An Epic Wedding Photographer Adventure to Scotland

Each year, we typically get a brief lull in wedding season around summertime right when the mid-summer New England humidity kicks in. It’s nothing compared to what our friends in the southern states face, but the prospect of all the sweaty people seems to slow down the summer weddings just a little bit. Where do two wedding photographers go for vacation? We took this past August to hop over to the UK and visit Scotland, a destination that has been on our bucket list for quite some time. Incredible landscapes, Scotch, more landscapes – it really doesn’t get any better than that, and it’s pretty clear why there seems to be an increasing number of destination weddings in the epic Scottish Highlands. We made plans relatively quickly (and hooked a couple of our favorite people to come along), and with that, a Scotland photographer adventure kicked off.

Scotland’s a pretty big place, and the last thing wanted was a stressful trip involving numerous stops with little time to enjoy the place, so we narrowed our focus to the Shetland Islands and the Scottish Highlands. One of us happened to be in Europe at the time already, and we had planned to hop over to Shetland almost immediately on arrival, so Inverness was the best place. Shetland is an incredibly unique place. There aren’t many trees, much of the economy is farmland and fishing, and the landscapes generally look surprisingly similar to those in parts of Iceland. Oh, and Shetland is really, really windy. Really. Over a few days, we explored castles, secret coastal caves, helped make fudge with the Shetland Fudge Company, and even went foraging with the kickass chef Akshay Borges of the Scalloway Hotel. Shetland also has lots and lots of puffins.

Our Scotland photographer adventure brought us back to Inverness a couple days later – along the way to Skye, we hiked near Ben Nevis (unfortunately the one day we had there was incredibly bad weather to actually hike Ben Nevis) to the Steall falls (where Harry Potter fought the dragon) in Nevis Gorge. By the way, Scotland is boggy, a fact we’d convenient forgotten, and found ourselves shin-deep in mud multiple days on this trip. The Isle of Skye is something completely different. On the “nice” days, we were treated to beautiful sunsets and sunrises lighting the incredible mountains all around, and on the other days, dramatic stormclouds rolled in. We snapped a couple engagement portraits of our engaged friends (duh), but we really just enjoyed each other’s company in one of the most beautiful places on earth. On our last day, we hiked the Quiraing and found ourselves a little lost on the summit, only to follow some sheep back to the path, where we promptly literally slid down on our butts in mud. It was awesome.

We’ve traveled quite a bit this year, and there haven’t really been any strikeouts. We loved Scotland, and it hopefully won’t be long before we’re back for another Scotland photographer adventure. Maybe for a wedding next time ;).