Tag: Ayrshire

Big Rock

It may not be the biggest rock in the world but it’s the only volcanic island you pass on the sea voyage from Belfast to Glasgow. When all those Irish immigrants came to Scotland before, during and after the Great Famine, Ailsa Craig was always the marker of the halfway point.

Whenever we had a family day-out at the coast, we came over the hill beyond Maybole village and our young eyes were awed by the sight. “Look! there’s Ailsa Craig!” was the cry, but my Dad said “It’s ‘Paddy’s Milestone’ – the nickname for the rock dating back to the times of those early Irish travellers.

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Wheels on Display

Lens-Artist’s Challenge #270 – On Display

Classic Car shows are not something I regularly attend but every now and then a visit certainly brings back memories and feelings of nostalgia. The Ayrshire Classic Car Club displays cars many times each year at different venues but this one was so close to home I couldn’t not go.

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Sea Calming

Lens-Artist Challenge #267 – Recharge

Thanks to Egidio for setting this week’s photo challenge. Egidio takes us out into the wild places of the US with his marvellous images illustrating the environments that recharge his batteries.

For myself nothing helps me reset more consistently than a trip down to the sea – just down to the Firth of Clyde. This involves a 20-30 minute drive depending on my chosen spot.

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Wild Animals

The first wild animal I thought of for this post was my daughter’s dog, Max. Now he is definitely a wild animal. However, I guess he doesn’t qualify for this post as he is technically a pet. And I don’t have masses of wild animal photographs but I’ve found a few of interest that I had almost forgotten that I had taken.

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Ladybirds

Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #27

For Denzil’s challenge, I really wanted to go out to the garden and get some new ladybird photos, but not one ladybug to be seen there. So I’m supplying some archive images here – some were taken indoors before returning the wee charmers to the garden.

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Monochromatic

Why do you choose to use monochrome? The chimpanzee is puzzled too. But more of him later……

So, as soon as I got to the hill, I looked at the sky and thought, ‘Black and white’. It’s just like that sometimes. Straight away you know that you feel a mono image should work and the drama of the sky was a decider here.

More monochrome images

Butterfly Collecting

I’ve just been reading in the BBC History magazine about a wealthy lady of the 17th century, whose abusive and estranged husband successfully challenged her will following her decease. He claimed that she was not of sound mind when she left all her property to her cousin. Among the evidence he cited of her madness was that she was obsessed with the collection of butterflies and moths.

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Framed

Providing a frame in the composition of an image can certainly work to draw the viewer’s eye into the focal point of the photograph. Using parts of a tree or an apperture in a building to frame the view can work really well.

I thought I used this technique quite often but looking through my back catalogue I see that is not the case. So, I went out today to try an take some new images of that type and found it’s not always so easy to get the right blend between the ‘frame’ and the subject.

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Unbound – An Evening at the Coast

Thanks to Dan of ‘Departing in 5 min’. for setting up this week’s Lens-Artists challenge No. 259 – titled ‘UNBOUND’ – relating to those times when we can escape our normal routine, perhaps taking off on holiday and travelling.

Well, we haven’t been able to go off on holiday for a long time now (there’s just reasons for that – it can’t be helped). Most of my photos are taken within 25 miles of home. But even then I can still escape the norm for a while. This week a group of friends and myself took our cameras down to an old haunt on the Ayrshire coast – to the village of Dunure.

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