Finding Inspiration
Rediscovering my love of photography in a journey through Assynt.
Hello, I’m Gill and I write a photography blog inspired by the landscapes of Suffolk and beyond. Please subscribe to read more of my writing and visit my website to view my images.
It is almost 4 weeks since I wrote my last blog post on what it means to be creative. At the time I was struggling with my photography. I had fallen out of love, not with the art of photography but with the business. I felt under pressure, trying desperately to create new work but failing to feel inspired. My weekly schedule felt challenging and my creativity felt as if it had deserted me.
After 3 weeks in Assynt in the north west of Scotland I feel as if I have rediscovered some of what was missing. A change of location, some new challenges and a completely different landscape have worked their magic and I am now home feeling re inspired. I went to Scotland looking for the ingredient that was missing from my photography but instead I found what was missing from me.
I have always considered Scotland to be a healing place. It is somewhere I feel completely at home and at one with nature, somewhere I am familiar with but not complacent about and somewhere I feel at ease. Its landscapes are giving places, demanding nothing from me but providing me with endless sources of wonder and inspiration. They also challenge me, and maybe that was what I was missing at home.
Pressure, even if it is self imposed, is always a barrier to creativity. The need to be my best and to produce my best work, again and again is hard. When I know I have to work to a deadline ideas stop flowing, images feel forced and the enjoyment dissipates. It can be a downward spiral which is often best fixed with a change of scene.
My trip to Assynt was a planned trip, not entirely a holiday, but a recce to build on my knowledge of the area with a view of running workshops there next year. I have been to this part of Scotland many times before but each visit reveals something new and inspires something different that I can take forward in my photography.
My favourite days were the rainy days, but we didn’t have many of those - one day in three weeks, but the conditions on that day produced some of my favourite images from the trip.
Never before have I experienced so much dry weather in April. Whilst the blue skies and sunny days were great for relaxing, they were terrible for atmospheric photography and awful for the environment. During our stay a huge fire broke out over Stac Pollaidh - one of the iconic mountains of Assynt.
While the smoke added an ethereal beauty to sunset over the landscape the aftermath was sad to see.
According to reports this part of Scotland has had only 20% of its usual rainfall for the first part of 2025 and everywhere we walked the landscape was devoid of water. Areas that would usually be boggy under foot were dry and crispy. It was a sad sight and one that I hope is only temporary.
Despite the environmental issues it was hard not to feel inspired surrounded by such beautiful landscapes and the more we explored the more my passion for photography was returning.
We visited places that I knew well and others that I had never visited before. We walked 4 miles into Sandwood Bay to visit one of Scotlands most remote beaches. This place had been on my bucket list for a long time and I was so glad to finally explore its 1 mile wide sandy shoreline backed by the most beautiful dune system. Despite the blue skies I managed to create some images that I was happy with.
I also came across some local music by Duncan Chisholm which I feel accompanies these images and evokes the feeling of this precious place perfectly.
So I am now back home with 2600 images to sort through and a mind full of creative ideas. I also have some workshops in mind for 2026. Not only was my trip restful and restorative, it was also productive and has reignited my passion of the business of photography.
Over the next few weeks I will be exploring some of my ideas from Assynt and showing some of the images I have made. However to keep this blog fresh I have decided to cut down my free posts to one a fortnight. I feel this will be better for my creativity and as such better for you as the reader. This won’t affect my paid post which will still go out weekly.
How do you cope with a lack of inspiration? Do you find that you place pressure on yourself to produce work and does this then hinder your creativity? If so how do you balance this need to produce with creating the right conditions to inspire good work? I would be really interested to hear your thoughts on this or any other topic inspired by this post.
Thank you very much for sticking with me during my time away and until next time enjoy your photography
Gill.
I think it’s been amazing that you have posted every Monday, Gill, for as long as you have, in addition to the subscriber posts. Absolutely understand your decision to move to fortnightly on Mondays.
Glad to read that your time up here in Scotland refreshed your creativity. As they say, a change is as good as a rest. It has been terribly dry, as you noticed, with wildfires in a few places. We get them here on the Peninsula pretty much every year at this time, with a big one near Acharacle about 4 weeks ago. It burned for 3 days and did blacken the hills. However, I was up there yesterday and it was amazing how green everything was. Such a recovery. Nature sure is resilient.