I took the van up to Mallaig and caught the ferry across to Eigg. You’re not allowed to take a vehicle onto the island — it’s too small, and you don’t need one anyway. The couple I was staying with collected me from the ferry terminal and drove me to their smallholding, where I’d be sleeping in a damp but perfectly comfortable little caravan.
It was winter. The sort of trip where the days are short and the weather dictates everything. During the day I fed the chickens that wandered up to the caravan door, read a book, and went for short walks when the rain eased. It was the kind of slow rhythm I’ve always slipped into easily on the islands.
When the light looked promising in late afternoon, I made my way down to Laig Bay.
The beach there is extraordinary — the sand is a natural mixture of pale quartz and dark basalt grains. When the waves pull back, they drag and sort the colours into patterns: stars, cross-hatching, sweeping lines, things that look almost sketched by hand. No two visits ever show the same shapes. It’s one of those rare places where the landscape feels like it’s actively drawing.
I stayed for a while, watching the beach change as the tide worked its way out. When the light finally fell, I walked back to the caravan in darkness, listening to the wind move across the croft.
The next morning I returned to the beach at dawn. It was freezing — a thin crust of ice lay across the upper sand and crunched quietly underfoot. The tide had reshaped the whole place overnight.
That’s when I saw them: a row of delicate fractal patterns carved by freshwater runoff from the land, sweeping in a gentle arc across the beach. They looked like small rivers, branching and re-branching, a natural sketch made during the night.
I set up the tripod and composed a tight frame with the fractal patterns close to the lens, leading the eye out towards the twin peaks of Rùm on the horizon — a shape that is always there, always familiar, always mysterious.
It felt like a quiet morning. Just me, the cold air, and a fleeting pattern in the sand that I knew wouldn’t last long.
Weeks later, encouraged by a friend, I entered the image into the 2010 Landscape Photographer of the Year competition. I didn’t think much more about it. I’d never entered before and had no expectations.
Then the email came.
The photograph from that freezing morning on Eigg — that simple arrangement of sand, water and light — had won the Classic View category.
It still feels fitting. That image wasn’t the product of a spectacular trip or grand conditions. It came from a small caravan on a quiet croft, a cold dawn, and a moment of noticing something subtle before the tide washed it away.
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