INTO THE LIGHT

Dusk is a special time of day for top landscape snapper Marc Pickering

Lochgilphead-based landscape photographer Marc Pickering is one of those lucky souls that calls the great outdoors his office, writes Rosie Morton. His love affair with the West Coast sky-rocketed when he began working at Forestry and Land Scotland in Argyll, offering him unique photographic perspectives.

‘I would climb forty metres up a tree and hang off the top to get an aerial view that way,’ laughs Marc, who spent ten years doing hard manual graft before shifting to managerial work. ‘Now, anytime I climb a tree it’s generally to go to osprey and eagle nests to put identification rings on them. I get some photos of the view from the nest.’

It’s not all about the birds’ eye views though. Prior to the pandemic, Marc – who took home the Landscape Award at this year’s Scottish Landscape Photographer of the Year competition – travelled up to 25,000 miles round Scotland annually, hiking up the likes of Ben Nevis to see summer solstice sunsets and iconic Highland vistas.

‘The more dramatic the light or colours that I can get from a sunset the better,’ says Marc, who prefers gloomy, atmospheric weather to blue skies. ‘I’ll wait all day if I have to, just to get one photo of nice rays of light or strong contrasts in light.

‘For years I wanted to get up the Coigach, Sgorr Tuath. I did a bit of research and saw there were sandstone spires that were interesting shapes, but there was no well trodden route to get there. It took me four years of trying. Either the weather would force me back or I just couldn’t find the route and didn’t get the light.

‘So, last year when we came out of lockdown I went straight up. I waited and got a beautiful sunset that night. It made all those years of trying really worthwhile.’

Though Marc was born in Newtonhill, south of Aberdeen, he is half-Norwegian and has had the chance to explore everything from the Arctic Circle to Lofoten, where he learned how to capture the Northern Lights from his Norwegian auntie. ‘Norway is like Scotland on steroids – it’s huge in comparison. I like the fact that Scotland has so much to offer in a small area.’

“It took me four years of trying to get up the Coigach

“Marc learned to capture the Northern Lights from his Norwegian auntie

Skies alight: Ballachulish sunset.

Left: Ardnamurchan Lighthouse sunset. Above: Summer sunset, Sgorr Tuath, Coigach.

Clockwise from top left: Kilchurn amongst the wildflowers; Fleeting winter light, Rannoch Moor; Northern lights, Bellanoch; Sunset from Ben Nevis.

From top: Bluebell Wood, Kilmartin; Rays over the Sound of Jura.