The air was still and clear with a magical display of stars above. Arriving at 5.30am before sunrise we picked our way through the marsh to the edge of the water and waited for the dawn. As a good friend once said to me: “Shut up, you hippy”.Īn insanely early trip to Loch Awe and Kilchurn Castle this week. I wonder if the bridge is a reminder that that moment is gone forever, never to be experienced again. It sits in my memory as a moment of total peace and happiness.
WYTCHWOOD SYRUP PORTABLE
I was sitting with Iain on the back of the Luton van listening to the Beatles on a portable cassette player eating a sandwich, looking out over this peaceful landscape while Iain puffed away on his roll-up. One job, on Scalpay, was on a particularly gorgeous summer day. I used to spend the summer holidays helping Iain, the carpet fitter who worked for my dad, lay carpets all over the island. So why does the my mind refuse to be impressed by the Scalpay bridge? I think it’s because I have a memory of Scalpay to which I attach entirely unreasonable importance. His philosophy was simple: If change gives people work and jobs then it’s a good thing. I get that from my father who was always looking for the next thing to do in business and even in retirement at the age of 83 he’s still ripping out flower beds and starting from scratch. I like change and I don’t like pointless nostalgia. It feels like the present and the past refusing to co-exist in my conscious mind. Probably due the huge scale of the bridge coming up against those strong memories of going over to Scalpay before the bridge existed. Some things do throw my sense of place off balance though. I recall who had chickens on the steep hill behind the main street in Tarbert, who I played with on what beaches, what it felt like to bush walk through the rhododendrons in the castle grounds, balancing on the sewage pipe to get across the river at Bayhead and on and on. Every road and corner, the town, the castle grounds, the beaches are all still connected to those strong childhood memories. I still have a better mental map of Lewis and Harris than the area where I now live. As I get older, I worry that someday I will get off the ferry and feel like a tourist in an unfamiliar place. The intensity of childhood experience and the memories we form in those early years are especially strong. The bond we form to the place into which we were born is enduring. Capture time in the waves and a little bit of time to myself.Įvery time I go back to Lewis I am simultaneously happy and worried. A few minutes of total focus and creativity.
Consider where’s the best view point to bring all the elements together, what height the tripod should be, what attitude to set the camera at, get the filter holder onto the lens, work out the strength and type of filter you need, place it correctly, work out the exposure, wait for the perfect moment, release the shutter. That may seem a bit more trouble than it’s worth to some! I find it a very relaxing and enjoyable process. To capture this type of image you need a tripod and neutral density filters and a remote shutter release. It’s how we actually experience the landscape rather than the frozen image of a short exposure time. Not everyone is a fan of these long exposures but, for me, it tells a more accurate story of the landscape. This one-second exposure captured the flow of water away from the camera back out into the sea.
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