Uglyfots

Stephen Budge said something about there being no shortage of lovely sights to takes photos of in Orkney. Of course, he is right. I decided to take this as a challenge and find *not nice* things to photograph. I quickly discovered that I did not have my mind right for this task, that I had trained myself over the years to discover nice things around me to photograph.

My first attempt to find uglyfots to snap had me driving around South Ronaldsay and Burray for 40 minutes on a rainy day and coming back with just one photo I could not resist taking. This one:

I think we can safely say that I was failing rather badly. My eye just could not stop finding things like this to photograph.

Today, however, I had a telephone discussion with my visuals consultant, Paul Morris, who advised me to take my camera with me on the weekly Tesco/Lidl run – that was surely a guarantee of ugliness. I followed his advice on this appropriately grey and rainy day and set about taking photos in the vicinity of these worthy establishements. My first shot was this, just after parking at Lidl

after which I walked out into the parking area beyond

by the old bus station

and the power station

and then going to Tesco

with its little housing estate behind it

before leaving town and stopping for a goodbye snap looking down the road leading into town...

Yet I still feel there is a problem: I like these photos and think that the Orkney light makes them nice uglyfots! Ah well, c'est la vie! Et la vie est bonne!