Colin Prior Mountain Man - North West Highlands The Adventure Show

This is one of my favourite parts of Scotland.

It's known as the Great Wilderness,

and it's got a majestic grandeur

that never fails to touch my soul.

That's a sentiment shared by an old pal of mine.

Colin Prior is not only

one of the most influential landscape photographers

in the world, but he is also a man who, for 25 years,

has shaped the way we hillgoers look at Scotland's mountains.

The very first picture I took with my panoramic camera

was an epiphany for me.

The light that I witnessed that evening

was like light I have never seen before.

From that point onwards,

I refocused my life so that I could pursue this type of photography.

Colin Prior has photographed many of the world's iconic landscapes.

Three years ago, we followed him to the heart of the Baltoro Glacier

in Pakistan's Karakoram.

Here, he was capturing some of the world's most famous mountains.

Now he's back home in Scotland and he's a man on a mission.

He made his name with a set of panoramic images

that defined wild Scotland for a generation.

I pinch myself, just being here.

The clouds are beginning to pink up now

as the sun rises,

and this is going to be orchestral.

But he's not someone to rest on his laurels.

Using the latest digital technology,

he's starting out again with the aim of making a definitive record

of these special places.

For the last six months, he's been working in the north-west Highlands.

Part of the process of shooting these images

is understanding how we perceive this landscape.

How do we perceive the natural world?

And it's not actually what's in the photograph,

it's where the photograph takes you.

It's the middle of February.

Much of the Scottish Highlands is still shut for the winter season.

There are no tourists about,

and the hills are virtually devoid of people,

but it's at this time of the year,

between the winter and the spring equinoxes,

that Colin Prior does most of his work.

People imagine the summer is the best time to take photographs

because the weather's better, but everything is green,

there's lots of midges, and if you get good weather,

it tends to be the result of an anticyclone,

and you've got blue skies,

but haze build-up as well.

Colin's photography relies on that rare combination

of being in the right place at the right time.

Yet everyone who goes into the mountains knows just how fickle

the Scottish weather can be.

And that's made harder when your home is just south of Glasgow.

Colin's set himself an ambitious target.

He wants to produce a set of world-class images,

and he's chosen three particular mountains

for this winter's project.

He's keen on an evening shot of our most remote Munro,

A' Mhaighdean.

But to get this means an ascent of a rarely visited peak,

Beinn Airigh Charr.

Then there's what many would consider our finest hill,

a mountain range in miniature, An Teallach.

But that's all to come.

Colin is beginning his work

on the highest of the Inverpolly hills, Cul Mor.

To produce photographs of his standard,

determination is as important as talent.

So the walk in begins well before dawn.

Of all the areas in Scotland, this is where my heart is.

There are lots of undisturbed places here,

and that's really what I thrive on.

GROUSE CRIES

The early part of the walk in this morning was quite remarkable.

The sun came up and glowed in the east.

And we stopped briefly and listened to the grouse.

They were sparring with each other.

We could hear the "Go back, go back, go back".

Just for a period of five or ten minutes,

we stood and listened,

as the sun continued to rise.

The glens are a bit colder

and there's mist lying in the bottom of the glen,

and that's giving the mountains a real ethereal feel.

Cul Mor rises above that,

and it's just such an enigmatic mountain,

and it seems to dominate the whole of the Assynt area

until, of course, you drive into Elphin,

and Suilven just rises from the moorland.

That's what really attracts me to this area.

And it's not just the visual information that you're after -

you need to absorb everything.

I remember reading a blog of a photographer,

and he had this fantastic moment and he said,

"And I put my earphones in,

"and I listened to my favourite track."

And I thought, "How can you do that?"

If you want to be a great photographer,

you need to switch on all of your senses.

It's not just vision -

we've got to smell things, and we hear things,

and that all informs the photograph.

Today, Colin is taking a different route up the mountain.

He's keeping to the north-east ridge,

and that's proving a good choice.

He planned to go straight to the summit,

but suddenly, there's a possibility of a photograph.

I might put it on the sticks and have a shot.

Because of the conditions today, we've got something really special.

We've got this wispy cloud,

and it's just floating over Sionascaig there.

So I'm going to give it a little shot.

Just get the legs down.

We'll have a look.

OK, I just need to do the focus now.

It's ironic, in a way, that you've got these...

..very sophisticated cameras that have got automatic everything,

and yet I'm choosing to focus manually and to expose manually.

The key is to be in control of the camera

and not having the camera control you.

The histogram is perfect.

And...

..the focus is perfect.

The rest is down to me.

I don't like it very much.

There's too much of a contrast between the foreground,

which has got no light,

and the background, which has got light.

What I plan to do now is use a telephoto lens

and maybe try and isolate some of that movement down there.

Just don't really have enough light in the foreground,

but I'm going to shoot this anyway.

It's certainly not going to win any awards, this picture.

Colin believes the key to his success lies in meticulous research.

That includes working out the best day to be on the mountain,

and the ideal time for his shot.

But there's more to it than that.

He needs to understand all the different aspects of a landscape.

Few people know this area better than Duncan MacKenzie.

Once he was a policeman, but now he has the stalking rights

to an area of land south of Lochinver.

The two men have been friends for years,

a friendship built on mutual respect.

There's not a lot of people like Duncan,

that spend the amount of time that he does in the natural world.

He's helped me find locations in the Assynt and Coigach area,

and more recently, he has introduced me to stalking with a camera

and got me very close to some fantastic beasts

that we've photographed during the rut.

On you go.

As I said to Colin,

it's all about sensitively managing the deer herd.

They're here a long time.

They deserve better than they get, I think.

In some parts, they're treated more or less as vermin.

But they're a fantastic animal

and this landscape, this backdrop,

just is part of the deal.

And I love every second I'm up here,

just looking after these beasties as best I can.

My job here on the ground is actually to keep these beasts -

it may sound strange - but keep them happy.

They have to be killed to keep the numbers down.

But it has to be done carefully

and sensitively.

So what you're looking for are some of the older beasts,

some of the weaker beasts that have not had good winters

and you're just harvesting them.

What I do is I crop the deer all the way through,

from three years of age,

right through all the age range,

and I'm shooting these from July 1,

so by the time the rut starts,

I've shot maybe 80-90% of the deer that's to be shot.

So we're trying to keep the animals pristine on the ground

and by the time the rut starts,

my job's done.

What an incredible mountain that is, isn't it?

Fantastic, yeah. It's wonderful.

Colin likes climbing big, high mountains.

I used to do that a long time ago, but I don't do it now.

Stags tend to be lower down, and hinds.

But we do bond together really well,

and we have a great time on the hill.

There's lots and lots of people up in the north-west,

and they all come looking at the hill,

looking at animals, looking, looking constantly,

but not necessarily seeing.

Colin is one of these guys who's very perceptive in what he sees.

He is constantly looking at light and he will say, "Stop, stop, stop,

"there's a fantastic light here,

"can you just give me two seconds?"

and he'll take two or three shots,

and that'll be the shots of the day.

I'm an amateur photographer too,

and I might have a huge mountain in the backdrop,

but the light is wrong, and that's not the shot,

but you think it is, but afterwards, when it's on the computer,

and you look at it again, you say, "No".

He knows exactly the right time to take the shot.

Earlier in the autumn,

Duncan's skill as a stalker and Colin's with a camera

resulted in a photograph that now takes pride of place

in Duncan's house.

It's more than just a classic image of the annual rut.

For Duncan, it tells a complex story about this particular deer herd.

The most important thing for a stalker

is that all these deer are not looking at the stalker.

Or in this case, the photographer.

It's just a natural scene.

At this time of year, he's at his lowest ebb,

cos there's nothing on his mind but the girls,

so he's got to check them for the smell.

And although they are in season for maybe about three weeks,

they are only actually receptive to the stag for about 20 hours,

24 hours maximum.

So he's got to go around each one, sniffing, he wets his nose...

..to enhance the smell, as you do.

Whisky tasting and whatever else.

As we do.

So you got him perfect,

because you got the back leg here coming down the hill,

and he's just licking his nose and he's planning this girl here.

It was such a privilege to get that close,

because the following day, I went off on my own,

and I found out very quickly how difficult it was.

Because not only is their eyesight better than ours,

their sense of smell is, you know,

innumerably more sensitive.

If I'd tried to do this myself,

I'd have been betrayed very, very quickly by my own inexperience.

But you got the photo.

You were on the knoll, you pressed the shutter.

I mean, you couldn't get better than that.

You've got your diagonals, you've got this,

what I keep going back to is this, it's so natural.

A few stalking pals have come in and said, "Wow, that is fantastic."

You've got his tongue coming out, totally natural,

this girl saying, "Oh, no, here he comes again."

This one saying, "Just stand, it's OK."

THEY LAUGH

"It'll be over quick!"

Back on Cul Mor, Colin is on the final part of the ascent.

And then it's a waiting game

until the light gives him the images he needs.

Plenty of time to reflect

on his life as a landscape photographer.

I don't know what I would have done had I not been a photographer.

I started off life working in my father's business

as an operations manager,

but it wasn't something I had any affinity with.

I left with no photographic training and the naive assumption

that I could become a professional photographer,

and here I am, 30 years later.

It's been a fabulous journey.

I'm one of the few professional photographers

that have had the opportunity to follow their dreams.

And after all this time,

I'm still as enthusiastic about photography as I was

the day that I first picked up a camera.

To be here on a day like today is completely unique.

I mean, this is a world-class landscape.

It is up there with Machu Picchu and Torres del Paine,

it's there with the Pyramids.

It's just amazing, and we've got it on our doorsteps.

Wow.

Colin has come here today not just for the view -

he wants to explore the surreal sandstone towers

that litter the summit plateau.

Just the shapes, look at the curvature and the moulding.

I mean, it almost looks man-made, that.

And look at these shapes here.

It's like a giant Play-Doh set.

There's a nice composition here.

Yeah, that's good. We'll do this as a shot later.

This is another area that is potentially suitable

for later this evening.

The sun's too hot.

It's still too bright

and there's no relief in the mountain.

It's all very flat illumination.

The visibility is excellent,

but I guess we photographers, we're never happy.

This kind of photography is all about the quality of the light,

and that means waiting until just the right moment.

That elusive instant before it's too dark

and when the sun turns this landscape

from something impressive to a place that is absolutely magical.

The light's beginning to come off that tor -

do you see that, on the left?

So I think we're probably about the best time.

The light will get warmer, but we're going to get more shadow.

So I feel that...

..we're going to very quickly be past our best.

Perfect.

CAMERA CLICKS

Yeah, I quite like that.

This is our last shot, we'll just let that light drop down a little.

And I'm going to get some beautiful colour in this stone.

I need to do this justice, and I'll try my hardest.

I think the sun is just about in its final stages of descent there.

Any longer, and it's going to drop into that cloud,

and we're going to lose the intensity.

We've got lovely yellow light here,

and I think it's about time...

..I took that final shot.

CAMERA CLICKS

Fantastic.

What an end to a perfect day.

This winter has been one of the most unpredictable in years.

In the north-west, snow-covered mountains were a rarity,

yet it all started out with great promise.

In November, the temperatures plummeted,

and there was a week of outstanding weather.

Colin was here, joining photographers

Adrian Hollister and Eddie Ephraums.

They were running an innovative workshop

simply called A Portrait Of An Teallach.

It attracted people from far and wide

and invited them to express their own vision

of a mountain that dominates the landscape.

Few people can fail to be awed by its grandeur.

Capturing it in a single image is a far more difficult challenge.

It's like food for the soul.

This is when you wonder about taking photographs,

because photographs actually won't convey this.

You know?

For me, it's just the shape and the colours.

They're simply breathtaking.

I know it looks black and white there,

but you can see how the shades work together

to give you that impression of colour.

And it's trying to capture that, in one single image.

I've started by taking the whole thing,

but now I'm just looking at individual details.

You can't describe it, so you have to be here.

And whilst we try and take pictures home

and people say, "Wow, that's wonderful",

it's difficult to really project what you feel when you're sat here.

Colin has chosen a location that is ideal

for capturing this huge mountain.

The group are up early and begin their walk in darkness.

It's a big effort for everyone.

But soon, the rewards are obvious.

We've just been so incredibly lucky this morning,

with the conditions we have.

The sun is just breaking the horizon at the moment,

and you can see it's picking up on Lord Berkley's Seat.

Just fantastic to have the group out here and witness this.

There's very few days each year...

..where you've got conditions like this,

and I pinch myself, just being here.

The clouds are beginning to pink up now

as the sun rises, and this is going to be orchestral,

the colours that will appear on An Teallach.

Just really being spoiled for choice, I think,

knowing where to photograph,

because everywhere you look, it's just stunning.

There's only a small opportunity before the light changes.

It's trying to make the most of it, before it all goes.

Just been really wonderful at the top here. Really wonderful.

That light over there,

I've not seen that orange light for a very long time.

We've got the, sort of, Antarctic thing,

with all the hills around in the snow,

and the light just clipping the tops of the mountains.

Photography's all about trying to take an image of something

you see and feel, and I don't think you ever quite achieve it,

so you're always striving and reaching.

Can't quite believe I'm here, can't quite believe I've made it.

For me, this is an Everest moment.

I never thought I'd be able to achieve anything like this.

And I'll look at this photograph and it will unlock everything,

I will look at that, and I'll be able to re...

..revisit - feel the cold, feel the wind, and be here again.

It was just breathtaking.

You could hear the wind, you could hear the...

You could hear the silence.

At the end of the week,

there's an exhibition in the new gallery

at the National Trust for Scotland's Inverewe House.

It's a tense moment for the photographers,

as the audience of local people have an intimate knowledge

of this mountain.

Thank you all for coming.

This workshop was entitled Portraits Of An Teallach.

The main reason for that is that

a portrait says not only something about the subject,

but also about the person that's taking the photograph,

and also the relationship between the two of them.

And what we were really hoping for this week

is to have photographs which really illustrate the relationship

between the photographer and the mountain,

as well as illustrating the mountain.

Every member of the course

has interpreted An Teallach in a different way.

Colin's photographed the mountain on many occasions,

and his panoramic views are amongst the most acclaimed work.

But he's not satisfied,

and is keen to take an image that'll do justice

to the complexity of this mountain range.

This winter, he wants to be right in the heart of the mountain,

and has decided to head up to the summit.

That means starting in the early hours of the morning.

It's the sort of thing you do every night, don't you?!

Ten to three. Hopefully we'll be there before the dawn.

There's nothing quite like chasing the sun.

I've always said that photography is a form of meditation.

And the walk in helps create that.

There's been occasions when I've worked commercially

where I've arrived on mountain tops by helicopter,

and the whole experience overwhelms that.

This connection that's created as you walk up the mountain

gets you into the pulse of the natural world.

And I do believe that it helps inform you, in a subconscious way,

to create better images.

Originally, Colin had visualised a picture

where the peaks would be covered in snow.

But the superb conditions during November didn't last

and for weeks, the weather has been appalling,

with high winds and driving rain.

Today has been a gamble,

and already, things are not looking good.

It's really clear, we're going to have great visibility,

but the winds are just going to make it impossible.

There's just no chance of us going to the summit

and being able to shoot a thing.

I don't think we're even going to be able to stand up,

we're beginning to struggle now, we're being blown around,

and the chances of putting a tripod up

and a camera on top of it are just not going to happen today.

Today has been a failure

and Colin comes down off the mountain.

There's An Teallach now - there's hardly any evidence of snow,

it's just been blown off it completely,

which is unsurprising, given the winds that we saw this morning.

The weather over the last 15 years has changed quite significantly,

and what was typical,

particularly at this time of the year,

would be four, five days of really evil weather,

dropping down lots of snow in the mountains.

And there would be a day at the end of that bad period of weather

where it was absolutely breathless.

That stability in the weather just doesn't happen any more.

If we get snow,

the wind tends to swing round into the west or the south-west,

and the snow's gone very quickly.

Colin's following in the footsteps of a pioneer

of Scottish landscape photography, Robert Moyes Adam.

Adam spent his professional life as an illustrator

at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh

but throughout his life was a keen photographer

who kept copious notes about his work.

In 1908, he had a half-plate field camera

made to his own specification

and, with this, produced landscape images

that are still considered as classics.

His collection of glass negatives is housed

at the photographic collections at St Andrews University.

I will just ask that you wear gloves.

They are original objects,

and the issue with glass plate negatives

is that they are still chemically quite active.

It's important to preserve them with some integrity.

Very excited to see these.

That's obviously An Teallach.

Robert Moyes Adam usually did quite long exposures on his negatives

to get the most detail in the landscape,

which usually blew out the sky.

So, over... It was very overexposed skies.

So, typically, he would then take another negative just of the sky,

and then work them together in the dark rooms.

And when you say a long exposure, typically, how long would that be?

Really, it depends on the light that day, but...

-Ten seconds.

-No, you're probably looking at several minutes, really.

-Really?

-Yeah. So, none of his...

He never had any action shots, really, in any of his work.

So, there's another one for you.

That's a more distant view of An Teallach -

I know where that's taken from as well.

These are tremendous, just to see them.

He wouldn't take many unexposed plates up the mountain with him,

because he would wait for the perfect shot.

And there is this legend now that he climbed the same mountain every day

for five days, waiting just to get the one shot,

and didn't take a single shot until his last day.

And he was sort of looking at the time, because he says,

"I have to get down, my train back to Edinburgh is in a few hours,"

and the skies cleared just in time for him

to take the shot that he wanted.

Just fantastic to see these negatives,

just like stepping back in time.

All of these were actually digitised in the '90s,

when we acquired them from DC Thomson,

as part of the Millennium Project,

to catalogue all 15,000 of his negatives.

-15,000?

-15,000 negatives.

-So...

-Incredibly prolific photographer,

to have shot that number of images.

Yeah. Robert Moyes Adam was probably one of the first photographers

to go out and thoroughly document the landscape -

and photographing the landscape with the passion...

..that he did, it really comes through.

I was reading up a little bit on some articles

that we have in the archive about him,

and they said, "He really is Scotland's photographer."

And pretty much everyone in Scotland had, at some point, in their house,

one of his photos.

This is a lovely image, isn't it?

-Mmm.

-Just really fantastic to see that,

and just to learn a little bit more about this great photographer,

who's, I suppose, one of Scotland's unsung heroes.

Yeah, I think so.

Colin's not simply content to look at Adam's work.

He wants to try the kind of camera

that was used to produce those original images.

In recent years, most camera shops have vanished from the high street,

but at Beauly, outside Inverness,

Ffordes hold one of Britain's largest collections

of second-hand and vintage cameras.

This one dates from Adam's time.

You had to get it right almost first time with film.

-Yeah!

-You haven't got a second chance.

I remember it well!

And I think it's more of a challenge

to your photography,

and you spend more time

looking at the images

before you actually take them.

It's obviously going to be difficult for me to take this camera out

and actually use it,

because we don't really have the film that works with this camera.

We've got the film, but we don't have the plate holders.

We don't have the holder.

The modern holders won't fit this.

So is there another camera that you've got here

which essentially works on the same principle?

Yeah, I've got a choice of other cameras.

It was just a different era, and I just love these cameras,

they were so beautiful.

It's the interaction with the camera,

it's not just the fact it's film.

I mean, I think, also, life is so busy nowadays

that it's nice to get back to basics,

and have a camera which isn't quick and easy-to-use,

and that you have to spend time on, and that time, also,

you have to spend on looking at the image,

and composing it and taking it.

It all adds to the experience,

and ultimately, I think, the quality.

-Right, that's your lens, all ready to go.

-Thank you.

Slots into there, and locks into place.

And these are the dark slides...

OK. I'm getting excited again, Steve.

-Getting excited!

-I'm not telling you anything you don't know,

you should know how to do this!

Well, I think that's everything, Steve.

-Good.

-I think I can go and be a photographer now.

Sounds a good idea!

This camera produces a negative that is five inches by four inches.

But it takes an expert to get the best out of it.

Colin returns to An Teallach,

and one of the places where he thinks

Adam took his original pictures.

I feel like a matador here on the hillside!

I remember this well.

I don't miss it, I have to say, not in the least.

So, this is a modern camera that's made in Japan,

and it's very much in the style of these early cameras.

We've got a lever here that allows us to open and close the shutter.

You can see the focusing screen.

The difference is that it gives you an image of what we're looking at,

which is inverted and upside-down.

I'm going to set the shutter speed to half a second,

and the aperture to F-22,

and we'll pull out the dark slide.

And it's just a simple case of...

..looking at the mountain and shooting the picture.

And that's how simple it is.

We put the dark slide back in...

..and that's our exposure made.

Lock it off.

Out comes the double dark slide.

We'll invert it,

and in it goes again.

Cock the shutter.

Out with the dark slide.

Just let it settle.

Sorted.

So, that's the photography over for the day.

And that's what these photographers would have been up against.

Once a film has gone, even the light changed into something dramatic,

we have no film left.

The process doesn't end there.

Today, the film needs to be sent to a specialist lab to be developed.

Colin has had to wait to see the results.

They look as if they've come from another era.

They could be the prints that Robert Adam actually produced,

they've got that sort of feel to them.

And, of course, it's the fact that they're reproduced from film.

The 5:4 camera demands a certain discipline.

Every process, every lever that you move within that camera,

there's a pitfall there.

And I found that the 5:4 camera

actually got between me and the subject,

and instead of it being an invisible conduit that allowed you to capture

what was out there without actually noticing it,

it just worked against the experience

of creating these images.

It's now February, and there's still been no significant snowfall.

It's more like spring than the middle of winter.

With photography on standby,

Colin uses his time to learn more about this mountain,

and there's no-one better to explain its intricacies

than climber and geologist John Mackenzie,

the Earl of Cromartie.

They're planning to walk to

Loch Toll an Lochain high in the mountain.

It's a great vantage point

and it's somewhere Colin's always meant to explore.

We are blessed with, here and in Coigach,

having wonderful mountains, which are basically inselbergs -

isolated things which have been sculpted by ice

and just left standing.

In fact it's like a layer cake - you've got Lewisian gneiss,

3,000 million years old, give or take a few million,

then you've got...

On top of that, you've got your Torridonian,

and then on top of that, you've got the Cambrian quartzite,

a mere 650 million years old.

And if you gave it a huge kick,

you'd separate all the three layers!

It's amazing to think that that Torridonian sandstone

was once eroded itself from giant mountains into these rivers.

Deep time. That's very hard to comprehend.

But of course, the shape of the mountain is relatively recent.

All glacially sculpted.

Who knows what they originally looked like?

I mean, the whole thing is slightly incomprehensible,

it's a bit like trying to grasp light years.

-Yeah.

-It's the same sort of magnitude of time to distance.

And it's not just the large-scale features

of the mountain that are impressive.

Most of us would walk up here

with no idea of what's underneath our feet.

Right, OK, here, we have an example of pipe rock.

Worm casts. 550 million-year-old worm casts

in Cambrian quartzite.

As you can see, there was quite a population of worms.

They obviously liked living in colonies.

Perhaps they had a social time.

I suspect they would have been like tube worms, you know,

with frilly tops, too soft to be fossilised - but the casts were.

In the old days, they thought this

was one of the earliest forms of life,

but we now know that life actually has been...

Fossils have been found in billion-year-old rock,

and possibly even earlier.

-Incredible, isn't it?

-It's old.

But it's the youngest of all the rocks here.

I've walked over many quartzite slabs like this,

and never known that these were, in fact, worm casts.

Now that you've explained that,

I'll get far more pleasure than if...

-Well, walking over our ancestors!

-That's right, yes!

-Yeah.

You've got to remember

the fantastic age of some of these hills.

An Teallach is relatively young, compared to the Lewisian gneiss.

But I have to admit, I go to mountains because

I think they're beautiful.

Geology is an important aspect of it,

because I like to know what I'm climbing on.

The best rock of all to climb on here, really,

is the Lewisian gneiss.

It may be slightly presumptuous, but I often feel,

when you're rock climbing on beautiful rock,

it's like climbing over a sculpture.

And you can look at the micro as compared to the macro -

wee plants, or wee crystals even, and little pockets,

and you look at stuff with great intensity.

Obviously, you're concentrating, aren't you, 100%?

But it's the feel of it, it's very, very tactile.

Just to feel the rock, and move with it -

not against it, but with it -

it's like moving with the wind

rather than trying to battle against it.

You're just connected with the rock.

I think you would like to think that you're connected,

you have a degree of rock intelligence,

and you can sort of find the easiest way

on your given route, or whatever.

And I think, perhaps, when you're on the mountains,

you live more intensely.

When we're down on the flat lands,

and you're stuck in front of a computer,

or behind it, whatever, you know,

OK, you are living and you're doing your work sometimes,

often with great intensity, but up here, there's a freedom.

I don't think you can really replicate that.

Colin, I'll come and join you.

That's an unusual-looking erratic there.

Quite incredible that when the ice melted,

it left this perfectly balanced on these small stones.

That's right.

And if you push a wee bit harder, you'll...!

It's essentially a sandstone boulder,

resting on two quartzite smaller boulders,

placed by ice.

I'd like to get a photograph of this.

Stay there. That's nice.

I think you're hiding the other pebble.

Sorry, it's not quite such a sophisticated machine as yours.

That's extraordinary.

Thank you.

This is beginning to look a bit more like it.

It's pretty fantastic, isn't it?

-Wow!

-Not many corries like this.

This is superb. I can see a picture in my mind's eye already.

It's going to be a morning picture.

From this position, all the elements are in place.

We've got almost a sort of linear face there...

-Yeah.

-..but it's not one-dimensional,

there's still a bit of depth.

And with the early morning light hitting that,

it's just going to be crimson, you know,

that Torridonian sandstone,

and all these tiny little granules

that reflects back that early morning light.

Now, it might take me one trip to do it,

it might take two or three.

But there's a great photograph here.

Today's expedition has changed

Colin's thinking about this mountain.

Originally, he planned a shot from the summit.

Now he thinks this is where it needs to be.

Having finally been to this location,

I can see the potential there,

and I think there's a far greater opportunity

to capture something magical about this mountain from this point,

and not from the summit of Bidein a' Ghlas Thuill.

But with the unseasonably warm weather,

An Teallach will have to wait.

Colin's fascinated by every aspect of these mountains,

and especially how the Gaelic place names

are important to our understanding of them.

Clarinda Chant is originally from London,

but she's always felt a deep connection to her Celtic origins,

and, 15 years ago, moved up here.

Gaelic was a language when English

was not even a gleam in somebody's eye.

It's a very ancient language.

Once I knew the language, when I first looked at a map,

and the whole sort of...

The whole landscape came to life, really, for me.

-It came alive.

-Yes.

And obviously, without a knowledge of Gaelic,

I don't understand the significance

of some of these names - and if I did,

the landscape would mean a great deal more to me.

Yes. A lot of Gaelic in the landscape

is to do with shape and colour,

and the animals that were important to them,

which is why you don't often see things to do with sheep,

because sheep didn't really count.

You've got Ben Ean, which is Bird Hill.

Sometimes, of course, there are people.

Here, you've got Druim Poll Eoghainn.

Eoghainn is a man's name. Ewan.

But more often than not, it was to do with shape,

particularly body parts.

The obvious one is the stack on Cul Mor itself.

All stacks were just called "bod", which is penis.

A lot of the Victoria map-makers cleaned them up.

Am Bodach, which means "the old man".

But this one, for some reason, escaped the clean-up,

and has retained its "bod".

Somehow it does reflect the Victorian mind-set.

They didn't mind the word "cioch", which is breast.

But they wouldn't have penis!

And that's leaving it for future generations wrong,

and then, eventually,

just a degrading of the whole language, really.

And our knowledge, our basic knowledge of what's gone on.

OK, let's have a look at the An Teallach map.

I would like to understand more about what is in this landscape

from the Gaelic words, which I don't understand.

-Yes.

-Because the more knowledge you have about

the outdoor and the natural world,

the more enjoyment you can have from being on a walk.

Yes, totally, absolutely.

And knowing the Gaelic words

is a very intrinsic part of that, really.

Sgurr Fiona - what would you read into Sgurr Fiona?

Well, I mean, the obvious thing is a woman's name, Fiona.

No, no, it isn't, actually.

The Gaelic for Fiona is something quite different.

Probably just means beautiful, "sgurr"...

"Fiona" could be wine, of wine.

But unless there was a burn there, that was sort of wine-coloured,

or the mountain itself...

I doubt there's vineyards there!

No, I doubt that very much!

Colours in Gaelic are more...

They're not as cut and dried as in English!

Dubh can mean black,

but it can also mean a sort of darkness,

a greyness, or even a sort of sinisterness.

Well, I'm going to try my hardest to learn.

I mean, I can't promise that my pronunciation

is going to be particularly good,

but I will try and absorb your lessons.

There's one other image Colin wants to achieve this season.

It's a winter shot of our most remote Munro -

A' Mhaighdean.

So I've joined him for the long walk into the Letterewe wilderness,

where we're planning an overnight camp on Beinn Airigh Charr.

The weather is overcast, but at long last,

there's snow on the higher summits.

And whatever the conditions, it's wonderful to be out here.

This is my idea of heaven.

We're in this big, wild area.

It's just fantastic to be in amongst this.

Even the names themselves stir my emotions.

Loch Maree, A' Mhaighdean, Ruadh Stac Mor, An Teallach...

But this is the hill you're taking me up today, Beinn Airigh Charr.

-What does it mean, do you know?

-I gather, in Gaelic,

it means the hill of the twisted sheiling.

-OK.

-So, there were sheilings,

and I think they're marked on the map quite clearly

at the bottom of the mountain.

So, the crofters would have moved their cattle up there.

I thought for a moment you were going to say,

because you're going to have to drag me up there,

it's the hill of the twisted old photographer.

We'd better go. We'd better get up there,

before it's dark.

-All right, we're off.

-Good.

I tend to carry a pretty lightweight pack if I can,

even when I've got all my camping gear in it,

I try to keep the weight down, and I assume you're the same.

But just coming up that wee steep bit, I suddenly realised,

you've probably got a big camera in there as well.

Well, over the years,

I've managed to reduce my bag from probably about 23 kilos to about 17.

But there's always that extra litre of water that needs to go in when

you're camping on top of a mountain,

because just before you get to the top, you've got to lift that water.

And of course, that's another kilo going into your pack.

But there's no short cut to that.

If you want to take photographs,

you really need to camp overnight up here.

You see, that's where you and I are different.

I would never camp on the summit of a mountain,

because it's the most exposed place of the mountain.

But presumably, you just want to stick your head out of the tent

and see what the weather's doing.

That's the great thing. After you've got your tent up,

you've had something to eat,

it's just a question then of waiting for the sun to set,

and hopefully you're going to get something in the evening.

If fate is in your favour, then you'll get something.

Interesting. You make me wish I'd brought my camera with me.

Well, you've brought your phone!

Colin, it's just struck me that you and I share

very similar backgrounds.

We were both born and brought up in Glasgow,

neither of us liked school very much,

and we both ended up climbing mountains.

When you were a youngster,

did you ever envisage that this was what you'd be doing for a living?

Never. I had no real idea of where my future path lay,

and it just really evolved this way.

Photography was something that I sort of fell into,

and a passion for mountains grew as a result of that.

I found photography when I was about 23,

and then I've always had this deep-rooted passion

of the natural world,

and I found that I could best

express it through mountain photography.

Your work has influenced at least a generation

of hill walkers and hillgoers.

Are you aware that you have changed people's perceptions of mountains?

Not really, but I do remember in the early days,

when I started working with that panoramic format,

and shooting images at dusk and dawn,

people would see these big prints that I published,

and some people couldn't believe

that it was Scotland they were looking at -

they felt it was the Rockies,

because I was photographing the mountains in that red light,

which people, I guess, hadn't seen before.

Oh, that's fabulous.

Well, the light looks fantastic,

I think I might just try and get a quick few shots.

-Oh, yeah.

-Before we do anything else.

Oh, beautiful. So, what have we got here?

-We've got Ruadh Stac Mor...

-Beinn Liath over here.

And, of course, Slioch.

-Oh, wow.

-What a panorama, hey?

And these lochs kind of leading the eye into all that.

It's wonderful.

Come on, Prior, get working!

I'll just watch. I'll watch the master at work.

We've got some pretty good light at the moment.

It's obviously not warm yet,

because the sun's not really beginning to set.

But there's no guarantee that, when the sun does drop,

that we're going to get the light that I'm anticipating.

So it looks pretty spectacular at the moment,

so I'd like to try and just shoot something right now.

If we get something later, it's a bonus, but right now,

it's not bad at all.

Well, that looks like the light for the time being.

We've got a couple of hours before sunset,

so probably a good time to get our tents up

and maybe even have a brew-up.

Get in the sleeping bag, it's freezing!

Yeah, that would be great.

When I come out to these places,

I do love camping out on a mountainside.

In fact, I quite often say to people

that the only way to get to know a mountain is to sleep on it.

I totally agree with that, and the longer you're there,

the more it permeates.

It's a sort of latent understanding you have of the rhythm of that land,

and, of course, if you're trying to take photographs of it,

then that comes across in the images.

Barry Lopez, in Arctic Dreams,

once wrote that what we do when we're in the landscape

is that we disassemble it.

And what we as photographers are doing

is we're reassembling the pieces through the viewfinder

in a way that corresponds to the way we see or feel

about that particular landscape.

So, it's really, really important to spend time and, you know,

stopping in a lay-by and jumping out of a car to take a few photographs

can never achieve that.

Greetings! I'm quite glad we got

some photographs before we put the tents up!

I was just thinking, wandering up there,

I suppose, while we both climb mountains for a living, in a sense,

I've got to think up the words to describe the experience

of being in the mountains.

I'm a purveyor of words, if you like.

-You're a wordsmith!

-Aye!

I've been inspired by some of the great wordsmiths in the past,

like WH Murray, like Tommy Weir.

Nan Shepherd, of course.

Nan Shepherd, of course, the great Cairngorm poet.

Who are your inspirations? Are your inspirations writers like that,

or other photographers?

Well, it's a combination.

I mean, throughout my life,

as well as looking at some of the early photographers' work,

and contemporary photographers' work on a pretty regular basis,

I've also read a great deal

about people who've spent time in the outdoors,

cos I've learned from them what they took

and what they expressed.

People like Barry Lopez, for instance, and Nan Shepherd.

What I find so inspiring about their writing is the insight,

it's things that they've experienced

and have had the power to describe it

in a way that most people would be unable to.

I mean, Nan Shepherd's great line, of course,

which I think...right at the end of The Living Mountain, is,

"The thing to be known grows with the knowing."

It's about learning, and it's about experience,

and I think it's about growing spiritually in these places.

And I've found that reading books by people like Barry Lopez

and Nan Shepherd and WH Murray

has helped me define what my role is in the outdoors.

Peering out of the tent, it's clear that today,

we're not going to get a magical sunset.

We're now looking at a beautiful, mysterious,

but not particularly photographic landscape.

The good news is that Colin's

earlier image of A' Mhaighdean is superb.

So, time for a wee celebration.

I've got the brew on, Colin.

Well, I thought we could have an aperitif.

A bit of coffee here. What have you got?

Oh, my goodness, that's posh-looking.

-Slainte.

-Slainte mhath. Here's to the mountain.

-Indeed.

-Cheers.

Time's running out for Colin.

The weather is as unpredictable as ever,

and he still needs that shot on An Teallach.

He must seize every opportunity,

and again, he's out in the early hours of the morning.

I've been trying to capture an image of An Teallach

that captures not just its majesty but its very essence.

And I'd like people to be able to look at the image

and for it perhaps to conjure up the sort of environment

where eagles live and fly, and where wildness truly exists.

And that's a great thing about landscape photography.

It allows the photographer to arrange the elements

in a way that corresponds to the way that they feel

about that particular environment.

Here, you've got this whole cliff face

rising from Loch Toll an Lochain

straight up to Lord Berkeley's Seat.

And it creates this depth to the picture

that you don't quite get from the higher point.

So I'm really excited about the opportunity here,

but whether it's going to happen this morning, I'm not sure.

I know where the location is, I just need the light.

This area creates its own weather, though.

I mean, even against weather forecasts,

it's...not always too accurate.

Well, this looks like the spot.

Good news, the loch's not frozen, so it's giving us a good contrast,

that sort of deep blue-black in amongst the white now.

I just can't see the top of the mountain at the moment,

so fingers crossed that this cloud will pass through

and give us a bit of light, that ephemeral moment

will hit the summit just as the clouds part,

like the opening of the Red Sea.

It's just all waiting.

It's...

If the light breaks through here,

and that cloud just lifts a little bit more,

we might have this picture.

Ideally, we want to be shooting this at sunrise.

We've got, in reality,

probably 10-15 minutes, and after that, it's over.

There's an awful lot going on here. It's very lively, the weather.

And there doesn't seem to be any indication

that the summits are clearing.

It's coming and going, it's patchy.

There's fundamentally so many different elements

that need to come together to give us this picture,

and it's just going to take that one moment.

It's not looking too exciting.

It's clear enough in the east, right enough. It's just here.

An Teallach's a magnet for clouds.

We need to wait, it's a waiting game.

Patience.

Deep patience, as the Inuit...

They have a word for it.

Quinuituq.

It's that waiting at a seal's breathing hole with a spear poised,

ready to throw it, for hours on end.

Waiting hours for a second.

I've waited years for this second.

Feet are like blocks of ice now.

It's dramatic, though, isn't it?

Just beginning,

the pink's just beginning to touch the tops of the clouds.

Which is a good sign.

-But not across there!

-HE CHUCKLES

Today, the wait is worthwhile.

The photography gods are smiling on Colin,

and just as the sun rises, the clouds part.

We've got the clear ridge now,

and we've got a bit of sunlight on it, finally.

Fantastic!

So, all the waiting paid off.

That sun on my back is just lovely.

And so is the picture!

I'm a happy man. What more can I say?

What a great mountain!

What a great mountain indeed.

We've been with Colin for six months,

and the result of all that effort is just a handful of photographs.

But these images convey the very essence

of these great Scottish mountains.