Ah... Paisley. My wife had ancestors living there in the 1850's before they immigrated to Utah. They were weavers as so many in the area were. It was a really cool thing to be able to look at census records and find out the street they lived on and go past that place. Nothing from then remains, as all the small cottages were torn down and tenements were built to house workers at the factories that took over. The industrial revolution in the Glasgow area was  nothing if not a tectonic shift to the area. Large thread factories and fabric production on an industrial scale replaced the small family weaving enterprise. It was just as devastating as the Highland Clearances but for different reasons. This post will cover approximately two days in the area but will complete our time in Scotland. Which was... hard. It was hard to leave, I could go back every year for a long time, if I could afford it.

We started off a Johnstone Parish Church, the main part of which was built in 1792 with the clock tower added 1823. I believe there were christenings  and weddings of relatives performed in this one. It was locked and we were unable to access the interior. 

Houston & Killellan Kirk was our next stop. It was pretty in a simple but not austere way.    

Much different than the Abbeys and Cathedrals that we have been visiting, this would have been a typical place of worship for the common folks. My wifes relatives in Renfrewshire just outside of Paisley worshipped and married here.    

Our next stop was one of the most interesting stops, in part due to the connection of my wife to the industry of weaving, and in part due to the opportunity to see a more common experience of life than the fancy homes we have seen. We visited a Black House in the Hebrides, while it was not photogenic it had texture. This spot had texture of life AND was more photogenic. Now, some of these shots are not artistic and simply documentary in nature, some are in line with how I remember. I key in to small details that just... stick with me, and I tried to capture those small details as best I could.

The Sma' Shot Cottages are a museum in Paisley that were owned by weavers, and are essentially the same as they were in the day. Here is a link ( https://www.visitscotland.com/info/see-do/sma-shot-cottages-p254461 ) it is just an amazing spot and well worth your time. From a technical/photographers point of reference, this is a setting that I would normally use a non-zoom or Prime Lens with a smaller f number/larger aperture, meaning that it can let in more light, which helps in the darker rooms with the trade off of a thinner area that stays in focus. I discussed in a prequel blog my choices of kit, so you can look back at my ramblings on that, but I did not take a fast prime appropriate for this so I used mostly my 28-105 zoom and higher ISO. I was very pleased with the results, unless you get really picky the noise from the higher ISO is not noticeable at all.

These copper containers/measuring cups had such a delicious patina and light from the window that set the stage for the rest of what I would see.
   

This loom is authentic and actually works, they were complicated machines that took skill, experience and effort, weavers would often work from the early morning to late at night, everyone helped even the young children. The guides noted that little children often were missing a finger or two from being around the machines. Times were different and childhood was short I guess.   

Yes the looms still work, it is whole body exercise to run one.   

Kitchens were small and multipurpose, every bit of space was precious.   

Sleeping spaces were literally right there in the kitchen, I would think that it would be one of the warmer spots, the beds were not large and I don't think the people were large either.   

The weavers grew their own dyes and had household gardens as well, self sufficiency was the only way to survive. This type of shot is where my ultrawide angle lens helped, placing a detail inside of the context of the larger setting. This was taken at 15mm and f8.   

I do not know how common it was to give a child a separate room, it wasn't a very big one.

School desk, how hard it must have been to find time to make sure your children had some education while still having them contribute to the household.   

The wide angle distortion makes this look bigger than it is in real life. These people were not large.   

Our guide was a volunteer, and quite young, late teens, maybe very early 20's but she seemed to have a real love for the cottages and they history.

You likely noticed that there were several photos in a row of essentially the same thing, notice that just shifting the place where the photo is taken from and the angle the camera is held at, what object is in the best focus as the subject. It is said that taking a good photograph starts with knowing where to stand, and where to point the camera.   

I would consider this parlor as a sign of the common people starting to gain a little prosperity, these would not be everyday rooms if I remember correctly, but were more for display and when company would come. A far cry from a stone hut without windows that people lived in not many years before, and maybe lived in still at that time but in more rural settings. What we consider normal, is really a recent development in the grander scheme.   

Often rooms would be rented out to add income, I believe this was an example of this.

Outside of the cottages was this lovely lion. I think it is pretty cool that worldwide there have been projects that add character through things like this.   

The next day Paisley Abbey was our destination, Renfrewshire is adjacent to Paisley, literally streets away, but they were separate villages years ago.   

When I complain that a building is not square or straight and it is hard to make the picture not look weird or distorted, this is what I am talking about. Yes the craftsmen that built them were incredibly skilled, but ground settles, mistakes are made, measurement was not millimeter perfect as we can do now. It adds character, as well as makes me a little more crazy. This is the front facade of the Paisley Abbey.

Your mind can compensate to a certain extent, changing perspective helps.   

Same lens, same focal length, just stood in a different spot and pointed the camera up more. Man, the more you look, the more crooked it is in places.   

This really is one of my favorite photos from the entire trip. The subtle play of light through the arches and the perspective really makes me a happy photographer.

Photography is nothing without light to capture, light filtered and changed through windows and brought inside is... glorious, even now when we have light at the flick of a switch. Think how it would have felt to a peasant in 1650 to see evidence of the glory of god through the light spilling into the darkness.

In the vein of "if you can lick 'em, join 'em" if the building is crooked, and you can't get it perfectly lined up and symmetrical, then embrace the crooked and make it irrelevant. Sometimes I refer to using ultra wide angle lenses as the practice of "Distort and conquer" full display here.   

Details, are what I remember, this shot required going extreme to get the detail I saw. This was shot at 15mm and f2.8, so ultrawide and wide open, meaning the aperture of the lens was not closed at all. Producing the thinnest area of the photo in focus and blurring what can be blurred to focus on the subject. Photographically the smaller the focal length, in this case 15mm, the harder it is to blur the background. When I was a teenager there were very few lenses that had the ability to produce this shot, and they were expensive professional lenses. The fact that I can do this as a hobbyist is really cool!   

To produce this shot I pulled out my 12mm fisheye lens, corner to corner is 180 degrees, This type of lens was even more rare until recently.   

I think I am as dizzy looking at this as I was taking it. You tend to walk around looking at ceilings a lot in cathedrals, doing it with the distortion of a fisheye lens adds to the distraction.

Yeah, the building has been around for awhile, guess I can forgive the building being a little crooked here and there.

Paisley Thread Mill Museum was our next stop. Hard to find especially on a saturday, but find it we did... eventually. As the town industrialized, and the small weavers were pushed out, Paisley became a hub of producing thread on a huge scale.   

Mural spotting was a lot of fun, we really liked keeping an eye out for these as we traveled, they were painted on many buildings, and they were just lovely.   

War monuments are everywhere, some cooler than others.

As evening set in, I saw a spectacular church building that I HAD to circle back to. In the late 1800's Thomas Coats a local philanthropist built a gothic revival church, it is now a wedding venue, and as there was a wedding going on, I could not go inside. But man I loved the outside!   

I just loved this building and the time we got to spend in the are of Paisley, we had to skip several spots in Glasgow... well really the whole town. If I ever get to go back, Glasgow Cathedral is a must see!

As always, thanks for looking and sticking around, comments are appreciated.