Scotland in October
Fly to Glasgow to shoot the streets with friends, then drive north to Ullapool, ferry to Stornoway, and follow increasingly vague directions to a small white house by slate-blue water.
In October, I flew to Glasgow to meet up with my good friends Rick Lepage and Hudson Henry, who had just finished teaching a pair of workshops on the Isle of Skye. The plan: spend a day street shooting in the city, then head north to make pictures, talk photography as much as we could, and have a bit of whiskey while we were at it.
My favorite photo from the Glasgow day captures Rick and Hudson looking for their next shot on Sauchiehall Street while a delivery rider barrels between them. The delivery riders in Glasgow were absolutely relentless that day and we had several near misses before and after this moment. Yet my friends were always in the act of looking for their next shot, cameras ready.
From Glasgow, we drove north through Inverness to Ullapool and caught the ferry across the Minch. Once off the ferry in Stornoway, we drove to Tarbert and then followed a set of semi-complete directions past the post office: Keep going up by the recycling center and then look for a really small sign next to a turn off to a gravel track road, then follow the road down to a little white house by the edge of the water. That’s Lingerbay on the Isle of Harris.
It was quiet. Really quiet. At 58ºN, it’s not the furthest north I’ve ever been, but it’s the furthest north I’ve been in Great Britain. Things moved slow. It was chilly, and moody, but somehow lovely all the same. The weather changed its mind a lot. At times, it felt grey, and then you’d notice turquoise in the water and golden in the moorland. The cell service was advertised as 4G, but ran at 3G speed, keeping us just connected enough to the world, and no more.
We were there to make pictures, talk photography, and be somewhere for a bit without the need to rush. Politics kept coming up, and we’d indulge it for a bit, then shove the topic aside in favor of talk of composition and seeing. Between the group we had a Sony RX1R III, a Leica Q3, and a Leica Q3 43 along, and swapping them between us in the field turned into a full side-by-side comparison.
You’d never imagine that you’d find a speciality coffee shop on the empty road between Tarbert and Luskentyre. Certainly you wouldn’t expect one in a vintage caravan housed alongside the wild moorland. But there is and it’s called Isle Coffee Harris.
It’s reportedly quite good, and some days you can even get a cinnamon swirl with your cortado. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to sample it ourselves, as every time we drove by it was either too early or too late. Next time, for sure.