Artist's statement

Having grown up in an urban environment, I have always been attracted to wild and lonely places where I can be myself, rather than what others want me to be. When I started photographing these places, I felt a real bond forming. The act of taking photographs of a location forces me to see its true nature and heightens my awareness of its unique qualities. Making photographs is for me like meditation, a way of getting into intimate touch with the visible world around me, and through it, with myself.

My pictures are never previsualised or planned, I feel strongly that pictures must come from contact with things at the time and place of taking. At such times I rely on my intuition to guide me to the composition that best conveys what I want to say. I am not interested in simply recording the places I have been, I prefer instead to concentrate on interesting shapes, patterns, textures and colour combinations.

Because my pictures are never planned, the lighting is often less than ideal. So whilst in general I like my photography to be straight, unmanipulated, devoid of all tricks (Stieglitz), I will use Photoshop to change contrast and colour saturation if I feel it better conveys what I want to say.

The more mundane facts

I'm based on the Isle of Skye in northern Scotland. I moved here in 1997, and for 10 years ran workshops in landscape photography. I now devote myself to recording the flora and fauna of Skye (www.skyeinfocus.co.uk).