Outer Hebrides

The Outer Hebrides - a very special landscape - the gift of a different pace of life and Hebridean character on a glorious scale, with vast views, intimate details, and infinite variety …

The images here were mostly taken on the Isle of Harris during visits in April and September 2010, June/July 2011, and May 2012. There are also images made during day trips from Harris to the Isle of Berneray, and Uig, on the west coast of Lewis.

One of the binding attractions of the islands is the way the landscape leaps from inviting sandy beaches and flower spangled machair, to lonely rocky lunar scenes, treacherously vertical sea cliffs, vast and looming bogs and moors, and towering mountain ranges.

There is a presence here, and a richness of life that is mesmerising and magical, drawing me in, and holding me spellbound …

The flowers of the machair, moors and dunes delight me with their profusion, diversity and beauty, triggering macro work, wet knees and a lost sense of time. The rocks, pebbles and grasses along the coastline captivate me with their texture, pattern and form, stimulating orderly monochrome thoughts. And the special Hebridean colours paint pictures before my eyes, producing dreamy pastel moments and vivid swirling abstracts.

And amongst all of this there is a chance, if we are quiet, that we will glimpse an otter tumbling in the shallows, a red throated diver feeding and preening just offshore, a pod of porpoises scouting the coastline. And the busy oystercatchers will trill and warn, the ravens will meddle and croak, and the buzzards will mew on the air.

The tapestry is infinite and ever changing, and rich beyond words …