Scottish Photographs

Michael Russell MSP

Boat Leaving Craignure Mull, Michael Russell
Boat leaving Craignure, Mull I usually travel to my advice surgeries on Coll & Tiree by small plane from Oban. It gives me a great view of amazing scenery

Digital Photograph

Autumn Morning Island of Bute, Michael Russell
Autumn Morning, Island of Bute

Digital Photograph

Showers in the Kilbrannon Sound, Michael Russell
Showers in the Kilbrannon Sound

Digital Photograph

Preparation, Michael Russell
Preparation
I am lucky to sometimes be in fascinating places, like here with my Cabinet colleagues the First Minister, Alex Salmond, and Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, in the green room twenty minutes before the launch of the white paper on Independence

Digital Photograph

Foggy Morning, Strathlachlan, Michael Russell
Foggy Morning, Strathlachlan

Digital Photograph

The swans say farewell to the paper boats, Michael Russell
The Swans Say Farewell to the Paper Boats
The artist George Wylie would have been 90 this year. His anarchic, original, irreverent talent opened up the idea of art to so many. The paper boats project involved hundreds of children and they were ceremonially set adrift on the Clyde this summer in an extraordinary ceremony

Digital Photograph

Lone Tree, Lismore, Michael Russell
Lone Tree, Lismore
The small island of Lismore lies just off the village of Appin and is home to over a hundred people. The passenger ferry at the north of the island has a wonderful view north

Digital Photograph

Highland Funeral, Michael Russell
Highland Funeral
The graveyard at Clachan Duich in Kintail is a cold, but wonderfully sited, place. At the funeral of former Liberal Democrat MSP John Farquhar Munro, a man who was passionate about Gaelic Culture and the people he served in the Highlands I was in the first “lift” of the coffin, bearing the weight of a friend as we took him to his final resting place looking out to his home, and doing so alongside political opponents such as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in the UK Government (and Highland MP) Danny Alexander. The community and democracy of life – and death – in Highland Scotland is still strong.

Digital Photograph

Iona restored stone cross, Michael Russell
Iona – restored stone cross.
I opened the museum at the Abbey on Pentecost Sunday 2013 – the 1450th anniversary of the landing of St Columba. These crosses have been raised for the first time in hundreds of years

Digital Photograph

Glen Kinglas, Michael Russell
Glen Kinglas

Digital Photograph

Across Loch Linnhe, Michael Russell
Across Loch Linnhe

Digital Photograph

Addressing the Haggis, Michael Russell
Addressing the Haggis
The ritual of a Burns supper can sometimes seem inflexible. But it can be subverted and improved in all sorts of ways as the comedian Hardeep Singh Kholi demonstrated in Glasgow in January 2012

Digital Photograph

Hogmanay Again, Michael Russell
Hogmanay, Again
Some villages in Scotland celebrate two “new years” – the Gregorian and the Julian. According to Neil Munro, who wrote the famous “Para Handy” stories, Carindow was one such village

Digital Photograph

Glendaruel, Michael Russell
Glendaruel
The “glen of the two red spots”, probably called after the profusion of bracken in the autumn, though perhaps also because of the blood that flowed from a battle here over a thousand years ago. It was the place where Deirdrie said farewell to Scotland in the 13th century Irish epic poem, and it has been my home for 20 years

Digital Photograph

Cloudburst, Port Askaig, Michael Russell
Cloudburst, Port Askaig
Taken from the ferry from Jura. The torrential rain obscured almost everything as we docked

Digital Photograph

Leaves, Michael Russell
Leaves
I like experimenting with textures and effects. These are autumn leaves on a tree in my Argyll garden

Digital Photograph

First Frost, Michael Russell
First Frost

Digital Photograph

First Snow Loch Fyne, Michael Russell
First Snow, Loch Fyne

Digital Photograph