I love Orkney

Birsay, Orkney, a September afternoon  in 2005, a day when the blessings and merits of a digital camera really were well proven.

For some reason, the light, low and bright, the state of the tide, well out, and presumably the season, encouraging, amongst other things, a proliferation of orange algae, I was able to 'get my eye in' and in the space of forty-five minutes took around eighty-five photos along the beach to the west of the spit that leads to the causeway across which one reaches the Brough of Birsay.

Deep cut shadowed rocks, barnacle patterns and seaweed strands - a session which left me high with visual delight.

Returning less than a month later, similar state of light and tide, nothing at all was perceptible of these riches.