Wind Sculpture
It was during one of my early landscape pilgrimages, to the shrine that is Lone Tree on Rannoch Moor, that I first began to understand what it is about the natural world that inspires me. Those of you who have placed your tripod in the same three holes beside Lochan na h-Achlaise know what wild deception you committed - while the camera pointed to a heroic mountain landscape, your back was braced against the thundering traffic of the ever-busy A82. When my photography by the loch side was over I scrambled up the bank and came face to face with an articulated truck, the size of which I had never appreciated at such close quarters. But it wasn't size that brought the revelation, it was shape. So much of the man-made world is straight, angular, gaunt. So much of nature lacks any order. It is curved, arched, round, sensuous - qualities my eye finds pleasure in and responds to.
On a late March afternoon of 75mph winds I arrived at Red Point beach south of Gairloch in the North West Highlands of Scotland with the intention of doing a recce and little else. Despite the stinging mixture of wind and sand, my eye was led to the river as it raced to the sea and the startling colour reflected off a high dune in its graceful curves. The pool's wind-whipped ripples also reflected a vivid sky and the combination of blue and gold was getting more intense with each minute of the setting sun. I could not resist.
Unfortunately wind has sapped this image of its sharpness, but technical frailties apart, it is still one of my true favourites, forged by nature's free-flowing energy. It almost seems a shame to put a rectangle around it.