Astbury's Adventures in Photography

Lathallan House, originally known as 'Laurence Park', dates to 1826 and is attributed to architect Thomas Hamilton (who, along with William Burn were the first Scottish members of RIBA). The house was notably home to Henry Salvesen who built Scotland's first steam powered car, which he used around the estate. The car, dating to 1896, still survives and has been known to appear in the London to Brighton veteran car run. Curious repair, just this one small wall section Front entrance Pair of safes, now sitting in the porch, contents unknown The house was stripped of much of it's timber fixtures and fittings and at one stage suffered a fire (possibly started accidentally by a rough sleeper). Lantern Bathtub, plug still in, located near the stable block Barbed wire no longer required, stable block door Sadly the house is now a ruin, listed on the Buildings at Risk Register for Scotland, and only frequented by occasional urbexers and the ...

I recently attended a two day training course at Stills Centre for Photography in Edinburgh for their training course " An Introduction to the Platinum/Palladium Print ". This is what would now be termed an alternative process (i.e. chemical not digital) although it works well as a hybrid process to contact print from digital negatives. As someone who is familiar with the Cyanotype process I already had some of the basic concepts around contact printing with a digital negative but the Pt/Pd print process is more involved and more exacting with chemicals which are much more expensive so it seemed like a good idea to get some training first. scan of Pt Pd print Day one of the training was very hands on and based in the darkroom, cutting and coating papers, learning some drop ratios, exposing to UV and then working through the various chemical baths to get finished prints. To prepare for this we had submitted image files in advance of the course start date, which had ...