From the main isle Hirta, that makes up the group of islands known as St. Kilda, this images was made looking out towards Boreray, Stac Lee & Stac an Armin.

I visited St. Kilda in May of this year.

Due to the low cloud that would hug the island for days, and the nesting Skua's, we couldn't actually get anywhere much. The wind and low visibility made for an impossible trip to the other side of the island (it's also amazingly very steep). But I think it was the birds that scared me the most. They attack you by diving right towards your field of vision with claws out in front. It's a very menacing pose and a good defence mechanism for keeping predators away from their nests.

Myself and my friend managed to get to this spot however, which isn't far away from the small Historic Scotland camp site (yes, there's a camp site there - shhhhh, I didn't tell you!). There's a very obvious dip that I found. It's not until today that I've noticed it's almost an exact compositional version of Joe Cornish' image (page 72) of his beautiful book 'Scotland's Coast'. I think this is interesting because I'm wondering if the reason I made this was a response to a subconsious memory of his image, or because it's one of the very few opportunities in this area of Hirta to make good compositions? I know for certain that I did not set up to copy - I much prefer to go to a location and find my own interpretation, but sometimes there isn't much of a choice, and certain landscapes dictate 'tripod-hole-syndrome'. So apologies Joe for making a similar shot - it was not my intention :-)

I've wanted to come here for a very long time. It is a fascinating place and my friend Chris had been reading up about the entire history before we got there!

Happy holiday memories (I still have dreams of my scalp sailing away in the claws of a very large bird).