2nd September 2026

Today I had a couple of jobs on this morning, which have taken an age to process due to IT Issues continuing - I am having to learn new software to keep on top of things for the moment. Then it was off to the darkroom to process a couple of films out of the Bronica which came out okay. The lightmeter, I think, is slightly over-reading so I will add some compensation and see how the next lot come out. I think they will scan okay, but prints are a bit iffy as it stands.

This print, however, was one I made from a photograph taken earlier in the summer on the big GSW690, and it is the first hand print that I am feeling quite pleased with! The shift to some better quality paper seems to have paid off nicely!

4th September 2026

The end of a fairly quiet week, work wise, ahead of a busy weekend as I head off for a meeting of the Scottish Network of Analogue Photographers (SNAP) tomorrow. The weather is being fairly dramatic, switching between sunshine and downpours… and unfortunately the sun was being un-cooperative regarding it’s position for my planned shoot (which I then remembered I had spotted in the afternoon a couple of days back) so a return for that one is going to be needed.

I took the high road through back into Inverness to pick some stuff up from the darkroom which I had left there, and go for breakfast with Jen post gym, and spotted this lone tree by the roadside. The colours in the landscape are shifting now towards the autumnal hues so it seemed a worthy place to stop for a brief moment.

6th September 2026

I love old cameras, I love film photography - there is something more “real” about proper analogue photography. It is much, much harder to get the results, there is just another level of skill and artistry that are involved with it - and not spending hours in front of a screen is nice. Admitably it switches to hours in the darkroom instead, but it makes a nice change!

This Olympus came into my posession yesterday - and the OM is actually a really, really fundamental part of my journey as a photographer. It wasn’t one I used or owned, it was one I always wanted… but most importantly it was the camera used by my mentor. And now I have one of my own. I am not entirely sure that it is currently fully functioning mind! I am running a test roll through at the moment and may send it in for a CLA and meter adjustment once I see the result.

8th September 2026

I am on a bit of a mission to redefine what “landscape photography” actually is - looking more towards the work of the great classic landscape painters rather than following the crowd that is influenced mostly by clicks, likes and competition judges preferences.

Today has been a fairly relaxed affair though, especially as the weather led to the last of the jobs of the day being abandoned. It was a drone shoot which was just not going to happen as the stormy weather rolled back in after a reasonably bright morning. Still, two down and both were decent jobs so it made for an okay day all in all.

Tomorrow was supposed to be very hectic, but one of the larger properties has postponed until next week which gives me a little more breathing space! Still going to be a busy one… but managably so!

10th September 2026

I am on a bit of a go slow tonight - the work has not yet been edited and it is late… to be honest I have been somewhat distracted by the growing venom of certain sections of the population to the RNLI… to me… we have been told not to wear any crew kit with logos on now.

No.

I don’t agree with this, and I will continue to wear it.

Today I was in another coastal town, Nairn, where I took this photograph outside the property I was shooting! This one is not for the brochure though, this one is for me!

12th September 2026

Been a day of PC wrangling today - it still isn’t “right” but it seems to be a bit better. I had a real drama scanning film too - it is working now, but that was more effort than it should have been!

16th September 2026

Today went a bit sideways for a variety of reasons… it was planned to be a good, busy and productive day but the main job went awry through no fault of my own. These things happen though, so I can’t really complain too much.

It’s gone quite quiet this week which is unusual for September so I am hoping to catch up with the errant job either Friday this week or Monday next, so long as the weather decides to co-operate. It was nice late morning today through to mid afternoon - then it all went south!

On the plus side I found an interesting new subject which I shot both digitally and rather a lot of exposures on film too, both on the Bronica ETRSi (using both a 6×45 back and a 24×50 back) and to get a whole load of exposures in with the Olympus OM-2 which I am putting a film through ahead of next week’s darkroom booking so that I can assess whether it needs to go in for some fettling or not!

18th September 2026

I wasn’t going to work today - nothing on the books - but a last minute, urgent, job came in so I rushed to Inverness whilst there was a window of reasonable weather and got everything shot, edited and returned before lunchtime!

On the way back I stopped to photograph the bridge home - this is literally at the bottom of the hill from our house - and today it was looking rather autumnal. Then it was back to the planned tasks of the day of sorting out everything for the youngests birthday on Sunday.

20th September 2026

It was always going to be a busy day and a busy weekend in general - because it is our youngest’s 8th birthday today! As well as his celebrations (which have mostly involved him gaming and eating cake) I have also been putting together a panel for The Society of Photographers to gain an entry level Commercial and Industrial photography qualification with them.

Unfortunately you have to go up the rungs so there is no skipping ahead, and I thought long an hard about which path I was going to embark on with them - whether I went the fine art route or whether I celebrated my commercial photography. In the end I decided that since my BIPP path started out with Fine Art, with societies I would start out with commercial work. Of course swapping and changing on both is entirely possible - and with societies I can always add additional qualification paths to my overall CV.

But it’s in. I have been saying I would submit for quite some time, today I quickly threw together a panel of 20 current photographs (because most of my work is in archive at the moment) taken over the last couple of months… and it occured to me that I haven’t had all that many really swanky jobs of late, which I hope are not a hinderance as I shoot the most basic or delapidated property with the same enthusiasm and quality that I do a castle.

My other worry is that I skipped the mentoring stage for this first submission. Not because I don’t think I wouldn’t benefit from the advice and scrutiny, but more because I want to get on with it and start looking towards my associateship with both the BIPP and Societies. I need to start shooting the work for the former over the next few months with the aim of starting to put a panel together in the New Year for whenever qualifications come around again next.

Looking back at the last week - it has been okay. A bit better than my own self determined baseline, but not by a huge amount. This coming week is currently in a similar position, although that is with Wednesday largely booked off for some darkroom time ahead of Saturday’s photowalk because I want to see how the Olympus is working before committing to taking it out for the day!

22nd September 2026

It’s a late finish tonight, the weather turned a bit miserable which always slows down the edits as I need to do a lot more work on the externals… plus 3 videos, the drone vids don’t take too long to put together but the interiors are another matter! I am hoping that an imminent firmware update for the camera will help things along a bit, but my PC running slow is a real issue with things like colour grading and noise supression!

Anyway, I stopped off in the rain whilst traversing the back roads of the Highlands and stumbled upon a 13th Century ruined church, complete with old stone coffin… a lifting stone… and some rather macabre legends relating to the two! This is somewhere that I am going to be heading back to another day!

Tomorrow is a nice, chilled out, kind of a day - just the one small job in the afternoon after a processing a few films - one of which will decide what camera I am taking to the weekends photowalk (or more that it will decide if it is being ruled out or not as I plan on using the Olympus unless this film is a disaster requiring it to be sent off for some remedial work!)

24th September 2026

Tonight I am feeling a little under the weather, so I have decided to have a quiet night and abandoned RNLI training. It has been a particularly cold, wet and miserable day as well which probably hasn’t helped too much! So much so that one of the jobs I had planned to get done today just wasn’t going to happen, so that has been rescheduled to Monday when the weather is - hopefully - a bit kinder!

26th September 2026

Today it was the second Inverness FotoWalk - a great excuse to wander around the Highland Capital with a group of enthusiastic photographers and shoot some street scenes - which is not something I do all that often. The light was playing nicely with some super dramatic clouds and shafts of sunshine between the showers too!

28th September 2026

Today has been a lot of driving around the place! I started off in Portmahomack shooting a little video and some aerial stills of a lovely property overlooking the sea. Then it was Dingwall for some shopping… home… then back out to Ardersier for another shoot latish on in the afternoon.

All are now edited and out to clients ahead of a mega-day tomorrow! Plus an RNLI Operations Meeting in the evening… so it’s going to be a big old day! I think Wednesday may be a catch up with editing… plus I have a few more I want to pop in to the BIPP monthlies from the last few days too!

30th September 2026

Another month is over… and another year for me. So I am having a day off… well… kind of. I have collected some keys for tomorrow, done my invoicing for the month and had a bit of a bimble around the Beauly Firth.

I have also accidentally bought a darkroom of my own. Well, Jen bought me an AGO film processing system which I was going to start out just processing film at home and printing in WASPS, but the processor can do paper too… and I have been looking at a used enlarger for a while… it didn’t have a timer which was putting me off - but the matching timer came up on eBay for a very, very good price… and so I decided to bite the bullet and get all the rest of the hardware now!

This sets me up, for the moment, to do black and white processing end to end at home. However - the hardware is also fully compatible with colour work - so I also got a chemical heater… and I will get the chemicals and paper to do a full colour workload next month as I think I have caused the couriers enough drama for one month!

3rd September 2026

Today I was over on the Black Isle catching up with a job that has evaded me for a while - it was a “no rush” situation as the property isn’t going on the market for some time yet, but the photographs needed the foliage and that will not be around for too much longer - particularly if we get the stormy autumn that is being forecast.

On the way back I attempted to stop at Channonry Point, but there was a queue for the carpark… so I gave up on that idea… and instead stopped off at Avoch. I love this scene with the old fishing cottages lining the foreshore. The colour was drab, but there was enough atmosphere in the light to lend itself to a black and white rendering. I took a few frames with the Bronica too, this time with some exposure compensation dialled in to see if I can inject some more contrast and depth to the film (currently it is running Formapan 200, an emulsion I haven’t tried yet!)

5th September 2026

Today it was off to Stirling for the SNAP meeting, its a twice a year meet up with other photographers working in analogue formats to chat, share ideas and generally network. It was good to be back in the city for a while too - I lived here for a few years quite some time ago now… and I have very happy and fond memories of the place.

It was a flying visit this time, I think next time we have a meeting which is out of area I may head down the night before and spend a bit of time exploring or re-aquainting (depending where it is) with the camera.

This was, quite literally, the only photograph I took today.

7th August 2026

It has been a day of travelling around again today - off to Portree on the Misty Isle to photograph a croft and, for the first time in an age, it was sunny.

At least, it was sunny for the job. I stopped off to shoot some landscapes and got an absolute soaking, the rain cleared briefly as I reached Eilean Donan (so a second stop was required) before finally making it home tonight.

One of the plus sides of a day like this, other than an impromtu mini adventure, is that it is only a single edit to run! A late return home, but a pretty early finish by my usual standards!

9th September 2026

Today has been a bit of an odd one - the pager went off late last night, which turned into a non-event, fortunately, but when that beeper starts it is all hands on deck.

So today started off on a tired note, then it was off up to Invergordon before heading back to Strathpeffer and Beauly… then home to rescue an unwell child from school which derailed my afternoon plans. Tomorrow I start playing catch up!

11th September 2026

Today I dropped Jen off at the airport in the morning, then home to get the heating system serviced ahead of winter. I need to put my prices up… that cost a lot! Anyway, it hasn’t been looked at since it went it so was probably wise to have it given the once over. They are coming back to fix the house battery too!

So my day has mostly been spent catching up with some bits and bobs and feeling very, very tired. I decided to pop the drone up over Achaidh, an old settlement that sits between my house and Meal Fuar-mhonaidh, the mountain in the background. It is a really special place and somewhere I really need to physically get back to at some stage!

But not today. Today I just want to sleep!

13th September 2026

Normally this would be the close of the weekend and back to it on Monday… but I am having a long weekend this week since Jen is away and the boys are off school tomorrow. I say I am having a long weekend off… but then I spent most of today and yesterday fettling the computer and running some re-edits on videos as I strive to raise my game in the world of videography and film making. I have some new lighting stands arriving shortly to help with that - and a set of inflatable light bars to help with interior lighting, particularly as we move towards the darker months.

The colours in the landscape are starting to shift now, they have been for the last few days - but I think things are starting to accelerate now with the greens slowly giving way to golds. This is the time that I really start to push the landscape side of my work forward, and this year I have a lot of plans on that front. I am less concerned by the colour this time around though, which is probably just as well given the summer we had and the forecast for the autumn to come, as my plans mostly revolve around black and white work for the next few months. I want to investigate colour analogue again soon, but for the moment it will be largely monochromatic. The choice to shoot my fine art photography on analogue formats is to bypass the arguement that everything is “filters”, “AI” and “Photoshop”. I am lucky enough to live in a spectacular environment and I want to show it as it actually is, without enhancement (beyond what I can do in the darkroom, which is - to be fair - pretty rudimentary!

So with next week kicking off on Tuesday I get a little more time to relax, which is just as well… they start on the road repairs tomorrow so life is going to be very disrupted up the hill for the rest of 2026! On the plus side… we should be getting fibre broadband installed during the works!

14th September 2026

It’s been a nice slow day today - which has been largely needed as it has been pretty full throttle of late!

Today I have been largely looking through some recent work to put together a panel for The Societies as I want to push forward with some professional development, whilst still persuing the same through the BIPP - but more eyes on my work, and more discussions about raising my output and profile is always going to be a good thing.

15th September 2026

I am not going to lie… today has been challenging to shoot in! It has been dull, dark, driech and very, very wet! I am absolutely astonished that the drone managed to not only launch but get some stills and footage! The exterior edits have been very, very heavy though to make things look bright and appealing!

17th September 2026

It has been a pretty miserable day again today. Dark and damp, and oh so windy! I had a couple of jobs on which I managed to get wrapped up before it got too wild out to launch the drone.

There was a shout (RNLI when I got home, but I was on school run duty, so sat it out) which turned into a recovery of a boat operation during training so I got myself involved with that side of things anyway.

Thursdays can be rather long days at times.

19th September 2026

The work has started on repairing the landslide that has been something of a thorn in our side for nearly 2 years. Where the digger is sitting is… or was… the road home before hte collapse. This is the first chance I have had to photograph the work since they started on Monday, and the first time I have popped by to have a look in quite a while! The slope seems to have found a slightly shallower angle from intial slide as far as I recall, but is now being rebuilt and armoured.

It’s a shame, this area was densly wooded with some lovely old trees prior to the storm that washed away so much land, but once it is rebuilt we will have better access home again, which is a much needed improvement. They are also (if the utilities company is to be believed) bringing fibre broadband to us during the course of the repairs! I am not holding my breath… but it would be lovely to be enjoying a faster and more reliable connection than Starlink can provide for less money!

I may try and stop for a photo here fairly regularly over the course of the coming months to document the progress! It may not look much, but the sense of relief that something is finally being done is palpable up the glen!

21st September 2026

Some days your plans are just doomed to failure. Today was one of those such days! We had a meeting first thing to attend, which was late starting and even later finishing - which isn’t a problem and normally would have been no issue whatsoever, but today… today I planned to go up to Gairloch and get back again before tea. With what would have been a late set off I would not have made it back for my role on Duty at RNLI Loch Ness either - and at the moment I am struggling to find the time to make my commitments to the team in the way I would like to. So the job got bounced to Friday.

This is a blow in more ways than one - the weather today has actually been pretty reasonable, which is something that has been in short supply this year! Friday is looking promising at the moment too though, so maybe we will be okay. The other issue is that I planned to shoot a load of film to finish off some rolls that I am planning on processing on Wednesday ahead of a photo walk on Saturday - this is to decide what camera(s) I will be taking along! I was going to take the big Bronica, but I am starting to think the OM-2n may be the analogue component this time with the RF playing the digital role. This is very much “travelling light”!

23rd September 2026

If anyone ever wants to give me an XPan… or a Fuji equivalent… I will love you forever! In the meantime, and short of a windfall… or a stroke of amazing luck of finding a “cheap” one… today’s photo comes from my hacked Zenza Bronica ETRSi with a converted 135W back and a roll of Ilford Ortho Plus. I am really happy with this film, and I now want to see what the 120 version comes out like - I have a roll of it in one of the cameras at the moment, but I can’t recall which one… it may be the 617!

This photo is a bit of a first for me, on my second coming to the world of analogue photography, as it was shot today, processed today by hand in the WASPs darkroom by myself… and then hand printed there too onto Kentmere VC paper as I wasn’t quite happy enough to put it onto my lovely Ilford Multigrade CoolTone stock! I did print a couple of other photographs on that paper mind, and I am absolutely blown away! I am hoping to get to the point I can create stock to sell hand made prints in the near future!

25th September 2026

It was a late start today as I was waiting for an electrician (who didn’t make it as his van broke down) - but once out it was up to Gairloch! The light was fantastic… but the wind made flying the drone something of a challenge!

27th September 2026

Today I am catching up with the edits from both yesterday’s FotoWalk and Friday’s job out in Gairloch. It is also raining.

29th September 2026

It has been rather lovely today, or at least… this morning! The sun was shining, the sky was blue… the leaves are starting to turn towards their autumnal hues.

I was out in Nairn for the morning and took a slight detour on the way between a couple of jobs past some vast old millponds at, oddly enough, a place called Newmill. I haven’t tavelled down this particular road before so it was quite interesting.

Unfortunately the weather deteriorated around lunch time so I decided against trying to get any externals for some jobs that are in the pipeline - the wind was picking up and the clouds gathering so it really wasn’t worth the effort. Tomorrow is looking a bit poor too so I may shelve the exterior shoot I had planned for then too and push them all to Thursday and Friday instead.

Maybe.