Shooting Waterfalls with Kyle McDougall

This is shooting waterfalls with Kyle McDougall.

You can plan your project. You can scout the maps, pack your film, mark the locations. But you can’t plan for the kind of rain that finds its way through zippers, sleeves, and resolve.

In his latest video, Kyle McDougall returns to North Wales to continue his Slate City project, armed with a large format camera, a stack of Ilford HP5+ and FP4+, and just enough stubbornness to shoot in one of the wettest days he’s faced yet.

And it pays off. In a hidden corner of an abandoned slate quarry, beside a waterfall roaring down moss-covered stone, he makes one of his favourite images of the series so far.

The video isn’t dramatic. It’s quiet. Reflective. You feel the weight of the backpack. The drip of water off the dark cloth. The slow, deliberate pace of someone chasing a vision, even as the weather turns against him. It’s about persistence, but also about the surprise of discovering something beautiful when conditions are anything but.

Kyle’s video is offering you permission to head out when everything says stay home. To keep going, even when the path is unclear. To trust that the image will come, not from control, but from presence.

We’ve been talking a lot about black and white at Loop this month. Maybe because it lends itself to days like this. Days that strip things back. Where all that’s left is texture, tone, and intention.

Watch the video. Then maybe reach out.
We run quiet, thoughtful classes here designed to help you find your version of that moment, too.