Peter Dibdin Photography

Luminous Creative are small but perfectly formed design consultancy based in Edinburgh. I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with them on several projects over the past few years – for clients like ASDA, Mara Seaweed, Zeneth and others. For our most recent collaboration, however, they were the client. They were in the process of updating their website and called me to take some new headshots of the team and website images, which of course, I was delighted to do.

Mary-Jane Moore of Luminous Creative

After taking photos of their new ten galleries back in summer 2016 (see blog post here), I’ve been back at the ever-brilliant National Museum of Scotland. This time, the brief was to get some images which gave a general flavour of a trip to the museum, for visitors to Edinburgh who maybe hadn’t been there before.

Promoting the visitor welcome at the National Museum of Scotland

For the past couple of months, I have been to more restaurants than I usually visit in a year. Unfortunately, I’ve not actually eaten at all of them (most of them, though). Instead, I’ve been working with Uber, who launched their food delivery service in Scotland recently. The app, called UberEATS, will allow users to order from over 100 outlets, and get food delivered straight to them.

Mackrel nigiri at Edinburgh restaurant, Maki Maki.

Back in March, PR and Press extraordinaire Neil Davidson and I spent a couple of days up in the glorious highlands on a shoot for Green Highland Renewables. We were there to shoot four new developments that the company have been working on, including one that I’d photographed a couple of years ago.

Although it feels like yesterday, I realised recently that it has been ten years since I did photography for the Edinburgh International Film Festival‘s ‘new’ branding.

Well, not quite, but it is an honour not many people get – to say that their work will be featured on literally millions of pounds – and I’m delighted that I will be able to claim that honour.

At the start of 2016, Royal Bank of Scotland were commissioning new banknotes. After asking the public to help choose who should feature, Mary Somerville was selected for the ten pound note. She and Nan Shepherd (who will feature on the new five pound note) will be the first women to have their portraits on Scottish banknotes.

The finished product – Royal Bank of Scotland’s new ten pound note

One of the brilliant things about being a photographer is that often I am one of the very first people to see a product, an exhibition or a show, before the public. This was the case at the beginning of July, when the National Museum of Scotland asked me to shoot their ten new galleries of Art, Design, Fashion, Science and Technology. I’m a big fan of the museum and I’ve followed their incredible transformation in recent years, so I was delighted to have the honour of being the very first person to capture the latest stage of their development.

Learning about communications in the Science and Technology galleries

Rather than spending this evening as I usually would on a Friday, with a glass of wine in my hand and enjoying my new fire stove (yes, in Edinburgh it is still just about cool enough to use), I am heading out to the wonderful Jupiter Artland as they celebrate their summer season opening. Although I am sure I will get a glass of wine at some point, I’ll be there on a more professional basis to take photos – capturing the reactions of their invited guests to see this year’s artwork. After months of being locked away to the public, the park will be back open as of tomorrow and I’m sure it will be another brilliant year.

Children enjoying ‘Cells of Life’ by Charles Jencks

One of the things that I love about my job is meeting a huge variety of people.  In the summer I worked with the very talented Adam Wilson of Teviot photographing a series of portraits for the Bethany Trust annual report.  We traveled all around the country meeting all sorts of inspirational faces, both people who had turned their lives around but also the people who supported them through it.  I’m looking forward to getting hold of a printed copy but in the mean time here is a link to the digital version (Thanks to Adam for the images of the printed report)

Bethany Annual Report 2015

I was commissioned by the National Theatre of Scotland to create a series of portraits of communities throughout Scotland to help illustrate their 2015 season.  They realised that each of their plays next year hinges on an idea of community apart from one, Muriel Sparks The Drivers Seat which has a distinct lack of one.  Each portrait represents the community portrayed in the play.

BELONG is a unique photographic essay created to accompany the announcement of the National Theatre of Scotland’s January to June 2015 Season. Working with the distinguished photographer Peter Dibdin, we met members of some of Scotland’s diverse communities. In seeking out the community members, we looked for synergies with the productions in our 2015 Season. While they were being photographed, we asked the subjects of the portraits to tell us a little about what it’s like to be part of a community.

“Tribes, families, clans and gangs have their joys and their challenges; we’ve taken that as our touchstone for our 2015 season of work,” says Artistic Director, Laurie Sansom. “In this diverse season we meet families ferociously fighting for survival, witness national loyalties challenged, confront cultural  customs and observe a woman with no ties, recreating herself before our eyes. These are stories of communities under pressure from within, friends and family rallying round, and people making incredible journeys to escape and invent new identities. This year we hope you will join us to explore what it means to feel part of gang, or out there on your own…”

Assistant credits: Cat Thomson and Alice Myers.

Yer Granny