One More Book

Dear Diary,

I seem to be on a literary roll lately.  The photo book on my trip to the Hebrides in 2005 arrived late yesterday.  It is the biggest photo book I've created yet and I am thrilled with it.  I've made a collage of the cover, a two page spread in the book and one of the images I made on South Harris.  The pages show the book that inspired the trip, Tir a'Mhurain, Paul Strand's photos from South Uist in 1954.  It also shows his photograph of a piper.  I met the man's nephew while I was there and photographed him in front of the same rock.  He was restoring his grandfather's croft.  Six years later he let me stay in it for a week.  What a great experience that was!

I've done small books of this trip in black and white, which was all I did back then, but in this book I revisited all the original files and created a book in color.  Many images I'd never used before and hadn't looked at in 15 years.  This trip was my first foray back into photography after a 25 year hiatus, the first digital camera I ever used and my first laptop computer with photo editing software.  Although I majored in photography and filmmaking at college, I was a complete novice with this new technology.  I can easily say that this trip fundamentally changed my life and I'm looking forward to a return to Lewis and Harris next year.  It will be my 5th trip to Scotland!