I was a bit late joining the photo-walk this year, but caught up with the small crowd of folks in Inverary prior to walking around the town with a camera in tow.
The views from the front, looking up lochs Shira and Fyne to sunlit mountains surrounding Glenkinglas, were stunning.
We also went around the Jail, where one of the guides pretended to have been naughty…
I spent much of this afternoon at the Perth Highland Games held on the North Inch. Amongst other things, there were many stalls selling leather and jewellery products, cyclists, heavy-weight sports including the shot-put and hammer, lots of pipe & drum bands (including St Andrew’s Pipe Band from Brisbane, Australia) and several cuddly dogs (never met a Pharoah Hound before!).
Three photos of trees, taken on a stroll up Kinnoull Hill in Perth.
A carpark in central Leeds, one Sunday morning during Christmas 2014.
Which serves the public better – a traffic warden ticketing cars or the gritting of road and pavement so folks could walk safely along?
Loch Earn is still an idyllic scene despite everyone stopping to take photos in St Fillan’s. Herewith, two obvious views:
Personally, I like this view instead:
People Watching / People Watching
There’s a time-/context-axis running from the far distance – first there was the landscape, then there was Robert Mulholland’s statue Still, then there’s people taking photos of it, then there’s me shooting them. All things considered, a bit “meta”.
Last Thursday tea-time, the Queen’s Baton came to Stranraer as part of the run-up to the Commonwealth Games. It was quite fun to watch the crowds milling around in anticipation – arguably made for more interesting street-photos than the baton itself.
It’s a bright sunny bank-holiday weekend, which means only one thing.
Of five approaching cars at which I waved, only one young yet surprisingly dour-looking passenger waved back.
Visiting vehicles are easily identified by how caravans clog-up the roads, how cars perform 3-point turns in the mouths of T-junctions.
Avoiding eye-contact becomes the norm, as does the body-language of shying-away from Dog when passing on the pavement. Instead, out come the silver insulated food bags that bring their suburban life to us, their chilled packet contents probably bought from the perceived safety of a generic supermarket en route rather than in one of the local shops.
It speaks of an indifference to the existing social networks within the village being invaded, a separation of us versus the self-centred them.
I do not see merit in the argument that tourism is good for the local economy. It might seem to be, in a short-sighted fashion; but when all visitors see is each other and perceive landscape as pretty, its shallowness does not compare to the depth and quality of soul that comes from involving oneself in committing one’s life and work to a place.
This afternoon in Stranraer I stumbled across a protest in the town centre, a group of maybe 30-40 folks setting out their stalls (literally) to protest against the `Bedroom Tax’ and other social injustices.
Kudos to them for getting off their backsides to object.
But please, in the interests of being taken seriously:
Hardly surprising that I had the Dire Straits song Industrial Disease going through my head all afternoon – `there’s a protest singer, singing a protest song’…