My Camera Stories

My photos and the stories behind them

Category: travel

  • 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…

  • Those gorgeous Olympus colours

    My first serious digital camera was an Olympus E500. Launched in 2005, it had an 8 megapixel CCD sensor that produced beautiful film-like colours. Like all CCD cameras however, the dynamic range we severely limited, and noise quickly started to become an issue when you went above 400 ISO. I loved that camera, and when…

  • Those beautiful Scottish skies

    At my camera group yesterday, we had a fascinating conversation about skies. As we critiqued each other’s photos, John repeatedly made the comment that there was too much sky in our photos. When John says something like that, you listen to him. Not just because he’s an experienced photographer but because he’s an experienced judge,…

  • From grainy to gorgeous – upgrading my APS film scans

    Picture CDs – not to be confused with Photo CDs – were widely offered by film processing labs in the early days of digital photography. They were fairly inexpensive. I usually got my films processed at Boots, which charged an extra £1.99 for a picture CD. Quality, unfortunately, was variable. If you were lucky, you…

  • Opening up the shadows

    Around 2007, when Flickr was absolutely at its height, I uploaded this photo of Duffus Castle, Morayshire, to a group which was dedicated to photo critiques. The rules were simple: post a photo of your own which you wanted critiqued, and give a critique of the three preceding photos. One of the critiques I received…

  • Scotland Street Tunnel

    King George V Park is one of Edinburgh’s hidden spaces. Maybe not an obvious place for casual visitors because it’s just a local park – a green space for local folk who don’t have their own gardens, and a place for children to play. And it’s also, bizarrely, the site of a disused railway tunnel…

  • The photo that looked like a painting

    When you’re on holiday, you take the weather you’ve got. On the Isle of Harris, even in August, that frequently means overcast. So I approached Luskentyre beach – one of the UK’s most beautiful – with a sense of eagerness, looking forward to the exploration but not expecting to go home with any particularly great…

  • Liminal spaces

    According to the internet, liminal spaces are empty or abandoned places that appear eerie and forlorn. as such, I’m often drawn to photograph them. Reddit has a whole community dedicated to liminal spaces but beware – the posts there are often of back rooms or empty shopping malls with no real liminal qualities. Which begs…

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