To set the scene, I was in Fraserburgh in November. For those of you who don’t know it, Fraserburgh is a fishing town in Aberdeenshire in the North East of Scotland. Locally it’s known as The Broch. It’s set in beautiful countryside and the beaches are truly amazing, miles and miles of golden sand and windswept dunes. Only the brave go swimming but there’s a surfing community too. A few years ago, I created a video of my walk around the coastline of the town from the beach, through the harbour, to the lighthouse. You can click the link here to view it or wait until the end and I’ll put another link there.

Before I get into my main story, here are a few images of the harbour and countryside, when I was there around twilight and sunset. You can click on any one to see it full size.

The main focus of my visit this time was to see the paint workshop which is well known locally. Over many, many years of being brushed and splashed, the paint has built up on the outer walls into defined patterns. This is mark making and texture taken to the extreme! The paint has run and dripped onto little mounds on the pavement and the whole effect is something you don’t see every day. Or ever in my life before!

Like graffiti, which I like to photograph in London, this is a constantly changing canvas and if anyone is actually making marks deliberately, there’ll be others who aren’t. And yet, parts of it, or even the whole crazy building, have a beauty and interest all of their own.

These patterns aren’t made up of soft or co-ordinated colours. Being a ship’s painter, the colours are bold and striking. If anything I might have expected more blues since that’s a really popular colour for fishing boats in this town.

The sculptural look reminds me of the artist in Brick Lane who makes little broccoli plaques and paints them in various colours. He has a problem in that he fixes these plaques on the walls around Brick Lane but people come along and take them. I’ve added a photo of his broccoli right at the end of this blog.

The close up image of the walls below is one of my favourites for its mix of colours, textures and drips.

Every time I go to Fraserburgh harbour I find new subjects to capture. This is a hard working area where function comes before decoration, and yet I find it absolutely full of interesting colour contrasts, attractively aged industrial buildings, a limitless number of textures and calm scenes on rippled water. The changing weather quickly brings new moods.

Here are the doors on the building. There is a number 5 and 6 as well and if I was paying more attention I would have taken a photo of them just to make up the set.

And here is one of the painters who kindly let me take his photo.

In addition to the paint shop, I took photos of some of the industrial features around the harbour. This time I noticed a lot of doors. These doors are quite often set into the walls (for loading) and are sometimes quite high up. No-one is choosing colours to harmonise here so sometimes they’re clashing or perhaps they’re beautifully weathered, The first door in this series was taken in Buckie, farther along the coast, and the others are all in Fraserburgh.

Aberdeenshire is a perfect contrast to my life in London and I’m absolutely happy when I’m back there, exploring the countryside and towns. I always find things that I’m drawn to photograph in Fraserburgh, especially around the harbour.

If this has left you wanting to see more of The Broch, click here to see my video on YouTube. Please consider subscribing to my channel because I intend to make a few more videos this year after a couple of years’ break and you can be first to see them.

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Yours, Loren x