Just a quick note to say Happy Solstice! The daylight will start getting longer from 4:28 pm today, assuming you are in the Northern Hemisphere.
January and February are usually the coldest months in the Northern hemisphere which will hopefully bring a ton of snow in the Alps for Snowboarding on :-)
If you're feeling blue about that idea here is a link to 17 ways to celebrate the winter solstice from Rhythms of Play.
Part 2 of my favourite photographs from 2017. I sometimes forget how many photographs I take and it can take time to go through them. I also seem to have good months and bad months in terms of quality. May seemed to be a particularly good month but alas I am only posting one per month.
My first visit to the "Still" sculpture at St. Fillans on Loch Earn. This was an impromptu trip where I decided around 7pm to drive to St Fillans as I had nothing better to do. It was a warm night and the midge were biting hard but I persevered until I had a few shots that I was happy with, before, during and after sunset. This was the photograph I took after sunset with just the dusk tones left. I am still a little sad that this sculpture has been taken away.
Summer saw me take a few impromptu trips, this time all the way to Corpach, near Fort William. I had been meaning to visit this location for a long time and after driving to Glencoe that day I decided to keep going until I got to Corpach. I had no idea where the boat was and had to phone a friend to get directions. It was around this time i the year that I really started to like 'dusky' tones in my photography.
Cramond Beach, these are anti-boat pylons that a lot of people mistake fro anti-submarine pylons. I have to bite my tongue when people call them anti-submarine. A remnant of the Second World war they are now starting to fall apart. The island in the distance is Cramond Island which can be reached via the causeway that the photograph is taken from. The tide comes in fast here and people do get stuck on the island overnight due to this.
Blackness Castle. If there is one thing that Scotland does not lack, it is castles. Blackness is surprisingly close to where I am living right now and I was surprised that I had never visited before this time. This is an HDR image, I wanted the colour in the sky as well as the detail of the seaweed and the castle in it. It's not a great photograph but I was pleased with the HDR processing on it. Something learned is always useful.
Edinburgh in winter; long shadows, low sun and short days. Bright lights, Christmas markets and fairground lights make the cold nights a little nicer.
I spent Friday roaming around the city, mostly with the intention of taking photos, drinking coffee and soaking in some of the atmosphere. It's been a while since I have spent a full day in Edinburgh and I was a bit surprised at how excited I was to step off the train at Waverley. Needless to say I had to make the pilgrimage to the Apple Store first, at the top of Waverley Steps.
You can pretty much trace out my day from the images below, started off by walking to Stockbridge to (finally) take some shots of Circus Lane, walked up to Calton Hill, then up to the university area and finally the South side of North Bridge to shoot the Christmas market and the fairground rides. At which point my camera battery died.
I took some other shots that didn't turn out as well as was hoped, hence why they aren't posted, but I'll go back for them before they turn off the lights of the winter festivities.
I thought it would be a good idea to flick through the photographs that I had been taking through 2017 as this year is drawing to a close. I have selected one of my favourite photographs from each month with a small description of where it came from. Most of them will also be found in my instagram feed.
It was taken at the Glasgow Necropolis. It was one of the first (of many) instameets that I went on this year. This was the first time that I had been to Glasgow to take photographs, it was a very long day and I think I came back with over 300 photographs, but this was my favourite. It's a bit dark, but then it was a cemetery. The person in it is Jens @jensinscotland.
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February saw a number of friends meeting up in Edinburgh, all instagrammers of course. Although we started up in the town centre we ended up in Leith. I caught this shot of @alycoste and @davidgulliver_photography at Newhaven Harbour. The way I caught Alayne's hand made me think she was asking for an explanation from David. I didn't really notice this until the day after. Amusingly the first two photographs from the year actually had people in the shots which usually isn't my style.
Another visit to Glasgow in March, this time with @davidgulliver_photography and @ashcharlton. There were a number of shots that I liked from this trip, especially the light trails from Charing Cross, but ultimately this was my favourite from the cloisters at Glasgow University. It took a while to get the photograph without any people in it. So many shots are about patience more than anything else.
The first of my many trips to my second home this year allowed me to take a lot of photographs of places that I hadn't shot since 2013. This is the Noordeinde Palace in The Hague, also know as the working palace. See the comment above about patience... I live close to this palace and it has various ceremonies each year which can be nice to watch. Noordeinde is also my favourite street in The Hague, so much to see and do.
Something for all those that have teased me about buying expensive Stance socks for the past couple of years, said so well by The Brooks Review:
"Shitty socks are fucking annoying. Spend $30 on a pair, and your socks will go from being annoying to being something you love, because $30 merino wool socks are magic."
It also worth reading the rest of the article. Needless to say my last visit to The Hague involved selecting several pairs of Stance socks.
