Wednesday 11 March 2009

940 miles, a lorry, a tank and a bridge....



Kylesku sits on the banks of Loch Glendhu, a small village with one pub, a B&B, a slipway for boats, and an RAF inflatable military tank target anchored next to the bridge. Oh yes the bridge, that's why we went there. Kylesku is approximately 470 miles from my front door, we went for the bridge, it curves across the lock linking Kylesku with Ulapool on the A894. My client found the bridge by trawling the internet, he wanted something different, it's definitely that. Sitting on the far North West coast of Scotland with magnificent views in every direction, Kylesku is rugged, beautiful and very remote.

The shoot was to be done over two days, though this also included the journey there and back. The Lorry required for the shoot, a Mercedes-Benz Atego, was already on it's way to Scotland well before my client, an assistant and myself headed North. The journey took nearly 9 hours, with a couple of stops for food and other necessary breaks and was pretty uneventful, the scenery though as we headed North just became more stunning as the miles slipped by, especially once we reached the highlands.

It was late afternoon by the time we finally pulled into Kylesku, after a slight problem with the sat-nav having taken us slightly off course, it was cloudy but the decision was made to get on with the shoot. After discussions about where to shoot from and where we wanted the lorry to stop for each exposure, it was a case of dragging the camera equipment and tripod up a small cliff, once on the top of the cliff the commanding view of the bridge, lock and mountains was perfect. It was obvious that I'd need to do some photoshop work to get the desired image, mostly because of a large green inflatable army tank sat image right.



We shot till it started to get dark, picking different angles and waiting for the sun to occasionally poke it's head out from behind the clouds. Then it was off to the pub for some hot grub and a pint. Then back to the B&B for a kip, up again at the crack of dawn, a quick breakfast before starting work again, then the mist rolled in, visibility down to 50 metres. Bugger! After a lot of waiting around the mist started to clear and shooting commenced, we really only had a few hours to get the other images we needed, but we did it. So we repacked the van and were back on the road, heading due south. The 9 hour journey home was interrupted once, as we climbed a mountain road and looked out on a wonderful vista, a Lock with the mountains in the distance. We had to stop and wait a while for the Mercedes Lorry to catch us up, but got a very nice shot for our trouble.



The image below is another in the series for the client, shot on a beach in Wales. There's also a shot of three vans exiting through the gates of Buckingham Palace, but that's another story!

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