Horizon
Some places on Earth are really very special and for me the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland is one of those places. A small archipielago, these islands are jems in the North Atlantic. With their golden white sand beaches and icy cold, crystal clear arctic water and air, I am never at a lose for subject matter or inspiration. Growing up in California and Hawaii and now living in Scotland, I have found a place, though not as warm, is just as beautiful.
With this photograph it is the simplicity of the image that I love so much. The storm clouds were building in the late afternoon and I knew the longer I stayed on the beach the greater the chances of getting soaked were. But I thought in the end it is just water, cold, but just water, so I waited for the sun to break through and my patience was rewarded. I did not get soaked, however, just as I got back to the van, the sky went black and the heavens opened!
My images are straight from the camera. I do not use any tone mapping or HDR software. I process in photoshop with the dodge and burn tool, working the shaddows and highlights to bring out the detail and depth. I do not want to distort the image or introduce false colors. The challenge is to produce a photograph that is as close to the moment it was captured in all respects. I constantly refer back to the original RAW file and histogram and compare that to my memory of the moment. It is tempting to slide the color bar to create spectacular sunsets and clouds, but nature does it better than software, so why mess around with it. In some cases I may actually de-saturate the image slightly if I think the camera has over compensated the color, which can happen with landscape mode, so I try to use the faithful or nuetral color mode.
