Thank you for cancelling our photoshoot

Sometimes there are days you know pretty much how they are going to begin, but their end is miles away from what you could have imagined. That was literally my cases on this Early May Bank Holiday.

I was meant to have a fun portrait shoot followed by a recording a short episode for the TomMigotPhotography Youtube channel on the use of a Flash meter but instead my shoot got cancelled at noon. Maybe I should add the reason I had made such a plan was because of the favourable dry and sunny weather forecast and therefore a perfect reason to go to the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Garden.

As soon as I got the text informing me of the change of plan, I had to react quickly, and the first thought that came to mind was: Let’s see the three sisters! I know what you are thinking now, a model cancels on me, and I now want to shoot three siblings instead. Well not quite. Those three sisters have been on my mind for quite some time I must admit but they are located 2,5hr drive north-west of Edinburgh, and if I am going to capture them I’d better make sure I have the weather on my side. Which is exactly what I had on that Monday. So I tell Nery (wife) and Skye (daughter) of my plan and within 30 min we were all in the car.

I was so exited by the idea of the 2,5hr drive. Am I crazy? Heck no! You should see the road and the scenery on either side; we are talking about 2,5hrs cruising through the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park and Glencoe National Park. So here we arrive at the car park just before the three sisters.

They were there, almost waiting for my arrival. We were not alone to have thought of paying them a visit on that Early May Bank Holiday, and that was not surprising. We stepped out of the car to introduce ourselves. After a few minutes, I decided to get back into the car and drive a bit further back as if being so close to them was making me feel too far from them and the better way for me to capture them closely was to step back. I found a small spot on the side of the road. I grabbed my new bag (which I will do a review of soon), my heavy tripod and here I went, climbing the wet grass and steep rocks for about 30min until I was finally at the perfect distance of the three siblings. If as you are reading, you are struggling to understand this story, maybe it is time for me to tell you a bit about those three sisters.

The Three Sisters of Glen Coe, are steeply-sided ridges of the great Bidean Nam Bian, the highest point in the area with 1150m. I hope you now understand why unlike all the crowd that is excited to park at the very bottom of the ridges, I had to step away to pay those beauties their due and get a chance to capture their portrait. The resulted photograph is obviously the one above.

I took me about 30min to climb to an acceptable location (given that Nery and Skye were seating in the car waiting for me to come back. That’s love!) and about 15min to get the perfect light. When I stated the whole Glen was dark, sheltered by a thick dark cloud which took its time let some rays penetrate through. While I wanted to capture the whole scene, I was very hesitant to capture only the far end Glen. So I kept zooming and changing the orientation of my camera back and forth until I made up my mind to capture at the widest at 24mm on Canon 5D III with 24-105mm in combination with NDG6-NDG9 Lee filters.

Interestingly, once I finished developing the above image, I zoomed into it and noticed another great photograph inside it:

In conclusion, I’d like to thank the beautiful and inspiring Megan for cancelling on me that day and by this, giving me the freedom I needed to capture a great Portrait of the Three Sisters of Glencoe.

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