On my travels

I had the opportunity to visit the Western Isles last week, more specifically, the Uists and Benbecula. I had visited Harris before and thoroughly enjoyed it so being the explorer I am off I went. I only had the one night to stop over so after booking my ferry ticket I headed off to Uig on Skye. I'm not going to bore you with details of the drive from Inverness to Skye but I've noted quite a few places that I've got to return to at a later date!


The ferry across to North Uist was pretty uneventful. The sea was as flat as a pancake and out on the observation deck I was enjoying the sunshine.


Arriving at Lochmaddy on North Uist in the afternoon the first thing that struck me was just how beautiful the island is. It's possible to drive from North Uist to South Uist through Benbecula on a manmade causeway which is quite a sight to see but I didn't have the time to see as much as I would have liked.


Not having been before I booked an overnight stay in the Temple View Hotel. What a great wee place. It gets it's name from the Trinity Temple that can be seen from the my bedroom window. I was going to post a picture of the temple but the sunset on that night was quite spectacular.

Standing out on the hill watching the sun going down was really mesmerising and I almost forgot to take pictures. I almost missed the whole thing as I was in my hotel room watching T.V. and only looked out the window because I had to answer my phone which was on the window sill. After a mad panic to get on my shoes and a manic run across a field I finally got set up on a hill next to the temple overlooking the west coast of the island. I took a meter reading from the rocks in the foreground and the lightest part of the sky to calculate the filter needed. On manual focus, I focussed a third of the way into the scene using the live view function on my camera and then it was a case of remembering to trip the shutter.

I will be returning but for a longer stay so that I can explore more of the islands.

1ds Mk3, tripod, 0.9 Lee Hard Grad

Chanory Point Lighthouse.

It was a blisteringly hot morning when we set off to Fortrose. The conditions weren't the best for photography. The sun was splitting the sky and there was not a cloud in sight. When we arrived we were met with the sight of hundreds of people all crowding the beach waiting for a sighting of the Moray Firth dolphins. Chanory point is an excellent place to see them and they did put in an appearance but unfortunately, they were not in a very playful mood so the most we saw was them breaking the surface of the water.



Once the crowds had left I had time to set up without any distractions. Because of the intensity of the sun it was quite difficult to get an overall exposure that retained detail in the white parts of the lighthouse. In the end I underexposed by a stop and shot the scene using a polariser.

I used my 17-40mm set at around 20mm for the shot but the one downside to this is, when coupled with a polariser at extreme wide angles the sky doesn't polarise evenly. You can see that parts of the sky are darker than others but there is not a lot that can be done apart from zooming in on the scene so the angle of view reduces.

This is a location I've bookmarked for a return trip during winter when there is snow on the ground. All I need to do is make sure I get there before the dolphin spotters.

Details: 1ds mk3, 17-40mm, tripod, polariser.

Welcome to my blog

Firstly, let me welcome you to my new blog. Hopefully, it's somewhere you'll come back to and see just what I've been up to.


My wife and I have recently moved to Inverness from Aberdeen and it's a Photographers dream. We've managed to explore the local area and there is so much to see. Recently we managed to get out on a beautiful day and drove across to the Gairloch. If you're into beautiful scenery, this is the place to go. It was quite difficult to keep the car on the road as I was always gawking out of the windows at the stunning mountain ranges and lochs. One of my favourite pictures from this trip is shown below

One of the things that struck me was the amount of abandoned buildings that are dotted around the landscape. When you see just how remote some of them are, it's not difficult to imagine how hard life must have been. Any time I come across one of these buildings, I try and photograph it to show the surroundings and in a lot of cases the stunning scenery. Imagine waking up to that view every day. Probably OK in the summer but absolute hell in the winter. It makes for a stunning photograph though.

Details: 1DS mk3, 17-40 f4L, Lee 0.6 ND Soft Grad, Tripod.