Scotland - Day 2 (2013)

After visiting the slate quarry in Ballaculish - see my previous post, we toured for the rest of the day, often dodging the rain, and taking advantage of any breaks in the cloud.

Where we actually went, however, was lost in the memory and seven years later all I can do is piece things together from the photographs. These days, I am much better at recording location notes on my phone including any points of interest that might be useful for a future blogposts. This in turn often drives the photography giving it extra purpose and coherence.

I believe that the afternoon was spent looking for the Eas Chia-aig (Water of the Old Witch) waterfalls which included a drive along Loch Lochy to Loch Arkaig. At several points we stopped to view Ben Nevis as it emerged from the clouds:

More obvious to the recollection was the stop at the Commando Monument at Speen Bridge:

The last venue of the day was Buachaille Etive Mor and the classic waterfall scene on the River Coupall. I had seen this particular scene photographed many times in photography magazines, and on photographic websites, and was keen to capture my own version. Like many photographers before and after me, I used a long exposure to create the movement in the water:

Slate Quarry (April 2013)

It rained on and off during the second day in Scotland (2013) which prevented the planned dawn trip to Castle Stalker. Instead we filled the time with a visit to the Ballaculish slate quarry before a drive to the Eas Chia-aig waterfall on the approach to Loch Arkaig, the monument at Speen Bridge, and Glen Coe.

In this post I will concentrate on the photographs from the slate quarry, most of which I had never processed until now, seven years later. I guess I was very landscape focused at the time and treated the quarry as a photographic time filler between rain showers. On reflection this was a mistake, the colours and textures are wonderful with some looking like abstract painted landscapes or scenes from 'other worlds'. I can remember pointing this out at the time but the results didn’t really register as they would today:

Scotland - Day One (2013)

Blackrock Cottage below Buachaille Etive was the first photograph taken on the trip to Scotland in 2013 (see my previous introductory post). In fact, it was taken on the evening before the first full day as we passed on route to the accommodation at Ballachulish, and like many landscape photographers before and after us, we set up on the tripod pitted ground for our own version of a classic view.


There is a lot of luck involved in travel and landscape photography. Effective landscape photography takes time, patience, and a lot of research to get the best light, composition, and ultimately be best photographic outcome. In contrast, travel photography is far more reactive to the conditions. It is possible to be in the right place at the right time but more often than not it is a matter of making the most of the conditions as they present themselves - as the Blackrock Cottage photograph demonstrates:

In order to counter the potential impacts of being too reactive we decided to target one location for the first part of the trip with repeated visits at the golden hours of the morning and evening whilst doing the touring photography in between. Day one was spent making that decision and Castle Stalker on Loch Laich and Loch Linnhe was selected, although I am not convinced we had this clarity of thinking at the time. I can certainly remember the debate about whether it it was a good idea to sit and wait for a chance of light until 8 or 9pm, especially as the cloud cover looked unpromising in the early part of the evening. Ultimately we did wait and luck played its part:

We had actually stopped at Castle Stalker earlier in the day when the tide was low. It was an opportunity to look around and take some preparatory shots:

On reflection, I am disappointed that I didn’t capture more of the sense of place during the Castle Stalker visits. I can see from these early pictures that there was something more photographically interesting about the venue that didn’t need to be centred solely around the castle. I guess that is the difference between my photography then and I how I might approach a subject now....although, as I said in my introduction to this retrospective series, there were early signs of a change in direction including these images of rusting metal:

Finally for day one, these were some of the mid afternoon touring photographs of Kilchurn Castle on Loch Awe, although seven years later I had to search for this location having forgotten the castle’s name. Whilst searching I came across some fantastic photography from this venue including wonderful mirror reflections in the Loch....perhaps if I ever returned to Loch Awe that would be the type of luck I would hope for!

Scotland 2013 - Introduction

I have signalled in recent posts that I am processing old photographs as one of the ways of keeping the photoblog going during the coronavirus lockdown. Due to shielding there is no new photography to post but the idea of selecting photography from past years has been interesting and happily engaging; so much so, I am ready to post some of the results much sooner than I had anticipated.

The subject for the retrospective posting is a trip to Scotland in April and May 2013, starting from a base in Ballahoulish before making our way to the Ilse of Harris, North Uist and finally the Ilse of Skye.

The aim of the trip was primarily landscape photography, seeking out some of the iconic scenes I had seen in magazines and online photographic sites e.g. Black Rock Cottage, Castle Stalker, the beeches of Luskentyre. However, what has interested me most when re-processing the images was the first signs of a shift in my photography, probably unnoticed at the time, but very recognisable today. In fact, as I worked through the images I could see many opportunities that I missed but also some photography that I really enjoyed. As a result, this has inspired me to revisit the Highlands when we get passed this virus pandemic...something positive that I can look forward to...

As I post the photographs from the trip, I will include reflections on the photography together with location information. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep detailed notes at the time so there a bit of guess work involved. Like so many of my blogposts I hope that the photography does most of the talking rather than my clumsy attempts with the written word.

With that in mind, these are a small selection of photographs from the first days in Scotland which I will expand upon in the forthcoming series of posts: