Skip to main content

Last Day Full Day

We left the B&B around 9:00 AM to make the hour and half drive to Edinburgh to check into our last hotel before our flight home tomorrow.  Since the drive was only an hour and half, we were able to stop at Stirling Castle and the Kelpie sculpture.  

The Kelpies (cell phone)
Stirling Castle was nice. It was fairly large castle and definitely less crowded than Edinburgh castle. I liked the wood carvings they had and the grounds were nice.  We did not stay for the noon gun firing (large artillery), which was kicking off a D-Day memorial.  From there we headed to one of the things I really wanted to see, the Kelpie sculpture.  The sculpture is of two horse heads coming out of the water.   The horse heads are several stories tall and made of formed silvered metal around an interior scaffolding.  It was easily visible from the M9.  I thought it was an impressive sculpture.  

From there it was on the hotel to drop off our bags, then over to the rental car place to drop off the car. This is the first time I’m glad I paid for the extra insurance on the car, since we did slightly nick the paint backing into a fence on the second day of driving it.  Once, we got back from the rental place we walked over to the TKMaxx (equivalent to TJMaxx) to pick up an extra piece of luggage.  I packed one extra bag with me but we ended up by a few bulky items like a wool blanket from the wool mill co-op and needed an extra carry on size bag to check.  Thankfully British Airways lets you check two bags per person for free.


While the trip was nice, I’m ready to go home tomorrow. I’m ready to sleep in my own bed and see my doggy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2024 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2025

This year felt a little off for me; I think it was because I was in a mental recovery mode.  I finished my graduate program in June and immediately went on a week-long vacation to Palm Springs.  I do not recommend Palm Springs in June; way too hot.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the graduate program mentally and physically exhausted me, which I think showed in some of my creative work.  But being able to work with great people like Natalie Hanrion , Coralinx Cosplay , and Anastasia B kept me motivated.  While I didn’t attend as many Cosplay Photo Shoot events as in the past, the ones I did attend were helpful in keeping the creativity flowing.  I also took some time this year to reflect on a few things and will be making some changes for 2025. In 2024, I shot 6241 frames, which is a 30-percent decrease from last year.  I edited 3187 frames, which is a 40-percent decrease from 2023.  I think this year, I started focusing on being very min...
Post a Comment
Read more

First Session of 2025 - Queen of Hearts

My first official shoot of 2025 was with Lady Cels on January 4 th , to shoot her Queen of Hearts cosplay based off the NoFlutter Design. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 1 FJ400 Westcott Strobes 60-inch umbrella with sock 1 rectangular soft box 1 bell reflector grids 2 C-stands 1 Platypod Sandbags Backdrop stand Savage Primary Red Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps   Gold ring wedding altar pieces Playing cards Flowers Styrofoam block Scotch tape     The set up The inspiration for this shoot was obviously the Queen of Hearts, but I took my set design cues from the original NoFlutter drawing.  I wanted to create something similar to the swirls used in the background of the image, so I started looking at wrought iron garden fences and ended up on gold we...
Post a Comment
Read more

Snow Session

On January 9 th , Washu Cosplay and I did a slightly impromptu snow session at Great Falls National Park.   This was possible because of the passing of the Explorers Act which allows photography in a National Park with a model without a permit.   Before you get too excited, the law limits equipment and the size of the party; you are allowed your camera, tripod, and handheld lighting equipment, and the group can be no more than 5 people, which includes the photographer, model, and assistants.   So, there are no big lighting setups or big crews; for big shots, you will still need a permit.      For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 1 speed light 1 light stand     The set up For this shoot I was mixing flash and natural light.  In most cases, my model was partially backlighted by the sun.  Thus, I u...
Post a Comment
Read more