I have never seen rocks with such colour on a beach before. I am not sure what caused the bright red of the stone, but it was really enhanced when the waves ran over them. This is a small beach between St. Abb’s Head to the north and St. Abb’s harbour just a few hundred yards down the coast in the opposite direction. There is a very nice walk from the village along the coast to the headland. In fact if you click the photo to see the larger preview, you can just make out a small dot on top of the cliffs to the left of the picture. This is actually two people arm in arm walking along the path.

This photo was taken last summer on my way up to Edinburgh. At the time we were in a bit of a rush (this being the third location of the day). I knew I had to make sacrifices in terms of what I could and couldn’t get to photograph that day. Rather than walking all the way along the path to St. Abb’s Head, I instead choose to climb down to this beach because the bright red rocks intrigued me so much. Worthwhile capturing, but this is definitely somewhere I have to return to after missing out on the classic St. Abb’s Head landscape view.

Is it just me or do the photos that seem to tell a story always look better in black and white? As here, where we see a couple enjoying a sunny day at Dunure Harbour on the west coast of Scotland. The man with his binoculars out is looking at the PS Waverley, the world’s last remaining sea going paddle steamer and his wife? Seems to be more interested in her book or magazine so that she hasn’t even glanced up at the historic sight passing her by. Well maybe not, but that is the impression I got when I looked across the harbour to see this composition with the paddle steamer and the interesting couple.

This photo was taken over a year ago and I was sure it had already appeared on the website. There is a more detailed view of the Waverley Paddle Steamer but not the above picture. Last week I was going though my 15,557 photos taken in 2007 for a recent lecture I did at Sale Photographic Society here in Manchester.

This time last week I travelled from Edinburgh up into the Scottish highlands to a small village on the west coast called Plockton. It describes itself as “The Jewel of the Highlands”. It was my first trip north of Edinburgh and I quickly realised that the potential for good landscape photography is almost endless in this part of the world. Good warm sunlight was always going be a little bit of an issue, because with dramatic scenery come dramatic weather conditions. Fortunately, whilst I was sat on the sea wall looking out over the bay, a few rays of sun broke through the clouds and lit up a small cluster of buildings and white boats. The resulting photograph can be seen above.

Whoever said that it always rains in Scotland was probably the same person who says that it always rains in the Lake District or Manchester for that matter. Still, on the day I was travelling down from Edinburgh to the Scottish Border via the west coast, it turned out to be a wonderful day for photography. Whilst editing this photograph I almost wrote on the website Dunbar Harbour (which I had visited back in 2006) on the east coast. It is strange how similar their two names are, Dunbar is much bigger than the harbour we see in the above image. Dunure only has a few houses, a lovely pub and a harbour – that’s pretty much the whole village. There are some lovely coastal walks around this area. About two minutes after capturing this picture, I looked to the horizon to see the Waverley paddle steamer passing by, and I thought to myself, “could this day get any better?”