As I noted yesterday morning, testing is at the heart of the WHO procedures for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is rather disappointing that both the UK and Scottish Governments are still choosing to ignore this. We are already reaping the consequences of this, and it will rapidly snowball.

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If, like me, you were were curious what to expect from a government seeking to employ misfits and weirdos, the wait is over. It means nothing more than ignoring prevailing scientific opinion when formulating government policy.

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I finally revamped my photos site. I have meant to do this for over a year now, but didn’t get to it until now. The biggest change is no more SmugMug.

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All in all 2019 wasn’t a bad year by any means, but nevertheless, for a variety of reasons I needn’t to bore you with, it sticks in mind as a year of journeys unrealised and photographs untaken, of unfinished business and, not least, a year of blogs unpublished. Free time was harder to find, and even harder to set aside.

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My current interest in black and white photography goes back to a three night wild camping trip in my favourite part of the world a couple of years ago. I had planned it for some time, with one particular image in mind, but alas, happened to run into an early heatwave, with all that it brings – largely cloudless skies, haze that even a polarizer can’t do much about, thunder, and rapidly forming, all encompassing, evening inversions.

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The question of the role and the importance of realism in landscape photography is one that keeps coming up over and over again. On the one hand we have the purists, holding onto old fashioned notions of truth, arguing that landscapes should be true to the land; on the other the free creatives, raising that millennia old question ‘What is Truth?’. And, broadly speaking, the former seem to have long lost the argument.

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My shoulder hurts from the seatbelt, plumes of steam bellowing from underneath the bonnet; I am sure I can smell petrol. Shaking fingers fumbling with the buckle. The driver side door won’t budge. Scrambling out over the gear stick. I put some distance between myself and the car, expecting it to burst into flames any moment.

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The NC500 is a travesty. The idea of car touring holidays harkens back to the environmental ignorance of mid 20th century and is wholly unfit for these days of an unfolding environmental catastrophe. VisitScotland, the Scottish Government, and all those who lend their name to promoting this anachronism, should be ashamed of themselves.

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A flame stretching up to heaven. The newsrooms can’t get enough, a journalist’s dream come true. You, me, everyone, glued to our screens, riveting stuff. (Honey, make us some popcorn, will you?)

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A recent UKH Opinion piece dealing with the ecological cost of the forthcoming Glen Etive micro hydro, and micro hydro in general, includes this statement: ‘[we can] produce large amounts of truly “clean and green” energy … through solar, offshore … and tidal energy solutions’. I have come across permutations of this argument before, and it strikes me that our assessment of the environmental cost of renewables, and our understanding of renewables in general, is somewhat simplistic, glossing over what it is renewables actually do.

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Some of the photographers of old get rather upset when folk say ‘film slows you down’, so I won’t say that, but I’ll say it slows me down for sure. It’s not just the ‘on location’ pace, but also the time it takes before I get to see what I tried to visualise.

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Film is experiencing something of a renaissance these days, as attested on social media (#ishootfilm #filmisnotdead), and, perhaps more importantly, by the reappearance of numerous previously discontinued film emulsions—there is, again, money to be made from film.

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I was going to write the usual annual retrospective, but sometimes life just gets in the way. They say a picture is worth a thousand words; perhaps it is, so anyway, here are a few.

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Glen Ogle. Most of the time a place on the way to somewhere else, somewhere more exciting. Yet, for me also a special, magical place where years ago my inner eye first really glimpsed the beauty of this land.

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I saw him as soon as I came over the rise. Hard not to, perched on a rock some hundred yards ahead, completely out of scale in this landscape.

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There are three of them up there, and what a racket! Correction: the racket, that’s just the two of them. She is soaring silent, near motionless, regal; aloof. Her path seemingly unalterable. On a mission permitting no distractions.

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