Photographing Scotland Book review

It’s often easy to keep returning to the same location time after time. This isn’t always a bad thing as the conditions can change giving you a different view of the scene. However, there will come a time when you want to try and find somewhere new. You could join social media groups and find photos that interest you. The problem, though, is sometimes photographers don’t like to share their unusual locations. Thankfully, photographer Dougie Cunningham doesn’t subscribe to this way of thinking. His book, Photographing Scotland, published by fotoVUE is an indispensable guide to locations in Scotland.

Photographing Scotland – The Author

Dougie Cunningham is a Glasgow based photographer. He came to photography through his love of outdoor sports. This allows some of the locations in the book to be for the adventurous snapper only. He has written for a number of magazines and counts Red Bull in his client list.

Photographing Scotland – The Book

The photo-location and visitor guidebook is available from Amazon for around £18. The book is split into five geographic sections. The Lowlands section covers the Borders, Galloway, Arran and all the way up the East Coast of Scotland to St Andrews. The Eastern Highlands section covers the East of Scotland from Perth to the Moray Coastline. The Western Highlands takes in Loch Lomond, Glencoe, Loch Ness and over to the Kyle of Lochalsh. The Western Isles includes the Outer Hebrides as well as Skye, Mull, Iona and Islay. The final section, Far North takes a straight line from Torridon in the West to Chanonry Point in the East and takes in locations north of that line including Shetland and Orkney.

Each location guide has four sections. After a short introduction giving some background to the location, there are some step-by-step directions to get to 3 or 4 viewpoints per location. They are really easy to follow and also indicate if they are wheel-chair accessible. The nest section is a detailed set of directions to the nearest parking location, this includes Latitude and Longitude coordinates, grid reference and postcode so you should be able to easily reach the right place with a standard SatNav system. There is then an accessibility guide which states how easy or hard it is to get to the locations. Finally, there is the best time of the day/year to visit. This gives a really good indication of when you are going to get the best conditions.

Photographing Scotland Review

This is a great starter book to start exploring new photography locations in Scotland. It has been well researched to not only cover the well-known locations, but also a few less photographed spots. I have tried three or four of the guides and found them to be very accurate so I could arrive at the location quite easily. The standard of photography is good and gives an indication of the possibilities of the location. It’s also handy that every image has the settings used for the shot. This means you don’t necessarily need to carry lenses with you that you won’t need. This is a highly recommended book to give you some inspiration for shooting landscape images in Scotland. I always feel actually using a product is the best endorsement. I have added one or two locations to the Landscape and Seascape workshop as a direct result of purchasing this book.

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