Kingussie icicles and Inverness curling

Unlike the great success I had with the frozen waterfall photos from Sunday, some photos I did on Saturday and Monday typify the gamble of working on spec.

On Saturday I went around Kingussie photographing some of the giant icicles that have formed after three weeks of sub-zero temperatures. These two photos show one of the largest icicles, hanging from the guttering of a shop, and the shop owner came to stand next to it for the photo, to give a sense of scale:

Neither photo, nor any of the others from around Kingussie that afternoon, were published in any of the newspapers that I sent them to.

And on Monday afternoon I headed up to Inverness to photograph a curling match that had been organised as a small-scale substitute for the Grand Match outdoor tournament on Lake of Menteith, which was cancelled due to safety concerns. The lighting conditions were bad but I got some decent shots:

Sadly not a single one of them was used in any of the papers!

Ah well. That's the gamble when you work on spec. Sometimes you win big, and sometimes you spend the whole afternoon taking photos that do nothing but take up space on your computer!