My Camera Stories

My photos and the stories behind them

Category: general

  • Theme: empty chairs

    Sometimes a theme emerges quite naturally from your photography. Many years ago I photographed an abandoned cane chair in Kelso, in the Scottish Borders. It was a simple photo, but that simplicity captivated me. Since then, I’ve continued taking photos of abandoned or empty chairs wherever I’ve found them And that’s the advantage of a…

  • Balancing technique and personal style in photography

    Camera Clubs are great for improving your photography in a friendly, supportive environment. They’re not always the best place to learn who you are as a photographer. The camera club aesthetic, basically, is: You get the idea. A lot of these rules are good photographic principles to live by. Learn them, internalise them, and –…

  • Why I loved Agfa Ultra 100 – until the sun came out

    For a brief period around the turn of the century, Agfa Ultra 100 was my default choice for creative work. Here’s an example from 2005, taken in overcast conditions at Tantallon Castle, East Lothian, Scotland. The sky is clearly overcast, but the colours remain saturated without being unrealistic. The red tones of the castle walls…

  • ACDSee Keywords and Categories

    ACDSee users have a problem. They have two different options for keywords, and another option for categories. Which one is best? The answer of course is that all three options are correct in different circumstances, and it’s important to understand their various strengths and weaknesses before you start using them. So here’s my suggestion for…

  • What are those big yellow things dominating the Leith skyline?

    TL;DR – They’re wind turbine jacket foundations. They were made in China by COOEC–Fluor Heavy Industries, and shipped here on the heavy transport ship Hua Yang Long. They are being stored temporarily in the Port of Leith before being installed in the Inch Cape Offshore Wind Farm – about 15km off the coast of Angus.…

  • A year’s worth of tried and tested themes for your next group photo walk

    My camera group has been going out and about, every second Friday morning, for – oh, I don’t know, probably around 12 years now. You can imagine, even in a city as varied as Edinburgh, we’ve been pretty much everywhere. Usually multiple times. So a couple of years ago, around March 2024, we decided to…

  • Mindfulness: one of photography’s hidden benefits

    Mindfulness can be an important part of photography. Yes, I’ve gone out to enjoy using my camera. Yes, I’m enjoying spending time with friends and looking forward to enjoying a coffee together. But alongside all the obvious skills of photography – considering the light, composing the scene, capturing the decisive moment – observation is the…

  • Transform an old Android tablet into a digital photo frame

    In an earlier post, I talked about the importance of curating your photos – not just managing them. When you curate your photos, you bring them to life. Instead of sitting in a Digital Asset Manager, or dying in a social media post that no-one looks at after the first 24 hours, in a digital…

  • How do you curate your photos?

    How do you manage your photos? You do manage your photos, right? Whether you use Digikam, Lightroom, ACDSee or even Windows Explorer, you have a system? Maybe you organise your photos by date. One folder per month, or one folder per photoshoot. Maybe you completely ignore folders, relying on your DAM to keep them in…

  • Capturing texture in St Giles Cathedral

    With the weather being dreich and grey, my camera group today visited St Giles Cathedral, on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. The theme was Texture. Whether that’s the same theme as Textures, or something different, is maybe something to explore another day. St Giles Cathedral is rich in textural detail, and my Panasonic Lumix 12-32mm lens was…

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