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So, MrsLJ and I have entered our fifth year in the wilds of Wester Ross. Leaving the comfort blanket of our home in Cumbria far behind us. Why did we even contemplate such a move. I’m not sure that I’d even scratched the photographic surface of Cumbria in that time. People, and by people I mean photographers, think of Cumbria in terms of its lakes and the various views that surround them. But Cumbria is so much more than that. There’s the quiet, pastoral beauty of the Eden Valley, the vast open spaces of the Pennines and the East Fellside. The Cumbrian views are quite polished. Civilisation is obvious at every turn. The dry stone walls, the boats that ply its lakes, the chains of pubs that open all year round.

If Wester Ross has a layer of civilisation, it's skin deep, a thin veneer only. The mountains are bigger. More rugged. Instead of manicured fields, there are miles of bog and rock.

If you dropped me anywhere in the Lakes, I would know exactly where I was, and I would be able to walk easily to the comfortable safety of the nearest pub. In contrast, I could get lost just about anywhere in Wester Ross. I could get lost ten minutes from my back door. I fondly imagined that the move would be great for my photography. In a way, it would just be more of the same things I’d always done. Just on a larger scale.

I thought I’d be exploring the relationship between mountains, Scots Pines, tumbling streams and bottomless lochs. But in truth, I failed miserably in that task. I found that photographing the (even bigger) view was not my forte. I can’t do it. Joe Cornish and the like can do it with ease. But my attempts to capture the grandeur of my locale left me seriously underwhelmed. Instead, I found that my head was being turned with greater regularity by the smaller view. Views that I’m fairly sure I would have walked past in the lakes.

Views that were as nothing to the grand views. But continued to hold my gaze the longer I looked at them. I’ve always said, “See with the heart, shoot with the head”. Perhaps it was time to take my own advice. To shoot the smaller view.

I’m not going to say the ‘intimate view’ as I hate that phrase. I love our landscape. Photographing it is my passion. Every image I make is intimate. They’re all a labour of love. And that love, that feeling of awe at the smaller and smaller world around me, led me to take all sorts of images that would have been beyond my more narrow-minded Cumbrian persona.

Do I question my failure at capturing the bigger view? No. It's just the way it is. If I dwelt on that failure, I might question our move to the desolate wastelands of the North. Instead of basking in my failure I’d rather look back at some of the images over the last three years or so with a smug feeling of pride. Having said all that, I’ve no idea what is next. But whatever it is, I’m looking forward to it.