Seasons

I’ve taken so many photos at Jupiter Artland over the past few years that one gallery wasn’t enough. This one is art- and architecture-free, featuring instead its changing flora across the seasons.

9 December 2014

Jupiter Artland

For the past few years, each spring and autumn, we’ve been taking our kids along to some art classes for young children held at one of the most impressive places in Edinburgh, Jupiter Artland. It’s in the grounds of a private stately home, but is open to the public each summer. You’ll find plenty of photographs of its monumental artworks online, but this is a gallery of three years’ worth of my own, taken in conditions the public doesn’t usually get to see, and including some temporary works now removed. The stars of the site are Cells of Life by Charles Jencks (who was featured here previously) and Love Bomb by Marc Quinn, but there’s a lot more to see, including some works not shown here. If you ever get the chance, make the trip.

26 November 2014

Escape

Camusdarach

Two weeks ago we went camping with the kids one last time before Edinburgh’s schools went back, at Camusdarach near Mallaig (which I had visited years ago with my parents to catch the ferry to Skye, before the bridge was completed further north). We were a bit late getting there because of an unanticipated traffic jam into Fort William, and because a few miles before the campsite we were flagged down by a local who told us there had just been a bad accident up ahead, with two cars on fire. For the next couple of hours we watched emergency vehicles race past while we fed the kids hot dogs from a tin for dinner and got eaten alive by midges. Driving past the scene of the accident was haunting, as it looked like one that nobody could have walked away from, but apparently three people did escape and were taken to hospital. Five minutes later and it could have been us.

We set up our tent and got to sleep, and were rewarded the next day with beautiful sunshine and a string of great beaches and dunes separated by rocky points and warm rockpools. It was breezy enough to fly our kite, but warm enough for the kids to run in and out of the sea all day.

On our second full day it rained relentlessly. We waited too long to make it worth heading home that day, so stuck it out for a third night before packing up the wet tent and driving back east. Turns out we caught the southern edge of ex-hurricane Bertha, which did a lot of damage further north. So it could have been worse.

The camping trips this summer have been fun, even though they each had a rain-to-sun ratio of about two to one. We might try to sneak in another weekend away before the weather gets too cold, although it’s felt like autumn since we got back, so that might not be long.

22 August 2014

The Kelpies, Falkirk

The Kelpies are a pair of monumental new sculptures by Andy Scott located between Falkirk and Grangemouth, next to the M9 from Edinburgh to Stirling. I was there on Sunday with the family and took some photos of the mega-ponies in an hour of sunshine between downpours.

5 August 2014

Sanity

Sanna Beach, Ardnamurchan Peninsula, 13 July 2014

I’ve been stuck in the office for a lot of Scotland’s recent warm weather, but have been taking some days off here and there to go camping with my family. After a trial night in the woods in June (to see how our three-year-old daughter liked it), a couple of weekends ago we went to the Ardnamurchan Campsite at Kilchoan, driving through mist and rain on single-track roads to get there. We had one afternoon of sunshine the next day, when we crossed the crater of an extinct volcano to reach one of the best beaches I’ve seen in Scotland yet, next to the crofting village of Sanna. Here’s one photo of the many I took that afternoon while the unexpected sun went to work on our unsuspecting skin (mouseover for another).

We’re heading back west before the end of the school holidays for a final summer camping trip, so there will be more sandy photos to come.

23 July 2014

The Worst Little Pub on the Coast

After years of meaning to, I’ve finally bought a scanner that can handle slides and film, and have started scanning my 35mm negatives. The earliest are from 1982, when Dad gave me his father’s old Yashica for my fourteenth birthday. Those first rolls were black and white, and developed in his darkroom. We only printed a few frames from each, if that; the rest have gone unseen, except as contact prints of the negatives, since I took them. Seeing them now is an uncanny experience; they’re older than most of the prints in my photo albums, but the images are effectively new to me, not worn down by over-familiarity. There’s my brother at age 11, looking as early-’80s as a Radiators video. There’s my mother the same age my wife is now.

Most of the photos were from camping trips and weekends away, with some of the same sorts of landscape shots I still take a lifetime later. But the clothes, the cars, and all the other aspects of the built environment turn them into time travel. Here’s one that’s particularly Tasmanian, and particularly 1982. Nowadays these signs would be a few laser-printed pages, and not nearly as good.

The Worst Little Pub on the Coast

Blow Fly Sponge $1.50, Leeches & Cream 5¢. Hold the Kangaroo Tits.

10 June 2014

Botanics

Edinburgh Botanic Gardens, 21 May 2014

A macro from the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens in May. Mouseover for another.

4 June 2014

Shells

shells shells shells

Shells

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any photos. Here are some from a few weeks ago.

16 May 2014

Journal in 2013