Land and people - Hebrides

Here's an idyllic scene, Loch Coruisk at the heart of the Cuillins on a perfectly clear spring day; blue skies and snow on the summits. It isn't a sight I see all that often; usually the weather and the light can be a bit more challenging, which is why my pictures can be described often as moody or atmospheric. On a fortnight's photographic tour, you usually get a bit of everything, sunshine and showers.

On this trip I was keen to balance the landscape pictures which tend to have an emphasis on unpopulated and pristine natural beauty. This is one view, and a beguiling one, but not the only story to be told about such environments. The John Muir Trust owns land on which several crofting communities live, and the organisation also has partnership arrangements with the communities of North Harris and Galson, amongst others. On this short journey my aim was to give a sense of these environments, and the wide range of people who you might meet there.

Coruisk and Loch Scavaig is one of the most dramatic scenes in the United Kingdom, even on a calm spring day. I visit often, sometimes taking the lazy way in with the holiday makers on the Bella Jane or the Misty Isle; on this visit I was also able to see it from the point of view of Ruaridh from Torrin and Gordon from Elgol as they harvested prawns, which make their way to restaurants in London and Spain. "There's a good living to be made from prawns if you know what you're doing," according to Gordon. However it was suggested to me later that good prawn numbers may indicate otherwise poor fish stocks. Ruaridh was a butcher, and still keeps cattle on his Torrin croft, but started prawn fishing four years ago - "The best decision I could have taken." As Gordon circles the boat, Ruaridh fires out the baited creels, and both fire out insults at each other. I was a guest, so I was immune, and Ruaridh took great care that I didn't get tangled in the lines and pulled over board. That would have ruined my day.

Gordon's father, Ian Mackinnon, manages the Strathaird Farm which is also owned by the Trust. I met him briefly on a very wet day, feeding the cattle. He was reminiscing a little about Ian Anderson, the Jethro Tull band leader who put a lot of his money into the estate before eventually selling it to the Trust. "On stage he was like a demented chicken, but he was a very shrewd business man." He also pointed out that one of the farm buildings was a church. "The minister gathered everybody into the church to meet the sheriff, who evicted everybody from the land." 

One of the books I had with me on this trip was Ian Mitchell's Isles of the West (published by Birlinn), a journey through areas of the Hebrides owned by conservation organisations. Ian Mackinnon is quoted in that book; I'll paraphrase, "The indigenous population thinks differently from the population on the outskirts of London or anywhere in the world. The thinking is different...People have their roots on the land here. If you look back in the records, it is all the same names. That has been the role of crofting, keeping people on the land." 

Ian was a little less reflective than that the next time I saw him - beasting about on a quad bike like a big kid. He was one of a squad of people roped in by Ally MacPherson the Trust's land manager on Skye, to help with the Camasunary beach clean-up. Earlier in the week a team of volunteers, coordinated by Sandy Maxwell, had collected piles of rubbish from the Camasunary beach, which had to be removed by boat - a more delicate operation than expected.