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Recent local photos
Thu Apr 8th - 6:08pm
Here are some recent local photos. Kids at an Easter Bunny Bonanza:
One boy chose to make an Easter Dinosaur:
Lorries that parked in Aviemore high street over night when the A9 was closed due to heavy snow and laybys were closed due to roadworks:
Winners of the Newtonmore 2-mile fun run. This is my favourite photo from the last few months. Usually when you have two people with trophies in a photo you end up with them standing shoulder-to-shoulder and you get a gap between their heads that’s just wasted space. I tried a few compositions with these two kids before finding this one and I think it worked really well. I’ll certainly re-use this composition in future.
Some very large horses and a very large carriage on Aviemore high street:
Police incident on Aviemore high street:
Collision between car and lorry on A9
Thu Apr 1st - 11:49am
I was up 'til the wee hours on Tuesday night so didn't wake up until about 2pm on Wednesday, and immediately had to dash out to a serious collision on the A9 near Newtonmore a couple of miles away. The collision, between a lorry and a car, had left a male occupant of the car in hospital with head injuries and a female occupant in hospital with less severe injuries.
Had to wait for around 3 hours before I could get the pics, and had stupidly forgotten to take anything to eat or drink. It was like manna from heaven when I hunted around my car and found a stray can of Irn Bru under the passenger seat. Best can of Irn Bru I've ever tasted!
Pics were used in The Sun and the Press & Journal.
Kilted skiing at Cairngorm Mountain
Sat Mar 6th - 4:24pm
Congratulations to everyone who took part in the kilted skiing record attempt at Cairngorm Mountain this morning. I really enjoyed being there to see 235 skiers and snowboarders of all ages, sizes and species (yes!) doing the righteous kilt thing in style. There was a great atmosphere and it was well organised, especially having the pipers and drummer leading the procession down to the finish line.
Read about it on the BBC and STV news sites.
So I’ll be needing a press card then…
Sat Mar 6th - 1:41am
Working in the Highlands, which is a huge area with a small population, you don't really need a press card. Most of the police know all the photographers and so long as you behave yourself, which we all do, there's never any problem.
Today I was covering a fire at a furniture store in Grantown, after receiving the usual media alert from the police press office. There was only one other photographer there and we were both playing by the rules, only going where the police allowed us to go and not getting in the way at all. As far as I'm aware, neither of us did anything wrong and there was no reason for any police officer to object to us being there.
Then up walked Inspector Attitude and confronted me. He was immediately combative. This is how the conversation went:
Him: Are you press?
Me: I am, yes.
Him: Show me your credentials.
Me: I'm freelance. I don't have credentials.
Him: You don't have any ID at all?
Me: I've got ID, I just don't have press credentials because I'm freelance.
Him: (Taking hold of me and pushing me.) Don't give me any of your nonsense.
Me: Excuse me?
At which point someone started talking to him on his radio and he left me alone. Later on he came over to where both myself and the other photographer were standing, and asked us to move even further back, but he was polite that time.
I've known for as long as I've been in this business that British press cards are effectively worthless because anyone can get one, whether they're press or not, so I've never bothered getting one. Plus I've only ever been asked for a press card once before, and that time was also by a policeman with an aggressive attitude who was trying to be obstructive.
Two times is two times too many though. Probably best if I just get the silly card and show it to any policeman daft enough to think it means something. If it lets me get on with my job without wasting time on stupid arguments then I guess it will be worth it. I just hope I don't have to pay some astronomical "membership fee" to whichever 'gatekeeper' I end up getting it from.
Anyway, even with the hassles, I got all the pics I wanted. (I should point out that the policeman in the first pic isn't the one who confronted me. This guy was friendly and polite, as the police nearly always are.)
Sport Relief bike ride and Carrbridge loco removal
Tue Mar 2nd - 3:25pm
Yesterday was insane. On Sunday night at 8pm I got a booking for a job in John O'Groats, over 160 miles away, and I had to be there for 8am. The job was covering the start of the Sport Relief celebrity bike ride.
The agency that I was covering the event for supplies photos to a lot of celebrity magazines and tabloid newspapers, so I tried to get photos that those publications would be interested in, such as this shot of David Walliams signing autographs:
Current media darling Miranda Hart:
And some gratuitous butt shots of Davina McCall:
Fearne Cotton kept a low profile and I didn't see her come out to mingle with the crowd at all, so there wasn't much opportunity for good pics of her:
Local school kids had turned out in force to give their support, so once the celebs had set off I got a group shot of the kids to send to the local paper:
So that was the John O'Groats job done.
On the way home I headed for the scene of a road accident near Invergordon, but it had been cleared up by the time I got there. I stopped in Inverness for a couple of hours to do a bit of shopping, then continued south.
And by pure luck, the time spent in Inverness meant that I reached Carrbridge just as the derailed locomotive was being taken away by road. I did a U-turn on the A9, headed back to the first layby, grabbed my camera and ran back along the A9 to get some shots of the loco and the queues of traffic. Maybe there's a good reason for the timing, but I thought it was quite bizarre that the loco was being moved at 5pm when it would surely cause a lot of inconvnience to motorists.
It was a very long day. I got home at about 6:30pm, sent the loco pics off to the papers, had a quick bite to eat, and sat on the settee for a game of Grand Theft Auto. I woke up 2 hours later, still sitting upright on the settee. I'd pretty much been running on adrenaline for the past 24 hours. Went to bed and slept for 11 hours.
Would happily do the same again tomorrow 
Locomotive lifted from Carrbridge derailment site
Sun Feb 14th - 3:50pm
The derailed 167-tonne locomotive at Carrbridge train station was lifted last night, by a team from Port Services using a specialist crane that can lift up to 1,000 tonnes. I had reliable information that the lift would be happening that night, but still you never know exactly how fast these heavy-lift operations will go so I turned up at midnight, found the best angle, and waited with my flask of soup
It was around 3am when the lift began:
After the loco was raised by about 20-feet there was a lot of banging noises from near the crane so the loco was lowered again while adjustments were made. Then the lift began for real. The next photo was used by the BBC as their "Big Picture" for today. Nice to see a wide shot being used, as it tends to be mostly tight shots that are used nowadays. I think a wide shot can often tell the story better.
And the next photo was used on the STV News web site.
The photos have all been sent to the national newspapers too so hopefully some will be used tomorrow. I'm fairly sure this next one won't be used, but I like it because of the composition with the guys sitting on the vehicle at the right of the frame.
Close-up of the loco being loaded on to a transporter which will take it by road to wherever it's going:
As preparation for the night shoot I had gone along to the site on Saturday afternoon. There was nobody around so I took the opportunity to go down to where the loco had come to rest. Naturally I called my better half to let her know what I was doing, so if she didn't hear from me in 10 minutes then something was wrong. You should always do that if you're going alone in to any situation where there's an element of risk. (Or just don't put yourself in that situation.)
I also made a panorama of the whole site. It was a 60-megapixel composite of 35 photos, showing a full 180-degrees, although it looked a little silly having the road at both sides of the picture so I cropped it to this middle section.
Click here to see a larger version
This is how the full 180-degree view looked:
And for novelty value, here's a 53-megapixel panorama made from 24 photos showing the scene where the locomotive has been stranded for nearly six weeks.
Click here to see a larger version
The buzz of deadlines, the agony of bad editing
Fri Jan 22nd - 11:10am
Last week, on Friday night, I did something that I've never done before: A deadline review of a concert. The performance by South African guitarist Tony Cox started at 8:30pm and I needed to file the review and photos by 10pm for Saturday's paper.
I had actually turned down the job at one point because I didn't think I could make the tight deadline, but then I decided to bite the bullet so I called the paper back and asked if I could do the job after all.
Everything went smoothly. I had the photos delivered by 9:30pm and the review was sent at 10pm on the dot. I called to check that everything had got through okay, and then relaxed a bit while I re-read the review to judge it with a clear head. I was very happy with what I had produced, especially considering the time limit.
Sadly the version that ran in the paper was heavily edited. Two sections, which I'd been asked to write as a preview of a concert coming up on Saturday night, were removed. And in doing so, the person who made the changes made it sound like I was actually reviewing a concert that hadn't happened yet! There was even a comment added about a performer who wasn't at the concert. The whole thing ended up being a bit of a mess and an embarrassment.
The edited version isn't available online, but here's my originl version:
Kingussie icicles and Inverness curling
Tue Jan 12th - 2:15pm
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!
Climbing on frozen Oui Oui
Tue Jan 12th - 1:53pm
On Sunday afternoon I took a trek up the lower slope of Creag Dubh mountain in the Cairngorms to photograph people climbing a frozen 75-foot waterfall, nicknamed Oui Oui. Lots of papers used my photos on Monday, the highlight being the front page of The Scotsman with this picture of one guy climbing without ropes or any other safety gear to protect him from falling:
This was one of my favourite shots:
In addition to the one on the front page, The Scotsman also used this next photo inside the paper. They printed it the full height of the page, really showing it off and it looked great!
Other photos were published in The Sun, Daily Record, Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Star. Here are a couple of wider shots:
And this was my office for the day. I had wellies on, totally unsuitable for how steep the climb was at the foot of the mountain, and I ended up doing most of it on my hands and knees. On the way down I often had to just sit on the snow and slide. I'm now getting kitted out with proper walking boots and crampons, should I find myself tackling any similar slopes in future!
Usually you go to the stories…
Fri Jan 8th - 6:33pm
…but sometmes the stories come to you.
I was heading out for a walk on Wednesday evening when a fire appliance went past with its lights and siren on, and stopped a few hundred yards away, at a junction where an articulated lorry was parked. So naturally I grabbed my camera bag and went along to see what was happening.
It turned out that the lorry's brakes had frozen on, causing a build-up of heat. Not an amazingly dramatic incident but a pictorial example of another way in which Scotland's freezing weather is affecting people's lives.
And last night while I was shopping in Tesco, a girl slipped on a wet floor and hit her head. What made this potentially newsworthy was that there were loads of trolleys lined-up in the car park with "caution wet floor" signs in each of them, to prevent people from parking near the store — so there weren't enough signs left to adequately mark the areas of wet floor in the store.
I talked to the girl and her mother immediately, and did a picture of them outside the store when they'd finished their shopping, with all the mis-used caution signs in the background. I think the story is in tomorrow's Press & Journal.
