VACMA: Samantha Gray

"My award was used primarily to cover the cost of the Historic Environment Scotland (HES) fee to allow me to use a drone at Brodgar, and also the cost of the drone hire itself. There were some initial discussions with HES to ask for a reduction in the charge due to the nature of my activity. Thankfully this was agreed, or I would not have been able to afford to do it. Use of the drone at the sites was only allowed with a company who had a particular licence, so this restricted me to only one company here. Raymie at Orkneyskycam was extremely helpful, and agreed a price per hour to reduce the costs for me. The rest of my funds went towards material costs. Also a Soulisquoy Printmakers membership to enable me to produce prints in response to my findings.

My project had some delays due to requesting the use of a drone at the Brodgar sites from HES, and also agreeing a date. Once this was done I was able to meet with Raymie early morning at Brodgar so the sites would be quiet. I had hired Raymie for an hour and a half, so I needed to make good use of our time. We started at the Standing Stones of Stenness, then moved on to the Ring of Brodgar, then finally to Maeshowe.

I had two friends with me assisting on site. I would begin dowsing around the site, and when my rods crossed, a friend would place a stone (gathered at Skaill beach) on the ground behind me as I walked on. They also had a printed map with them to mark where they had placed a stone. Raymie had the drone above me recording the activity, he also took some images. Although the stones were a decent size, as the drone had to be quite high up it was difficult to see them on the ground. Especially with the Ring of Brodgar being so large. Raymie did take a few section shots to get better visibility. Once the morning’s activity was done, Raymie went to edit the footage and images to send to me.

Once I received the footage and images I decided how I might use them to create some prints. I was keen to use a collagraph printmaking technique for my prints, as I felt these would best create the look I wanted. I joined Soulisquoy Printmakers studio in Stromness for a few months to allow me the time and tools to do so. I also experimented with my Gelli plate mono-printing techniques to create some other prints. As I love the look of maps and aerial photography, I focused on this, especially with the drone shots being similar.

I had assumed that I would be working with only Raymie’s images but this ended up not being the case, I also used a plan of Maeshowe as it was more striking. I have produced two collagraph prints, one being of the Maeshowe plan image (which I have received agreement from Sigurd Towrie to use), and the other is a section of the Ring of Brodgar which is from one of Raymie’s images. I did produce a collagraph print from an image of the Standing Stones of Stenness that Raymie took, but I was not happy with the result. Otherwise I have been enjoying experimenting with my Gelli plate and also some mixed media pieces."