Photos From My Recent Edinburgh Photo Hike

On Sunday, May 21, at the tail end of my recent Scotland trip, I led a photo hike in Edinburgh with my friend Lauren MacNeish.

A travel and landscape photographer from the area, Lauren helped organize and promote the event, and she was kind enough to share her photos from our afternoon hike up Arthur’s Seat, a local 822-foot tall hill situated right in the city center.

With numerous trails and a fun summit, Arthur’s Seat provides excellent views of Edinburgh and the surrounding areas. It was the perfect location for a group of photographers to get outside, take in the fresh Scottish air and enjoy some camera camaraderie. A true international gathering, we had a few local shooters, two other Americans two people from India and a couple from Bulgaria.

The was my first international photo walk and we had a lot of fun talking about photography, sharing travel stories and getting to know each other. In addition, I got to meet two more of my regular readers in person. One was a local Edinburgh photographer and the other was from Southern California who happened to be there at the beginning of his own Highlands walking adventure.

They both subscribe to my newsletter and had heard about the photo hike directly from me. The other people had signed up through the Eventbrite listing that Lauren had created to promote the hike.

I always enjoy meeting other photographers out in the world, especially people who are familiar with my work, who read my blog or follow me on social media. To me this is the best part about social media, and during my Scotland trip, I actually met a handful of other friends and followers during my trip.

Lauren also works in the marketing department at SmugMug UK, and since I’m a longtime SmugMug user for my print store, we loosely billed it as a SmugMug event.

I’ve always liked the features the SmugMug offers for creating customizable galleries that allow for great presentation, as well as professional  services, like private galleries, right-click protection and a fully hosted shopping cart for selling prints, cards and other photo gifts.

SmugMug has a Lightroom Plugin and they just released a standalone Mac OS App that makes uploading, sorting and storing you photos even easier. (They also have a Windows app as well.)

Check out Lauren’s website to see more of her Scotland landscape photography, and more photos of our Arthur’s Seat hike, and if you’d like to be notified of my future events, check my upcoming events page, or better yet, sign up for my newsletter.