Whilst my son was having his weekly swimming lesson I went for a mad dash around Duns Castle and Hen Poo whilst it was still light.
As I cleared the darkening woodland and came around onto the path by the lake, the swirling mottled clouds above looked like something from a water colour painting.
The sun had disappeared below the tree line to the west and the sky varied in colour and light intensity from shimmering cream to silvery blue and dark gun metal grey.
The bulk of the credit for this photo has to go to Imogen Cloët, an award winning designer and visual artist based in Newcastle. The art installation featured within Cragside House – the former home of Lord Armstrong, a Victorian inventor, innovator and landscape genius – which is now managed by the National Trust. It was photographed by pretty much everyone who passed by, but taking a good photo of a room filled with light bulbs, windows and tourists proved a little tricky. Thanks to careful balancing and the adjustable screen on the back of the camera, I managed to take a photo from directly underneath the light bulbs with the metal mounting plate and Victorian wood panel ceiling in the background. A lot of my textural and black and white photos feature unusual subjects, but I never thought that a room full of incandescent light bulbs powered by Victorian hydropower would be something that I’d ever photograph.
At Cothill we’re always treated to amazing sunrises in winter. As each day shortens and the sun rise is that little bit later, it also moves closer to the summit of Cheviot. When the sun breaks over the Cheviot Hills and the clouds mass overhead the sky simply looks vast. If the timing is just right, it’s possible to capture the vivid intensity of dawn in yellows and pinks, with the dark grey blue of night still overhead.
When I set up my blog I entitled the category for my photographic posts “Photos; Borders and beyond” because most of my photos are taken in or near to the Scottish Borders. I’m glad I made use of the term “beyond” however, as it is most fitting for this photo of sea, sky and space taken at 33,000 feet somewhere over the North Sea. I’ve often seen stunning views, beautiful sunrises and unique sunsets from plane windows, but more often than not an ugly engine, enormous wing or dirty window didn’t allow for an artistic photo to be taken. On this particular occasional I was dawn to the blueness of everything, and suddenly realised there was no engine or wing in sight, and that the window was completely devoid of scratches, grease, condensation and frost. From the tight confines of my seat I was just able to extract my wide-angled lens from the bowls of my bag, and after several attempts I snapped this photo; looking down on the sky, up into space, with the curvature of the earth just visible on the horizon.
I popped to the coast at the weekend and whilst walking I came across an area of large round boulders covered in silky smooth seaweed that was so vivid it was almost luminescent (and also bone jarringly slippery to stand on). With the midsummer’s sun directly overhead, the harsh shadows cast by neighbouring boulders made for a stark contrast between the bright green of the seaweed and the near black of the shade. I took quite a few shots but opted to put this one on the blog as I love gentle curve that falls around the edge of the boulder, with dark shadow one side and the crisp green lines of the seaweed on the other.
I went for a walk along the old abandoned Duns to Greenlaw railway line yesterday. As a result of all the recent rain, a huge swath of this field was underwater. The cold nights had frozen the flood waters a peculiar milky white colour, and in the bright full sun of the early morning the distant ridge eerily looked like a misplaced sand dune.
There was an absolutely glorious sunrise this morning, and I managed to capture this photo just as the sun spilled over the Merse, with the distant shadow of Cheviot to the south and the dark blue sky of the fading night overhead.
The Jim Clark Rally shot passed the Scottish Borders Website Design office at Cothill on Saturday. The road was sealed off most of the day, and prior to the event starting there was an eerie silence with the occasional wail from the sirens on passing marshal vehicles. I attempted to take photos of the speeding rally cars (which were coming into view from behind a hedge at over 100mph) but only managed to get two cars in the middle of the frame (both rather blurred)!
I noticed after the rain last night that a leaf on one of the hosta plants in the garden was holding onto numerous droplets of water. The rain drops were held in what looked like suspended animation across an entire leaf, each one an inverted reflection of the garden.
Whilst out walking late the other afternoon I came across this fungus surrounded by a carpet of vivid green moss. Because of the low light and frost, the brown ringed fungus had a peculiar bluish tinge to it; a stark contrast in colour and texture to the background moss.
