We are now about 10 miles off the Scottish west coast, on Isle of Eigg. Wikipedia says it's 9 km long and 5 km wide (which makes its total area of 31 square kilometers). Locals say there are about 100 people permanently living here. That means we have seen the most of them in the small harbour pub when we arrived. Bruce Percy is saying it is one of the most photogenic islands in Britain. We have not seen many of them but we both absultely trust Bruce and our own eyes.
Bay of Laig (photographed by Ota)
There are two incredibly beautiful sand beaches here - Bay of Laig and Singing Sands. We have spent the entire week coming back on them in a search for some good landscape imagery. However boring it may sound, actually the variance between the high and low tide that could have been over 100 meters of (new) beach; diverse and ever-changing lighting conditions as well as plenty of sand formations made the same places look completely different each time.
Bay of Laig (photographed by Marek)
On top and most importantly, we had a chance to spend some considerable time with Bruce Percy, one of the most influential landscape photographers of today as we came here to attend his workshop. Bruce has just been amazing not only by sharing his visions and experiences on location but also afterwards, when we went through images shot. His sense of rather abstract interpretation of the landscape and ability to break it up into shapes and forms has been extremely inspirational. As well, Bruce was at all not shy to share his post-process practices with all of us. He is eventually the funny Scottish lad to talk to just about anything.
So the combination of this exclusive company, couple of fellow photographers and the beautiful landscape is making our trip here well worthwile. Bearing in mind it took almost 24 hours to get here, to the mere toe of the European Union.
Why I talk about it. This place absolutely does not feel like the part of EU as we know it, which is great. People apparently live their simple rural lives here in happiness and independently, reconnected with the past and nature. We have no cell phone signal for the entire week (yes, there's a landline and wifi works well here as you can see :-)). I was trying to remember when it was last time that I disconnected my phone for more than few minutes to switch a network. I think it was before I got my first cell around 1998... It is a strange feeling but I sort of like it. For now, it's been so revealing to hide away for just a few days from our busy way of surviving. I wish I could make it permanent one day, any day, but certainly way before the end of my days...