Scottish Landscapes
The pleasure I get from spending time in Scottish highlands is difficult to explain. For me its a ‘soul’ experience. It inspires, motivates, relaxes, and exhausts me, but it never fails to make me wonder about that sense of wild, untamed beauty. I take an image of what I see in that moment knowing that what I am seeing is transitional, ephemeral, never to be viewed again with that same balance of lights and colours. While I take pleasure in the barrenness of the vast open spaces, I am respectfully aware of the cultural landscape of the Highlands of Scotland, which became transformed 300 years ago with the effect of the Highland Clearances to become one of the most sparsely populated areas in Europe. Now empty glens, empty dwellings, once populated add to that sense of history of a people long gone but not forgotten. In my photography I try to portray that air of mystery and of the unspoken sense of loss that is almost tangible in the hills and glens of the Scottish Highlands.
