"My preference is to shoot alone - it is when I am surrounded by silence and stillness that my creativity flows best. I don't leave home with a head full of ideas about what I am going to shoot. How can I know what I want to say until I get there? Instead I choose to sit and ponder and decide what it is I want to convey. It is a concentration that - for me - demands solitude. The ingress of the water at Luskentyre and its slow encroachment upon a few optimistic buttercups took my interest. As ever, the minimal Hebridean backdrop of a truncated mountainside balanced the composition. The sky was blue. I made it bluer. The sea was still and needed no interference. The buttercups did what they always do - gathered around in clusters, looking jovial and carefree."  Valda Bailey