Explore & Discover Scotland: Visit the most beautiful places take the best photos

Having seen a copy of the Peak District guide and with a forthcoming trip to the western highlands of Scotland planned, I ordered a copy of the Scotland guide. My first impression was that this is a weighty tome. A book for planning. It’s not a book for throwing in your bag for a day in the hills., but to pore over, sat by the fire, whisky in hand. For the photographer, the guide does everything a good guidebook should do. It inspires you with great places to go, the images to capture and tells you exactly how to get to and the time of day to go to get the shots. Almost every location has multiple viewpoints, showing suitable alternatives should your intended viewpoint be busy, if you just want a change from a familiar one or if you want to get something a bit different. Particularly for a landscape photographer, this guide is a must, not that only landscapes are covered - Edinburgh and Glasgow are covered too but as with the country itself, the landscapes are what one thinks of and they are here in abundance. But the beauty of this guide is that is only a part of it. If you enjoy stunning photography, then Dougie Cunningham’s images are second to none. From the obvious ‘place your tripod legs in the holes’ images of the Buachaille in Glen Coe to the ethereal cover shot of a Sutherland bothy or the vast moonscape wilderness grandeur of Stac Pollaidh, there is an image here to take your breath away. It’s a book of beauty and one you’ll love to leave out on the coffee table. If travelling were an armchair pastime, this is your passport, plane ticket and memory bank all in one. And it doesn’t stop there. I love guidebooks. I generally buy a few for any single area I visit and on this trip, I found I picked Photographing Scotland up more than any other guide. If you want to visit the obvious tourist destinations along with a whole host of lesser well-known spots, from roadside to big hike, then you’ll not be disappointed. It has so much more to offer than a traditional tourist’s guidebook, missing only the transport, eating, drinking and accommodation sections you’d normally find in a guidebook which quickly go out of date as prices inflate, currency deflates and businesses close down. With this book plus the internet, you’ve got everything you need for a number of trips to Scotland for a lifetime to come. With twelve guides (and counting) on Fotovue’s bookshelves, they’ve found a winning formula and these will certainly be my go-to guides for any trip.

This is one of the most thorough books that I have ever read. It has been researched in depth and gives several alternative views for most of the locations. Obviously it gives instructions on how to get to a location but this is backed up by high definition, high quality images of what you will find there. I have used this book in the past two weeks to visit some of the locations around the Fort William area and I found it to be very accurate indeed (and up to the minute). I would suggest that the book itself is too heavy to carry around on a walk but terrific to plan out where to go. I usually find that I am always short of time even on photo holidays and this book provided me with information to plan out my days. The only thing that stopped me was two days of torrential rain / snow, so time once again was precious. I am a very keen photographer and this is definitely going with me on my future trips to Scotland. If, like me, you love Scotland and photography then you need this book. Buy it.

Very glad I purchased this for my 2 week Hebrides and West Scotland trip. Bit of a brick of a book. One to keep in the car as you tour and not lug in a daypack. Snap a photo of the relevant pages if you want to have details when you are out on foot. This guide is absolutely packed with detail and despite being a photographer's location guide it is a great supplement to a normal travel guide in describing worthy places to visit. The photography specific information is plentiful (i.e. image metadata) but not intrusive if you want to ignore it. Locations are nicely organised and numbered and cross referenced to maps. It covers the honey-pot locations but has plenty of side trips and alternatives and places I would have otherwise completely overlooked, e.g. photogenic ship wrecks by the roadside. Importantly it does not direct you to go to place x and take photo y. It guides you to places with plenty of suggestions on what to look for and how to get the best from your shots with lots of glossy examples for inspiration.

A very good book covering many locations in Scotland. It’s quite big, so not practical for carrying out in the field, but that’s not really it’s purpose. It gives accurate information on how to get to a particular spot and tips on time of year and plenty of photographs with associated metadata. No one tome can possibly cover every location in Scotland and it’s a bit foolish to suggest it should. My hope is that any more detailed book will give serious consideration to omitting anywhere that cannot cope with a mass invasion of thoughtless individuals. Scotland is blessed with some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, but we are experiencing a severe problem with discarded rubbish and bad driving.

Ditch the small books, this is the one. Works as a piece of art in addition to massive inspiration, and guide. It's heavily angled to photo and not travel. Would refer to a friend

I now have several books of this collection, and they are all fantastic. In my opinion, they managed to balance at the same time beautiful pictures, travel guidance and photography tips. Photographing Scotland was actually the first book in the collection I used to plan a road trip around the Highlands, and despite the weight of the book in my luggage, it was worth every grams of it. This is a great tool to help plan viewpoints, and the author brings you to areas out of the standard touristic ones, with good walks in the process. I think the book really helped making my journey even better that it already was. Each photography opportunity is well described, sometimes even with some historical notes - which I would have not expected in that kind of book -, there are instructions to reach them (with quite precise post codes easy to enter in your car GPS, even though sometimes you need to read carefully the walking instructions). Since this one, I have used the Photographing North Wales, East Anglia, and Peak District to plan other road trips, and I have never been disappointed. I just wish that this format existed for places outside the UK (and I will certainly use the Dolomites one if I go there one day, and I wish I had the Iceland one when I visited 😉 )

This is an absolutely beautiful book. It is a rather weighty tomb; but this is due to the quality of the paper. Not only does it act as a very comprehensive guide to Scotland, but also stunning as it is filled with exceptionally high quality photographs. The layout is very logical and flows smoothly from section to section. As a Scott, I love the way that it portrays my native Country in a bright way and not in drab dowdy way that a lot of artists depicts. If you are interested in Photography, and or, Scotland you are in for a visual extravaganza. I would highly recommend that you buy this book.

I've not used one of these Fotovue guides before but I have to say I'm very impressed. This one has all the information you need to find all the iconic and less well-known locations around Scotland. It has location detail including best viewpoints, it even has details of suitable parking locations together with how long it would take to reach a viewpoint from that parking place. The author has even suggested the best time of year and the best time of day to be visiting any particular location. For the more serious photographer, the writer has provided details of his camera settings for your guidance. Dougie Cunningham (the author) has provided some great pictures and has gone to a lot of effort to be at prime locations at the best time of day, the pictures are reproduced at a good size with what appears to be accurate colour and although some of the other pictures in the book are reproduced quite small they are still large enough to inspire any photographer whether using a phone or a digital SLR.