Merry Christmas! I’m up in Perth with my family for a few days, but it doesn’t look as festive as this image from Christmas Day a couple of years ago! I went out for a walk with the camera, but the conditions were grey and windy, not ideal for photography, so I spent the afternoon stuffing myself with food and geeking out with new gadgets!

A quick iPhone photo looking over Croyde Bay in Devon, one of my favourite places to be, even when the waves are small, like they were when this was taken.

Wheat Field in the evening sunshine, Flecknoe, Warwickshire. June 2011

This image is from an evening walk near the village of Flecknoe in Warwickshire, as it was such a lovely evening it would have been rude not to go out with the camera. I really liked how the green of the young wheat and blue sky were so vivid in the evening light.

For more images of the harbour, signal tower and sea defences have a look at my Arbroath gallery:

This morning we decided to head to Forfar to get some bridies for lunch and seeing as it was such a nice morning we decided to continue over to Arbroath to get some smokies for dinner.

Arbroath Harbour:

Dad at Arbroath Harbour:

The only downside to the trip was that it was perfect sports car weather, driving on perfect sports car roads, but both the sports cars are back down in the shire. Now it’s time to eat the smokies…

The real reason for choosing Kinnoull Hill, was Kinnoull Tower, a derelict tower perched on the edge of a cliff, probably a look out post to spot people coming up the Tay from the North Sea/Dundee. Its well positioned to catch the evening sun and with the Tay weaving away in the background. This afternoon the Tay was fairly full, with hardly a ripple and I really like the way this image has come out.

Also in Kinnoull Woods there are a series of wooden sculptures by Pete Bowsher (aka Chainsaw Pete), this bird of prey (looks like an eagle, but buzzard sized) was up near Kinnoull Tower.

Our first evening we headed north up the A9, past Dunkeld and then left the car and headed up the hill towards a loch that we thought would catch the evening sun. After a few wrong turnings we came out of the woods into a meadow, where we should have stopped, due to the sun almost having disappeared behind the mountains, but instead we carried on for the loch, by the time we reached in the sun had already dropped. This was a great shame, as the loch was frozen and there was a pretty green cottage on the bank. I’m pretty pleased with the image below, but can’t help wondering how much better it would have been 20 minutes before.

Being of Scottish/French descent a St George’s Cross isn’t something I’d normally take a picture of, but I thought the light on it was great. I was taking the scenic route home from my parent’s place and stopped at Fairfax’s viewpoint, just outside Naseby, hoping to capture the vista that Fairfax would have seen prior to the Battle of Naseby, minus all the armies etc obviously, but a farmer had dropped a huge pile of manure in the foreground of the shot, so a flag is what I took.

As I’ve already hinted at, 2010 is going to be a busy year, the motorsport season is going to start for me on the 14th February, with some rallycross at Mallory Park (being single on valentines day does have some benefits), with the Ma5da Racing season kicking off towards the end of March. As per 2008 & 2009 I will be covering all rounds of the Ma5da Racing Championship, including their add on series for the Mk3 MX-5s. When I have got more reliable dates for the events I am covering I will put a post on the blog, this should be in a few weeks after the Autosport International show.

My aims for 2010 photography wise are to get published in Autosport magazine again, get my website 100% finished and most importantly to take more photos for myself. In my personal life I’m aiming to snowboard more than I did in 2009, which shouldn’t be too tricky and to get my flat sorted out, before the 2 year anniversary of moving in. I will also make sure that I update this blog (and my development blog) more often.

I’ll leave you with a bonus picture from my new years eve celebrations, regular readers may recognise Simon, my little brother, who threw a nations themed fancy dress party to bring in 2010, any guesses as to which nation he is?

This shot was taken on Xmas day on the North Inch park in Perth while I was out for a pre Xmas dinner stroll in the snow, I did try a black and white conversion, but felt that this colour version worked the best:

I’m in the process of designing a new website, the first part of it is my new portfolio of landscape images.

Landscape – Images by Lewis Craik