I miss London
…and I react with a start every time I realize how long it’s been since I was last there.
The Glory Days
Alness, on the shores of the Cromarty Firth in northern Scotland, has a heritage of floral displays and the town won many awards between 1997 and 2007. Winter is certainly not the most picturesque time to visit, yet the small town has its charms and is a pleasant place to visit. It’s a slight anachronism, though, that a town which was so obviously keen on maintaining a high standard is slowly becoming slightly shabby, with the usual array of chemists, pubs and cheap shops lining the car-laden main street. One wonders why, with so many awards and commendations until 2007, what happened to curtain the town’s enthusiasm over the last five years.
Dornoch Firth
As the A9 main road winds its way north, along the eastern coast of the north of Scotland, it crosses the Cromarty Firth before winding along to the Dornoch Firth, right at the head of the estuary as the river runs out to the sea. Dark, brooding weather is a common feature of the northern parts of Scotland and on overcast days, such as this one, the few hours of daylight in winter do little to show the landscape to its best advantage.
Ten of the best
My aunt picked out ten portraits from my Flickr stream which she feels are the best of those I’ve shared. It’s always interesting to gain other creative people’s point of view, so I thought I’d share the selection for you to comment.
Shift + refresh
Time for a re-think on how this website is organized and laid out. Priorities will be a more graphically appealing portfolio, a more easily scannable “blog” section, and a Mobile First approach to design and functionality. Stay tuned. (But don’t hold your breath while you do. It may be a while.)
Photographing groups
Photographing groups is difficult at the best of times, but there come times when, as an event photographer, you have to organize a planned group photo in the middle of an event. Forget about long planning and lots of setup time: the goal is to make the best of the time you have, which is often brief.
Wild red stags
Driving back from Tongue, on the far north coast of Scotland, our journey through part of the most remote areas of the Highlands coincided with dusk. Wild deer come down from the hills at this time of night to make their way to the water of the lochs.
Lens sharpness across a range of apertures
I’ve been disappointed by the image quality of my landscape photographs from time to time, where the images viewed at full size on my computer screen at home are lacking in detail and very soft. However, I’ve also noted that the results vary from shoot to shoot and occasionally from shot to shot. Having reviewed the images, I found that the poor results were all shot in bright light, when I used a small aperture in order to attain maximum depth of field and detail in the image.
Portraits on location
2012 is the year in which I’m going to try and catch up on an inordinate amount of photos which have never seen the light of day. I have no idea yet how I’m going to get them all online in a manageable form, but I’ve taken the first step by adding another new gallery page to the site for portraits taken on location.
The cold north west
I’m back from an extended break over Christmas and the New Year, which I spent with family in Scotland. My photographic goal was to get out and capture the landscape no matter what the weather threw at me, and I’m quite pleased with the shots I achieved in the “dreich” (grey, wet and overcast) weather. I even managed to get as far north as Tongue, on the far north coast, despite squally weather and intermittent, biting snow flurries. I’ve added a new gallery page to the website for the North Western Highlands, which contains photos from my trip as well as a somewhat warmer and sunnier trip last summer.