About Stan Farrow and his Photography

I am a photographer, living and working in Scotland, with a major focus on landscape imagery. I have recently given up the world of full-time work in Higher Education, and so I am now able spend more time following my lifelong interest in photography.

In June 2005 I was awarded an LRPS by the Royal Photographic Society. In October of 2006 I was also awarded an ARPS. (See my Newburgh photographs for my successful ARPS portfolio). In addition, in November 2005 I held a major exhibition of my work in the Byre Theatre, St Andrews, Fife. My latest solo exhibition took place in late November/early December 2007, and featured photographs of the Tay between Perth and the North Sea.

The collections of images illustrated in this web site mainly comprise images of the Scottish landscape (the majority of which are local to St Andrews and North East Fife) as well as images of the American South West.

More recently though I have been moving away from using photography in a representational sense and have been looking for more abstract elements of colour, texture, form, etc. (Again see some of my Newburgh photos for this).

Ultimately though, I suppose that this web site is just a showcase for my favourite images, and I consider this to be reason enough to include them. I hope that you enjoy my photographs. I have certainly enjoyed taking them.

Equipment:

I am now working almost exclusively with digital cameras. My serious digital photography started with a Nikon D100 and a Fuji S2 Pro. I now use both a Nikon D300 and a Nikon D200 which are a joy to use.

I have recently disposed of my 35mm cameras, and it was like parting with old friends, although they hadn't been used for at least a couple of years,

I use a variety of lenses, including:

Nikon 24-85 mm

Nikon 18 - 200 mm VR*

Nikon 70 - 300 mm

Nikon 80 - 400 mm VR*

Sigma 17 -30 mm

My "standard lens" seems to be the Nikon 24-85mm , which boasts an f2.8 aperture and a macro facility. This never seems to be off my camera these days!

I also use a Manfrotto tripod that is awkward to carry, but which gives a very stable camera platform. I have also recently purchased a Gitzo "Traveller" Tripod that is very light, made of carbon fibre, and packs easily into a carry-on flight bag. It is very expensive, but is theonly tripod that fits my needs for foreign travel.

Although I have recently addeded VR* lenses to my camera bag, and image stablisation works well, I am still not sure about these lenses - they enable me to work faster, but using a tripod instils a certain discipline and forces me to concentrate more on the image I am taking.

In my images I use a variety of filters. These include:

UV filters

Circular polarisers

Gray graduates

Warm-up

Neutral Density

Even with digital photography, it is best to get the image right "in camera", rather than to rely on corrections in Photoshop after the photograph has been taken. I use gray graduates a lot to hold back to bright skies in my images. Polarisers I often use too to remove reflections. At other times the UV filter protects my lens.