2009 a Great Year for me & a turning point
18th December 2009
In: Some advice.
2009 will go down as one of my best years so far as a landscape photographer, it started off very slowly, still recovering from pneumonia which I think started from a trans Atlantic flight home from a great holiday in Canada with my family. I met kids who I had only heard about via my Big Sister Yvonne, she's actually 5 ft 1 inch but still my big sister. 34 years since I had been to Canada, and a wonderful 4 weeks sped by, family, friends, meals in great restaurants and travelling the great Ontario trail so many have tramped before me. Survived the collapse of my airline carrier and got home a few pounds heavier & with a mountain of images to process.
Then I was on a field trip with new friends and it was shaping up nicely when I fell ill and had to leave them, ended in the Hospital on the way home after dialling the emergency services. ( Marvellous people who deserve nothing but praise )
Took 3 months but eventually life gets better and I turned a corner and suddenly seemed so much better. "Relief".
The new Year dawned and come February I was due to meet again with my friends from the interrupted trip plus a couple more.
Since then I vowed that if the sun shone somewhere in Scotland I'd be there, a new day arrived for me. I'll never be able to repay these friends who kept me going and gave me the power to see life as it is.
Melanie, Claire and Bill have brought me a new life, back from the brink and in the nick of time. Life is sweet again and hopefully you can see the difference in my images on the site here.
So 2009 has found me travelling a different trail and opened up my horizon, Northumberland over the border into England and down to Wales twice. But still Scotland is my home and I'm always drawn back, the bagpipes call me to the Glens and Lochs and the wonderful single track roads that sometimes lead to a magical place where the sun shines over a hillside and glints on the water where some marvellous fish swim in the cold waters.
The west coast is my favourite haunt, Rannoch Moor and Glencoe the jewels in Scotland's Ancient crown, and many more further north into Wester Ross and Sutherland where the mountains were carved from the living rock by glaciers, millions of years before man set foot on the land.
The Scottish Highlands never fail to inspire, mountains and tumbling water. Great hills as in Skye and Torridon, Lochs on Rannoch Moor, Perthshire Assynt and beyond.
The Islands on the West and North, wild and sometimes hard to get to by ferry, sometimes interrupted you never know what the weather will do from one minute to the next. On the East the bird sanctuaries are crammed with life 150,000 birds on the Bass Rock, and there are many, many more. The misty isle, Skye where Eagles and Sea Eagles are always there just on the edge of your sight. The Island of Mull, steeped in history and with so many Castles of the Clans, some still working and inhabited to this day, Iona which has a history that is almost lost in the mist of time, the connection with Ireland and the Viking raiders.
I think I have enough to go on with in what's left of my life to have an exciting and hopefully productive retirement. So here's to all of you who read this, near or far, if you have some Scots blood or not, Scotland is a fine and unique country that I love. Come see it with your own eyes & Hail Caledonia! ...remember, bring your "wellies" with you.
A very Happy Christmas & a prosperous New Year, Lang Mae yer lumb reek,
Dougie
Links to Melanie, Claire & Bill are on the links page, they all contribute to Photo Travel Revue.
Then I was on a field trip with new friends and it was shaping up nicely when I fell ill and had to leave them, ended in the Hospital on the way home after dialling the emergency services. ( Marvellous people who deserve nothing but praise )
Took 3 months but eventually life gets better and I turned a corner and suddenly seemed so much better. "Relief".
The new Year dawned and come February I was due to meet again with my friends from the interrupted trip plus a couple more.
Since then I vowed that if the sun shone somewhere in Scotland I'd be there, a new day arrived for me. I'll never be able to repay these friends who kept me going and gave me the power to see life as it is.
Melanie, Claire and Bill have brought me a new life, back from the brink and in the nick of time. Life is sweet again and hopefully you can see the difference in my images on the site here.
So 2009 has found me travelling a different trail and opened up my horizon, Northumberland over the border into England and down to Wales twice. But still Scotland is my home and I'm always drawn back, the bagpipes call me to the Glens and Lochs and the wonderful single track roads that sometimes lead to a magical place where the sun shines over a hillside and glints on the water where some marvellous fish swim in the cold waters.
The west coast is my favourite haunt, Rannoch Moor and Glencoe the jewels in Scotland's Ancient crown, and many more further north into Wester Ross and Sutherland where the mountains were carved from the living rock by glaciers, millions of years before man set foot on the land.
The Scottish Highlands never fail to inspire, mountains and tumbling water. Great hills as in Skye and Torridon, Lochs on Rannoch Moor, Perthshire Assynt and beyond.
The Islands on the West and North, wild and sometimes hard to get to by ferry, sometimes interrupted you never know what the weather will do from one minute to the next. On the East the bird sanctuaries are crammed with life 150,000 birds on the Bass Rock, and there are many, many more. The misty isle, Skye where Eagles and Sea Eagles are always there just on the edge of your sight. The Island of Mull, steeped in history and with so many Castles of the Clans, some still working and inhabited to this day, Iona which has a history that is almost lost in the mist of time, the connection with Ireland and the Viking raiders.
I think I have enough to go on with in what's left of my life to have an exciting and hopefully productive retirement. So here's to all of you who read this, near or far, if you have some Scots blood or not, Scotland is a fine and unique country that I love. Come see it with your own eyes & Hail Caledonia! ...remember, bring your "wellies" with you.
A very Happy Christmas & a prosperous New Year, Lang Mae yer lumb reek,
Dougie
Links to Melanie, Claire & Bill are on the links page, they all contribute to Photo Travel Revue.
Comments
By John Martin: Mr. Salteri -- My wife and I will be in Scotland for the month of May, 2013. I'm a "sometime" travel photographer (skeeterstravelphotography.com)and have read your blogs. I like your love of Scotland and hope to reveal, in my photography, what I see in yours.
John Martin