Mangurstadh Sea's
By Alistair Keddie
11 Jul 2009
Huge sea cliffs and stacks dominate the wild, windswept west coast of Lewis near Mangurstadh in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. They sit above a boiling and restless sea that often throws its might against them in violent storms, waves breaching and bursting over their tops. Somedays, the cliffs will light dramatically towards the end of the day with intense and often fleeting bursts of strong red or golden light. Often, they don't. The weather here changes so fast. Days go, light threatens and disappoints or frustratingly happens out of the blue while your cooking dinner for friends. Well, there's always tomorrow...
I spent four or five days and nights shooting around here, living with friends in a house down the coast. I kept returning here, to a point called Aird Feinis, a narrow and flat topped peninsula of rock that juts into the sea above the stacks of Geodh an Fhithich.
Mangursta, Mangersta, Mangurstadh, Mangarastadir, like many of the names here, flows over time from Old Norse and a history of early Viking occupation. Apparently meaning, fluid in itself, comes from the Old Norse word for a pedlar or merchant, 'Mangari' who had a farm or homestead here.
Everything flows, the light flows unpredictably across the landscape, striking at will, the sea flows interminably, tracing passages and patterns across its surface that long exposure shots seem to capture, the names flow, from Norse to Gaelic to English and back again, tidal.
I remember running on the night the light hit, running over the clifftops around the spots I'd scouted on previous nights, laden with camera and tripod, running through gold and red, long shadows and delicate pinks as the sun set, desperate to capture as much of the setting scene as I could, then staying out late and shooting till dark, pushing the exposures out in the extended summer twilight of these northern latitudes. And glad I got these shots after only four or five nights, glad the sea shows something of its power to smash walls of rock and glad that red beam of sunlight chose this night to strike.
