In the summer of 2016 Nicki, her husband and their two cats decided that there was probably even more to life than their very comfortable existence in Cheltenham, so they packed up their belongings and moved to Orkney, a group of islands on the 59th parallel and situated off the north east coast of Scotland, at the point where the Atlantic Ocean meets the North Sea.  They have no regrets.

We tried really hard to move to the Isle of Harris.  I longed to be able to gorge on the endless photographic opportunities and to immerse myself in life on the edge, in the place where the Atlantic collides with North West Europe and has the weather to prove it. But the universe had other ideas, so here we are, a year into our Orkney adventure.

From the air Orkney resembles a jigsaw puzzle fit for a giant, fretsawed out of the sea and painted emerald green.  At first I was entranced by the skies, huge 180 degree panoramas of endless shape-shifting beauty, but after several months of walking around with my head quite literally in the clouds, the first winter storms started to arrive.

We are surrounded by water - Orkney has nearly 600 miles of coastline - and I quickly realised that my longing to experience the primal power of the elements had been granted to me, that the place deep inside me that craves a little danger was standing to attention.

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It is impossible to stand up in these high winds so I crawl from the car and hope for the best, aware that I am taking a risk but with an absolute need to be here, to connect with the forces that since the beginning of time have shaped this place that I now call home. In order to envelop myself in the storm I must be at eye level to the massive waves, as big as houses, as they come thundering in, so I hunker down under a cliff in a spot that could have been carved out just for me by all the raging tempests that have ever been. The sound is deafening and I can taste the salt spray on my lips. I offer up a silent prayer that I and my camera equipment will survive and then I get to work.

I draw on my experiences as a bird photographer; anticipation and quick reactions are key skills here. I spend a while observing the action as the spot that I have chosen is complex; the waves often come from two directions and it is a rocky, craggy place - I pause to think of how many ships and lives have been lost along this notorious stretch of coastline. If I am lucky the sun might break through, illuminating the turbulence with all the colours of the Caribbean, but what I am really looking for is the point at which the triumvirate of wind, tide and rock combine to produce a moment of power so absolute that it is hard to comprehend.

Now remember to press the shutter button…

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Orkney is a land steeped in mythology and folk tales, from Fin Folk and selkies to giants and hogboons, and I get the strongest feeling that magic is alive and well here.  Inevitably much of the folklore is based around the sea - the sight of a boat being swallowed alive by sea haar is alluringly hypnotic and surreal, transforming even the largest cruise liners into the ghost ship of the Flying Dutchman, doomed to sail the seas for ever.  The simmer dim, the perpetual twilight of midsummer in the Northern Isles, is other-worldly, seemingly filled with enchantment and the supernatural, but there is faerie magic here too, or so I found when I started to photograph the wild flowers of Orkney.

In Orkney it is the wind that shapes everything. I have long been fascinated by movement; dance, music, wind and light on the surface of water, birds in flight, and by a quality of suggestion and mystery that is possessed by so much of the art and music that I admire. It is that sense of something fleeting, not quite seen and impossible to hold on to, like impressionist chords sliding and evaporating into another tonality and with a rhythm that is often vague and free.  Here I feel a purity of expression and a joyousness; watch fulmars scything effortlessly through the air on a stormy day and tell me that they are not loving every second!

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I give myself over to the idea that the combination of wind and flowers will have an exuberance, freedom within a form, like jazz to the classical.  Again, I must be at eye level to my subject matter, so I don the waterproofs…Orkney can be boggy…and get down on the ground. Using manual focus, and almost always a telephoto lens, I immerse myself in another place. But I must be still and quiet, absorbed in a concentration that shuts out everything outside of this nanoscopic universe. I search, shifting the focus millimetre by millimetre. What am I looking for? I don’t really know, except that I will know it when I see it, that in-between space, the unseen landscape that holds its secrets close.  For here, even though the image will be static, there will be flow and movement. Some days I return empty-handed - the faeries will not tell - but some days I am granted a glimpse into their world, a privilege that is only given to those who want to see.

“Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices,

That if I then had waked after long sleep

Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked

I cried to dream again.”

William Shakespeare,  The Tempest