Skye gallery launched on website

White-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla)
Nex 7 55-210 @ 210mm 1/50 f13

I have finally finished creating and editing the images from my Skye trip. I have cut them down to 48 which summarises my trip for me and shows my vision of this stunning island.

A new image gallery has been added to the website for the Isle of Skye with fine art monochrome images of this one of the Inner Hebrides of the Scottish coast.

Go to the gallery.

The Cuillin

The mountains on Skye are called the Cuillin and they can be split into two groups. The true Cuillin are also known as the Black Cuillin to distinguish them from the Red Hills (Am Binnean Dearg) across Glen Sligachan. The Red Hills are lower and are less rocky. The highest point of the Cuillins, and of the Isle of Skye, is Sgùrr Alasdair in the Black Cuillins at 992 m (3,255 ft).


The Black Cuillin from Sligachan I
Nikon D800E 16-35 @ 35mm 1/125 f16


The Black Cuillins are mainly composed of basalt and gabbro. The former is 
usually grey to black in colour and formed from the rapid cooling of basaltic lava exposed at or very near the surface of the earth. It rapidly weathers to brown or rust-red due to oxidation of its iron-rich minerals into rustIt is from the dark colour of the gabbro that the Black Cuillin receives its name. The summits of the Cuillins are bare rock, jagged in outline and with steep cliffs and deep cut corries and gullies. There are twelve Munros on Skye, which are all Black Cuillin peaks, though Bla Bheinn is part of a group of outliers separated from the main ridge by Glen Sligachan.

The Red Hills (Am Binnean Dearg in Gaelic) are sometimes known as the Red Cuillin. They are mainly composed of granite which is paler than the gabbro  and has weathered into more rounded hills with vegetation covering their summits and long scree slopes on their flanks. Granite is a common widely occurring type of igneous rock which is granular and crystalline in texture and consists mainly of quartz, mica, and feldspar. Granites can be pink to gray in color, depending on their chemistry and mineralogy and their colour often varies in different lights and from different angles.


The Red Hills from Sligachan I
Nikon D800E 16-35 @35mm 1/50 f16

The highest point of the hills is Glamaig, which is almost conical from most aspects and is the northernmost of the Red Hills.





Glamaig III
Nex 7 18-55 @ 34mm 1/400 f4.5

The Battle of Coire Na Creiche was fought on the slopes below Bruach na Frìthe in 1601. It was the last Scottish clan battle fought on Skye, in which the Clan MacDonald of Sleat defeated the Clan MacLeod after a bitter feud.



Coire na Creiche III
Nex 7 18-55 @ 18mm 1/60 f11

In 2000 the Cuillins were put on sale for £10 million by the Laird in a scheme of land in exchange for repairs to Dunvegan castle. Following a dispute over ownership, a deal was cut for the property to be gifted in return for repairs to the clan castle
 


Bla Bheinn II
Nex 7 55-210 @ 195 1/250 f11
I wanted to capture the majesty of these mountains and their dominance of the landscape. I was also struck by the stark contrast between the perceived ruggedness of the Black Cuillin and the smoothness of the Red Hills. For most of the two weeks the tops of the mountains were not visible, although they were on a couple of days, most of the time they were shrouded in cloud. The interplay between the rocks, light and mist was fascinating to anyone who has time to watch and marvel at the light.

2 weeks on Skye - the return

The Cuillin from Caiplach I
Nex 7 Lensbaby Edge 80


I have just returned from two weeks on Skye on the north west coast of Scotland. There I spent a lot of time reflecting and meeting some great people. I was with the family on our annual summer holiday, which has been spent in Scotland for the last 3 years.

I visited a lot of galleries - in the first week I went to some photographic galleries and in the second week I consciously avoided them. This was for two reasons. The first was that most of the images are very similar and the second is that I realised that I wanted a different type of inspiration by studying the eye of a painter or sculptor etc rather than another photographer.

To expound upon the first reason - in the past I have visited photographic galleries, looked at other sites on the internet, studied books and magazines and come to the conclusion that a lot of landscape photography is the same, or very similar. I assume this is because the artists are all trying to sell their art to survive and clearly the market  demands Cornish Pastiches, with the added saturated colour and sunrises or sunsets. Whilst this is clearly for many it is not for me. I wish to tap into my inner soul and project this in the images I create.

The second reason was to gain new inspiration. The painter can include and exclude and thereby simplify their composition. Their 'eye' creates the image and they develop the mood by the way they portray the landscape in front of them. The use of light by some is truly remarkable.

As I have written before I usually travel having done my homework and with some preconceived ideas of what I want to achieve. This time I prepared in a different way. Having been to Skye before I knew somewhat  what to expect. I had the Ordnance Survey maps and knew where our cottage was. This was all. I did not use Google Earth or The Photographer's Ephemeris. I had not even looked up the tides.


Beinn Dearg Mhor IINex 7 Lensbaby Edge 80


I had decided to be more spontaneous on this trip and therefore went with some projects in mind to drive my images, however these were very loose. I wanted to look at 'worship/religion' and perhaps tie this into history. I wanted to capture the essence of the weather which I knew was predicted to be poor, even though it was August. I wanted to try to show the contrast between the 'anger' of the mountains and the 'peace' of the coast, although living at the coast, I know that it is not always peaceful and can easily display it's own form of anger. These themes I remembered influencing me when I was last on 'The Misty Isle'. Finally I was going to have a rest and therefore I was not going to get up for one sunrise and I was on holiday with two young girls and I wanted to spend time with them and so I was not going to go out for one sunset. This was perhaps the hardest part of the holiday for me as I have been indoctrinated by the plethora of books and sites telling me that this is photographic sacrilege.

Now I have the pleasure/difficulty/disappointment of sorting and developing my visions. Now I am busy sorting and developing my visions to convey the mood/emotion felt at the time. What is fascinating to me is the transference of my mood in these images as the first and second week were very different.


Beinn Dearg Mhor IIINex 7 Lensbaby Edge 80


I am not sure whether they will make the final 'keepers', but they do demonstrate a point to me and that is that all the images here were made in the first week and are very dark. The second week's images were less dark and I made fewer blurred images. I will expound upon mood and image making in another post.