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September 2005
It's 10:30am on Monday morning, and I have just caught myself idly browsing the internet planning a trip to the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. Now, that in
itself is perhaps not something to overly concern yourself with. In fact, it's probably a location many photographers dream of travelling to. However, the
reason that it took me by surprise is because I have only just arrived back home from there less than twenty-four hours ago. The place has obviously made more
of an impression on me than even I imagined it did.
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Tiumpan Head, Eye Peninsula, Isle of Lewis, Scotland. |
Before I went to the Outer Hebrides, I had heard the stories and seen the pictures of the white sand and turquoise sea beaches on the Isle of Harris, but
always took it with an ounce of scepticism. It's a wonder what a polariser can do, right? And compared to the murky brown seas around my home patch in the
south east of England, wouldn't anything look crystal clear? Yet the moment that we drove around the corner and the vast luminous beach
of Luskentyre swept across my view, I was awe-struck. Not only did the reality of this magnificent beach live up to the reputation which I had heard about,
but it also completely surpassed any pre-determined mental picture I had built up in my mind. The grand grass-covered dunes flowed into a vast sweep of
deserted sand, with crystal clear water lapping gently at its shore. It was a view that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Caribbean travel brochure. Were it not
for the noticeably cooler temperature and the towering mountains and scatter of islands in the distance which confirmed the whole scene firmly as being a part
of Scotland, you could have easily been fooled into thinking that you had somehow been transported to those tropical islands thousands of miles away.
So as the brakes of the car screeched to a stop, I snatched my camera bag from the back seat and headed down to the beach. The half-walk, half-scramble down
from the road to the sand and rocks below seemed to take an eternity and had my mind racing. Would the light last until I got down to the beach? Would the
clouds roll in and steal the mountain view from the distance? Would I blink and find that this tropical utopia had vanished? But the colours were not an
illusion, and the light continued to shine softly over the scene.
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Luskentyre beach, Isle of Harris, Scotland. |
It was a small piece of tranquil heaven. The odd cyclist stopped at the road side on the cliff above to wonder at the scene before grabbing a snapshot and
silently moving on. A man and his dog played on the beach in the far distance. A couple of small cottages huddled at the base of a hill behind the dunes. If
it wasn't for the perpetual ebb and flow of the tide, you could lose all sense of time passing by. Yet despite this serenity, my thoughts were in chaos. The
scene was almost too beautiful, with too many photos to be taken in every direction, so that it was impossible to know in which way to start. Also, I was
all too aware of the fact that my friend was up on the cliffs above taking pictures of the beach, where I was standing, and knew that she wouldn't
appreciate my footprints, or my bright blue fleece, showing in her viewfinder. With this in mind, I skipped carefully over the rocks huddling against the
cliff edge, feeling the lure of the waters edge pulling me nearer. Setting up my tripod on the soft sand, the legs slowly sinking as the waves lapped
around them, I started exposing some film. And before I knew it, more than an hour had passed before I saw my friend again.
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Lewisian gneiss, Isle of Harris, Scotland. |
But the Outer Hebrides have so much more to offer than just these beautiful beaches. Outcrops of Lewisian gneiss [pronounced "nice"] form small islets
in both the white shores and shallow azure sea in the bays around the islands, as well as making up most of the bedrock under your feet. It would be very
easy to spend all your time taking in the distant scene without appreciating that the close-up view is just as amazing. Crouching down to examine the
ground can reveal some true wonders. This beautiful rock is the oldest in Europe and billions of years have shaped and folded it to create vast waves and
folds in the bedrock, as well as intricate ripples within the individual layers. With the waves crashing just a couple of feet away, I hurriedly
manipulated my tripod legs on the boulders, and closed my macro lens down a couple of stops to compensate for the near impossibility of getting the film in
the same plane as the rocks beneath my feet, taking photos of the stunning ripple details before the incoming tide might wash us away.
So, as I sit here reflecting on my travels of the last week, stuffing exposed film into envelopes to send off to the lab, I wonder where I put that
Stornoway ferry timetable...
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