourself out of a warm bed in the dark, fumble the kettle on so quietly you barely make a coffee, and drive twenty minutes on empty roads to stand in the cold on the off-chance the light does something.
Most mornings it doesn’t. That’s the deal nobody mentions. You go out four times for one morning that delivers. The forecast lies. The cloud that was meant to break sits there like it’s paying rent.
And then, sometimes
But this morning it broke. For about twenty minutes the whole glen went the colour of warm honey and the Three Sisters caught fire at the top, and there was nobody there but me and several thousand midges. I barely breathed. I just worked, moving the tripod, changing the framing, trying to keep up with a light that changes faster than you can think.
You can see what came of it in Glencoe, First Light.
Then it was gone, the cloud rolled back, and I drove home to a second breakfast feeling like I’d got away with something. That’s the addiction, really. Not the photo. The twenty minutes where the world shows off and you happen to be standing there, ready, because you got up.