Posts about Scotland

  • Suilven, from the main road

    During a day’s driving to the north western corner of Scotland this summer, much of the round trip to our destination was on a road like this.

  • Salmon Leap

    Photographing salmon leaping isn’t as easy as it first appears.

  • The Eighteenth Hole

    Visiting the golf club at Carnoustie in Scotland brings back memories from the days when golf, not photography, was my driving passion.

  • Alice and Chris

    Jo and I travelled to Scotland over the weekend to attend the wedding of Jo’s friend Alice to her RAF sweetheart Chris.

  • The classic lighthouse of the children’s storybook is a tall white tower, banded with red and surrounded on most sides by the sea, looming above treacherous rocks and shining its light far and wide to tell people to stay away.

  • Fun with timelapse photography

    I’ve tinkered with timelapse photography at several points over the past few years, and have begun to refine my technique using a digital SLR over the past few weeks. This article explains how, with an example sequence of a cruise ship leaving Invergordon in Scotland.

  • Near Kirkbuddo

    Taken from the road to Letham on my second trip to see Jo, in spring 2005.

  • The Big Freeze

    On our way back to Edinburgh from Angus, we stopped off at Kinross to see the impressive expanse of Loch Leven, frozen and covered with snow.

  • A friend asked me over the Christmas break how I manage to retain my drive for taking photos. I gave it some thought over the past few days and thought that my answer might be useful or interesting to other photographers or artists and so here it is.

  • Letham in the Snow

    We spent much of the Christmas and New Year break in Letham, a small town in Angus, Scotland, where Jo grew up. Just after New Year, we took Archie, the family dog, for a walk around the town and Jo showed me places from her childhood as the evening set in and more snow fell.

  • We took a diversion off the motorway to explore the wintry countryside and came across the highest village in Scotland, buried in snow.

  • Takeoff from Edinburgh airport

    A five minute video shot out of the window of an easyJet flight leaving Edinburgh and banking west over the Firth of Forth in Scotland.

  • Short observational notes taken on a flight between Edinburgh and Geneva.

  • Gaudy is Good

    I love gaudiness in the U.K. at Christmas and revel in the blinking, multi-coloured tastelessness of it all. Just so long as it’s someone else’s home, not my own.

  • St. Andrew’s Dinner

    Jo and I bumped into a couple on the train home from Milan a few weeks ago: a British guy working for the British Embassy in Bern, and his Russian fiancée. After talking about all sorts of stuff, including life as Brits abroad, we were invited to this year’s St. Andrew‘s Dinner to celebrate the…

  • Jo’s parents found baby hedgehogs in their garden for three Fridays in a row during September this year. The animals were late babies – too small to survive the winter – so Jo’s father Roy drove the 20-odd miles to take them to the Wormit Hedgehog Care Centre, across the River Tay from Dundee. Jo…

  • Dalguise Viaduct

    This grade A listed railway viaduct, just north of Dunkeld near the A9 main road between Perth and Inverness, was designed by Joseph Mitchell to carry the Inverness and Perth Junction Railway across the River Tay and opened on 9 September 1863 at a cost of £20,395; it remains in use. It is of lattice…

  • During a violent storm on the evening of 28 December 1879, the centre section of the first Tay Bridge, known as the “High Girders”, collapsed, taking with it a train that was running on its single track. Seventy-five lives were lost, including the son-in-law of design engineer Sir Thomas Bouch. The total number was only…

  • Security threat

    Not a great photo, but I’m posting it in order to wind up a security guard and highlight the photographic policy in the Wellgate shopping centre in Dundee. Moments after taking this, I was accosted and asked what I was doing. This photo is dangerous material, as I could’ve been taking this shot of the…

  • Santas

  • Or, in other words, T zero! It’s been a long and eventful journey up from Switzerland to Scotland, though we’ve had only a couple of minor hiccups and no real problems. I’ve been keeping a diary as we’ve been travelling but as you can imagine, I’ve more important things to think about today! I’ll post…