Golden Hour

Mugdock Park

Portraits in Mugdock Park

Mugdock Country Park is one of my favourite outdoors spaces to photograph in. It’s easily accessible from Glasgow and not too remote. There are bits of it that feel like remote countryside, places that are lush green and overgrown with ferns. You can find meadows, huge trees, water, there are even ruins of a castle - basically a never-ending source of photo inspiration and despite having done numerous shoots there over the years, I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of the park. In fact, I got lost there for a bit on a shoot last year, wandering in a wooded area in circles. Below you can see one image from every shoot I’ve done in Mugdock Park so far. Enjoy.

Kathleen MacInnes

I’ve known Kathleen MacInnes, a brilliant Gaelic singer, for quite a while and have photographed her live on several occasions (mainly for Ceol’s Craic events) and it was a joy to be asked to do a proper session with her. We spent a lovely summer evening in Govan’s Dry Docks earlier this year and I’m including some of the final images below.

GEAR
Nikon D850 + Nikkor 85mm f1.4
Tiffen Black Pro-mist 1/4 Filter

Travelling Mercies

“Travelling Mercies” is a recent album from husband and wife duo Ashton Lane, and it topped UK Official Country Artists Album Charts earlier this year. I was approached by Esther and Tim last summer to photograph and design the album packaging. The shoot took place last September in one of my favourite places, Mugdock Park. In fact, I keep meaning to do a separate blog devoted to sessions I did there over the years (and there have been many), hopefully I’ll get to it soon. Anyway, back to Ashton Lane, I always get a bit nervous when my brief for a Glasgow based shoot includes words “outdoors” and “sunny” simultaneously - I may have many tricks up my sleeve but controlling the weather isn’t one of them so all you can do is hope that you’ll get lucky. And lucky we were indeed - it was a beautiful sunny evening, perfect for what we were trying to achieve.

Behind the scenes:

GEAR
Nikon D850 + Nikkor 85mm f1.4

Throwback: Patricia Panther

Patricia Panther is a singer, songwriter, producer, actress and an all around badass. We've worked together on several occasions but this throwback post is about our first collaboration back in April 2013 where we spent a beautiful (albeit cold) afternoon and evening shooting in the ruins of St. Peter’s Seminary in Cardross (I’ve written before about my trips there). Huge thanks to Ryan Vance for assistance.

GEAR:
Nikon D700
Nikkor 50mm f1.4
Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8
Nikon SB-600 Speedlight
Lastolite 24” x 24” Softbox
Reflector

Behind the scenes photos by Ryan Vance:

Nicole Caldwell

You may have seen Nicole Caldwell belting out "Purple Rain" on the X-Factor recently. I've been a fan of her voice ever since I've heard her perform with Soul Nation Choir a few years ago. Being able to finally work with Nicole on her very first photoshoot as a solo artist was a great opportunity. And a lot of fun! The brief was "bohemian/hippie/natural" so off we went last month to Mugdock Country Park (one of my favourite places to shoot) with Caroline Stewart on makeup duties and spent an evening walking about, laughing and talking nonsense. Oh yes, and we took some photos too. Enjoy!

PS. Big thanks to David for all the help!