The A939 from Lecht to Aviemore

I was coming to the end of a long bike ride in Scotland and after pedalling for hours in torrential rain the sun broke through and I had this lovely view. The sun shining, a long downhill section, sheep sunbathing in the road, all looked good for a steady trundle home. As things panned out though, this unassuming souvenir snapshot, taken on my cameraphone, adopted a more providential role, as 5 minutes after making the exposure, I skidded on the very bend you see in the picture; fell off my bike, broke my arm and ended up in hospital for 5 days. Not a life threatening injury, but a significant event in my life that has caused me to consider much, and in this instance prove the catalyst for this photographic project.

On recovery, my initial thoughts were to revisit the site, ride the bend and try to figure out what had actually happened - get to know the road if you like, and what better way of getting to know something than to point a camera at it.

To add refinement and provenance, I decided to shoot on film, using my Mamiya C330 twin lens reflex, it was the camera I used at college, and as I went to college in Edinburgh it all seemed to come together nicely. Also, to give a more considered approach (and in response to the glut of imagery we are bombarded with in this digital age) I thought it would be a good exercise to limit myself to the number of exposures on one roll of film; the project ’12 Scottish Exposures’ was born.

Captured on my Mamiya twin lens, this image was taken from exactly the same spot as my original camera phone shot (although actually, probably just a few inches to the right! See frame 1 in this series).

The A939 from Aviemore to Lecht 

Looking back towards the bend where I crashed, you can just see it, about half way up the frame and over to the right. A beautiful road through the heart of the Cairngorms.

One of the main reasons for my tour of Scotland was to visit the passing motorist Donald, and to thank him and his wife Lois for their kindness and generosity. If it wasn’t for their help and support I would have been in a spot of bother.

As I arrived at their house this was the scene that greeted me, yes Donald from the highlands of Scotland does have a castle, and I did not put the duck there!

Looking west from Ardnamurchan Point - the most westerly point of mainland UK

Shooting on film you don’t have the benefit of live review and refinement, but using negative film and allowing for that antiquated phenomena known as reciprocity failure, I knew I was better to overexpose than under. 10 minutes at f16 proved about right.

See my series Cardinal Points for more like this.

Looking west from Ardnamurchan Point - the most westerly point of mainland UK

Sanna, Ardnamurchan

When I started taking photographs almost 40 years ago I would search the local woods and parks round Bramhall where I grew up, or on the beaches of North Wales where we took family holidays, looking for patterns rhythms and textures of nature; essentially those are the precepts that underpin my work to this day.

Sanna, Ardnamurchan

Sanna, Ardnamurchan

Photography has taken me all round the world, but the beaches on the west coast of Scotland are the most beautiful and unspoilt that I’ve seen.

Ardnamurchan 

60 million years ago I would have been looking into a bubbling volcano.

Loch Linnhe

Commando Memorial, Spean Bridge

Ben Nevis

The mist drew my attention to the elegant form and structure of this cairn near the summit of Ben Nevis, it also served to hi-light the importance of such a primitive navigational device - that is, marking the path and making sure you don’t step into the abyss of the 800m sheer drop down Five Finger Gully. A reassuring sight in the age of digital navigation. The traditional process of shooting on film echoes this simplicity, I like that sense of synergy.

Similar to the basics of navigation (see cairn in previous image) and basics of photography, I love the fact that amongst all the intricacies of surgery, anatomy and physiology, my elbow was fixed together with a bracket and seven screws!

Here are the seven screws and bracket, with a pinch of gravel from the road, all kept neatly in a tin of shortbread that was in my back pocket when I crashed. My own personal and unique souvenir of my trip to Scotland.