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  • Capturing atmosphere with expired Kodak TMAX P3200

    In 2005 I was still shooting film. Oh, I had a digital camera – the very capable Fujifilm Finepix E550 – but it was a compact, and I still loved the precision that came from the manual controls on my Canon EOS SLR. 

    It was a very fine balancing act. I was saving for a digital SLR, but they were still eye-wateringly out of reach for my limited budget. So my trusty Canon was what I took with me for serious photography. 

    Black and white photograph of a rocky shoreline with large, cracked concrete blocks partially submerged in water, reflecting on the surface.
    Black and white photograph of a limestone pavement with a reflection in a shallow pool of water.

    Every time I shot film, of course, it cost money – for the film, for the processing – and where did that money come from? From my limited photography budget, of course, making the prospect of buying that digital SLR ever more remote. 

    But also in 2005, newspapers had pretty much completed the transition from film to digital, and that meant they had lots of old film camera equipment and accessories that they simply didn’t have any use for. My camera club was one of the beneficiaries. The East Lothian Courier, after a routine clear out, offered us a whole load of unexposed film and darkroom equipment. 

    Most club members had already migrated to digital, and politely declined. I said “yes please”, and was gifted a dozen rolls of Kodak TMAX P3200.  Expired Kodak TMAX P3200. Expired 20 years ago, in fact. 

    I did a wee bit of searching online and discovered a thriving community of folk who enjoyed shooting expired film. It sounded like fun, and I already had the expired film for free. I was astonished to discover that people often paid a premium for it.

    The results were mixed. Shooting street one day, I found a still-life of an old cane chair that I very much appreciated. And shooting at Barns Ness, I enjoyed the shapes and textures made by the limestone pavement. I was very happy with photos from both locations. 

    Other than that? Some shots of Kelso Abbey and Roxburgh Castle (check) were disappointing. Landscapes of St Mary’s Loch were underexposed – a common problem with expired film. But that limestone pavement was fabulous. I’ve been back a few times, shooting digital, but I’ve never recaptured the atmosphere of that long-expired free film.

    Thank you, East Lothian Courier. 

  • A sculpture croft in the far north of Scotland

    I first encountered the ceramics of Lotte Glob in the far north of Scotland at Balnakiel Craft Village, near Durness. Even then, her work seemed to exist slightly apart from its surroundings. A mix of strange, playful shapes that felt organic despite their ceramic origins. She created mugs and plates too – we have one of her plates displayed on the sideboard in our kitchen sideboard – but it was the abstract pieces that stood out. Wee ceramic spheres that bobbed gently in the water. Strange organic forms that felt like they had descended from another planet.

    Two ceramic spheres positioned in a heather-covered landscape with rolling hills and dramatic clouds in the background.

    Balnakiel was an abandoned army base, loosely transformed into artists’ studios. Every time we visited, it felt different. Opening hours drifted. Studios appeared and disappeared. The place positively encouraged a mindful wander, simply seeing what was there instead of seeking out anything in particular.

    Exterior view of Lotte Glob's pottery studio in a rural setting, featuring a white building with signs and windows, surrounded by grassy landscape and a parked car.
    An interior view of Lotte Glob's art studio showcasing various ceramic pieces, including bowls, plates, and abstract sculptures, with large windows allowing natural light to illuminate the space.

    One studio kept drawing us back. Lotte Glob’s Far North gallery was one of the few that had reliable opening hours, and we made a point of visiting every time we were in the area. The work was beyond what we could reasonably afford, but we eventually chose the small side plate which is still proudly displayed in our kitchen.

    In time, the Far North Gallery closed. Lotte moved to Laid, near Loch Erribol on Scotland’s far north coast and we stopped visiting the studio.

    Loch Erribol has an unjustified reputation as Loch ‘Orrible – a legacy of the war, over 70 years ago. It’s an unfair reputation, for sure, but we remembered an unpleasant holiday at nearby Bettyhill, many years earlier when the rain didn’t stop for a week,. It was enough to stop us returning.

    Until one day we searched out Lotte Glob’s website. The Contact page website invited people to visit by appointment. We hesitated. We were conscious that we were unlikely to buy anything, and surely this was a working artist’s studio? But Lotte’s invitation seemed genuine so we filled out the contact form, and Lotte’s warm reply came very quickly.

    Lotte has always placed her work in the landscape but it was hard to imagine how it would look. Those strange, alien shapes. Would they really fit in with the heather and thin grasses of this soil-poor land?

    Of course it worked perfectly. Ceramic forms were scattered across the croft. Half-hidden in shallow folds of ground. Standing exposed against the sky. In one quiet corner, children’s messages from the local primary school added to the sense of place. The ceramic forms felt both foreign and entirely at ease, as if they had emerged from the land rather than being imposed on it.

    Two ceramic sculptures resembling abstract organic forms, positioned outdoors with a scenic view of a body of water and hills in the background.
    A partially collapsed stone structure surrounded by lush grass and scenic hills under a partly cloudy sky.
    A collection of ceramic tiles with various engraved messages and drawings, scattered among pebbles and grass.

    The light shifted constantly. Cloud and sun swept over the hills, delivering a challenging light. My small Olympus camera struggled with the dynamic range, but I reasoned that these were the weather conditions we had been given, and Lotte’s work encouraged us to stay in the moment.

    Before we left, we visited the studio to look more closely at Lotte’s current work. When she came out to speak with us the conversation seemed unforced, although I’m sure that we said the same conventional things as every other visitor.

    The sculpture croft is still there. I hope it’s there forever. It’s a very special place.

    A person standing beside abstract ceramic sculptures in a natural landscape, with a body of water and hills in the background.
    Yes, that’s me – camera in hand, as always

  • The little lens that died

    I’m not a fan of power zoom lenses. It’s one of the reasons why I prefer SLR or mirrorless cameras to compact cameras. But they do have their place. In their powered-off state they can be absolutely tiny, allowing a compact camera to be as small as a pack of cards while still having a huge zoom range. 

    And so when I finally abandoned compact cameras, I dug out my old, almost forgotten, Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 14-42/3.5-5.6 EZ. Mounted on an even older Olympus Pen E-P3, the combination was truly impressive. Not quite as small as a compact, but it still slipped easily into a jacket pocket, and the combination gave me many of the advantages of a serious enthusiasts’ camera without weighing me down like my EM1 Mark II. 

    Which was all well and good until the 14-42 EZ died. The lens is sadly notorious for this. I’m sure there are many people out there who have used a 14-42 EZ for many years with no problem at all, but within six months of me starting to use it again, my copy succumbed to the dreaded and familiar ribbon failure. First, it refused to autofocus. Then it refused to manual focus. Then it started zooming erratically in and out for no reason. And finally it … died. The aperture stuck firmly closed, and the lens was useless. 

    This was very sad for me. Much as I dislike power zooms, the 14-42 EZ had a big role to play in my camera bag. My other standard zoom – the Olympus M.Zuiko 12-45 f4.0 Pro – balances awkwardly on a small camera body and requires a satchel or camera bag instead of a jacket pocket. So the 14-42 was the lightweight choice – ideal when I didn’t want to be weighed down. 

    So where next? I’m disenchanted by the 14-42 EZ, and too cautious to buy another in case it suffers the same fate. I could use a prime lens like the Olympus M.Zuiko 17mm f1.8 that’s already in my camera bag, but that would mean a complete change in my shooting style. 

    Hmm. Maybe the Panasonic Lumix 12-32 might be a suitable replacement? I don’t have a budget for it, but surely I could part-exchange the Olympus 17mm f1.8? After all, I’ve only used it once this year. Decisions, eh? 

  • The photo I forgot

    Have you ever gone back to a photo you’d forgotten, and found yourself wondering … how did I forget that?  Of course your digital shoebox (and maybe an actual, real, shoebox if you’ve been taking photos as long as me) is full of photos you’ve forgotten. Occasionally you’ll go back to it, browse through, and find yourself muttering “I’d forgotten all about that”. But actual, real, portfolio-worthy photos that had completely slipped your mind?

    In 2018 I was exploring the possibilities of travelling as light as possible. My camera of choice was an Olympus PM1 – an impossibly small camera which combined point-and-shoot simplicity with the image quality you might expect from a full-size mirrorless body. Combined with the Olympus 9mm bodycap lens, you had a fearsomely good architectural setup which would fit easily in a jacket pocket.

    And so, in September 2018 I found myself at Seton Collegiate Church in East Lothian. It’s an atmospheric place, steeped in mediaeval history and with alleged – but hotly disputed – links to the Knights Templar. It’s also, usually, very quiet. It’s well off the beaten track. Tourists – at least in those days – rarely ventured there.

    But with beautiful, well-kept grounds, nestling in woodland with goldfinches, tree creepers, and nuthatches regularly visiting, for a long time it was my regular haunt whenever I had new camera equipment and wanted to take a few test shots.

    All of which, I think, explains why I completely forgot this photo even existed: it was a test shot, designed to help familiarise myself with a new lens. From the day I shot it, I never saw it as a keeper.

    But something must have gelled with me because I imported the RAW into Lightroom, which I was trialling at the time, and managed to produce this dramatic monochrome shot. Which I instantly forgot. Oh well. I’ve found it again now. I hope you like it as much as I do – at least now that I remember it!

  • Blogging is hard

    It’s been a few months now since I started this site. I waited till I had ten posts before I pressed the Publish button, and I’ve added another twenty posts since then. Early days still, but I see some themes developing, and I’m starting to see the topics I want to explore.

    Very early on, I decided this was a blog in which I would tell the stories of my photographs and I think, mostly, I’ve done that. Portfolio sites are – frankly – mostly pretty boring. They’re useful, of course, as a shop window for commercial photographers. And undoubtedly many portfolio sites are very attractive to look at. But there’s often very little reason to return to a portfolio site. If you really want to follow a photographer there are other ways to do it – via Instagram, Facebook, or even Flickr.

    Storytelling, on the other hand, is endlessly fascinating. We all love a good story, and even a fairly bland photograph can be of interest once you know the story behind it.

    A person sitting at a table, working on a laptop, with a plant in the background and a framed picture hanging on the wall.
    I’ll blog from anywhere – but the kitchen table is where I’m most comfortable

    So here we are. Six months in from that day when I sat down at my kitchen table to write my first blog post. My biggest challenge has been, frankly, technical. I didn’t expect this. In my working life I was a wiki administrator, so I was well used to navigating, updating, and generally managing a cloud-hosted content management system. Unfortunately WordPress, it turns out, is way more complex than Confluence ever was.

    Last week, finally, I got the blog navigation to work out (mostly) how I wanted it. My next task is to get to grips with featured images. At the moment, the blog is a mix of posts that do and don’t have featured images and, bluntly, it’s a mess. Maybe it doesn’t matter much at the moment but hopefully, as the blog continues to grow, in around a year’s time there will be around 100 posts to explore. And the current mess with featured images simply isn’t scalable.

    Oh well. The writing part is usually pretty straightforward. The photography isn’t a problem – it’s the whole reason why I’m here. But managing the blog. Hey, that’s difficult!

  • Seeing beauty in the transformation of waste into energy

    Watching household rubbish being turned into electricity isn’t your average day out, but when my camera group was offered the opportunity to visit the Millerhill Recycling and Energy Recovery Facility, we enthusiastically accepted the invitation. We all arrived on a fine Autumn day, carefully reverse parking under the watchful gaze of the CCTV, and entered the facility to discover the story of how the stuff we throw away avoids landfill and ends up powering 30,000 homes.

    Our visit began with a warm welcome and a PowerPoint from the facility’s administration lead, before we set off to explore the plant itself. What followed was a fascinating glimpse into one of Edinburgh’s quiet success stories; a wee slice of urban life that hums away in the background, keeping the lights on while the rest of us put the bins out.

    View of an industrial facility's entrance with traffic lights, yellow bollards, and a clear sky in the background.
    View from the waste reception building, where refuse lorries deposit household waste to be incinerated.
    A monochrome interior view of the Millerhill Recycling and Energy Recovery Facility, featuring a reflective sphere hanging from an overhead rail against a textured wall, with traffic light indicators visible nearby.
    Another view of the waste reception building, showing the bare grey of the industrial architecture.
    A row of high-visibility jackets hanging on a coat rack, with a safety helmet placed on a wooden bench below.
    Outside the main control room, a row of coat hooks with the ubiquitous high vis jackets and safety helmets.
    A large metal claw is seen lifting a load of household waste inside the Millerhill Recycling and Energy Recovery Facility, showcasing the waste-to-energy process.
    A large metal claw gathers huge piles of rubbish to be dropped into the furnace. It’s hard to get a sense of scale, but the claw was probably abut the size of a Ford Transit.
    Interior view of the Millerhill Recycling and Energy Recovery Facility, showcasing the structural elements and machinery used for converting household waste into electricity.
    The facility was full of liminal spaces like this. As our guide told us – “if you see a lot of people, it means something’s gone wrong”. We didn’t see many people while we were there.
    A door on an industrial facility, with safety signage and overhead lights, surrounded by metal railings and pipes.
    Another liminal space – a door, on a gantry at the Millerhill RERC
    Close-up of a white chimney on a metal building against a clear blue sky.
    The tour took us onto the roof to see a view of the surrounding countryside, slowly being encroached by massive housing developments. I was more interested in this minimal view of the huge chimney.
    Close-up of two industrial valves on insulated pipes in a facility, showcasing their black handles and attached labels.
    The facility was a gift for fans of industrial still life photography
    Two individuals in safety gear observing a glowing furnace at the Millerhill Recycling and Energy Recovery Facility.
    A view into the furnace, where the household waste is burned at a temperature of 1,300 c
    A large pile of household waste inside a recycling and energy recovery facility, with industrial walls and metal roofing visible.
    The ash pile – all that’s left after the rubbish has passed through the furnace

  • Cameras just get in the way, sometimes

    In 2019 I felt the need for a new challenge. A recent trip to Mull had introduced me to the white tailed eagle – a truly magnificent bird, about the size of a barn door – and I’d come away enthused by my experience. I’d always enjoyed casually watching birds at the local park, but without ever really taking it seriously. Putting those elements together, and being primarily a photographer during my limited leisure time, I bought a 75-300mm lens for my Olympus camera and set out to learn a new skill.

    White tailed eagle, Mull. Not a bad result on such a grim day, considering the very basic equipment I was using.

    Early outings were predictably basic. Goosander at my local park. Robins and coal tits at the botanic gardens. Redshanks at Aberlady nature reserve.

    The turning point came, ironically, during lockdown. Normally when I see people standing by the side of the pavement with their clipboards, poised to ask me my views, I shake my head and walk vigorously past. But walking home from Musselburgh lagoons one day, after an enjoyable session photographing the birdlife, a person with a clipboard, standing incongruously by a footpath through the lagoons, piqued my interest and I stopped to speak with him.

    He was doing a survey, as it turned out, about people’s use of the lagoons in their leisure time. Musselburgh lagoons, bizarrely, are not a nature reserve. There are scrapes there, well maintained by East Lothian Council for use by the birdlife. It’s a familiar spot for birdwatchers – I’ve seen many rarities there – and people treat it as a special place for wildlife. But it’s also well used by dog walkers and there are multiple leisure activities that take place there – a BMX track, a boating lake, and even a horse racing track. It is, in short, a multi-use location that adds hugely to the amenities of the area. But it was also, in 2020, in danger of going seriously downhill.

    Cockenzie power station, a few miles down the road, was one of Britain’s last coal-fired power stations. It was also the reason why Musselburgh lagoons existed. The lagoons were built on reclaimed land, formed by decades of waste from the power station being dumped and gradually forming new land which was then taken over by nature.

    Now though, with the closure of the power station, the land was being handed over to the council who needed to find a use for it. Hence the person with the clipboard asking questions about how I used the lagoons, whether it benefited my mental and physical health, and what I thought should happen there. As I answered the questions, I found myself reflecting on my motivations for being there, and I gradually realised something very important.

    I love photography. To this day, it remains my principle pastime. But I realised that when I was in nature, photographing wildlife, the camera often got in the way. I found myself using the camera as though it was a pair of digital binoculars, enjoying the experience of watching bird behaviours more than the experience of photographing them.

    I didn’t modify my behaviour immediately, but over the following months I found myself going out more often with my binoculars, and less often with my camera. I joined a birdwatching group to enjoy the social aspect of birdwatching. And I leaned into the mindfulness of just enjoying spending time in nature.

    A couple of years later, East Lothian Council opened a new set of bird hides at the lagoons. Last time I was there, I enjoyed watching a marsh sandpiper among the much more familiar lapwings, oystercatchers, and curlews. I hope my survey answers helped, in some small way, to persuade the council that the money invested was well spent.

    Three geese flying in formation against a blue sky with fluffy clouds.
    Greylag geese, River Esk, Musselburgh

  • Small sensors don’t do bokeh

    Apparently, small sensors can’t do bokeh. It’s funny how often the “rules” of photography turn out to be old wives’ tales.

    A cluster of orange mushrooms growing among green grass, captured with a soft background blur.
    Mushrooms, Tentsmuir, Fife. Panasonic FZ150. presented exactly as shot (vivid mode).

    Of course there are cameras that don’t do bokeh. In the early 2000s, I grew inexplicably fond of Kodak Advantix cameras. Bizarre, I know, but they were lightweight, easily loaded with 35mm film, and they produced “panoramic” images with ease. The cheap cameras I used were also, invariably, fixed-focus; and if there’s one thing that fixed-focus compacts are really, really good at, it’s ensuring that everything is in focus.

    But almost any other camera? Hell, I still aim for bokeh when I’m shooting fisheye.

    2014 was a transition year for me. Disillusioned by Olympus turning its back on digital SLRs, I bought a Panasonic Lumix FZ150 and started to explore what it could do. And the answer was – a lot. The small sensor limited things, of course. Low-light could be challenging, and shots at the long end of the zoom invariably lacked crispness. But the colours were strong, especially in vivid mode, and I could get punchy results with minimal effort.

    With only a 1/2.3″ sensor, you might expect that it struggled with bokeh. Oh, no. With the right subject, it was a bokeh beast. One of the many reasons I loved that camera.

  • Those gorgeous Olympus colours

    My first serious digital camera was an Olympus E500. Launched in 2005, it had an 8 megapixel CCD sensor that produced beautiful film-like colours. Like all CCD cameras however, the dynamic range we severely limited, and noise quickly started to become an issue when you went above 400 ISO. I loved that camera, and when I briefly replaced it with an E620, I found the E620 a big disappointment.

    The 12 megapixel sensor of the E620 was, on paper, a big improvement. But the colours lacked that Olympus magic. And crucially by this time, the writing was on the wall for Olympus DSLRs. Olympus was ready to abandon the Four Thirds format and replace it with Micro Four Thirds – essentially very similar cameras using the same sensors. but in a smaller rangefinder-style mirrorless body.

    Disenchanted, I abandoned Olympus and spent the next few years shooting a succession of Canon bridge cameras and Sony compacts.

    Years later – and now an Olympus shooter again thanks to the OM-D EM10 Mark II – I decided to dip my toes back into some of those old rangefinder-style Pen series cameras. It was a frustrating journey, leavened thankfully by the fact that early Olympus mirrorless cameras were cheap to buy on the second hand market. It was easy to buy an old Olympus, shoot with it for a few months, and sell it on for the same price as I had paid for it. I quickly established my likes and preferences among the early Pen cameras.

    • Olympus Pen E-P1 (2009) – Oh, those Olympus colours. Beautiful. But that low-resolution rear sensor made shooting in bright sunlight very difficult.
    • Olympus Pen E-P2 (2010) – Essentially a P1 with the ability to add an external viewfinder. I still have one, adapted to infrared, but I don’t recommend it unless you’re willing to splash out on the optional electronic viewfinder, which makes it a much more pleasant shooting experience.
    • Olympus Pen Mini E-PM1 (2011) – A very nice wee camera, highly recommended if you’re looking for something pocketable. But the lack of dials and buttons make it more of a point and shoot than a serious enthusiasts camera.
    • Olympus Pen E-P3 (2011) – This was a major refresh of the Pen range. An updated processor (TruePic VI) made noticeable improvements to noise performance and focus speed. And – ignored by many reviewers – the speed of navigating through menus became noticeably snappier. A nice camera, and the only 12 megapixel Olympus that I would happily use today as a regular-carry camera.

    But what about those Olympus colours? The Panasonic 12 megapixel sensor may beat the Kodak CCD for noise and dynamic range, but it can’t match it for colour renditions, surely? Well, no. It can’t. But using the Vivid colour mode, and slightly increasing the contrast, it gets pretty close.

    Vibrant red maple leaves hanging from branches, creating a colorful canopy above a grassy ground.
    Japanese Acer in full autumn colour, photographed at Dawyck Botanic Garden in the Scottish Borders. Olympus Pen E-P3, Olympus M.Zuiko 14-42 EZ. Processed in OM Workspace to match original in-camera rendering.

  • In search of the Musselburgh spoonbill

    Two stonechats perched on a graffitied sign against a clear blue sky.
    Two stonechats, Musselburgh Lagoons, October 2025. Olympus EM1 MII, Olympus M.Zuiko 75-300mm

    Birdwatchers’ Facebook in the Lothians has been all of a twitter over the past ten days or so. Storm Amy, like all good storms, blew large numbers of birds off course. The result was a flurry of rarities at Musselburgh Lagoons – my local birding patch. A Marsh Sandpiper was the real highlight. That’s a genuine rarity wherever in the UK you see it. Spotted redshank, a large group of barnacle geese and a lone spoonbill were all duly spotted and added to my notes.

    That spoonbill, though – a photogenic bird for sure, but it was way too distant for my camera. Hence a second trip on a Sunday afternoon with the express purpose of bagging a photo of the Musselburgh Spoonbill.

    Inevitably, I was unsuccessful.

    Oh, I saw the marsh sandpiper again, so the afternoon wasn’t exactly a washout. And I enjoyed an afternoon of birding in fabulous light – the sort of mild autumn day that makes you glad to be out and about. But the spoonbill, I was reliably informed, had been seen in Falkirk. Oh well.

    Walking home by the sea wall, I spotted two birdwatchers pointing their binoculars inland – in the “wrong” direction. I followed suit, and was rewarded with a beautiful sighting of a stonechat sitting on an old graffitied sign. I couldn’t be that lucky, surely? But by the time I got my camera out of my bag, far from flying away, it had been joined by another bird. Two stonechats. Nice. All I need now is a photo contest on the theme of urban nature.