Fingal's Cave, Staffa

The Hebrides, Scotland

Unframed archival pigment print

Fingal's Cave on the Isle of Staffa is one of the highlights of any tour of the Inner Hebrides. The cave is washed by waves that echo off the columnar basalt walls in a melodious way. Easy to see why the young Felix Mendelssohn wrote his famous overture The Hebrides after traveling here. The cave has been famous since naturalist Joseph Banks promoted it to the wider world in the late 18th century, after which it became a "must see" site in the Victorian era. Such a site presented me with the problem of how to photograph such a well known landmark. My solution came after seeing an old engraving of a Victorian party exploring the cave in a rowboat – with a man up front holding a lantern! That gave me the idea of lighting the cave, which I accomplished with the help of two lads from neighboring Iona who were back in the cave with really big flashlights.  All of this at about 3:45 in the morning, long before sunrise, the predawn light so very blue and beautiful.  This was a central image in our National Geographic story on the Hebrides of Scotland.

FINE ART PRINTS

The print is made on Epson's Legacy Baryta II paper, a beautiful OBA free heavy fine art paper which makes a sumptuous visual presentation. Printed with Epson's Ultrachrome inks for the greatest archival print longevity and color gamut. 

Printed personally by Jim, individually signed and numbered, embossed with Jim's studio blind stamp to confirm that each print was created by him. 

Our print sizes denote the actual image size. Printed with a wide margin of white paper to facilitate handling, so the total paper size will be larger.