Ancient Scotland Revisited

Twenty years ago, a year or two after I moved to Glasgow, I started a personal photo project recording some of the ancient sites, particularly standing stones and some circles, around Scotland. And in 1996 I started publishing them on my first shaky web site which eventually evolved into Ancient Scotland. It was beyond ugly, but it got a bit of notice for all the pictures and the very regular updates. Folk would license photos for use in books from time to time, and I was fairly proud of it.

1996 version. Nice colour scheme!

Eventually I realised it was starting to hurt my eyes. And I was still building most of the pages by hand. So twelve years ago I did a complete rewrite.

2001 version. At least it's not so red.

For the last nine years or so, Ancient Scotland has been languishing somewhat without many updates. I've still been shooting plenty of pictures but, since I gave up my programming work to be a full time photographer, I've been concentrating on other outlets. I've always meant to return to updating Ancient Scotland, but every year that passes makes me a little more out of the habit, and a little more frustrated with the mess that is the software behind the site.

So this year's Christmas project was to knock it back into shape and make it a little cleaner and a little less painful to update. We'll see whether I actually get back into the swing of updating, but there's less excuse now. I've added six new Arran sites, and one from Mull, and I'm feeling fairly positive about it.

2014 version. I guess this will look dated soon enough, too.

One thing that really jumps out at me is the quality of my old pictures. And not in a good way. I used to be really proud of my pictures. Some of them still seem OK, but I think the majority of them make me cringe just a bit. Well, the old ones will stay, at least until I get opportunity to shoot new versions. Everyone needs an exercise in humility!

If I keep going with it, great. I'm motivated just now. If that fades, maybe I should scrap it rather than attempt version 4.