Scotland – Page 2 – Peter Cairns Photography Blog

SCOTLAND: The Big Picture.

Posted on November 18, 2014 by Peter Cairns6 Comments

I can’t remember the last time that I was so excited about my photography. It’s a bit weird; I’m like a kid in a sweetshop. It’s not that I’m jetting off to the Pantanal or the Canadian Rockies. It’s not that National Geographic is sending me to Antarctica – quite the opposite in fact: I’m staying in Scotland, a tiny country with a Big Story (that’s the exciting bit).

Years ago I met a Swiss photographer who was passionate about the Serengeti ecosystem. He told me to always make sure I was “doing something” for a place, species or issue about which I was passionate. Ever since that chance meeting, I’ve done exactly that, or at least tried to.

Continue reading “SCOTLAND: The Big Picture.”

The Eagle’s Way: Jim Crumley

Posted on July 18, 2014August 19, 2014 by Peter Cairns6 Comments

Those of you who have endured my rants over the years will know that I just don’t get it. Life that is. I don’t get Christmas; I don’t get marriage; I certainly don’t get funerals. I don’t get cars; I don’t get jewellery; I don’t get food, especially pretentious food. The list goes on. I quite like tattoos though. And that frizzy hair that young women promoting discount sofas tend to have. Very nice. Overall however, I struggle to make sense of the world and its human inhabitants. Continue reading “The Eagle’s Way: Jim Crumley”

Puffin Bootcamp

Posted on July 11, 2014August 19, 2014 by Peter Cairns4 Comments

There can be few wildlife photographers in the northern hemisphere without at least one decent puffin picture. The bar is probably higher with puffins than with any other bird. It is then even more important to find just the right place – lighting, background and viewpoint all play a part in just the right place – and our recent Puffin Bootcamp took us to the far north to just the right place: Fair Isle. Continue reading “Puffin Bootcamp”

Trees for Life

Posted on May 5, 2014May 5, 2014 by Peter Cairns2 Comments

We all have value systems: the internal rules that govern our daily lives and ethical beliefs. My values have been shaped over five decades and are influenced by myriad factors including my upbringing, my friends and colleagues, my exposure to different belief systems around the world and in recent years, by a better understanding of our relationship with Nature. Continue reading “Trees for Life”

Island Trilogy

Posted on April 28, 2014June 4, 2014 by Peter Cairns5 Comments

Rain and wind are regular companions on Scotland’s west coast and so it was no surprise when on our first day on Harris, the first port of call on our recent Island Trilogy tour, dawn arrived and brought with it the wet stuff. Continue reading “Island Trilogy”

Wild Land: A worthwhile investment

Posted on April 11, 2014April 10, 2014 by Emma Blyth1 Comment

I suspect like me, many of you reading this subscribe to a wide range of conservation bodies. My susceptibility over the years to join pretty much anything and everything is witnessed by the extensive list of direct debits on my bank statements. Continue reading “Wild Land: A worthwhile investment”

Worth grousing about

Posted on February 19, 2014February 25, 2014 by Emma Blyth6 Comments

As the lekking season draws nearer, Mark Hamblin talks about his long-term love affair with black grouse.

I have a love-hate relationship with black grouse. Mostly, I love them. The hate bit comes in when the alarm goes off in the middle of the night and the last thing I want to do is get out of bed and drive for an hour and stomp across a wet moorland in the dark to sit in a cold hide. Continue reading “Worth grousing about”

“A retrenchment to core activities”

Posted on January 26, 2014February 25, 2014 by Peter Cairns4 Comments

August 1998. It was a nervous morning as Mark Hamblin and I sat in my kitchen drinking coffee like it was going out of fashion, awaiting the arrival of our first guest on our first photo tour in our first year of collaboration. We had no track record, no model on which to base the tour content and no idea how we would be received. By late afternoon the now familiar Wing-and-a-Prayer approach kicked in and somehow we seemed to pull it off. Continue reading ““A retrenchment to core activities””

Fresh or fodder?

Posted on December 16, 2013February 25, 2014 by Peter Cairns7 Comments

On a recent photo tour I overheard my co-guide Mark Hamblin being asked about his favourite image. Mark replied that he tended towards images he’d recently taken, implying that ‘freshness’ equated to enduring ‘quality’. It’s inevitable that when photographers, even established pros like Mark, acquire new images, especially from a place that they’ve never before photographed, there is an emotional attachment to those images: Continue reading “Fresh or fodder?”

New Shoots

Posted on November 14, 2013February 25, 2014 by Peter Cairns2 Comments

James Shooter is a young photographer and conservationist who came to our attention through the A Focus on Nature project. We were so impressed we gave him a job! A month in James tells us what he’s been up to. Over to you James…

My first month at Northshots has been interesting to say the least. Continue reading “New Shoots”