Formidable

Having toured Edinburgh Castle at the start of the trip, we came to Dunvegan with a fairly high bar, and by that comparison it’s a modest building. What it has instead is a long history and a face that gives nothing away. I shot it head-on from the parking area at the entrance, which isn’t a romantic vantage but is the one that shows the thing as it actually presents itself.

Heavy cloud sat over it all afternoon, well lit from behind and looking permanently about to rain, though I don’t believe it ever did. That sky is what makes the picture work — it gives the blunt geometry of the walls something to push against.

This was a mid-stay sightseeing afternoon rather than a shoot. I had the camera with me, as I did everywhere on that trip, without any real expectation of coming away with something.

Scottish and Japanese castles are enormously different buildings and I have several of both on this site now. They were built to solve the same problem: stand somewhere defensible, look impossible to take, and hold when somebody tries. Seeing two cultures arrive at such different answers to that is a large part of why I keep photographing them.