The Three Muskateers

Yesterday I met up with two friends in pursuit of photographic nirvana. We regularly meet up every two or three weeks and spend the day doing photography. One of my friends is another amateur photographer and the other is an artist who either sketches or takes photographs as inspiration for his paintings. In fact prior to joining Blipfoto it would be fair to say that the major portion of my photography was either done during these jaunts or when I am on holiday.

We had all been to the Victoria Crowe exhibition at the Scottish Gallery before Christmas and very much enjoyed her paintings, particularly her early period paintings when she lived out at Kitleyknowe near Carlops and took her inspiration from the landscape and from her shepherdess neighbour. These paintings are very spare and stark - winter landscapes.

So we headed out to Kitleyknowe in the hope that there would still be some snow around and we could indulge ourselves in winter landscapes. Luckily there was still about eight inches of snow around undisturbed across the fields. The weather which was freezing cold with occassional snow showers giving us the bland white skies to match the the landscape. A perfect day for minimalist landscape photography.

The only down side was that my fingerless gloves did not in any way protect my hands from the bitter cold so our time there had to be to be limited. But even this turned out to be bonus as we repaired to the nearest hostelry, the Allan Ramsay in Carlops and I enjoyed one of the nicest sirloin steaks I have tasted in recent years.