The Forth Bridge is a railway bridge over the Firth of Forth in Scotland. I have been to photograph it a couple of times and it has always had this horrible looking scaffolding on parts of the structure. Due to the size (1.6 miles long) it needs constant maintenance so this scaffolding is always here. However the current painting of the bridge involves a new paint that is expected to last at least 25 years, due for completion this December. This may mean a chance for me to capture a photograph of the bridge scaffolding free at some point!

Close up and with a wide angle lens, the Scott Monument looks very strange and dominates the frame. This is a Victorian Gothic monument to author Sir Walter Scott in the centre of Edinburgh. I captured this image a couple of winters ago thinking it might make for an interesting monochrome or black and white image. However after some post production losing the colour didn’t help, so I kept the dirty sandstone colour. This monument is over 200 feet tall and has 287 steps to the top. Author Bill Bryson is said to have described it as a “gothic rocket ship” and you can see why from this angle!

Allan Ramsay was a Scottish poet from 300 years ago. This statue is in Princes Gardens and I was stood on the pavement on Princes Street to capture this photograph at dusk. It was just before Christmas and the city was very crowded, so I had to be quick about capturing this exposure, trying to do my best to use my tripod in the middle of the pavement and not get in too many peoples way. Still it was worth it, in the background you can see Edinburgh Castle.

As I have discussed before, arguably the best place to see penguin’s in the UK is at Edinburgh Zoo’s massive penguin enclosure. The management of the zoo are obviously well aware of this as the above photograph was taken on the main road in front of the entrance to the zoo. This model of a penguin is on the top of the zoo’s sign. Not quite as majestic as the real thing, but I felt it was worthy of capturing on camera.