A busy and difficult summer

Noss Head Lighthouse. A HDR image taken on a whistle stop trip to drop my daughter off at an archaeological dig.

Noss Head Lighthouse. A HDR image taken on a whistle stop trip to drop my daughter off at an archaeological dig.

This is just a very quick update on what is happening at Scott Tilley photography at the minute. Coincidentally this summer has turned out to be one of my busiest and most difficult! The number of workshops and one to ones I do has increased greatly which is absolutely fantastic. My daughter is working on her dissertation and as she doesn’t drive and sampling needs to be done in the North of Scotland it is a fantastic opportunity to mix in some photography. She also needs transport to a dig near Wick in the far north east, again all good as far as photography is concerned. I was also training for a full Ironman triathlon at the end of July so as you can imagine spare time was at a premium.

A hastily taken image of a Common Blue butterfly taken during a quiet moment on one of my Macro Photography Workshops.

A hastily taken image of a Common Blue butterfly taken during a quiet moment on one of my Macro Photography Workshops.

An image taken well over a year ago but never processed. This is certainly one of my favourite images and it would have stayed hidden on my hard drive if I wasn’t laid up after surgery!

An image taken well over a year ago but never processed. This is certainly one of my favourite images and it would have stayed hidden on my hard drive if I wasn’t laid up after surgery!

So, busy as you can see but not impossible especially when your doing the things you love. I was all on course in April and had just started to up my training from around seven hours a week to the required eleven to fifteen. It was at this point I somehow developed a hernia and everything was put in jeopardy. Being a triathlete teaches you one thing if nothing else and thats organisation. At first I tried to train with it on the advice of my GP. I did wonder why she was smiling when I asked if I could train with it! After a couple of weeks I knew it wasn’t going to be possible, and not having a date to be operated on I decided my only course of action was to pull out of my event.

After a couple of months I finally got a date for surgery (8th August) That really helped as it enabled me to reschedule a few things get my macro workshops done early and make the landscape ones later when I should be fully fit again. I also had to reschedule a couple of one to ones but both clients where very understanding.

I’m currently writing this a few days after the surgery and doing as I’m told so that my recovery is fast and without complications. Over the next few months you should get some images from the far north of Scotland appearing on the site and perhaps a wild camp in the Lake District?

Dates for 1-2-1 photography days are still available and you can book a date of your choosing directly on this website, just follow the links. I will then contact you for some further information on your camera setup as well as organising a suitable location to meet up. I tend to chose this nearer the day depending on weather, light and also your location.

I have to say a big thanks to all the staff at Kings Mill Hospital for looking after me. In the end I had an injection in the back so was awake throughout the operation. Unfortunately for me this numbed my legs but with twenty minutes to go I could feel pretty much everything!. I only have myself to blame for this really. Being a triathlete, pain pretty much comes as part of the training and racing deal, and not having had surgery before I wasn’t sure if this was normal, I just locked my jaw and took the pain until the last stitch when the surgeon noticed the grimace! I advised him I could feel everything and they hastily gave me some more local anaesthetic! As I say I really should have opened my mouth, it was certainly an experience. The images in this update blog are a selection of the images i have managed to take either before surgery or as I now recover at home.

Keep an eye out on the website for more updates and if your interested take a look at my courses and workshops page. This list is not exhaustive however and I am always happy for clients to come to me with the own ideas for a day out with the camera, just contact me in all the usual ways.

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Whats Been Happening!

You might be wondering what has been happening with the website and the Blog over the last few months, so here is an update on why all has been quiet!

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As some of you will know as well as being a passionate photographer I also enjoy health and fitness. Sport for me really began when I took up road cycling in my late teens. As I got older this morphed into duathlons and triathlons. During this time I also took up digital photography. A strange combination I know but they never seemed to run at the same time. What tended to happen was that I would be in triathlon mode, train too hard, burn out and go back to photography. Put on weight, decided I needed to get fit and go back to triathlon and the process would repeat. Now a couple of years ago I really thought I had done with triathlon. I either got injured or put to much stress on myself for that A event, it was never fun (hence the shout of other club members that I was never smiling when I came into the finish. Why? because I was always trying too hard)

However, just as I began to throw myself back into landscape photography, I hit fifty and perhaps some would call it a midlife crisis but I signed up for the Outlaw. Now the Outlaw is Nottinghamshires very own Ironman triathlon. My reasons for entering where simple, I had never done the full Ironman distance before and I am determined to do it this time with a smile on my face. I also wanted to stop the cycle of photography and training and run them both together. So far this does seem to be working. Ironman training is pretty intense and I am currently doing around seven hours training per week but this will rise as the July 2019 race date gets closer.

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The New Bike

2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.22 mile run

This limits my time out with the camera, however, it really does give you something to look forward to after the hours of swim,bike,run. I don't intend to use this site to give updates of my training and kit choices as that's a whole different area and I suspect few of you follow the path I do. (I would be intrigued to know if there are others!)

Photography wise I have decided to take a hiatus from the running of my Youtube channel as it really does take up a lot of time and can impact on the quality of images you produce as you get bogged down with sound quality and filming. Needless to say I had hoped this would free up some free time for personal photography projects but this coincided with a flood of product photography jobs and days out teaching.

Anyway, this is a short update just to let you know where I'm at. I recently uploaded an image taken at Morton Castle in Dumfries and Galloway, this is located in the night sky gallery so please take a look and let me know what you think.

I will speak to you soon.

Scott.

A very shot trip to Whitby images and video!

After getting some time off work and with an afternoon to spare it can be difficult to find attractive landscape photography shots in the height of summer. If you ask most landscape photographers they will probably admit that this time of year is a real struggle. I tend to find that getting into some high mountains or onto the coast gives the best opportunities. Now that's a challenge in Nottinghamshire. So, after deciding that high mountains was the more difficult option it was a race to the coast, and on the east coast it doesn't get much more interesting than Whitby.

The setting for for Bram Stokers Dracula, or at least the British part of the story, the very place were the Demeter crashes onto the rocks and the count runs up towards the abbey in the form as a massive black dog. The place exudes atmosphere, even with the thousands of tourists milling about its streets it provides a thin veneer for the character swirling underneath. I had forgotten this until our visit and I can assure you that I will be back in the depths of winter with the veneer gone and Whitby's pores oozing as they once did in the 1880's.

Just click to watch!