We visited Saturday’s wedding venue on Friday as the sun was setting. We wanted to scope the surrounding location. The sun was doing lovely things for us, so I couldn’t help but ask Rab—my friend and second shooter—to snap this photo.
A Weekend Retreat To Inveraray
Every time I’ve driven past Loch Fyne Hotel and Spa, I’ve thought to myself I have to stay there. This weekend, Naomi and I spent three nights at Loch Fyne Hotel and Spa. We enjoyed good food, red wine, horror movies and a 90 minute massage. It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time and I’m a little disappointed to be back to reality!
Welcome, 2014
There is nothing better than a road trip to the Scottish highlands. It never fails to leave me feeling grateful and inspired, I’m thankful this beauty is only a 2 hour drive from the city I call home. Today, my eyeballs couldn’t quite take it all in. I think I need more road trips in my life.
The bitter weather meant we didn’t spend much time outdoors, stopping off at Glencoe Mountain Resort for a hot chocolate, and (the muchos recommended) The Real Food Cafe for fish and chips. I also tried my first pickled egg. Sold!
Perhaps the best part of visiting this area of Scotland, though, is the lack of phone signal. I can’t check-in on Foursquare, or upload my iPhone snaps to Instagram, or live tweet my adventure. No distractions, just excited eyeballs.
A Romantic Weekend in Bruges
When Christmas was approaching and I had family asking what gifts I wanted, I realised I have too much ‘stuff’ and would rather add to my memory bank than my DVD collection. I asked for flight money towards a weekend in Europe, though at that point I was undecided on where to go or who with.
A few months later, Shawshank and I had booked flights to Brussels and an apartment in Bruges (via Airbnb). I went to college with Shawshank and she is one of few people I can spend a lot of time with and not want to kill (I like my own space). Having spent a year backpacking around the globe, I knew Shawshank would be good company to travel with.
I don’t really know what to say about Bruges, other than my photos can’t do the beauty of this place justice. It’s a very romantic city, so it came as no surprise that people thought Shawshank and I were… together. If you like mad parties and late nights, perhaps Bruges is not the best city to visit. But for somebody like myself who enjoys early mornings and exploring with a camera, then finishing the day in a quiet pub with a bottle of red wine, Bruges is perfect. My eyeballs had a lot of eyegasms with the architecture, too.
The only downfall was our day trip to Brussels. Admittedly we hadn’t looked into what to do before we got there, preferring to blindly walk about and see what we stumbled upon. The city was a major letdown, however, and looked like a tip (with the exception of Grand Place, ho-ly wow). In fact, Brussels reminded me a lot of Glasgow, and as much as I love my city I know it’s not the nicest to look at. I wish we had visited Ghent instead.
The breakfasts are big, the beer is tasty, the waffles are a delight, and the whole city is bathed in medieval magic. Oh, and you can also check out my Instagram photos.
Merry Christmas
I just wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas from Inverkip, Scotland. I’m spending Christmas with my family at my Mum’s house. I popped online to share this photo and updated some WordPress plugins while I was at it, consequently breaking my whole site. Bear with my while I attempt to fumble around with PHP. But, yeah, have a great Christmas!
Meet Me At St Louis
Every Sunday, for the rest of our lives. I’ll have waffles with bacon and maple syrup, please. And a latte ‘cos I’m a fatty.
When Lindsay asked where I wanted to go for brunch, I asked her to take me somewhere new. It’s easy to get into a habit of visiting regular spots, and while I will always wax lyrical about Tribeca’s french toast, it’s Glasgow we’re talking about and there are a thousand other places to discover. Enter St Louis cafe, which is on Dumbarton Road nearer to the Partick end of the city.
After OD’ing on sugar, we drove to Holmwood for a play in the sun and yet more coffee. Perfect Sunday!
Hyndland Farmers’ Market
When I first moved to Glasgow, I had romantic illusions of visiting the farmers’ market every second Saturday and stocking up on fresh produce. Today, I finally visited the farmers’ market… after 17 months of living here.
Based in Glasgow’s West End on the corner of Dumbarton Road and Hyndland Street, the market is a stone’s throw from my recommended brunch haunt, Tribeca. That is pretty much a perfect Saturday, in my opinion.
Whilst I didn’t splurge on fresh produce, I took a few photos, drank some coffee and tasted many samples, the most notable being the Irn Bru tablet. Yes, it sounds all kinds of wrong (and diet-wise it is), but you can’t visit a Scottish farmers’ market and not appreciate it.
Seven Days of Self
If you look through my Flickr stream, you will see that since 2009 only a handful of the photos I’ve taken have been self portraits. Generally I avoid being in front of the camera (unless it’s Instagram, but those filters seemingly make anything forgiving). I find self portraits too finicky, and they usually result in me hating my face or body. Basically, self portraits are not my favourite form of photography to explore.
Occasionally, though, Rick and I talk about the need for a project that coerces us to pick up our cameras. Enter Seven Days of Self, a mini project that involved us taking a self portrait for 7 days. Simple. But this time we had people vote on themes, which were decided on the day. This generally left little time to plan and get the shot out there. By the way, I never have worked well under pressure.
Here are some facts:
- One photo shot with the 45mm
- Two photos shot with the 28mm
- Four photos shot with the 50mm (my favourite lens)
- ‘Apocalypse’ was my least favourite shot, despite how much the theme excited me
- ‘Trust’ was my most well received photo
- This is how Trust was shot
- I got a cold after shooting ‘Wet’, so shut the fuck up when you say I wasn’t wet enough
- Only two of my preferred themes were chosen out of the entire seven days
- I got to learn some new Photoshop stuff
- Photos were shot in the city centre, Merchant City, west end and the south side of Glasgow
- Three pretty dresses were worn; one red, one green and one floral, and this was probably my favourite part of the whole project (getting to wear dresses)
- The gun in the Apocalypse shot was for the original PlayStation
- I did conceptual photography for the first time ever, and I’ll probably do it again
- This has put me off doing a Project 50
Rick and I didn’t discuss the concepts in any detail, so we didn’t have much of an idea what each other were shooting. This made the big reveal quite interesting, and they always turned out so differently.
Here are the themes from all seven days. If you click on them it will take you to my Flickr, where there is a more in-depth description of each photo.
Thank you to everyone who voted! Despite not loving some of my shots, I think the project was a success based on the reactions of other people and how involved some of you got, not to mention that it encouraged me to attempt something a little different.
I’ve also included Rick’s photos from the project here. It is pretty obvious which ones are his ‘cos he has a beard.
Easter Weekend
I eat well, I train pretty hard, I’m in the best shape of my life and feeling really happy for it. However, I love my grub. That will never change, and I give myself one cheat day a week to indulge in something I might have been craving. This weekend, though, I went overboard. Ugh. I feel awful for it. Burgers and ice cream and mojitos and chocolate. So not worth it, and I can’t wait to hit the gym this morning to work up a sweat and lift something heavy.
Anyway, as established above my Easter weekend consisted of a lot of eating, but there was also a bit of street shooting, visiting Kelvingrove Art Gallery (which I hadn’t managed to do despite moving to Glasgow a year ago!), beginning Season 5 of Dexter, and getting overexcited by a cherry blossom tree. Hope you all have a good long weekend. Mine has been cut short, but such is the life of running your own business.
