49.8

This photograph was taken during a trip to Northern Scotland in the winter of 2008.

Earlier that day, while shooting on a frozen river, I fell through the ice and, alongside with being very scared, I lost my camera in the incident. As it was still morning, I went back to my hotel, almost naked because my clothes had turned to solid ice and I had to take them off! I took a warm bath and I went to the nearest city, Inverness, to buy a new camera and get back to work. Or else I feared I would never go back at all...

And as I didn't want to get too close to the water yet, I decided to lose myself in the frozen fields of the mainland. Then I saw this one with its long tire traces, the clouds had this fantastic long shapes like a herd of sheep following each other in the sky. So I ran into the tire tracks so that my footsteps wouldn't show on the photo, installed my tripod and panoramic head (I'm getting better each year at doing this in a hurry...) and voila.

Well... not exaclty though. It took me countless hours to postwork this as the shades were too dark in many places to stitch the various shots properly, and I really almost gave up because every little error would show on the field especially in large poster format. But now I see the result and I think that this was probably one of the most bloody tough experiences both in the shooting that day and the postwork but it's dear to me now.

Arthuan is the celtic word for the winter solstice. Time of renewal and awakening. Hope you enjoy the photograph... :)