Raff Karva Photography — Prints

Edinburgh Blue Hour

The original plan was a comet. It didn't cooperate — hiding behind a hill or a building, as Edinburgh things tend to do. What I got instead was this cityscape from Calton Hill, and a Dussehra festival happening on the hill that same evening. A failed plan that became a good photograph.

Crow

Crows gather around their dead. Investigators of their own losses, holding what some researchers cautiously call a funeral, others, an autopsy. A group of them is called a murder, which feels about right for a cemetery. Whether any of that is projection or observation probably depends on how much time you've spent with them. Taken at Warriston Cemetery, Edinburgh.

Moon over Edinburgh

A real moon. Planned meticulously — full frame camera, professional telephoto optics, waiting for the right alignment over the city. Some photographs require patience and a spreadsheet. This was one of them.

Fox

I was heading home after a long session when the fox appeared from behind thick bushes — young, alert, moving through the forest with that lightness foxes have. I was in my ghillie suit. It stopped, looked at me for over a minute, head tilted, working through whatever calculation foxes make about uncertain things. Then it turned and went back to its actual business.

Zoe

Zoe is a common blackbird — female, brown, quietly elegant — who visits my garden with enough regularity that naming her felt reasonable. Her song on a still morning is something I genuinely look forward to. Blackbirds have been written about for centuries. Spend time with one and you understand why.

Youngster

Some walks are better than others. We surprised each other. He was mid-munch when I appeared — a young stag, first antlers barely formed, entirely unbothered by the interruption. He looked at me, decided I wasn't worth the concern, and carried on eating. I took a few photographs and left him to it. The light was harsh, midday, but the forest canopy helped.

Snake

Scotland's wildlife photography is heavily weighted toward the majestic and the feathered. Stags, raptors, puffins. Nobody leads with the reptiles. I found mine basking. That's usually how it goes — a slow morning, warm sun on a south-facing slope, and then a shape among the rocks that gradually resolves into something unmistakable. The zig-zag pattern along the spine. The absolute stillness of an animal that has decided it is already invisible, and is not wrong.

Kintail

Glen Shiel at sunset, looking west from altitude. The Highlands do this on still evenings — the ridgelines stack behind one another in receding layers of amber and shadow, each range slightly softer than the one in front, until the furthest peaks dissolve into the sky. A small lochan catches the last light in the valley below. Shot from high on the Five Sisters, the descent still to come.