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  • Machrie Bay Community Tuck Shop

    Exterior view of the Machrie Tearoom at Machrie Bay Golf Club on the Isle of Arran, Scotland, featuring a light-colored building with a sign and wooden decking.
    The Machrie Golf Club and Community Tuck Shop on the Isle of Arran, a popular refreshment stop for visitors.

    Think of the photo that you’re most proud of. Maybe it’s a portrait of a friend or family member. Maybe it’s a beautiful landscape that took hours of hiking to get there, and then even more hours of editing to get it just perfect. Maybe it’s a piece of street photography where all the elements came together perfectly at the right moment. That’s the one you want to be your most viewed photo, right? The one that you want people to happen across when they’re online, and then stop and admire.

    So what’s my most viewed photo? That would be a very ordinary street view photo of Machrie Bay Golf Club and Community Tuck Shop on the Isle of Arran, just off the west coast of Scotland. It’s just a snapshot. But crucially, it’s the right snapshot.

    Over the years, I’ve had various online presences. My first website, around 2002, was moderately successful. The advertising – and remember this was before Google AdSense was available – paid enough to regularly buy new camera equipment. Then I migrated my photos to Flickr, which was rapidly becoming the place to share photos, and I was successful enough that my contributions regularly made it onto Flickr’s front page. But then the rise of social networks made Flickr feel old-fashioned, and I withdrew from sharing my photos online.

    Fast forward to 2018. My wife and I were holidaying on Arran – one of the ruggedly beautiful islands off Scotland’s west coast. It’s a fabulous place to visit but, at least in 2018, you couldn’t expect coffee shops and Italian bistros on every corner. Driving a circuit round the island, my wife searched for a refreshment stop and found that the clubhouse at Machrie Golf Club offered good lunches to non-members. It wasn’t difficult to find, easily spotted from the main road, but navigating Google Street View on a phone can be pretty challenging, and I remember thinking that it would have been nice if Google Maps had had a photo showing exactly how it looked from the roadside.

    Clearly lots of other folk had the same thought, because very quickly the number of times the photo had been viewed was over 100,000. Last time I checked, in mid 2025, the number was approaching 320,000. Not bad for a random snapshot.

  • Aberdeen Public Soup Kitchen

    Black and white photograph of the Aberdeen Public Soup Kitchen with a traffic warden standing nearby and a parked car in front.
    Historic view of the Aberdeen Public Soup Kitchen, featuring a parked Volkswagen Golf and a traffic warden.

    In 1986, I didn’t really do street photography. My camera was a Zenit E – already a very heavy camera even before attaching the 58mm Helios lens. Somehow it never occurred to me to buy another lens so I was stuck with the 58mm focal length. The focal length was better suited for portrait work, and the split prism focussing made it easy to miss focus at the wide open apertures I used to avoid camera shake. But I did enjoy photographing buildings which were abandoned, neglected, or simply unloved, and this was what attracted me to the Aberdeen Public Soup Kitchen.

    The nearby Bon Accord Centre had opened in 1984. It housed a great selection of shops but it also blocked the flow of traffic on George Street, and killed off many Aberdeen institutions such as the Rubber Shop. Sadly I have no photos of that, but I did explore the surrounding streets for photos of the old Northern Co-operative Society Arcade, and the Aberdeen Public Soup Kitchen.

    I would have preferred to photograph the building straight-on, with no distractions in the way, but a permanently rotating selection of parked cars meant that that wasn’t possible. Instead, I positioned myself on the other side and waited for a scene to reveal itself. I’ve often wondered the story here. Has the traffic warden just issued a parking ticket? A warning? Or has the driver of the nearly-new Volkswagen Golf just beaten the system?

    This is one of those photos that gets more valuable over time. The narrative aspect made it a good photo even when it was new, But 40 years later? Traffic wardens don’t look like that anymore. Cars don’t look like that anymore. And the Aberdeen Public Soup Kitchen is now a candle shop.

    Clearly this is a photo which brings back memories for people, because from time to time I come across copies online. It pops up from time to time in the Aberdeen Memories Facebook page. There are multiple copies on Pinterest. And even a couple of websites which have reached out to me and asked for permission to use it.

    I always enjoy seeing this photo in the wild. Of course if anyone used it commercially I’d be looking for a licensing fee. But until then, I’ll just enjoy it.

  • My Photos, and the stories behind them

    A person standing on Portobello Beach, wearing a striped shirt and jacket, with a neutral expression and a scenic background of the beach and sky.
    A personal portrait taken on Portobello Beach, capturing a pivotal moment in life.

    It depends how you count it, of course. How do you define a serious hobbyist, and what differentiates them from a semi-professional? But using a few assumptions, I calculate that around 10 million photographers across the globe have some sort of website. Which leads to an obvious question: why one more?

    Well, it’s easy to say that I take photos only for myself. And a lot of the time it’s true. But of the 6,000 or so photos I took last year there are a few – maybe a couple of dozen – which are good enough to share. So this is where I’m sharing them, and the stories behind them.  

    Have you ever been in a gallery, looking at an exhibit and wondering what you’re looking at? Chances are there’s some sort of interpretive text written on the exhibition label. Sometimes the interpretive texts are the only way to understand what you’re seeing. Sometimes you might spend more time reading the interpretive text than looking at the exhibit. That’s why the stories behind a painting or photo are important. By understanding the stories, we can better appreciate the image. 

    Of course not everyone will agree. Some photographers prefer their works to stand on their own, devoid of any explanation. And some photographers, like me, enjoy telling stories. Welcome to My Camera Stories – my photos, and the stories behind them.

    About the photo

    That’s me on Portobello Beach. The story here is very simple. Take a look at any old photo album. Spend time looking through it, and one person is always missing – the person who owned the camera. They would photograph the people around them, but they would rarely be the subject of a photograph. If they were, it was more likely to be a snapshot than a portrait.

    Looking back at my own photos, I realise I’m an exception to this rule. I have often been surrounded by people who enjoy taking photos, and I feel very lucky to have so many good portraits of myself over the last half-century. This particular portrait was taken by my wife, shortly after we moved from London to Edinburgh in 1991. Looking back, I can’t believe we had the confidence to take such a leap into the unknown. New job, new city, new friends. In the end, it all worked out. After a couple of false starts, we found our feet. Secure jobs, friends around us, a home of own. But at this point, all that was still ahead of us, and I can see the worry behind my neutral expression.

    Photos capture a moment. And this moment was one of the decisive moments of my life. I’m very lucky that my wife was there to capture it.