Regrettably personal events intervened and caused a period of inactivity during 2011 and much of 2010, but I can now once again dedicate time to the expressive-landscape and have plans to drive it forward to create an interactive photography resource

Click HERE to Visit

Click HERE to Visit

Click HERE to Visit

Click HERE to Visit

Click HERE to visit

 Add to this time for family holidays, keeping the garden under control, work (yes work steals time too), other interests/pastimes and then finally also time spent with the computer processing a growing backlog of newly acquired images and you can see that time for updating the Blog is scarce.

Anyway Summer is over, Autumn arriving and Winter beckons and with it shorter days and dark longer nights, the garden slows and there are less distractions generally, so I trust more time to clear the backlog of images and add the occasional Blog entry.Last month we arrived back from a very restful two weeks in Mallorca – a straightforward family hotel/pool/beach holiday. I took all the camera gear in the hope of the occasional photographic sojourn away from the tourist centres. I did indeed manage to escape, on several occasions in fact, but overall the experience was disappointing. On the few times that the location delivered, the weather did not (too clear, too blue, too sunny!) and at other times, locations showing promise from advance researching just didn’t deliver. Windmills continue to haunt me – Mallorca has more than its fair share of them, so I had great plans. These plans were slowly eroded away as I explored more of the island. It seemed to me that the attractive windmills had poor backgrounds and conversely the windmills in good locations were not photogenic. A derelict windmill would have been good, but nothing really gelled. Why haunt me ? Well – because I know somewhere on the island there must be a worthwhile windmill in a good location, that would work well at sunset or sunrise – I JUST DIDN’T FIND IT…. Is this any better than finding one but missing the light? Maybe……… but only just. Still I suppose I can’t complain, the holiday was intended as a family escape and not as a photographic destination. Nonetheless – note to self – when it comes to Spain and photography, STICK TO THE MAINLAND. I have also taken a trip down to Dorset, but like much of the UK this summer the weather didn’t deliver. So, the planned early morning at Durdle Door and Lulworth just didn’t happen – I looked out of the window and rain persuaded me to stay in bed. Likewise the light didn’t lend itself to capturing the heather across the New Forest, so that was scrubbed too.
The excessive rain has done one thing however. I have nearly managed to catch up on all my image processing. I should soon have a few more images from the Isle of Harris available to upload along with a very few from the odd summer opportunity.

I have also managed to upload a collection of 27 images from Montana and Wyoming taken during a trip in November last year. These can be viewed on my www.expressive-landscape.com site CLICK HERE

ABOVE IMAGES – First Image was taken in Glasgow, the rest are from the Isle of Harris.

Moving to May – early May was a trip to Isle of Harris on a Light and Land tour lead by David Ward. Once again L & L delivered an excellent trip and it was a chance to catch up with several fellow Light and Landers that I had travelled with on other tours as well as make new acquaintances. Rather delightfully, once you have done a few trips with Light and Land, it starts to become much like an extended family.

The trip featured some great locations, well worth the travelling the distance. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get to Harris. Flying isn’t that convenient (London to Glasgow etc and then on to Stornaway) The timings aren’t that conducive to a single day of travelling, once getting from Stornaway to Tarbert (our base for the week) is also factored in. Driving is a bit of a marathon exercise, again best if the journey is split halfway, with a ferry journey then over to Harris. Once again timings really dictate an overnight stop on Skye before catching the ferry. This leaves the train and more especially the sleeper service to Glasgow or Inverness. I chose this option as the use of time seemed to be better at face value, however the cost of the sleeper is greater than the cost of flying (if you don’t wish to share a cabin with a stranger – not my kind of thing I’m afraid) and the term sleeper should be used loosely for anyone even close to being a light sleeper as the train sways and bounces around alarmingly.

I have only just started reviewing the images taken on the trip – it may take some time, given the amount of free time that I don’t have at the moment. Nonetheless, scattered amongst this entry are a few from the first day of the trip.