“Duncansby Stacks” — Sea Stacks at John O’Groats on Scotland’s North Sea Coast.
Our big loop through northwest Scotland began at Inverness, went to Skye, then headed north with stops at Ullapool and Altnaharra. From there we crossed the northern coast to John O’Groats. Why John O’Groats? it feels like one of the more remote places in Scotland – it is on the North Sea and beyond there are only the Orkney Islands. I also recall running into a cyclist on our previous visit to Scotland who was riding from the furthest south point in England to John O’Groats, and that piqued my interest.
“Isle of Rum” — The Inner Hebrides Isle of Rum, viewed from Elgol, Isle of Skye.
I made this photograph of the distant Isle of Rum from the hills right above the Scottish village of Elgol, on the Isle of Skye. It does not seem like this is one of the more popular places on Skye, to say the least. It is a long drive on remote single-track roads and, to the best of my knowledge, there are no big, iconic tourist sites there. It seems like a quiet place, and we had to search around to find one little place where we could get a cup of coffee and a snack. We were the only customers.
“Sea Stacks and Surf, Big Sur” — Rough surf and rugged sea stacks along the Big Sur coastline.
California’s coast is quite varied — in places you can find classic wide beaches, but there are impossibly rugged, inaccessible areas, too. (One section in far-northern California is so rugged that engineers were forced to divert the route of Highway 1 far inland.) This photograph comes from a section of the upper Big Sur coast that combines that ruggedness with a degree of accessibility.
I visited on the late-June morning because friends and fellow photographers were visiting the area — so it was a chance both to photograph and to meet up with them. We arrived very early, before the tourist crowds, and photographed soon after the sun cleared the coastal hills and light arrived on the rugged, rocky shoreline and surf.
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“Sea Stacks and Surf” — Sea stacks in morning light along the rugged Big Sur coastline.
Way back in June I met up with my friends Franka Gabler and David Hoffman to photograph the upper Big Sur area of the California coast. They were there to see an exhibit of photographs by John Sexton and Anne Larsen, so I did the 90 minute drive down to Big Sur to meet them. After some confusion about who was where — and no cell service to sort it out — I finally figured out that they were on the bluffs above this area where Soberanes Creek enters the Pacific Ocean.
This is a particularly rugged section of the Big Sur coast. While it doesn’t feature the high cliffs that make other areas essentially inaccessible, here there are rugged rocky headlands and many sea stacks, especially in the shallow bay between the Soberanes Creek and Soberanes Point.
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