Creative Photography Festival in the Highlands of Scotland

I recently went out to make a video about the upcoming Creative Photography Festival which I organised in Drumnadrochit. You can see the website here: https://creative-light.co.uk/

You can watch the video above, or on my YouTube Channel and below is the transcript:

It’s early morning at Glen Affric, and I am just having a look around at locations for the Creative Light photography festival, which is coming up next week. I have been going around all the different locations that the leaders will be taking people to. And it’s been really lovely this week because we have the autumn colors, just really coming into their own. So as you can see behind me, we’ve got one of those spectacular days where there’s high pressure, so we’ve got really still water, the mist is hanging around, and it’s actually quite cold. I haven’t felt this cold all year, so my fingers are hurting. But it’s just exhilarating to see conditions like this. It stays Misty for a little bit longer than other places, which is just wonderful. I just wanted to tell you a little bit about what’s happening next weekend, and how the festival came about. A couple of years ago, I remember the moment I was just standing in my van cooking dinner. Often these sorts of ideas come to me when I’m doing something where I’m away from home and in complete rest, and my mind has this, this time to think about things.

So I was thinking. I wonder why we don’t have a big gathering, like sort of a photography conference. But not so formal and not so heavy. Maybe more like a gathering of people in nature, who love creativity. I wonder why we don’t have anything like that in the Highlands of Scotland, because this, as you can see behind me, is just the perfect place to be for photography and for creatives. So I decided at that moment to start considering building my own. So fast forward two years, and I have created and launched and it’s sold out very, very fast, which is encouraging. The concept behind the creative photography festival was to provide a creative space for sharing, for kindness, and for people to be encouraged and supportive to others. Being in the landscape. Being creative, whether that’s writing, whether that’s photography, whether that’s art, or generally, I’ve opened that up to everybody. So there’s no need to be worried about bringing kit if you don’t want to bring it . We are actually coming here next Saturday and we’re going to be coming here for photography and a dip. So there’s quite a large group of us who are going to be swimming in these cold waters.

And we’ll also be going to Glen Starthfarrar and Reelig Glen, which are just some of the incredible places in the area. So we’ve got it all on the doorstep. And we’ve also got masterclasses going on back at Polmaily House. And then we’ll be heading back in for lunch at Polmaily house, which is a beautiful house that is situated right in the forest. So it’s a beautiful setting for a photography festival. We’ll have some talks going on in the afternoon via a variety of speakers that will be aimed at being more inspirational and helping you find your own path a little bit and inspire you just to be creative. And also not to worry too much about not feeling good enough, which is quite a common thing. So the whole photographic festival, the ethos behind the festival, is joining together to support each other. And it doesn’t really matter whether you have the best kit or you feel like you’re an amazing photographer because who does? It’s about opening up creativity for everybody.

Over the next week, I’ll be heading to all the different locations just to check them out and to check the conditions actually, and it is looking really good. So it’s going to be a great week ahead exploring these places.

Next year, I will be moving it to Aviemore simply because we’re looking for a bigger location that’ll, that’ll allow more people to attend. We had quite a long waitlist this year and had to turn people down. Next year we’ll be in the Cairngorms with more capacity and different locations. So it’s very exciting. Stay tuned for that. And we’ll be reporting that from next week’s festival as well with some films and some photos for you. So I’m really looking forward to meeting everybody next week.