Cath was having lunch with some old work colleagues a few days ago and I offered to drop her off at the venue in St Andrews so that I could spend a couple of hours (women have long lunches, don't they?) photographing a part of Fife that I don't know too well at all.
For overseas readers and Sassenachs (only joking - I love you really!) Fife is on Scotland's east coast about half way up. It's a mix of lovely old fishing villages, great golf courses, rolling agricultural land and, at the southern end, minging coastal towns.
The nicest spot is an area known as the East Neuk. It includes St Andrews, Crail, Pittenweem, Anstruther and Elie, all quite historic and well worth a visit. St Andrews is a university town that happens to have the most famous golf course in the world on its doorstep - literally. Crail is a chocolate-boxy fishing village, all quaint houses and red-tiled roofs. Anstruther and the adjoining village of Cellardyke are grittier and more interesting from a photographic point of view, I think.
I'm reasonably familiar with the villages but it's the land ten to fifteen miles inland that I wanted to explore a little. The two photographs I've posted here were shot on the F90x but I haven't had time to get into the darkroom so these come courtesy of Photoshop. In truth, I could have spent a lot longer poking around. I cannot resist driving down a country lane just to see what's at the end of it. It's why I love visiting places I've never been to before. We spent ten days in the South of France last summer and the most enjoyable part for me was exploring the network of circulade villages in the evening sun, not knowing what was going to be around the next corner. It's irresistible, but I digress.
The tower in the first photograph is a bit of enigma. Is it a folly? A church? A once-ornate grain store? Who knows. Anyway, it stuck out like a sore thumb so I did my best in Photoshop to enhance this aspect. As for the blasted tree - who knows what trauma it's seen over the years! Looks a bit like a wand out of one of the Harry Potter films to me. Bill Brandt would probably have liked this one.
"minging"
ReplyDeleteGod I love that word! So descriptive. Haven't heard or seen or used it since moving to the US.
Haha! It's a good word all right, Paul. So is minger as in "Did you see that minger picking his nose?" Another good word is one from my own Dundee dialect, "mechter", which means much the same as minger. Mind you, if I were to write the blog in the Dundee dialect you wouldn't understand a word of it!
ReplyDeleteGood Job,i read you,from Italy.
ReplyDeleteWelcome Mario and thanks for leaving a comment!
ReplyDeleteWanted to restart my darkroom (in my bathroom) and needed some negatives to develop. So, although I am still recovering from the wow effect my new nikon d700 made on me, I dag up my old smena and zenit, loaded them with rolls and now I'm enjoying my come-back to real photography. I'll see how't goes.
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