Castle of Old Wick

The cover image of my first Scotland calendar shows the Castle of Old Wick. You have to look very closely to spot it. Although the ruin perches on a cliff in the background, it has become so much a part of the landscape that it barely stands out from it anymore. Something happened whilst taking this photograph that I’ve experienced several times before in Scotland. You prepare for a location, having seen various images of it, and return with shots you hadn’t planned at all. This is simply down to the density of subjects and possibilities this country offers. At the Castle of Old Wick, there were plenty of them.

I visited the location for the first time in the evening and realised that ‘Old Wick’ is a suitable name, and that the ravages of time have taken a heavy toll on the castle. Up close, the crumbling ruin offered no subjects that really inspired me. What really caught my eye instead was the immediate surroundings. From the car park to the castle, you walk several hundred metres along the rugged coastline. It was this path that changed everything, demoting the evening visit to location scouting for the following morning, when the real spectacle was to unfold.

And it certainly did. Having photographed the sunrise over the North Sea, I walked on a little towards the castle, but left the path and made my way down to the cliffs. What opened up before me was a coastal landscape bathed in the most beautiful morning light. The castle lay in the distance. It had long since ceased to be the reason I was standing there.

From a photographic point of view, the situation posed a few challenges. First, I had to find a position where my own shadow wouldn’t fall into the frame. That brought me right to the very edge of the cliff, so close that not even a seagull’s feather would have fitted between the tripod leg and the drop. Then came the question of exposure. I considered using a short shutter speed to capture the dynamism of the sea. But on closer inspection, there was little to see of the raw energy that had shaped this landscape. That morning, the North Sea was swaying gently. A long exposure best captured the mood. The shot that made it onto the calendar cover was exposed for exactly two minutes. And there was no time to lose. The sun was rising quickly and the golden hour wouldn’t last forever. It was getting brighter by the minute, and the exposure time had to be recalculated constantly. I certainly didn’t feel the tranquillity that the finished image radiates whilst I was taking the photograph. But I did end up with an unexpected shot in the bag. In Scotland, things like this happen quite often – fortunately!