Gordon Harrison Gallery

Information About Gordon C Harrison

Landscapes For Every Mood - A Photographers View of the Highlands

If you have found yourself at this page you have probably been browsing Scotland.org’s excellent Guide to the Scottish Highlands, and perhaps seen some of the photographs I have taken of the beautiful scenery the area has to offer. My wife and I relocated from Blantyre to a small village in the Highlands in 1993. That village is Laide, a tiny coastal village by the shores of Gruinard Bay in Wester Ross, about an hours drive south of Ullapool. We love living amongst the lochs and mountains in the Highlands, this is our home now and we have put down deep roots.

If you want peace and tranquillity, and a break from the everyday rat race, the Scottish Highlands is the place to be. The people are very friendly, the scenery is stunning, and there is great food and hospitality on offer at levels to suit every budget. There is a very strong community spirit in the Highlands, people know each other for miles around, and are always ready to help when needed. This is quite unlike my experiences in the many other places I’ve lived in.

There is a different pace and quality of life here which draws visitors back to the area again and again, so much so that many decide to relocate, as Isabel and I did!

My business is photography, primarily landscape photography, selling my products via outlets in the Highlands and also via my Landscapes For Every Mood website. My studio is in my home in Laide and I am happy to receive visitors, but please make an appointment, time is very limited, and I am often out on business, frequently photographing landscapes!

The art of landscape photography has for most of my life been a personal pursuit. To be alone in some remote place, waiting, watching for a moment of spectacular natural phenomena, gives me a sense of being at one with the natural world.

It is also moving and exciting to witness dramatic lighting transform the landscape before you. These moments can be fleeting and unpredictable. The challenge is to capture these rare moments in camera, and subsequently create from the image a photograph with the emotional impact felt at the time. To do this successfully requires both technical skills and an artistic vision, allowing others to share these moments of natural drama.

As a photographer I am responsible for the image capture, choosing the instant in time to record the scene, the composition of the image, the camera settings to record the light in a way which captures the mood of the scene, and other technical aspects. Often hours can be spent to capture an image, watching the lighting for the critical moment. Capturing the image starts another process, transferring that image to photographic paper. As much creativity and time will be spent at this stage as was spent capturing the image.

The cameras ability to freeze an instant in time, enables us to enjoy that moment at leisure, as opposed to the transient quality of moving images, and to capture the moment, both painters and photographers employ the same techniques of composition and effects of fine light to make their images, but will I leave it to a poet with the skill to put into words what I feel when alone in the hills with my camera.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is a society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;

I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

From Lord Byron's 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'

If you have enjoyed viewing my images and would like to see more, please visit my website at Landscapes For Every Mood. If you are looking to purchase a particular scene and you can’t find it on my website, just send an [Landscapes For Every Mood - A Photographers View of the Highlands email] via the contact form on my website. If I have photographed the scene I will send a sample of the image for you to view.

There is much you can discover about the Scottish Highlands from browsing the extensive information on Scotland.org’s Guide to the Highlands, but to truly experience it you will need to come and visit the area and meet the people.

We look forward to welcoming you to our community.

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