2nd June 2025

The boys are off school today for an Inset Day so it was a quick dash into town to get something for tea, and also to wrap up a quick outstanding job.

It is good to be back in the Highlands though!

4th June 2025

I have decided that for June... and possibly beyond... I am going to branch out of my comfort zone of architecture and property to bring you "Wild Wednesday"! I have no idea how this will go as a lot depends on time, weather and being somewhere suitable... but this is the plan!

Today we start off with a rook mooching about at the Playground in Drumnadrochit looking for discarded crisps. An easy start perhaps... but it counts!

I am not a wildlife photographer!

6th June 2025

A stormy squall runs up Loch Ness on a dramatic day… which has seen me suspend work for an agency.

8th June 2025

The River Coiltie running down into Drumnadrochit. Glen Coiltie is "The Wooded Glen" and an absolutely beautiful place, unfortunately a place which is now under threat as a Pumped Hydro scheme has been proposed behind Meal Fuar-mhonaidh. A scheme that will involve three vast 60 meter high dams to vastly increase the size of the natural loch behind the mountain damaging natural habitat significantly. This is before you take into account the 1000 person "workers village" high in the hills (which will be hell in winter), the massive sub surface works that will impact on the groundwater levels on the hill (potentially having vast impact on the water supplies to all residents).

Then there is the vast number of additional wagons they are going to be bringing in.

And that is before even thinking about the impacts on the loch itself.

More detail can be found on https://savelochness.co.uk/

1st June 2025

The reason I have been away for the weekend - to photograph a friends house in Fife for parents who can’t travel to see where they now live. Something a little different to the usual.

It has been nice to have a change of scenery for a couple of days, and also catching up with people I haven’t seen in a while is always good. Back to work now for the month though!

10th June 2025

Today's adventures took us to Gairloch (eventually... after a stop in Inverness and another in Invergordon). It was nice to spend a little time just exploring after the craziness of the workload was done with (because the car needed a wee top up!). Jen had the day off so came with me for a bit of a change of scenery.

I think she may be putting an offer in on the house we shot last though. I did ask if they fancied a swap with Drumnadrochit but they were pretty set on wanting actual money for it.

12th June 2025

This is a "work photo" from Glenleraig near An Nead right up on the north west coast of Scotland... and I think this must rate as one of my all time favourite work photos, despite the house being very "basic" in the eyes of pretty much everyone. This is the kind of place I love though, and when you throw in the absolutely stunning landscape of Assynt I am in absolute heaven!

I really have to come here when the NC lemmings have gone back to whence they came as I keep forgetting how much this region speaks to me.

14th June 2025

Today has been a little damp. Which is good as it has been so dry through spring that we need some more water, but it would be nice to see some good weather again soon!

Had a busy morning today - a fresh set of front tyres on the car as it was in desperate need (the brakes are next on the agenda... but getting them is proving a bit of a challenge... and the one quoted price so far was painful as they could only find uprated Brembo discs and pads to fit!). My phone crashed 4 times on the way into Inverness and since I had an email about a special offer through from EE I popped into the shop to run through it with them... and walked out with a new handset and my first new contract since the last one expired 4 years ago.

Anyway - it's looking suitably dramatic and a bit spooky outside this evening so I popped out for a quick shot. I can’t believe that this time next week we will be crossing over the mid point of the year with the Summer Solstice! And not long after that the boys will all be wrapping up another year of school, then heading straight off on summer camp for a week with Scouts to Belfast.

Looking ahead to next week and it’s already looking reasonable and that is before most of the big jobs come through on a 2 or 3 day turn around… I even have a rough skeleton of bookings in place for the week after so I could be looking at a strong finish to June!

16th June 2025

Today saw me out to Gorthleck first thing, a bit of a rarity to get south of the loch so Jen came with me for a bit of a look at some different scenery! The weather, however, had a different plan - it was largely grim, except a brief respite as we headed back up towards Inverness for my second job of the day.

I love this area just outside Inverness and it is somewhere I plan to explore much more thorughly in the future!

30th June 2025

This is not the photograph I would have liked to end the month on, but this is the reality of a camp fire lit on Dava Muir over the weekend. It is now a 10 mile long wildfire destroying everything in it’s path.

There is some stunning displays of stupidity over the tourist season, but actions like this really are monumental examples of the hard of thinking we see day in day out, either people driving like idiots or not looking where they are going on the roads leading to accidents and fatalities to this, wholesale environmental destruction all in the name of having a “free holiday”.

Get a grip.

3rd June 2025

A small clump of purple thrift caught my eye at South Kessock slipway this afternoon whilst turning around to head for home.

I need to start challenging myself a little more again to get some really interesting shots and build my work… so tomorrow I am going to attempt something a little different!

5th June 2025

The Monadhliath Mountains in the rain - it’s been one of those highly changable days today, but I managed to catch a little sunshine for each of the jobs I had on so I can’t complain too much!

Taking this got me a soaking mind!

In related news I am very, very close to calling it a day on agency work. It doesn’t pay well enough, the power is entirely in their hands making for a very unequal relationship and when things go wrong they are not acting quickly or fairly in setting it right.

7th June 2025

A productive kinda day today - garden centre, supermarket, B&Q and another garden centre... then a brewery. Finding grow bags was really rather tricky and required a victory purchase when we finally got some!

I have also ordered another 360 camera as I scratched the lens on my Ricoh X last week. It still works and I have another that is in a severe state of Frankenstein’s dabbling which I am now going to strip for parts (if I can) to try and replace the one scratched lens on my current workhorse. If I can manage to make it work then I will have two - a main camera and a spare. I then need to find some way to protect the lenses from further damage as this is getting expensive! When I was using the Z1 it was costing £2,000/year in replacements - now we are about a grand instead! I question whether it’s worth it….

In other news - still nothing back from FA so still blacklisting their jobs. Which is awkward as a lovely client of theirs is desperate for me to go to Gairloch but I may be fully booked up now with work that actually pays….

9th June 2025

It has been an odd kind of day today - the first of two jobs was a very, very odd old house in a very poor state that I was shooting for an auction house. Even stranger was that despite the power being off the radio on an old stereo randomly turned on down in the living room whilst I was upstairs! Radio 2 has never sounded so spooky... particularly as I am convinced it was too large to run off batteries - this was a big old unit!

Anyway. I left. Quite quickly

The second job was an aerial shoot but the weather was terrible by then - I took some shots and footage but having looked at it again I think I will return in a couple of days for another go at it.

On the way home I took this - at least all this rain has been good for the trees!

22nd June 2025

Today we took the boys karting at the Inverness track - the electric karts there are absolutely fantastic!

11th June 2025

In the second of my series of "I am no wildlife photographer, but lets give it a go" we have a Wagtail sitting on my roof. Mainly because it is the only wildlife I have seen today that has stayed still long enough for a quick frame!

13th June 2025

Friday 13th... I have been too exhausted to notice!

Today's main task was to get Roki in to the vet for his annual inoculations and health check - he is generally all good, but needs to loose some timber (much like me then!).

To celebrate his health status I thought I would do a doggy portrait for today!

I am feeling a little out of sorts today, or this evening anyway. I can’t put my finger on it… perhaps it is the lack of social life just making me feel a little lonely? It may just be that Jen has loads of friends but doesn’t realise it despite being out a fair bit, whilst I stay home in the evenings lost in my own thoughts. Who knows… probably doesn’t really matter in the greater scheme of things anyway.

I used to have a full social life, but that all fell by the wayside when I moved out of Stirling itself to Doune to a large extent and then completely evaporated in the Lake District. I don’t think I know how to do sociable anymore. Being self employed for the last 20 years has probably not made it any easier to meet people mind - and the RNLI hasn’t provided those connections that I was hoping it would, probably a reflection of my role as much as anything else as it doesn’t build the same bonds and, I think, we are largely forgotten and overlooked within the organisation as a whole which focuses on the more dramatic roles.

Will I do anything about it? Probably not.

15th June 2025

A rare moment of actually having time for some domestic chores today - I put together this hybrid greenhouse/polytunnel in which we plan to grow some veg! I have no idea how well it will work but we don’t have the funds to put up anything more substantial just at the moment, and there is so much to do around the garden first anyway before we even thing of anything more permanent… and probably building the rest of the house too!

Anyway - it’s up and this weekend we will probably start putting things inside it to grow. Maybe a bit late, but hopefully it won’t matter too much being inside!

18th June 2025

Today did not go entirely to plan. I thought it had... then I checked over the jobs... and then I noticed a slight omission.

So Friday morning is no longer "get some admin done" it is now "go back and reshoot 3 missed images". The admin will have to await the afternoon!

Anyway, in all the excitement of messing up (there was a valid reason for this to be fair) I forgot it was #WildWednesday so had to pop out tonight to go and see who was about around the house. Fortunately a young sika decided to pop by to say hello!

20th June 2025

Today was, as expected, mad. A whole load of charging around the countryside without much chance to stop. It was 22 degrees when I walked out the door this morning, I think my car peaked around 30 degrees at some point in the afternoon and it felt like it just kept getting hotter and hotter as the afternoon progressed.

It's cooled down now and the cats are all outside enjoying the evening now they can face leaving their refuges from the heat!

26th June 2025

The old hut on Loch Bad an Sgalaig, Wester Ross as rain sweeps across the mountains.

This hut has been on my list for some time to shoot, and the couple of attempts I have made so far just haven't done it justice... I quite like this one though, it is suitably dramatic!

I am hoping to start work on my companion website to this one over the next week or so with the intention of really diving deep into the world of fine art photography. I have a couple of ideas for the first couple of series that I am going to work on… and possibly a third… with the idea of selling my work as unique one-off framed prints. These will be very, very high quality items as I start moving towards an area I always intended to work in and, hopefully, succeed in. I am really pleased with how the commercial photography side has grown and developed with this year looking like everything is coming together nicely, and which I hope will continue to thrive as I start looking at this new idea!

28th June 2025

Absolutely nothing going on here.

Been one of those days... went out to do a quick job this morning, spent an hour looking for it... eventually found it (with the help of Robert and Kirsty)... then the owner of the property couldn't open the door of one rental because the lock broke and the other was occupied last minute. So a total waste of time (and a total waste of a Saturday lazy morning!)

Instead it was home, bacon sarnie and start attacking the midden that exists in the house.

The cats are unimpressed with the events of the day.

17th June 2025

Today was a return trip to Gairloch to redo a 360 tour which was slightly blurred in sections after the camera went down last week - a gust of wind put it on the floor! I thought I had got away with it as the landing was relatively soft grass - but a small (tiny infact) abrasion ended it’s useful life. I ordered up a replacement (which is a painful and regular occurance) as soon as I got home which should have arrived on Thursday or Friday… it arrived on Monday, late! Fortunately I hadn’t quite got to the point of rearranging the shoot at that stage so managed to get there today as planned.

Afterwards there was a bit of time to explore - and I found this fantastic old croft house in Big Sand, a crofting township just along the coast from the main village!

24th June 2025

It was a bit bleak today heading out to Kinlochewe. I stopped at the “viewpoint” anyway….

I was enroute to a job which has taken some serious editing to make look respectable, it was literally at the bottom of the pass from here in the clag!

This was the edit, I took this within 10 minutes of the photograph looking down Glen Docherty from the pass!

The wonders of Photoshop!

19th June 2025

Its starting to look very lush up the glen.

21st June 2025

The Wild Gorse Midsummer Fayre at Belladrum was today - loads of art and artists were there and also quite a few folk that we knew were bumped into along the way. We even had our portrait painted in a 20 minute session (40, there were two of us).

23rd June 2025

Today has been a challenge! I started off here, in Cannich, before heading into Inverness for a couple of jobs and then Bunchrew for a fourth - which probably is my limit for a day as I have just finished editing at 10pm! The weather was the main obstacle though with the drone proving to be hugely challenging and lots of grey skies and rain to contend with to.

Except for the odd moment of sunshine, such as this!

25th June 2025

There were several rooks searching through the seaweed on the beach at Portree today, something I don't think I have ever seen before. Some were even having baths!

This marks the last photo in my "Wild Wednesday" chalenge where I decided to photograph wildlife once a week as a bit of a challenge to myself. I was hoping for more diversity in subjects, but never mind. I am just trying to decide if I should continue if for longer!

27th June 2025

The clouds were thickening as I passed through Avoch this afternoon, but it was still worth stopping off at the harbour for 5 minutes!

I don’t usually do “late afternoon” jobs as it is a bit of a pain with children to make arrangements for - and then the late night editing to get them in overnight… but today there was no alternative. The house was quite spectacular though, if a bit challenging to shoot externally due to the

tight nature of Fortrose High Street and the

high front elevation!

29th June 2025

Not done a great deal of anything today… my heart has just not been in it. I have no idea why, just feel a wee bit down today.

Last week was just so busy that it may just be down to not having a moment to think!

Anyway, here is today’s photo… and next week is looking a little less hectic (or a lot less truth be told) so I will probably catch up with myself a little!