Large Format Black and White images (mostly) from the Hebrides...
One of the things I do is to wander around looking for landscapes images. A favourite area of mine is the Hebrides. If I for some reason or other had to be imprisoned and I could choose where, it would be up there. I'd probably go for a little island called Berneray off the tip of North Uist. Beautiful pure white sandy beaches. Otters, gannets, whales...wild, yet populated by gentle people. This one is of the West Beach, Berneray:
The island of Pabbay is in the distance, left and the Toe of Harris is on the right.
This one is of wormcasts on the Cockle beach:
You can dig or rather rake the surface to get cockles...the Cockle beach is a shallow tidal bay, ideal for sailboarding and generally messing about.
Here we have a coloured image of lichen on an extensive flat rock on top of one of the small hills:
One last one of grass in the giant sandhills on the west coast of Berneray, done in lith style:
Next we go to Islay, Tiree and Jura, Inner Hebrides. This first one is a beach on the West coast of Islay. The clouds were moving really fast that day and I had to set up my Sinar Norma in a great hurry. I was lucky enough to get this image:
In the original, the sand grains close up, are sharp...
Now Tiree, a wave breaking on a beautiful stoney beach:
I had one of these made for a friend, a metre square mounted on aluminium with a perspex coating.
Now, two images on Jura. Pathway stones and frozen ripples on a beach at New Year:
The whole gear weighs about 30 lb and there's a BIG tripod. The camera uses 5x4 inch film. The camera is one of those which needs a black cloth over ones head in order to set up and focus. It's a bit different from point and shoot with a digital camera. The whole process is just 'nice'. The images scan to about a gigabyte each and can be printed pretty big. Sometimes I print them in the darkroom in the old style... Great fun. When I was a boy my brother got me interested in photography and I made my first enlarger out of a sweet tin and an old lens he gave me. I had to squeeze into an airing cupboard...happy days.