The Isle of Skye/[Gulls Nest, late on mid-summer night, Isle of Skye]

From the Getty Museum record

*I had discovered the eggs one sunny afternoon, but as the light was then too flat and the nest looked too pretty for this very wild part of the island, I decided to come back in the evening. It was almost midsummer-night and the pale green twilight started rather late. When I approached the nest on an isolated outpost of rocks, an enormously large gull which had been sitting with the eggs, flew off and circled low around my head barking like a dog. It was windstill, the mountains of the Scottish mainland were reflected in the sea--the light was now just right for the picture.* In November 1947 Bill Brandt published "Over the sea to Skye," a photo-essay on the Isle of Skye with commentary by the photographer, in the magazine *Lilliput.* The essay concluded with this photograph of the gull's nest, which Brandt described above. By using a wooden camera with a primitive, shutterless, pinhole aperture rather than a standard lens, he was able to render this wide-angle view of the nest in the foreground with minute detail as well as to represent the majestic mountain and calm sea in the distance.