It's 6am in the morning as I write this. I'm sitting with the most spectacular view in front of me. I'm perched high up above the Neist Point Lighthouse on the Isle of Skye just waiting for that glimmer of light to fall in the right place. The sun rose about an hour and twenty minutes ago, so I've been up here for 2 hours now and there's something crawling up my arm….

I came up here yesterday, leaving home at 7:30, and I finally completed the 500 mile drive about 8 o'clock last night, although I did do a little reconnoitring before making my way up to lighthouse. When I finally found the end of the road, I was greeted by a blanket of fog. I couldn't see 5m in front of my face. Gutted. I decided it would be unwise to venture  along a precarious cliff top path in these conditions, so I decided to make my bed for the night. I rustled up myself a chicken curry, using my  best new camping gadget, the JetBoil Zip system to rehydrate my dinner and rolled out my sleeping bag. 

I set my alarm for 2am. If it was still foggy or looking decidedly unfavourable then, I was going to jump behind the wheel and do the 60 mile / 2 hour drive to Elgol and see what was happening there. It would have been a rash decision. I'd driven all this way. Endured so much junk food and caffeine that surely the Lord of the Light on the Landscape would be good to me. 

I awoke at 2am to see the waves crashing on the shore under the moonlight on a distant craggy cliff. I snoozed my alarm. All would be good.

I reappeared from my slumber about 3:30, packed a lightweight bag, threw on all the warm gear I could find and set off to find the shot.

I staggered around in the marsh for some time, completely failing to see the bleedinlgy obvious "Path this way" sign and arrive at a suitable position with soaking wet feet. Here I have now been sitting for the best part of 2 hours and the light just never really happened. 

It was pretty cloudy at dawn. Very little colour or character to the sky. Flat as a pancake and dull as dishwater. I'd done all this for the almighty Lord of the dappled countryside light to present me with this. I was not to be swayed. I  stayed my ground, I ground my hooves and snorted. "There will be light" I said. And lo and behold, I waited a bit. And a little bit more. And after some more bits of time passed, my damp feet and cold arse complained, eventually the Lord of the Light of the Landscape deemed it appropriate to throw some of it's magnificence upon my subject. I was honoured, and I quickly thrashed off as many different frames as possible before he deemed me unworthy yet again. I used as many focal lengths, apertures, neutral density stops as possible to make sure that I had all the ingredients to somehow be able to replicate in print, the majesty of the view before me.

I think now that I have probably pretty much exhausted all possibilities here with the current light, It may change, though it looks unlikely to. And with that I'm going to head inland and check out the wonders that Skye holds.

Incidentally, these 3 images are now available on my gallery to purchase as prints here. I will shortly be adding more images from my trip as I get round to processing them. Keep checking back for more. 

I also posted a bunch of iPhone snaps whilst on my travels - you can check them out here.