Skye At Night books are the ideal Christmas present, and I’m expecting a jump in demand so it’s time to get ready…

A significant proportion of the second edition of Skye At Night has a problem. Due to a binding issue, some pages are in the wrong place. Here's what's going to happen next...

That's £2,650 sent to the Skye Mountain Rescue Team now, representing the profit from the first print run. Very nice! In this post I share some of the considerations in making donations like this, and how the amount varies depending on how the books are sold.

Amazing, The first edition of Skye At Night has just sold out only two weeks after the launch. I'm delighted, especially as those 250 copies in the first edition will result in a donation of about £2500 for the Skye Mountain Rescue Team. The second edition is being printed right now.

“A gem of a book”.

“The best photographic book highlighting the Isle of Skye to be printed this century”.

Wonderful quotes from the first review of Skye At Night in the West Highland Free Press. It feels like the culmination of a massive effort to make a mad idea into a real, tangible thing to hold and treasure.

The book is launched. Here’s what happened at the launch event which took place at Armadale Castle on Friday 2nd August. What a lovely evening, with a chunky first donation for the Skye Mountain Rescue Team.

How hard can it be to produce, launch and distribute a book? Very hard as it turns out. But launch it I will! The launch is scheduled for the 2nd of August at 7pm at the Stables, Armadale Castle. Yes, I get to launch my book at an actual Scottish castle, and seat of Clan Donald. Amazing. Lots of preparation is happening as I worry about a million little things.

I had the pleasure of being gently quizzed about my Skye At Night book by Suzy Lee of Radio Skye. I first met Suzy at Ros T’s album launch in Portree and it was excellent to get reacquainted. Radio Skye have a very cool studio in Portree which broadcasts across the Skye and Lochalsh.

I get a lot of questions about how I shoot these group “environmental portrait” images. Here I go through how they are lit and why there’s no light in shot, and how the post-processing is done.

OMG this is nerve wracking! I’ve reviewed the final hardcopy proof from my printer, Swallowtail Print and it’s now approved for printing. Last week they sent me a full copy of the book, unbound (so all pages are separate) to check and there have ben many hours of proof reading and minor corrections. The trigger is now well and truly pulled, and now I wait for a pallet of 250 first edition Skye At Night books to be delivered in 3-4 weeks.

Now my Leica Q3 is one year old, and very well used, it’s a good time to do a comprehensive review of this little camera. I think it’s only once you’ve used a camera in real-world, highly stressed situations that you get a real understanding of its capabilities. I’ve had plenty of those situations in the last twelve months! Let’s go…

I had the pleasure of photographing Kelly and Alastair who were working the night shift at Broadford Ambulance Station. Here’s how it went.

The Isle of Skye is home to the International Otter Survival Fund, a charity that helps with the conservation of otters around the world. On this night I photographed Ben at their Sanctuary in Broadford and heard more about their work.

During the winter, the Torabhaig distillery runs 24x7 with three shifts of distillers keeping production going non-stop. On this wild and stormy night in January, Doc and Niall were on duty among the beautiful copper stills and traditional wooden washbacks.

And it’s over to Sleat Furniture Services to photograph Stuart Shone inside and outside his workshop. Bright strip lights and high winds make for an interesting shoot.

A first for me - photographing ice pancakes on a freezing river in the darkness of a moonless night. What a great experience. A very unusual subject, set off nicely by a very bright green airglow in the sky.

A cold night in a cemetery is not at the top of most peoples’ to-do list, but it was for me one bitterly cold February night.

A cracking visit to Achnacloich to meet Neil and Ruariadh, directors of Dualchas Architects, as they review plans for a new project. The setting is Neil’s own house of his own design which is 100% stunning.

How to photograph some artisan weavers in a shed at night? I found out when I visited Andrea and Roger who founded Skye Weavers up in Glendale.

As ever with this sort of thing, I went with an idea of the key shot I wanted, and ended up with a much bigger variety of compositions that I expected. Always keep an open mind!

A beautiful, still, cold, clear night in a little-known corner of Skye yielded 3 lovely photographs for the book. What a place this island is!