Black Rock Cottage and Ashness Bridge

Black Rock Cottage and Ashness Bridge

I’ve written before about what I call the Ashness Bridge problem. Today, yet another beautiful picture of Black Rock Cottage in Glencoe has reminded me of the difficulty of taking new and creative images of famous – or joining notorious – beauty spots. I suppose that the same problem may exist with well known models.

And with one short sentence I had eased the problem of illustrating this blog, because now I can include studio pictures of models… Although I do feel bound to use at least one or two shots of those well-known beauty spots.



I suppose the biggest thing is the way that pictures of places like these isolate the beauty, and insulate it from the mundane surroundings. My abiding memory of Ashness Bridge is of a Kensington tractor negotiating the humpback bridge with undue caution, underlining the painfully obvious fact that the driver didn’t understand the width of their vehicle. (I have a firm belief that every owner of a sports utility vehicle should have to drive it once a month on a competitive off-road course involving mud, rocks, and a degree of panel damage.)



Black Rock Cottage used to be romantically sited in Glencoe, well away from the main road. The construction of a ski lift a little further up the side road that it’s on has taken a bit of the gilt from the gingerbread. I’d actually been looking for the cottage for years on the odd occasions when I drove through Glen Coe, and had always failed to find it because I was looking for a place that didn’t exist anymore, isolated on the floor of the Glen. The very existence of a side turning near it meant that I didn’t see it until 2014.

When I got there, found somewhere to park that didn’t block the road, and set about exploring with my camera, I found that the standard view misses an important feature – the gate across the entrance.
Anyway, here’s the real view from the road, and a couple of portraits of models who are pretty well known in the studio photography world. Have a great week!