Shooting Fife

I've just not long returned from a long big extended holiday to New Zealand, stopping in to the USA, Canada and Hong Kong along the way. I took a lot of photos along the way, and had a lot of fun - it was great to not really have to worry so much about day-to-day responsibilities, and just getting to see some amazing places and meet some amazing people. These places and people were a great inspiration for my photography work, and I managed to rack up a lot of frames on the journey

My biggest problem at the moment, is how to motivate myself to get out with the camera and keep taking good photos when I live in a sleepy commuter town with no volcanoes, penguins or stingrays to shoot. Of course, this leads to me wondering if I'm actually capable of taking good photos at all, or whether I was just pretty lucky with the subjects!

I guess what I'll just have to do is adapt and try and think where I can get the good shots from. I've been out on a couple of nights shooting around the Hillend Industrial Estate, a once bustling, but now declining industrial estate along the northern edge of the town. I was sad to miss the big drama when travelling people showed up en masse in caravans in the grounds of the OCLI factory where my mum used to work. Apparently they'd been forced out of their previous site at the old Lexmark factory in Rosyth by some violent locals, and chanced upon another site just along the road here in Dalgety Bay.

It's been interesting seeing various buildings and factories falling off one-by-one over time. The old Cemtron factory has just recently become vacant, OCLI is being earmarked for housebuilding, Marconi Simulations has been replaced by an ASDA supermarket, and various others have burnt out or fallen into ruin. In fact, one old industrial building (I can't remember what it used to be) is set to get Dalgety Bay's first full-time photography studio when Nikki Mcleod opens her business in there.

Tonight's plan was to take a stroll up to the Cemtron grounds and have a wee peek in, but a thunderstorm with accompanying rain has just rolled over, so I'll just need to see!