Far Out: A Photo Essay on Scotland’s Outer Hebrides

The lands stretch without end and the skies rage like some old moody god. Inescapable, all-pervasive–on Scotland’s westernmost islands, the elements are your constant companions. Billion-year-old mountains rise up from the sea, in appearance quite literally like the moon, made up in parts of rocks that formed the lunar highlands. Simple houses stand far apart from one another, miles lie between one village and the next. People are a rare sight, but the age-old ruins are many. Just a few days spent around the Outer Hebrides give you a sense of the immensity of the universe, the island sights sometimes a picture of simplicity and perfection, that quickly get transformed into a dystopian vision as the sky greys, the winds start to howl and you look around and find you are the only person there.

A Hebridean welcome–a tractor and some boats on land, empty roads, and turbulent skies that followed us everywhere we went on these mysterious isles.

Scenes by the wayside / Achmore village, Isle of Lewis

Endless pastures with a view

Dun Carloway is Scotland’s best-preserved broch. Built during the Iron Age, possibly in the first century AD, the Carloway broch stands on top of a steep hill overlooking the changing tides of the towns and the sea below.

The Callanish stone circles from the late Neolithic era continue to puzzle the questioning visitor, but for the island residents, it is now also the starting point of a popular summer marathon.

Blackhouses at Gearrannan village. These are centuries-old traditional crofters’ houses, used for both livestock and people. Occupied till the 1970s, the blackhouses were given conservation status and preserved after their residents moved to more modern accommodation to avoid the difficult upkeep of drystone and thatchwork.

Sheep graze at Port Sto in Ness, unperturbed by the Atlantic gales.

Driving across the Western Isles, you may encounter few cars and perhaps no people, but you will always share the road with sheep.

Two islanders take a walk on an empty stretch of Luskentyre beach on the Isle of Harris and make a minimalist photographer very happy.

A couple walks a dog at a near-empty Luskentyre beach, whose beginning and end are nowhere in sight. What does it mean to live in a place so detached and desolate when the rest of the world can’t keep pace with itself?

The result is of course a dwindling population, owing to the inevitable migrations of the young to places of business and commerce, diversity and activity, in search of a life of more interesting complexities than the arduous mundaneness of Hebridean living–one of the few lifestyle options available on these faraway islands.
In evidence, a lone house in Scarista village, Isle of Harris.

Another empty road leading away from Scarista beach to the village, picture perfect under an expressive sky.

Dusk spreads across the sky over the harbour at Tarbert, the main town on the Isle of Harris.

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