We’d booked into the Harris Hotel in Tarbert for five nights. It was the third attempt to stay at the hotel having had to cancel twice because of Covid. I can’t recommend them highly enough, lovely food, comfortable rooms and their customer care is second to none. Once we'd unpacked and had a cuppa we headed for Luskentyre in time for a pre-sunset session.
The clouds had rolled in by the time we'd parked up, the carpark was empty. We walked down to Luskentyre beach and passed a couple of wild campers, the midges were out in force, but I'm sure it didn't put them off. I was a bit overcome tbh, I wanted to start photographing straight away as the light was really good. I also just wanted to just stand there and enjoy the moment, take it all in it was breathtaking, even with my ridiculously high expectations. I'd bought a wide angle lens the 18mm Samyang for this very purpose, it's tiny and light and I really enjoyed shooting with that focal length. Working with filters really suits my way of working, I enjoy being methodical, taking my time setting up but it's not good for the stress levels when you're trying to do it quickly to catch the light. We will go back and spend more time there.
It'd been a pretty hectic few days and a fair bit of travelling had caught up with us. We needed to slow the pace down a bit and just enjoy the islands. I didn't write a journal, I will the next time, the next few days on Harris were one beautiful location after another. When the American photographer Paul Strand went to the islands with his wife in the 1950s they stayed for several months, and it was sometime before they actually started taking images, I totally understand why. More on Strand later.
Below are some of my favourite images, we travelled down the West coast visiting many of the beaches and took a day to drive down the Gold road on the East coast, a very different atmosphere. We pretty much had the beaches to ourselves apart from the sunbathing cows - now that's not a phrase you hear very often.
Limited edition fine art prints are also available to buy.
