1400 mile round trip for 6 photos!

 Last week I reached the end of an incredible journey - I took the last 6 images that completed my new landscape photography book of remote Britain. 

Over the last 5 years, I have been travelling to remote locations around Britain, and what began as an exercise to show these landscapes to everyone else has been a life-changing experience for me that's brought me peace beyond anything I've ever known. There's something so powerful for me about being in isolated locations of stunning, raw beauty that has helped my mental health in ways I could never have imagined, and each of the photos in my new book will serve as a memory of an experience I will always treasure.
I was 6 images short of a complete set of photographs for the book, and there was one island I've always wanted to capture, called the Isle of Barra - so when a short window of time opened up for me, I booked the ferry, collected my nephew (Josiah) and left the next day. It's a 12 hour drive to the ferry port and another 5 hours on the ferry - totalling 700 miles from my house.

 

watch some behind the scenes footage from the trip


Whenever I've visited the islands around Great Britain, I've learned to go with no preconceived expectations of how the photographs will turn out, but rather to allow the islands to speak for themselves, and hopefully capture their raw beauty in whatever weather is thrown at me - and I've had all kinds of weather thrown in my direction over the last 5 years!

 

This was once again true of the Isle of Barra - we had high winds, heavy rain and sunshine all within a couple of days and the challenge was to get to the locations that gave the best light at the right time, to ensure the photographs captured the island in a way I felt reflected it's feel at atmosphere.

 

These gloves, called the Storm Waterproof Gloves were the best gloves I've ever worn for a photo shoot. They were soft inside, warm and even worked on my camera's touch screen! Watch the behind the scenes footage above to see.

 

We had two full days on the island, which has a causeway which connects to another island, called Vatersay. The theme of both islands was a continuous collection of white sandy beaches and turquoise seas - it became impossible to choose which was our favourite of these seemingly tropical beaches - so we tried to get round them all!