Let’s try this photography thing again (Scotland 2024 - Part 1)

I’d planned a trip, well sort of at least.

I’d booked 4 campsites so I knew where I needed to be at the end of each day, but that was about it.

eBay had become my friend too and I’d been buying up new things for the trip. Nothing major as I’d bought a new camera the year before after the last trip, but there was a couple of bits I wanted.

On the last trip I’d split the drive to John O’Groats into 2 days, staying in Inverness for a night.

This time, I’d decided to skip that and go straight to John O’Groats.

I had 5 days cleared in the diary and didn’t want to waste them.

The plan was pretty simple:

Day 1 - Drive from Oldham to John O’Groats (just under 500 miles)

Day 2 - Day of driving and photography, ending up at Sango Sands

Day 3 - Day of driving and photography, ending up near Ullapool (although as it turned out not as near as I’d thought)

Day 4 - Day of driving and photography, ending Applecross.

Day 5 - Drive home (about 450 miles)

Day 1 - The Drive

I set my alarm for 0530, as I wanted to be on the road for 6.

It was a Thursday so I was planning on being well on the way before rush hour and traffic (in particular the M62/60) go bad.

However, 5 minutes I was on the road before I hit traffic.

Great I thought, this is it. Trip Spoilt.

Luckily this traffic only lasted a couple of miles and soon after things cleared up.

Before I knew it, was 2 hours up the road and entering Scotland.

That felt great, so I celebrated by stopping for breakfast not far south of Glasgow.

I’d not remembered though at this point how big Scotland is.

I might have crossed the border, but I was still 6 hours solid driving away from my goal, John O’groats.

Happily the rest of the drive went smoothly, and I hit Inverness around noon, almost exactly 6 hours after leaving my house.

I stopped here for lunch, and as the weather was nice got the drone out for a quick fly (new toy, which I was quite nerdily probably not a real word* excited to use). From here I started to look at where I could get the camera out properly.

Before setting off I’d found a google maps list that showed lots of good photography spots in the areas I was going.

I didn’t plan on visiting all of them, or limiting myself to those places, but I thought having a quick guide like that would be useful.

It was and during the afternoon I took a very leisurely pace up towards John O’Groats, visiting a couple of these places on the way.

Lybster Lighthouse

My favourites for the day were Lybster Lighthouse.

A tiny harbour, with a nice lighthouse looking over a bay of quite dark, jagged, rocks.

The sun was out too which meant it was quite bright.

I got the drone out first for a play and captured the lighthouse before moving to the camera.

One of the things I’ve always liked about landscape photography is the way that water, or clouds are captured.

I like the way that an image of something like a mountain can have both the still and precision of the mountain, but also the flowing of the clouds or the water.

I had no idea how this worked though, until I watched a video by Thomas Heaton, a Landscape Photographer whose YouTube video’s I’d been watching quite a bit of (and still am). In one of his videos, from a Scotland trip I think, he’d captured what I thought was a really nice image, but had also explained really nicely how he’d done it. ND Filters were the answer (plus some skill and practice obviously).

I’d bought a variable ND Filter for the lens I like the most (a 24-70 from Tamron), and so I started to experiment on the sea in the harbour.

Anyone who’s looked at the pictures I’ve posted of the trip will notice I didn’t post any thing that captured the still of a subject, and the flowing of its surroundings, certainly not the sea anyway.

That’s because I didn’t get any. What I came out with weren’t great. In fact the best picture I got of the sea from that spot was on my phone.

I didn’t consider it a waste though, not at all.

While my goal for this trip was to hopefully get some pictures I liked, it was also to learn, experiment.

I’d spent quite a while stood on the harbour wall with my tripod, camera playing around with the shot, and so while the output wasn’t great, I’d enjoyed the process.

Old Keiss Castle

Next I drove up to the tiny village of Keiss to see the Old Keiss Castle which is a 16th century castle, sitting right on the edge of a cliff.

I parked up in the harbour, and took the 10 minute walk up to the Castle.

Along the walk you pass a couple of old WWII pill boxes and a a couple of Iron Age Brochs.

The Castle itself was sitting right in the light of the sun which was still slowing quite bright with a nice blue sky (shame that didn’t last as we’ll discover over the coming days).

I’d not taken the tripod out with me on this walk, which I should have. Definitely.

Apart from the lighthouse from earlier, I’d never really photographed a ‘thing’, I’d always (in the 1, single, trip I’d done before) captured for the ‘scene’.

I had no idea what I was doing, so I just got the camera out and starting shooting. Zoom in, Zoom out, put the sun behind me, put the sun in front of me. Just take pictures.

A bit like the harbour before, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was enjoying it, and that’s why I was there.

I got a couple of nice pictures of the castle though, which was a nice end to the day I’d started almost 500 miles away.

After the short walk back to the van, I drove on up to the campsite for the night, at John O’Groats.

I’ve been to John O’Groats before, on my trip this was last year, but it was nice to get there again. This marked the proper start of the trip for me.

After a quick photoshoot around the area, it was time to relax for the night and get ready for the next few days.

Day 2 - John O’Groats to Sango Sands

After a decent nights sleep, I woke up, had some breakfast and headed out for the first full day for the trip.

The afternoon before I’d noticed that I was only a couple of miles from Duncansby Stacks, an area I’d seen on lots of the videos and posts about this area, and so I decided to visit this first thing.

After a short drive round, I parked up, grabbed my  camera bag and followed the path through to the stacks.

I struggled a bit with getting a composition I liked. The sky was dull and nothing really stood out. The only shot I could see that I liked would mean jumping the fences and getting very, too, close to the cliff edge.

I decided not to bother, but got the drone out instead for a fly around the stacks instead.

After this, I drove towards Thurso, around half an hour away. I needed to drop into a supermarket for some things and wanted to get Diesel.

I’d used about two thirds of my fuel getting up here, so wanted to fill up now as I knew I would be getting more remote over the next few days. 

By this time it was nearly lunchtime so I started driving west on pretty unremarkable roads. I remembered though from the year before that the roads got much more interesting so I carried on moving.

I stopped on the Tonge Causeway for lunch. This causeway sitting over the Kyle of Tongue loch has a great little carpark to sit and have lunch, right on the edge of the loch. 

Here I took a little drone footage, and a couple of pictures of the weather surrounding Ben Loyal, a 764m peak nestled in dark clouds.

From here, I carried on west, stopping at a couple of places on the way, smashing my GoPro when the suction cup failed to stick it to side of the van, before arriving at the campsite around 5pm.

This hadn’t been a big day with lots of photography, but a relaxing day which is exactly what I had needed.

Days 3 and 4 coming soon...

In the next blog, I’ll write about the last couple of days of the trip, where again the weather decided it was going to change and the sun was going to mostly hide away.