At the start of this trip, we wanted to nominate a day to revisit Elgol, as we have only been there once before when the weather wasn’t too good on that occasion. Elgol is such a lovely place, so we wanted the best day weather wise to visit this time, and today was the day.
After breakfast we loaded the car and set off, we had glimpses of blue sky above, but we still had scattered showers. We reached Broadford and turned towards Elgol it was raining so our hopes of getting any favourable weather conditions were diminishing.
However, as we got closer to Elgol the sky began to clear, and when we reached the sea front at Elgol we had clear skies with scattered cloud cover, the weather gods were being very kind to us today.
After a bite to eat and a drink in the car we got changed and set off on what would be a unbelievable days photography.
I walked down to the pier and little shingle beach where right from the off, I found a old winch lying on the beach, so I tried to make something form this, the old rusty steel work contracting to the blueish stones on the beach.
From here I found a little outcrop of rocks which were being covered by the incoming tide, so I set up to try and get a long exposure with the reseeding waves flowing around the rocks.
After this little session I headed over towards the large rocks and honeycomb cliffs to try and find the famous round rock.
After quite a bit of scrambling over rocks looking for this round rock, I eventually found it, but the tide was some distance below the rock, so I had two options wait here for the incoming tide to reach the rock, or continue looking around for other photography opportunities, I decided to do the latter.
It was not long before I found another rocky outcrop that was beginning to be submerged by the incoming tide, so I set up here and began to practice with various shutter speeds to capture the movement in the water to its best effect.
After this I noticed that every now and again a large wave would crash into the rocks on the rocky water’s edge, so I framed a shot looking towards the Cuillin Mountains, attached the remote shutter and waited for these larger waves to arrive, hoping to capture the water splashes in the air. After many practices some images on the back of the camera looked quite good.
All the time the weather conditions were the best we had experienced during our stay on Skye.
After this little session I returned to the round rock, only to find that the sea had still not reached the rock, although it was a lot closer than earlier in the morning. I decided to frame up a shot and get some images of the scene, again using different shutter speeds to gain different effects of the sea conditions. Looking at the images on the back of the camera, they were not standout quality, but they were reasonable.
I then had a little dabble at shooting some of the little round crevices in the rocks surface, these were partly filled with water, so I had a scramble about looking for some interesting pebbles that I could place in these crevasses to make some close-up shots of them, my thinking being that if I processed these as Black and White images, they might make an abstract photo.
After this I took a series of panoramic shots of the scene across the bay towards the Black Cuillin Mountains, the shadows and highlights hitting these was sublime.
At this pint I looked at my watch and was amazed to find that I had been on the beach at Elgol for over three hours, my god how time flies by when you are having fun!!.
I decided to head back towards the car, snapping a couple of photos as I went, but as I got back on to the road, the conditions and scene behind towards the Cuillin Mountains changed drastically, the skies became dark, with the sun shining from the south towards the massive localised rain clouds in the north which began to discharge the water within them, this created breath-taking scenes of brightly light rainbows against a backdrop of very dark skies.
Single, double, and even treble rainbows were visible at times, at one time a complete ark of a rainbow was visible over the School at Elgol.
I was like a kid in a sweet shop, snapping images as the conditions changed. Some of these photos turning out to be some of the best I have taken, definitely good enough to go into my portfolio.
As I got back to the car, I was smiling to myself at what we had just witnessed, what weather, what light, what a day’s photography we had just had.
All experienced by only us, not one other photographer was present that I could see, this morning had made the whole trip worthwhile.
I was shocked to find that we had been at Elgol for over 4 hours, it was time for a bite to eat, a drink and take in what we had experienced, simply breath-taking.
What a truly special days photography to bring our short stay on the Isle of Skye.
