'Windswept' with Nicolla
These trips outside the city started becoming rarer and rarer for a while, as life got in the way and priorities began to shift around the mid-2019 mark. Turbulent days. I was faced with some life-decisions and circumstances that left me anxious to say the least. Without getting into the nitty-gritty, it was at around this time that plenty of the personal targets I’d set for myself for 2019 came to a complete standstill. Scratch that. It wasn’t a stand still. It was as if everything was suddenly up in the air, and I was right in the middle of a tornado of ‘W-T-F’. Everything I had to do for the ensuing months was done to keep my head above water, to get through to the next hurdle, and then the next, and then the next. It got in the way of my goals, my relationships, my creativity… What’s worse is that I felt like I didn’t care. I felt burnt out. I woke up, went through the motions, got back home, continued the motions, and went to sleep. Rinse, repeat. It was resignation, and it was so unlike me.
Derek Dunlop’s suggestion for a collaboration was timely, so I jumped at the opportunity to plan a proper, outdoor, location shoot after a while. Fast forward a week or so, we drove to Whitelee Windfarms, accompanied by Nicolla, Nikole, and Gemma. It was a particularly windy day, which I was so glad about, considering I’d become hell-bent on attempting to capture that ‘windswept’, up-in-the-air feeling. That odd sensation that everything in life is in haphazard motion, and the simultaneous submission to that chaos.
Perhaps I overshot it, or over-thought it, but I’m pretty happy with the result, which I consider an added bonus on top of the therapeutic impact of actually getting out of the city to create things. I’m still pretty surprised at how easy it was to get together, and to work so seamlessly on bringing a mood and idea to life - go team! Added kudos to everyone for powering through the freezing Scottish winds to make this entire thing possible!
