Kilncraigs and Alloa Tower

This was so going to be something completely different today.

I'd set out to see if my back-up camera was up to the task of taking some exposure bracketed shots with the intention of trying out a bit of HDR with them. As I was taking these shots, I could hear the low drone of some aircraft approaching and looking around people had stopped in the streets and were pointing skyward. Just then, and directly above the Kilncraigs building I was photographing, three World War II aircraft appeared in the sky in perfect formation; a Lancaster bomber flanked by a Spitfire and a Hurricane. A quick zoom in and a click on the shutter button and I thought I had my blip for the day. What I had forgot though was the camera was set up for the shadowed areas and what I ended up with was three frame of pure white light. Bugger.

The three planes headed over towards the Ochil Hills for a flight over Dollar, then onto Grangemouth for a fly-past there. They were then heading on up to Leuchars Airshow for the Battle of Britain Memorial display.

So, a perfect blip opportunity missed, and back to Plan A.

In this shot is the Old Alloa Tower in which Mary Queen of Scots spent a night once. To the right is one of my favourite buildings in Alloa, the Kilncraigs building. Architecturally it's pretty stunning with it's ground to roof glass frontage merging with original old Patons building. My mother worked extremely tough night shifts in this mill when we were kids, something that I only appreciated in speaking to other workers in later years who had spent time doing the same. This might have been a contributing factor to why she passed away at the ridiculously early age of 56.

There's no mill activity around Clackmannanshire at all these days, the building now provides modern office space for a less industrial age.

I did work on a job for Paton's a few years ago in which I needed to have some designs knitted to incorporate into a cover illustration. My mum would have jumped at the chance to do this and would have had them rattled up in no time, but we couldn't even get someone in Scotland to do this; they ended up being produced in China and sent back here!