Undiscovered Scotland

 

"Arran and Ayrshire" by Colin Nutt is part of the Picturing Scotland series of collections of photography which between them cover many of the more scenically inspiring areas of Scotland with titles like The Outer Hebrides, Ross and Cromarty, Royal Deeside, Northern Argyll, and The Isle of Skye. The formula for each book is similar, with a brief introductory text leading you into the photographs themselves, each of which comes with a detailed caption telling you what you are looking at.

A book of photographs stands or falls on the quality of the photographs it contains. The 84 that make up "Arran and Ayrshire" are excellent. We should express an interest, as one of the images used was taken by Undiscovered Scotland, though all but a handful are previously unpublished and taken by the author of the book, Colin Nutt. Almost as important is the amount of work that has obviously gone into selecting a set of images which give the reader a real feel for what Arran and Ayrshire are actually like: a set of photographs that range from well known subjects in Ayr or on Arran through to much less familiar subjects in rural Ayrshire.

The introductory text is a useful introduction to Arran and Ayrshire, and you then head straight into the pictures. The first half of the book looks at the Isle of Arran, often described as "Scotland in Miniature". Ayrshire is tackled very roughly from north to south, beginning in Largs before taking in East Ayrshire, Ayr, and South Ayrshire: including, naturally enough, many of the places in Ayrshire associated with Scotland's national bard, Robert Burns. We have ourselves photographed many of the places covered in this book, and it is fascinating to compare and contrast the photographs which emerged as a result. Above all else, our own experiences of photographing the area help us comment on the excellent job Colin Nutt has done in this very nice book.