Albert Watson What Do Artists Do All Day?

I was lucky to discover photography fairly early on.

I had my father's box Brownie in my hands when I was 12.

From that moment, I have to say, it's kind of weird,

but I knew that that's what I wanted to do.

Perfect.

Now it's closer.

'I've never really settled down to one genre.'

Over the years, I think I've taken millions of pictures.

'When you spend the first 25 years of your life in a particular place,

'it never really leaves you.

'So, Scotland's never far from my thoughts.

'About six months ago, we decided we'd do this project on Skye.

'I'm of course really excited.

'It's the first fine art project that I've done back in Scotland.'

The next project is in the Caribbean.

I have fond memories of camping up here with my mum and dad

and tents and my sisters and so on in wild weather.

And it was always a sense of mystery here.

The weather is... For this project, it's vital.

That's why we're here in October,

because the weather is more aggressive.

You know, in Skye...

In Skye, you never quite know what you're getting.

You can look out and it's sunny,

by the time you get in your car it's already raining.

The light is quite unique here.

And, basically, the sun's the same all over the planet,

but when you have these humidity patterns that come through,

clouds and so on,

it's very, very unusual light sometimes

and it's changing every second almost.

Beautiful.

Yeah, I think we should go.

-Enjoy.

-Good, thank you. All right.

-We'll follow you.

Every time I pull out here,

I've got to make sure I'm driving on the left here.

This kind of looks like a broken steering wheel here,

but in fact that piece of white tape

just reminds me to drive on the left here.

When you begin a job like this,

you put into your head a lot of different words to try

and give you a guidance as to what, intellectually,

the project should be.

And...

..Lord Of The Rings came to mind.

A different, surreal landscape comes to mind.

The words I have tattooed on my brain are "mysticism"

and "romanticism" and "Victorian romanticism".

You come off the mainland and you hit the silence.

It's hard to know why...

Why is it different?

It's a...it's a strange place.

A lot of photographers, they get sucked into the landscape,

so the landscape dominates you.

You have to make sure that in the end you dominate the landscape.

That idea, you know, as a photographer...

Sorry, Jon.

Sorry to pull over.

That's probably worth shooting. Sorry about that.

This is almost too pretty for me.

The central section here, where you see the rain

coming down on the horizon line there, is very minimal.

But I need some pictures that are quite minimal and simple.

Mystery is the biggest,

is the most important thing on this trip.

I'll give you a second. I'm going to hit that again, because...

I won't get the water there.

I'm using quite a long lens here,

and we actually stitch these together.

I can nowadays with computers splice the shots together,

and it gives me a very, very high megapixel count,

which means sharper.

A few years ago, I was really much quicker than I am now.

Coming down the road, this just seemed right.

The cloud, it seemed at the right level,

the light seemed the right level, and...

..once again, it's quite romantic-looking, in a way, for me.

I'd never photographed anybody famous before,

so to get Alfred Hitchcock as the first one is not easy.

And...I have to say I was really sweating.

Alfred Hitchcock was a gourmet chef.

And the magazine were getting his recipe for the Christmas issue.

And they wanted Hitchcock to hold this plate with a goose on it.

I said it's much better if it's kind of a raw goose, plucked, but raw,

and he can look like he's strangling it, it was much more Hitchcock.

At that point, that just shifted me up the ladder

a little bit, that shot.

And they began to give me regular assignments after I did that image.

For me, a day like today is perfection.

It doesn't bother me that there's rain around.

It's a little bit on the cold side,

there are shafts of light everywhere.

These clouds that come off of the Atlantic are just...

They're really amazing.

Tonight, were heading up to the Quiraing.

I first saw the Quiraing when I was...

Let me see, I would have been about 12, I think.

It's amazing, I still, from all these years ago,

I still remember it.

It's a...

really magnificent piece of landscape.

I wouldn't want to cycle up this road.

Up into the clouds here.

So here we are. Look at the colour.

Good.

I'm just going to have to do it. One second.

It's going to be... Obviously, I'm going to hit this...

-..when the sun is right.

-OK.

-So there'll be delays between shots.

OK.

I was kind of terrified coming to Skye

and ending up with picture postcards,

which is not the reason to come here.

I wanted to create landscapes and images that were quite mysterious

and strange.

The real difficulty here, of this shot, is just the wind.

The wind is pretty much about 35-40mph right now.

It gives us a lot of technical problems,

and that's why we use the umbrella.

The umbrella's not for the rain, the umbrella's for the wind.

Now the sharpness, how is the sharpness in the foreground, though?

Cleaning lens.

-Not great.

-Not great. OK.

-You want the timer, or do you want to hit it twice?

-I'll hit it twice.

Just waiting for the sun.

That last one was good, that you gave me. It just came in.

I quite like these conditions.

I think it challenges you and I quite like it when it's,

you know, you're in darkest Africa and it's hot as hell,

but also I like it that we're here.

And...it's pretty cold right now.

So, I like the contrast.

Handling models is its own thing

that you have to learn how to do, you know.

I've photographed hundreds of models,

and they always present their own challenges.

But I'm comfortable with all kinds of people.

Of course, working with models

and celebrities is miles away from what I'm doing here on Skye.

Landscape photography isn't easy.

There are so many factors to deal with.

Weather being the main one.

But, of course, finding ways to bring my style to landscapes

is what I love.

Let's see, we have a little rush hour here...

I don't know what the etiquette is here,

if you overtake on the left or the right here.

OK...

-Big, aren't they?

-They are pretty big.

Must be the grass here.

HE LAUGHS

They're overtaking on the outside!

We could be here for some time, absolutely, you know.

I'm wondering if I can get by them here...maybe.

OK, overtaking on the right.

Only on Skye.

Three miles to coffee.

Just for the purpose of just seeing it as a sketch, you can

always open up the road just a little bit for me.

So, you can go to the darker exposure.

It's not really a stop to have a coffee, it's a

stop to have a coffee and do some work

because we're going to have a look at some of the things we've

shot already just to have a look at what we've done.

I mean, you do this and you put it together, just gives you a rough

idea of what you've done, you know,

what you've achieved in the previous one, two, three hours,

and to make sure that I'm on track here.

A technician also allows me to really look into the imagery

and bit by bit I can really, erm,

think about what I'm doing here, without me

having to take part of my brain and work out the technical side of that.

So, next, we're going to go up to a place called the Fairy Glen.

It's a strange, little pocket.

It almost looks like a burial ground or something.

Stuart, it's Albert here.

Could you bring up a couple of sparklers?

And don't forget the matches.

What I'm looking for is...

..just some of the trees here that grow next

to or into the walls.

And the kind of place that fairies hide, you know?

So, I'm just going to run a test here with some sparklers I got

and maybe some Roman candles

and see if we can work some of that sparkle into the shots here.

Be creative. Two macho guys with sparklers, there we go.

All done? Wait one second, that was not good, Joe, will you hold on?

And coming in now, OK.

You should have that, Joe, you right? And there it is.

More energy, Stuart. Don't wimp out on me.

Here we go.

Look at these two fairies working with the lights here.

OK, all done?

Now, so, just you don't have any qualms about manipulating

nature to get the shot, do you?

Not at all.

I mean, when a painter...if Monet's painting his lily pond, guess what?

Those colours aren't exactly what was in the lily pond.

So, I mean, you're doing impressions of things, you're creating images.

You think it's going to go up?

And what we're just adding on top here is a little bit of,

we hope, mystery.

A little bit of suggesting some magic here, which fireworks are.

Basically, when you do something like this it's all experimentation.

FIREWORK CRACKLES

Sometimes, shots like this are not so easy.

And in this case here, the firework is very, very bright.

And the tree is quite dark. Right, wait until it comes in.

There you go...hit it!

Hit one more.

Easy on the camera.

Now, Stuart, a little bit to your left.

Good...all right, we can drop the camera right here.

I'm sure there are times in the year

where there's some mist coming through here

but I'm not really able to sit here for 365 days

until that mist drifts through exactly where I want it.

Set up, good.

Right, well, that's definitely worth doing, I think.

It needs a little bit more space on the left-hand side.

It'll take me a few minutes just to do the technical side.

Creatively, I think it's fine.

Here it comes.

-OK.

-Cut.

THEY LAUGH

Just aged 50 years.

That's about 20 packs of cigarettes you had there.

Do you ever think, what am I doing here,

in bad weather conditions, or do you always have a will to work still?

I never think, "What am I doing here?"

I think I'm lucky to be here,

so...erm, you know,

as long as you have a camera in your hand or

a tripod in front of you, there's never a problem.

I don't care how cold it is, how hot it is.

Once a camera's in my hand, you forget everything.

You don't even notice anything.

You don't notice rain, you don't notice the cold.

Basically, you just keep going.

When you have a camera in your hand, as a photographer,

you're not really...you don't notice anything, actually!

I can easily work ten hours, I don't even need to eat anything.

You can just keep going. So long as you have a camera.

If you take away the camera, then suddenly you feel hungry,

tired, thirsty, whatever, you know?

But with a camera, that takes...

Are you going to stop, for once, today, though?

Well, we had coffee.

I'm actually looking for some rain.

So, I get some rain on the windshield of the car.

Almost an impressionistic shot of what you're looking at.

You're not just looking for one picture. You're trying to

integrate the picture into one story.

So, sometimes you'd just go out and shoot a lot of shots.

Other photographers might be thinking more of a storyline.

I think creativity is kind of an interesting thing.

Lots of times, people say, "Well, where did that idea come from?"

It kind of pops in from a secret place in your brain, I think.

It's quite good here. It's quite desolate here.

So, I'm going to have them just put some water on.

Keith...

-Go for Keith.

-You have a spritzer?

-Yeah, coming in, one sec...

Just give you a basic frame here.

-Are you moving the camera?

-Erm, not yet.

It looks like there's motion blur.

OK.

There will be.

Check this out.

It just takes me a couple of exposures to find it, so hold on.

The exposure's beautiful right now.

Right, that's a better shot.

What's nice on Skye are these

track roads, that are very, very...

They're not bad roads but they're pretty rough at the same time.

And...I just find them a little bit interesting,

a little bit mysterious.

-How's that?

-It's great!

Really good.

Is that your optimum there?

-That's a great shot.

-This one?

-Yes.

Now, what I'm doing is,

I'm using the headlights of the cars to light the grass here.

So, if you look at the grass right now, the grass is really beautiful.

So, the headlights light the grass, then I let it blend away...

..into a little bit of darkness, so as it looks quite mysterious.

Yes, sorry...I need, actually, a little bit of height.

Is this normal for you to eke out the last possible light of day?

Yes.

If it looks like this, then it's worth doing.

-So, that's great.

-I think it looks pretty good.

-Yeah.

Today was excellent for me.

You know, in the end, a good day for me is

if I get one shot that I think is quite good.

But, today, I have three shots that are contenders,

so it's a really good day for me, today.

I've had a magical time on this island but I'm looking

forward to getting back to New York to really

work on these pictures.