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Mark Littlejohn
Mark Littlejohn is an outdoor photographer who lives on the edge of a beach in the desolate wastelands of the Highlands of Scotland. He takes photographs of anything unlucky enough to pass in front of his camera.
The sky is a clear, featureless blue. Not a cloud anywhere to interrupt the monotone monotony. And yet, despite the obvious lack of obstructions, the sun is shining wanly on the land and sea that surrounds me. The spring colours aren’t vibrant. They’re washed out, desaturated almost. I’m wandering out of the house slowly with my old dog. At a pace we can both manage.
I don’t have a camera slung over my shoulder. My camera used to be a permanent fixture. Part of my body, my soul. Not so much a piece of highly engineered metal and glass but flesh and blood. As much a part of me as my heart or my lungs. Why haven’t I taken the camera out with me this morning? I don’t know. Tiredness perhaps. Not that I’m burning the candle at both ends. These days are long since past. I’m weary from travelling backwards and forwards across the country on one family errand or another.
But as I wander slowly with the dog, we’ve meandered down to the little beach that runs along in front of our house. I’ve let the slow moving dog off his lead now that we’re on the soft sand. There’s no one in sight. He has his little slice of heaven all to himself. And all of a sudden he’s no longer slow moving. He’s running like a rocking horse, the same sort of motion, head up, then bottom up. Bouncing. Mouth open in a big, slathery grin. And I can’t help but smile at him.
And as I smile, I notice the patterns in the sand. Left by the outgoing tide earlier this morning. The patterns are beautiful. That soft light I mentioned earlier is showing them off perfectly.
I lift my head and look up from the sand. Staring out to sea. Clisham, the tallest mountain on Harris, is clearly visible above the distinct outlines of the Shiant Isles. There’s a silveriness on the horizon. A dividing line between the distinctly different blues of sea and sky. I’m not sure what that line is. A slight hint of mist perhaps, or maybe it's just a calmer stretch of sea. I don’t know. And I’m not really interested in knowing.
All I know is that my shoulders have dropped slightly and my breathing has slowed. My brain's working easily again. It's thinking about how I can capture these quiet little moments of beauty. That marriage of heart and head, thinking about how I would capture what it is that I see in my mind's eye. A reminder to myself that it was always the landscape itself that inspired me to pick up a camera in the first place.
Photography has never been a cerebral exercise for me. I’ve no great technical expertise. My processing is rudimentary at best. My photography is more to do with bringing a little peace to my soul. Putting a smile back on my face. I was at a wonderful photography festival in Germany last year, where I was one of a number of speakers at the event.
And in a way, I felt slightly guilty when it was my turn to stand up in front of everyone. All I did was talk about myself and show some pretty pictures of my local landscapes. Some big views and some little ones. But. Perhaps before we think about saving the world, we need to think about saving ourselves first.
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