Aberdeen
August saw a number of outdoor excursions to the Sawmill at Finzean, the Bridges over the Dee, Kincorth nature reserve. Below a small selection plucked from FaceBook
Put these up on our blog as I told the young artists I’d post them on the Visions page but then realised our facebook page is closed. So hopefully they will find this via Google. Maybe this page can be updated with the finished work, when one of us visits the beach.
Another trip from our summer excursions programme, this time organised by Pamela Adam. First a brief stop at the wreck of the fishing boat at Cairnbulg. Light was rather dull here, so we did not linger too long.
Then onwards to Fraserburgh harbour, where we wandered around briefly and took a few shots of boats etc.
Our next and final stop was at the Lighthouse Museum which provided more interesting opportunities as the light had now improved and the setting sun was coming through the clouds. We met Derek Gray here and we all tried our version of a shot he was taking.
Just for fun I’ve posted three versions of more or less the same shot below:
Our summer outdoor excursions programme took us to the Forest of Birse near Finzean for a look at the water powered 19th century mills. I’d visited these circa 7 years ago as part of the photography course at Grays, and knew it would be good if we could arrange access to the buildings.  Guy Haslam, the chairperson of the Birse Community Trust  was extremely helpful and arranged to meet us at 7pm outside the mill. The mill is still in operation on a part time basis and manufactures fence posts, brooms and wooden kitchen implements like spurtles and dough rollers. In the past it used to make wooden stoppers for herring barrels.
Further along the river is the bucket mill, which we did not visit on this occasion. The following a bit more info from the Historic Scotland website: “The Finzean Sawmill and Turning Mill, on the N bank of the River Feugh, is a remarkable survival in full working order. The sawmill, and the site of the Bucket Mill were established in the early 19th century to exploit the Glen Ferrick pine woods. From the 1830s to 1871, the sawmill was occupied by a range of different timber contractors who were harvesting timber on Finzean Estate. During this period the sawmiller was Charles Young. In 1871 the operation of the Sawmill passed to Alexander Duncan, who had built the Finzean Turning Mill in the 1830s on the outflow from the sawmill. The Sawmill and Turning Mill is still operated by a member of the Duncan family. In 1999, the ownership of the mills passed from Finzean Estate to Birse Community Trust. Extensive restoration work has been carried out on the mills using local timber milled at the sawmill.”
After a brief intro he took us upstream to the weir that had just been restored after serious damage by storm Frank in December 2015.
We then walked back to the main saw mill with the water wheel. It is here I first noticed the annoying midges that started to attack if you stood still for any length of time. Fortunately we soon moved to the inside of the saw mill, with some fearsome looking circular saws. Here the logs get rolled in from outside and sawn into planks.
The wheel is cast iron with wooden paddles held together with wooden pegs and can’t be allowed to dry out too much as it would fall apart.
A good evening out enjoyed by your editor and those present judging from the comments on Facebook. Many thanks to Guy Haslam for treating us to the full tour of the mills.
Something alive
Something made of wood
Something made of stone
Water
Narrow depth of field
Large depth of field
These were our briefs for a brief Thursday evening outing to Drum Castle grounds. Some of us wandered to the gardens around the walled garden which is closed after 5pm, but there is still plenty to look at in this area. Others took photos in the forest, the playground or the castle itself. Below a selection of images posted on Facebook. See if you can work out which category each shot is in?
Below a small selection of images posted by Visions’ photographers:
Last month a few of us wandered around Footdee, the old fishing village of Aberdeen. To make things more challenging we were handed a brief to take foto’s fitting the following categories: Action, history, colour, texture, different perspective. Here are a few of the shots that members posted on Facebook:
Alan Meek reached 12th place in the AP competition this week (june 26 2018) with his shot of an Osprey catching a trout. Here is a slightly bigger version:
