Scottish Highlands Portfolio

Although my favourite photographic locations in Scotland tend to focus around the Hebridean islands, I also enjoy visiting a number of key locations in the Scottish Highlands, from Glencoe and Ranoch Moor in the South to Assynt and Sutherland in the North and the Cairngorms on the East Coast, with lots of other dramatic spaces in between such as Argyll, Lochaber and the Great Glen with its start attraction of Loch Ness and its main tenant the Loch ness monster.

The administrative centre for the Highlands is the city of Inverness and the Highland Council is the administrative body that manages many of the public services in the area. As a former Councillor in the Highland Council, I am reminded of the sheer size of the Highland area, being comparable to the size of some small European countries such as Belgium. Of course the Scottish Highlands are much more sparsely populated than in belgium making an equitable provision of public services much more difficult than say in the central belt of Scotland. But the flip side of this is that residents of the Highlands get to live in an area that can still be considered the great outdoors with some of the worlds most stunning scenery along with an unrivalled diveristy of form.

It is a nice challenge for me, given where I am in my photographic journey, to start to populate this Scottish Highlands portfolio and my starting point is a portfolio of photographs I took recently in Assynt, south west Sutherland, where some of Scotland’s greatest mountains are located such as Canisp, Suiliven and Stac Pollaidh. The mix of dramatic mountain scenery and wonderful lochs and Lochans make for some excellent locations for the landscape photographer. I hope to add to my Highland portfolio soon with a collection of photographs taken in Glencoe.