Neist Point, Skye, Scotland
One Year Ago
One thing that Facebook is good for are the memories that it pops up with from time to time. The social media on my desktop has been reminding me for the last week that a year ago my wife and I were in Scotland, and that on this date– a year ago - we were exploring her ancestral homeland of Skye, Scotland, and so the image made one year ago of Neist Point – a small piece of land that thrusts out into the Atlantic and which has a gorgeous backdrop of green hillsides and steep cliffs, with the ocean swirling and crashing below.
I must say that going to Scotland in general, and Skye in particular, was an eye opener and it changed the way I thought about photography quite a bit. Going to Scotland taught me that when we travel we see “new” things, things that are not really new simply new to us. So we get excited and make photographs that record what we discover. When I returned to Nova Scotia, which is after all New Scotland, I saw our home Province “like new” and have spent the last year making images that reflect some of the things many of us I think take for granted and perhaps are a bit jaded by.
A friend has written a book entitled “Waking Up in My Own Backyard”, where Sandra Phinney describes the very interesting things one can find right here at home. I think that she and I are on the same wavelength and I have discovered much here that can be photographed to show people things in ways they may not have thought about , or which are really things one hasn’t fully “seen”.
It comes down to my favourite Henry David Thoreau quote - “It’s not what you look at, it’s what you see”.
We often travel through every day life and don’t really see what’s all around us, we just look. Nova Scotia has much beauty and much to be thankful for. We just need to look at it as if we are travellers – with fresh eyes and as if seeing something for the first time. Then, perhaps we really see. And I hope that I can keep sharing those sights with you all.
