My Camera Stories

My photos and the stories behind them

Category: travel

  • Police van on Whitehall

    I’ve lived in cities all my life, but living in Edinburgh is a completely different experience from the hustle and busyness of London’s West End. I was in London for a few days on business so my free time was restricted to an hour or so in the evening, before a rushed dinner with my…

  • A change of perspective

    Many visitors to Tuscany bypass the town of Pietrasanta. There is no single, iconic sight associated with the town. The appeal comes from small galleries and workshops. Temporary exhibitions of sculpture, usually featuring the local Carrara marble. And partly, perhaps, that’s because there’s no direct train from the main tourist hubs – from Florence, Cinque…

  • When white balance gets it wrong

    If you’re anything like me, most of the time you don’t even think about white balance. Set your camera to auto, shoot away … and the results are exactly what you expect. Sometimes your camera gets the white balance wrong, and that’s OK because DxO, or ACDSee, or whatever you use to tweak your photos…

  • Elphin Chicken Day

    Chickens are funny, right? So when I saw a sign on the waterfront at Ullapool, advertising Elphin Chicken Day, I was immediately intrigued. So what is it? Well, according to the Facebook page, it’s a day of community fun. That means cakes, games, chickens. Who wouldn’t want to go? Sadly in 2018 when this photo…

  • The surprisingly simple story of how Greyfriars Bobby got his shiny nose

    TL,DR – tourists rubbing his nose for luck. Because I hate it when websites have clickbaity titles and make you read through a whole load of irrelevancies before giving you the story.  I’ve always been very happy with this photo of the Greyfriars Bobby statue, photographed in 2006. Look closely at Bobby’s nose, and compare…

  • Where are your photos from 20 years ago?

    Do you know where your photos from 20 years ago are?  The big social network of the day was MySpace. Theoretically it still exists, but a botched server migration in 2015 led to the loss of most user data – over 12 years of content – so if you were hoping to find your Christmas…

  • Capturing atmosphere with expired Kodak TMAX P3200

    In 2005 I was still shooting film. Oh, I had a digital camera – the very capable Fujifilm Finepix E550 – but it was a compact, and I still loved the precision that came from the manual controls on my Canon EOS SLR.  It was a very fine balancing act. I was saving for a…

  • A sculpture croft in the far north of Scotland

    I first encountered the ceramics of Lotte Glob in the far north of Scotland at Balnakiel Craft Village, near Durness. Even then, her work seemed to exist slightly apart from its surroundings. A mix of strange, playful shapes that felt organic despite their ceramic origins. She created mugs and plates too – we have one…

  • Cameras just get in the way, sometimes

    In 2019 I felt the need for a new challenge. A recent trip to Mull had introduced me to the white tailed eagle – a truly magnificent bird, about the size of a barn door – and I’d come away enthused by my experience. I’d always enjoyed casually watching birds at the local park, but…

  • Small sensors don’t do bokeh

    Apparently, small sensors can’t do bokeh. It’s funny how often the “rules” of photography turn out to be old wives’ tales. Of course there are cameras that don’t do bokeh. In the early 2000s, I grew inexplicably fond of Kodak Advantix cameras. Bizarre, I know, but they were lightweight, easily loaded with 35mm film, and…

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