Island Light

Dave Wheeler was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1943, during World War II. His earliest memories include “being taken to hide under a strong table in the coal cellar as German V-1 bombers went over.” He recalls the winter of 1947 (one of the severest winters in 20th century Britain) when, as a four-year-old, he walked along the tops of mountainous drifts and went with his father to scrounge coal from nearby tips, sitting atop the bag of gleaned coal for the ride home on the sledge. Then, come spring, he sailed “paper boats on roads flooded by melt-water unable to escape into drains still blocked by snow.”

Dave attributes his awakening interest in weather to those early rough winters and spring floods. He even recalls the weather (“cold, blustery, gray”) on Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation day in 1953. And during his school days from 1954 to 1960, when the Yorkshire temperatures often fell below –30 degrees, he trudged a mile to school on freezing feet.

In the ensuing years, Dave came to relish what many of us might consider extreme sports. In his late teens, he was “very much into cycling.” In 1958, when he was 15, he and a buddy did a 1000-mile cycle tour of Scotland during the summer holidays, biking long distances over rugged terrain. During his cycling mania, he also biked through the officially closed, snow-clogged Snake Pass.

From 1960 to 1963, Dave was a Meteorological Observer at RAF Finningley, an air force base near Doncaster, South Yorkshire. In 1960, in search of new adventures, he had “sold [his] bike… bought boots and a rucksack and took to the Derbyshire hills.” He adds, “We taught ourselves camping and climbing on the Gritstone edges and were soon winter camping at 2000 feet on Kinder Scout!” Then, “We taught ourselves winter climbing in Glencoe—and again survived!” Glencoe is the site of the famous massacre of the MacDonalds by the Campbells. Anyone who has driven through that gloomy and foreboding place could see what a feat winter climbing there must be.

During his three-year stint as a meteorologist at RAF Finningley, Dave apparently couldn’t get his fill of the rugged terrain of northern Scotland. He fell in with the Glencoe mountain rescue team, honing his climbing skills. Of those adventures he says, the “highlight must be the fortnight mountain camping and climbing in Glencoe during the winter of 1963.”

Then Dave was on to his next job, a two-year tour of duty as a meteorological observer on South Georgia, an island in the South Atlantic Ocean located at 37° West, 54.5° South, about 1300 kilometers (roughly 808 miles) east-south-east of the Falkland Islands. There he taught himself cross-country skiing. (“Deep, deep snow in winter—what more could I ask for?”) Dave sums up his first tour of duty on South Georgia as, “Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!” You can see his fascinating and often beautiful South Georgia photos on his website, though be warned: the photos recording the whaling and sealing industry are graphic.

It was on South Georgia that Dave’s interest in photography blossomed. As a teen, after cutting his teeth on a Brownie box, and then a folding bellows Kodak (a present from his grandfather), he bought a Pentax S1a and, in the darkroom on the South Georgia base, taught himself film processing, doing “vast amounts of black-and-white printing.”

Shortly after returning to Scotland in 1965, Dave married his fiancée, Jane. They spent their honeymoon—of course!—“skiing/camping in Scotland.” And then, “another brilliant tour—showing Jane the delights of South Georgia.” After their South Georgia tour, they spent Christmas and the New Year in the Falklands. On East Falkland, they “spent most of their time out at Goose Green.” He adds, “With Jane teaching me to ride, many hours each day were spent exploring on horseback.”

After the Wheelers’ return to Scotland, Dave went to work with Scottish TV as a sound engineer. Several interesting years with Scottish TV followed but, in time, he found “working indoors something less than enjoyable.” He does concede, “The TV Outside Broadcasts that I worked on—many of them local football matches—were fun… but best of all I liked the Christmas Watch Night Services (especially when it snowed), the Hogmanay show; the Edinburgh Festival and Tattoo were excellent.”

He and Jane and their two dogs “continued to go off at weekends and holidays on photographic expeditions, camping and exploring the more remote parts of northwest Scotland.” He applied to be a climbing and skiing instructor, but because he had “no paper, though plenty of practical qualifications,” he had no luck getting that job.

Then, the NTS (National Trust of Scotland) offered a job for a couple to take over a croft [a small rented farm] on Fair Isle. His curiosity piqued, Dave contacted the NTS and asked if they might have anything in his beloved Glencoe (“The NTS did own much of Glencoe,” he points out). They didn’t, but wondered if he and Jane might be interested in the Fair Isle offer. So they filled out an application.

One of the questions on the form was, “What experience do you have of living on an isolated island in winter?” Dave says that question “was definitely us. South Georgia, nearest neighbors 800 miles away and—apart from radio—no communications with the outside world for six months of the year!”

Fair Isle might not be as isolated, lonely or cold as South Georgia, but still, most of us would likely not find life there altogether easy.
Three miles long, 1.5 miles wide, lying about halfway between the Orkney and the Shetland Islands, with the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the North Sea to the east, Fair Isle is the most remote inhabited island in the United Kingdom.

Most of the 70 islanders—including the Wheelers, who have resided on Fair Isle since 1972, live on the southern half of the Island, on small crofts. The northern half of the island is moorland, with cliffs rising to over 600 feet above the sea.

There are neither pubs nor restaurants on Fair Isle, and only a primary school. There is an airfield and a ferry service, which, if the weather isn’t inclement (which it often can be) transport goods are not available on the island. In summer, tourists—as many as 300 a day if a visiting cruise ship manages to land its passengers—visit the island, often having heard of the famous Fair Isle sweaters made from the wool of the island’s sheep. But for most of the year, Fair Isle is left to the residents who, you might say, live by their wits.

Dave Wheeler had plenty of wits and considerable experience to make a success of living on Fair Isle. And over the years, this jack-of-all-trades (and master of many) has taken on a handful of jobs on the island. On his resume, under “Occupation,” Dave lists: “Self-employed. Meteorologist, photographer, crofter, Airport Manager, IT instructor [at the local primary school, with its half dozen or so students], Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages.” In 2002, Queen Elizabeth made him an MBE, a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for Services To Weather on Fair Isle.

Under “Interests,” Dave lists: “Photography; Fair Isle, weather, climate, snow and ice; crofting, South Georgia, polar regions, mountains, computers; digital media; country music; wine; real ale; malt whisky.” (How nice to see those last four on his list—to know he actually puts up his feet now and then!)

Dave’s primary interest is landscape photography. With no buildings or tall trees to get in the way, he can “focus on the link between land, sea and sky and how changing light patterns can alter the mood and produce many different interpretations of the same scene.” He adds, “This is especially so as—for most of the time—my photographic activities lie within an area just a few kilometers square on the small and remote Fair Isle.”

In his 35 years on the island, Dave has not only shot many landscapes, he has also photographed his fellow islanders “as [they] work with, and manage, [their] environment in a sustainable way.”

Dave adds, “Over the past 40 years my photographs document a change from a crofting lifestyle barely altered over generations, to one where Fair Isle, trying to keep its traditional way of life, moves to accommodate the benefits of the digital age.”

When he shoots, Dave says, he is “almost exclusively loyal to Pentax.” His primary camera is the new Pentax K7; he has a variety of lenses. He also uses a Leica D-Lux 4 compact as his “always present” camera.

For computers, he has two Dell PCs, one with a dual-core processor and 16GB RAM. Both computers have dual 23-inch monitors, and three networked Buffalo Terabyte RAID drives, various LaCie and Maxtor external USB drives. He organizes his photos using Adobe CS4. With Lightroom 2, he makes prints up to 8.5 x 14 inches on a Kodak 1400 dye-sublimation printer. He sends out for larger prints.

Dave is busy on many fronts, so he doesn’t have a lot of time to aggressively market his photos, though he derives pleasure from giving many of them away. He is modest about the photos he does sell. He has sold to Audubon magazine and other magazine and book publishers, as well as to interior decorators. Most recently, he sold a Fair Isle lighthouse shot to MacMillan books which will be used on the cover of a paperback novel, Blue Lightning, a crime thriller by the well known UK author Ann Cleeves, due out in February 2010.

It is easy to imagine Dave Wheeler criss-crossing every square inch of his island home, shooting the ever-changing light over the landscape, capturing the way of life of the islanders (and that of the sheep, who, in many of their portraits, seem to look at Dave with an amused eye, as if to say, “Oh, him again!”).

Here are just a few of Dave’s stunning landscapes, seascapes and skyscapes (and sheepscapes). More can be seen on his website, along with his South Georgia Island photos. Take your time looking; there’s a glut of good photos to appreciate.

Most landscape photographers have a strong sense of place. For some, that place might be our own backyard or larger neighborhood. For others; a place we return to again and again. We may travel—may even itch to see new places, new things to shoot. But we always return to that most familiar place, eager to catch it in different lights, in different compositions.
For Dave Wheeler, his place for 35 years—the place that inspires his art, and continues to challenge him—is the tiny, remote, isolated, windswept, beautiful Fair Isle.

Dave Wheeler’s website is www.davewheelerphotography.com. For an interesting BBC piece about Fair Isle and Dave Wheeler, visit: www.bbc.co.uk/world
service/documentaries/2009/07/000000_global_perspective_across_water.shtml.

Writer and photographer Jane Wingate lives in Farmington, NH. Prints of her photos, and of other photos, as well as her collection of essays, THE TOILET PAPERS, Pieces Just the Right Length, are available on her website, www.janewingate.com.