Fortrose Cathedral Ruins

The second stop on our little road trip was Fortrose, a town I have never visited before. I had hear that it had a ruined cathedral, but didn't really know anything about it. There's very little of the original cathedral left - just one arcade. The main building is gone pretty much entirely. ::This artist::, Kieran Baxter, did a reconstruction, which can be viewed at the link, for Historic Scotland; it shows that there's not a lot left at all compared to what was there originally. 

The Bishop's Tomb

I liked how the sun was streaming through the glassless window to illuminate the Bishop's effigy. The town surrounding the cathedral has grown up around the cathedral square, which is now like a little green park in the centre of the town. The remaining portion is still the size of a whole church, and it's quite eerie looking up into the vaulted arches (all fenced off) and in at the tombs and memorials. It was once a place of worship, but is now a mausoleum. Closing it off was probably for safety reasons, but its inaccessibility also gives a greater sense of reverence.  

Clouds And Arches

I wonder if the interior walls were once plastered and painted, but currently they are only covered in whitish lichen. I was walking around, trying to imagine the scale of what had once stood there, strolling down where the aisle would have been, wondering at what kind of roof had spanned above me, what sorts of vaults or beams, how it would have been with stained glass and wooden pews, and a choir singing psalms. I need to find out more about the local history; it seems like all the great cathedrals and ecclesiastical buildings in the Highlands were destroyed. Inverness' cathedral is small by comparison, Victorian and thus comparatively recent, and also was never completed. I sometimes think that if I suddenly became astronomically rich, I'd pay for the towers to be completed on Inverness' cathedral so that the cathedral finally has the presence it was designed to have, and so that the architect's vision is finally realised. 

Light And Shadow

The cathedral is an odd building to photograph, as you can only photograph it from the outside, but most of the really interesting stuff is on the inside. I'm a very enthusiastic architectural photographer, but not necessarily a very good one. I really like the angle I got for the picture below, bit the space was quite dark, and it's ever so slightly motion blurred because I couldn't hold my camera steady enough for the exposure required to get the detail in the ceiling. 

Vaulted ceiling

I am thinking of getting a Tumblr account, and using it just for architectural photography - not really connecting it to anything else I do as a blogger (e.g not a Goth a Tumblr, a buildings Tumblr). I know Tumblr has its problems with drama and unreasonable, immature people - I quit Tumblr once before because I was frustrated with how I'd go through tags looking for something, but find that people had tagged so much irrelevant stuff in there, plus a lot of stuff I found... a bit unpleasant. I know Tumblr has put in more stringent measures around self-harm content, and also I think around pornographic content, but these things still turn up in searches for things - I know why self-harm related content comes up in the Goth tag, but that doesn't mean it should. Anyway, despite my previous bad experiences with Tumblr, I am considering making an account there just for my architectural photography. Hopefully I stick to quite a specific content niche, I'll minimise my exposure to the negative and frustrating side of Tumblr. I'd like to share my architectural photography with a broader audience - more than just those who also have an interest in Goth, and I do wonder if Tumblr might be a better platform for that. 

Photographic Friday: Gothic Revival Church By The Sea

I have to do a precedent study for college, as I am designing a seaside home in a semi-rural location, so I have been visiting a bunch of little fishing villages on the Black Isle coast as that is the area our home is for. That is quite a long way to go just to look at stone cottages with bottle-neck gables, rectangular windows and dormers ('coastal vernacular residential architecture idiosyncratic to the locality')  as lovely as they may be, so I gathered up some friends and made a road-trip of it. Raven, Catastrophe and K went with me. 

Catastrophe and K photographed by Raven; he's an awesome photographer!

The weather was a bit chilly, and partially cloudy, but a lot milder than I would expect for February in Scotland; there's still snow on the taller hills, but it's strangely mild this year in terms of temperature -  in terms of storms, it's been quite bad. Catastrophe and K went to stand right up near the sea wall and got utterly soaked by the crashing waves. Raven photographed them, and I went off to look at cottages. But I didn't JUST look at cottages... 

Above the cottages I noticed a graveyard and church... 

How can I resist Gothic Revival architecture?

I haven't been able to find out much about Rosemarkie Parish Church except that it was opened in 1821, and is in a similar style to most of the stone-built Gothic Revival parish churches in the Highlands; it's very 'Church of Scotland' - fancier than most Free Church churches and less fancy than Catholic ones. I know that many of the parish churches are very similar, but I find them all uniquely charming in their own way, and while to some it may seem "they're all the same", to me each one is different with its own quirks, and I appreciate all of them. 

I like dramatic skies and pointy arches

As far as churches go it is not the biggest, nor the fanciest, nor the most unusual, but the thing I really like about it is not just the building itself - it is its location. It is just up the hill from the beach; it overlooks a row of cottages and then there is the coastal road and the pebbled beach. The view is pretty impressive. It is an exposed place and the salt on the wind reminds you that you're not far from the sea at all. 

That's not a field beyond the hedge, it's the sea

I love these wee churches with their pretty graveyards. I've been around hundreds, and they never fail to enchant me. I've written about why graveyards appeal to me before, and while I am no longer Christian, ecclesiastical architecture still appeals to me - people have made such beautiful things in devotion to their God (and sometimes, I guess, for secular ulterior motives too) and many of the better-designed churches convey a sense of peace and optimism, or in the case of grand cathedrals, seem to be man's best attempt to build something on Earth approximating how it is in Heaven.  I think some of them got pretty close. 

I also like mausoleums...

It has its own graveyard. I would think there are quite a few who would like to be buried looking out at sea for the rest of eternity, especially in a community that was for a long time a fishing village. I really liked this Gothic iron fence - the gate seems broken, not closing properly; I didn't leave it open like that out of laziness or anything; I didn't even open it, and I didn't want to fiddle with it in case I broke it more. 

Beyond that row of graves and the hedge behind them is a steep hill and then it is, as you can see behind the fence at the rear, the sea. Rosemarkie faces onto a firth, rather than the open sea, so somewhere on the horizon will be Morayshire - the land between Ardersier and Culloden. 

This is just one point on my road-trip, and there will be more architectural photography over the next few days, including the ruins of Fortrose Cathedral. It  surprises me how many truly grand and quite vast ecclesiastical buildings lie in ruins across the Highlands - Beauly Priory and Elgin Cathedral being notable examples. 

Beauly Priory With Friends

This being my blog, it has a lot of pictures of me on it, and not really many pictures of anybody else unless I was at a gathering. I intend to change that this summer, recruiting friends from within the Goth subculture and friendly  to it, to be models for mini photo-shoots. I am not a professional photographer, this is only a hobby, and I do not profess to be much good.

The two models for this photo-shoot are my friend Ducky, and Catastrophe Plague (artist name, obviously) who is a good friend of Ducky's and whom I have only just recently met. These photographs are not highly styled fashion photographs, they are instead taken to capture images of my friends and fellow members of the Highland Goth and Alternative scene just being themselves. I guess it would be a bit pretentious to call this project social documentation, but I am proud of the local Goth and Alternative community, and wanted to capture some of it as a visual record of who we are and what we are.

Beauly Priory was chosen because Ducky is from Beauly, and knows the place well, and because it is a beautiful building that I had not thoroughly visited before. I had been there briefly a while ago, but there was plenty of restoration work being done at the time, and it was also not the best weather, so I took a few pictures with the camera on my smartphone but did not take any proper photographs. This time I was supposed to bring the nice Canon camera I use when I am taking "proper" photographs, but I couldn't find the charger the day before, or any batteries with full charge (it has been ages since I took it out) so the "point and click" camera had to do. 

Ducky standing in the front door. Photo by HouseCat

Beauly Priory is a wonderful Gothic building, which has long been out of use as an actual priory, is mostly in a state of ruin, and has since been used as a graveyard, with people interred actually within the building (hence the headstone behind Ducky) as well as around the building. The priory is undergoing a process of restoration, so a large portion was surrounded in scaffolding and temporary fencing. We left all of that area well alone, but the positions of the fences made it hard to walk around the priory without walking on grave-slabs. I find actually walking on them both disrespectful to those interred and likely to damage any inscriptions and carvings with repetetive passings.

Ducky ended up wearing my sunglasses. I had them in my raincoat pocket. Yes, Scottish weather is changeable enough that it is entirely possible to need sunglasses and a raincoat is quick succession. I'm often carrying sunglasses and a compact umbrella in my handbag at the same time, especially in "summer". We're prone to 'all four seasons in one day' weather. 

Ducky wearing my sunglasses. They were in my raincoat.

I took several photographs of both Ducky and Catastrophe Plague. They are not a couple, just good friends. I liked using the wall as a backdrop because there is just so much of it, and the textures of the stone, and the varying colours, look interesting. The patches of colour I presume indicate patches of construction as it was built in sections with stones from different places, or different batches of quarrying. The stones look recently repointed, probably part of the recent restoration work.

Both friends infront of the wall. Photo by the HouseCat.

Catastrophe's dress was a tad long, so if worn hanging from the straps, came down very low at the bust, so instead it was pulled up higher and the straps folded down over at the shoulders, which I think looked very witchy. An important thing about Goth fashion is that clothes do not have to be worn in the way intended; wear them however you feel like wearing them! 

Looking sorrowful in the archway. Photograph by HouseCat

This alcove is actually very low down, and Catastrophe was barely sitting in it, more leaning against the ledge. I really like how the composition turned out, and the archway provided a frame for the image. This is one of my favourites from the session. I know this could have still been done better, but considering this is my first time deliberately doing a set of photographs where people are the subject, I am very happy with this particular photograph, and reasonably chuffed with the whole set.

Portrait of Catastrophe Plague

I took some close-ups of Catastrophe, in a portrait style. I think the walls of the Priory are just beautiful, and so used them for the backdrop as much as possible. Catastrophe is lucky to have very nice cheek-bones, so I tried to pick angles that would highlight that. I am really not very experienced at taking portraits at all, so would quite like any advice my readers have on taking better pictures. 

Hair adjusting pose. Photograph by the HouseCat.

Catastrophe was doing some hair adjustment, and I thought it would make for an interesting composition, so Catastrophe ended up hair-tweaking about four times for this. I am frustrated that the raised arm came out a bit too bright compared to the rest of the skin tones, but other than that, am quite happy. The dress makes me think 'Game of Thrones' meets 'Lord of The Rings'. especially with all the vertical seams and the layering - another reason to capitalise on the splendid medieval building! 

Yellow roses signify happiness, if I remember rightly.

Catastrophe has a great fondness of roses, so especially requested this one with the yellow roses by the perimeter wall. I think the perimeter wall is a Victorian or later addition. The stones are far more finely dressed (cut more neatly) and there is fancy Gothic Revival carving on some points. I am not happy with the contrast on the roses, but I am not sure how to fix it in a satisfactory manner, as I think the lightest petals are just too washed out. I altered the contrast on the rest of the image as it needed more contrast, with the flowers masked out, but I do not know how to improve them. 

Photograph of me by Ducky

And one photograph of me! I figured there ought to be some record of my having been there. I think I was the most colourful of the three of us, with my violet and black brocade jacket and turquoise hair.

I took several more photos of both Ducky and Catastrophe, but these ones were the best o the bunch. I took 95 photographs in total, and about a dozen of them were reasonable - I think that is a good ratio of useable photographs to dud ones! I will be taking more photographs of friends willing to model, so I hope my readers like the idea of this project. 

Autumn Road-Trip 1: Ardclach Old Parish Church

Back in early Autumn, Raven, Suzy_Bugs, Hemlock (another Goth and photographer) and I went on a road-trip around the area between Nairn and Elgin, looking for interesting parts of the local historical landscape to photograph - old buildings, old bridges, graveyards, churches and interesting places from an architectural and historical point of view. A disused chapel and graveyard in the middle of nowhere seemed like the perfect start. 

Photograph by HouseCat. A surprisingly sunny day for Autumn in Scotland.

Instead of a rectangular, hall-like floor-plan, like many chapels of the period, or the traditional cruciform shape, it is T-shaped, with the side wing probably being an extension to an original hall-style church. It's in quite a lovely secluded location and is enclosed, along with its churchyard, with low stone wall - or rather, low from the churchyard perspective, as it is built on a terraced plateau and is significantly higher than the flood-plain below. There was apparently a church on the site before this current building, which according to the Buildings At Risk Register, was dedicated to St. Luag. 

 have tried to take the graves at angles where they're not readable,
but I think it is too shallow, sadly. No disrespect ended to the deceased or relatives.

It hasn't been used in decades. It is boarded up with the 'windows' painted onto boards over the real windows (if they're still there). The building is not open to the public, so I have no idea what the interior is like. The graveyard has some fairly recent graves for a cemetery at a disused church. I found out that the building was put on the Buildings At Risk register. The entry has a few interesting details about the building - as to its age, it was built in stages from 1626 onwards, with a lot of work done in the 19thC, and it has been unused since 1958.

A very bright day in Scotland. Photograph by HouseCat. 

The weather was particularly mild for autumn. There were light showers, but otherwise it was quite sunny. We went for a short walk in the surrounding countryside.  The river is very close by, and quite fast flowing over rock - it reminds me of the river Teifi in Wales. My next blog entry will be photographs of the river. We also took photographs of creepy-crawlies (mostly spiders, but none of my photographs of spiders came out right), plants and the countryside, which while very pretty, I do not feel fit in with the theme of this blog, so I am not posting them here. I will only be posting about the river because I like the textures and blackness of the water in the photographs I took, and feel like they are better suited to aesthetic of this blog. 

A photograph more akin to my usual style. Photograph by HouseCat.

In one far corner of the graveyard, there was a small tree, and beneath the tree were candles, a horse-shoe, some ribbons and other items that seemed to either indicate a rather unorthodox memorial, or some kind of folk-magic.  I left it alone, and did not photograph it as I did not wish to be disrespectful to the intentions of whomever person put them there.

This was just the first part of the Road Trip, and there were many more places I visited that day - all of which will be featured on my blog. 

In full colour! The sky was grey with clouds but bight. 

The area was pretty green and lush, and the rain showers really made everything seem so bright. Something about the pine woodland reminds me of parts of Canada. It really is a lovely location. For a place so secluded and long-disused, and with a graveyard, it didn't seem creepy outside. Hemlock told me a rather creepy story about inside, however, that doesn't exactly include a ghost, more something that I will simply term an "entity". Maybe at some point I will get him to write it up and share it here. 

Looking down the broad side of the church. Photograph by HouseCat

That is all for this instalment, but I will post the rest up shortly. I do hope you enjoy my architectural photographs of disused and ruined buildings. I especially like chronicling the various local graveyards, are they can so easily fall into disrepair, and I hope that maybe if that happens, my photographs may at leat be a record of what once was. 

Inverness Cathedral

The first instalment of Architectural Photography Week!
Firstly, this week is going to be architectural photography week here at Domesticated Goth. For the next few days, expect plenty of photographs of various buildings and ruins I have visited, and a few guest posts from better photographers than me as on Sunday 13th we went on a little trip to some interesting locations. 

The rose window has a pentagram
(and I've only just noticed!)

Secondly, enjoy these photographs of Inverness Cathedral. These are the only two I've taken that turned out well, and all the others are just the same angles with different settings as I played with the 'proper camera' on manual. Raven helped me, as I'm quite the photography newbie when it comes to the technical side of things. 

This one was intended as a cover picture for my Facebook

Inverness Cathedral is reasonably small by cathedral standards, but is beautifully decorated both inside and out. It is Victorian (1860s), built in the Gothic Revival style and it was designed by Alexander Ross, who also designed Eden Court, the bishop's house just a little further down the river. The two towers at the front were supposed to be full spires, but were never built at such. If you go inside the cathedral, there's a lovely watercolour painting of the original design with the two spires, framed up nicely and on display. I personally feel that the original design would have appeared more cathedral like, rather than church like.