The Western Isles had attracted me for many years, drawn by wild landscapes, beautiful golden beaches and azure seas usually seen at latitudes much further south than they are. Like the far north west of the mainland they are a bit of a mission to get to from the north of England. I’m looking forward to the day hopefully not too far away if current research progress continues when cars can dive themselves, imagine going to sleep Friday evening in a camper van and waking up with it having driven you 300miles away! The extra freedom this will offer will be amazing.

Anyway I visited last year taking the ferry over for a few days cycling and exploring. I had a couple of locations I wanted to visit from a photography point of view, there are some spectacular images taken from the beaches on the western cost of Harris taken by others and I had hoped to capture something similar.

In the end none of my images particularly excited my as any of my best, I great sunset shot was always just out of reach particularly due to the not insignificant oversight of forgetting to take my camera stand and thus being somewhat limited in the exposures I could take.

The Lighthouse at the Butt of Lewis looks out over the North Atlantic. The image is a 3 shot HDR composite

Another view of the Butt of Lewis Lighthouse

A beautiful beach at Port of Ness, a village on the north cost of Lewis is typical of the golden sand and light blue seas of the north west. It was actually raining quite heavily and difficult to keep the lens dry.

Lewis is rich in prehistoric monuments from a long history of habitation. These stones are park of one of the smaller circles at Callanish and would photograph really well at sunset. Again this image is an HDR composite. 

The beach at Horgabost campsite has stunning view across to the hills of North Harris