Tuesday 28 April 2009

Shoot your passion




In an earlier blog I was commenting on advice given to aspiring photographers by successful photographers. The gist of which was - photograph things you are passionate about and hopefully some fine pictures will emerge. I think they are right. I decided to spend some of my Easter break reading up on deserted glens in the North-East of Scotland - something I've been interested in for years. I have given myself the challenge of finding these abandoned and deserted glens and trying to take visually pleasing pictures. Many of these deserted glens only have a pile of stones as evidence of the remains of houses, so photographing these 'piles of granite' and making them interesting was a challenge.

On one or two days I was blessed with vivid and intense light and dramatic skies which helped greatly. Every now and then there would be a whole house still standing like the shot above of a place called Ardoch. “They call it the ‘Metropolean o’ the Waterside’. What they meant was that it was Glen Gairn’s metropolis; where they said ‘fowk had a’thing amang themselves’. This was Ardoch, one of the biggest clachans on Gairnside, whose fourteen fire-houses (houses with chimneys) lay on the lower slopes of Mammie Hill, looking down to where the River Gairn sweeps towards the River Dee.” The Land of the Lost by Robert Smith.

I really enjoyed mixing hobbies like this - reading local history, walking or cycling in Scotland and taking photographs. But what gave me even more pleasure was how much others on Flickr enjoyed the pictures. My views, comments and favs increased and that led to a few shots getting into Explore. Yeh, some might say it's pathetic to care about such stuff, but I would far rather I got many responses than none at all.

So I plan sticking to this 'passion' for local history of cleared glens and photographing as many interesting ruins as possible.

Anybody else experience such 'win-win' situations?