Mark Murray

@markrmurray.bsky.social

2027 Followers 924 Following

Educator. Photographer. Foodie. Fan of all things chocolate. Executive director of the Association of Texas Photography Instructors. Support a lot of other scholastic journalism organizations including CSPA, JEA, NSPA, and TAJE. https://www.atpi.org

A Southwest Airlines plane gets ready to depart the Phoenix airport on a sunny morning as our plane waits for our turn.
Three old saddles hang from a beam in a barn at Nelson Ghost Town in Nevada.
The late afternoon sun paints The Coliseum in Rome with golden hour light against a blue sky. A solitary seagull wings past the architectural wonder.
The late afternoon sun lights up scattered clouds while traffic waits at a four-way signal in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
The shadows of a chandelier rake across a stone wall in a small church in Barcelona, Spain. The hard, wooden benches sit waiting for worshippers to gather.
Three radar domes sit in front of ATLAS-1, better known as Trestle, at Sandia National Labs near Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Trestle was a test platform built during the Cold War to test the effects of EMP pulses on aircraft. It is the world’s largest structure composed of wood and glue laminate and required 6.5 million board feet of lumber. It could hold a B-52 bomber on the platform.
A passenger stands in the subway car as it prepares to depart from the Colisseo station in Rome. The car is crowded with other people sitting or standing, but this is the only visible face.
Several women wait on the subway platform at the Coliseum stop in Rome.
As two men walk away from the camera, the late afternoon sun casts long shadows on the cobblestones outside the Coliseum in Rome.
The golden light of the setting sun reflects off of some clouds in the Northern New Mexico sky.
Evening storms and the setting sun combine to create a colorful view out the window of the plane as we depart DFW Airport on a July evening.
Barrels sit and wait as the contents age into prime Scottish whiskey. Glenfarclas is a fifth-generation, family-owned distillery in the Highlands that proudly refuses to sell to any conglomerate that approaches them. The oldest barrel in the warehouse is from 1953. The barrels are sourced from a sherry winery in Spain.
A panoramic photo shows four cannon watching over a wall at the Alhambra in the city of Granada, Spain. High clouds drift over the Sierra Nevada mountains in the background.
A man stands on the subway platform at the Rome Colosseum waiting on the train.
An evening view of the Coliseum in Rome shows some tourists scattered around, but not the huge crowds earlier in the day. Both original stonework and more recent brickwork can be seen on this side of the Coliseum.
A man walks past the wall of Kensico Dam in the state part next to Valhalla, New York.
A variety of clouds pierce the bright blue sky of Northern New Mexico on a June afternoon. A tree hugs the corner of the frame to anchor the sky to the ground.
The rugged desert of Southern California is visible out the airplane window on a flight from LAX to ABQ in August 2019.
The ruins of Urquhart Castle sit on the bank of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. A cloudy and rainy day didn't deter lots of tourists from visiting the site. A field of green grass and wildflowers leads towards the castle with the hills visible on the other side of the loch.
At 10 p.m. at night the sunset lights up the River Spey with golden hour light. Trees frame the bottom of the photo while a home can be seen on the green hillside in the background.
Three tourists stop to take photos in the Alhambra with their phones.
Cars pass by the Fremont and the 4 Queens casinos in downtown Las Vegas as a giant wormhole graphic moves down the ceiling of the Fremont Street experience, a five-block pedestrian mall. The screen is a barrel-vault that covers four blocks and contains 12.5 million LEDs.
Two tourists rest outside the Palacio De Carlos V in the Alhambra complex as the late afternoon sun casts shadows on the building and the ground.
The palace of Carlos V is part of the Alhambra complex in Granada, Spain. The building was started in 1527 but wasn’t completed until 1967 when the roof was finally finished. The photo shows the inner circular patio with wispy clouds in the blue sky.
The Dr. Konstantin Frank Winery in the Finger Lakes region of New York offers a beautiful view of the vine-covered hills and Keuka Lake on a sunny day. Clouds gather in the blue sky to add some drama to the scene.
Orange trees frame a walkway of intricately set stones of different colors in the garden of the Hospital de la Caridad in Córdoba, Spain. It is now a museum.
Cactus and an old wagon help frame the chapel at Nelson Ghost Town southeast of Las Vegas. The dusty hills rise in the background. Gold and silver were discovered nearby in El Dorado Canyon about 1859.
As the sun sets over the Gulf of Genoa, a man walks past a single tree and benches set up on the overlook of Riomaggiore, one of the five towns of the Cinque Terre along the western coast of Italy.
A tour boat approaches Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. Trees on the hills are ghostlike thanks to the rain and low clouds this day. Any sign of Nessie?
The clock on the upper level of the Antwerpen-Centraal railway station is showcased by the elaborate brick work and domed ceiling. Built between 1895 and 1905 and designed by Louis Delacenserie, it is considered the finest example of railway architecture in Belgium.
On the high speed train (about 160 mph) between Cordoba and Granada, the landscape rushes by. Hillsides covered with olive trees stretch to the horizon. Wispy clouds float in the sky above the brown landscape.
Sunrise paints the clouds with golden light over the slumbering city of Florence, Italy in late November 2025. The tower from the Palazzo Vecchio is silhouetted against the morning sky.
Two country homes sit on a hillside in Tuscany, Italy along the SP15 road. A freshly plowed field is ready for spring planting while the mountains in the distance show some snow on the peaks.
The caramel custard from the restaurant Au Vieux Saint Martin in Brussels offers an excellent end to a dinner. It sits in caramel sauce with a thin cookie on top.
A duck swims past the floating hotel, Ocean Mist Leith, our group’s first hotel in Scotland during our travels. The former WWII minesweeper was converted into a hotel and was one of the group’s favorite places. The twilight reflects off the water while the buildings along the dock glow with their lights.
A solitary shirt hangs in an open window in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The remains of Urquhart Castle, which was blown up by Clan Grant in the 1500s to prevent the capture of the castle by Clan McDonald, welcomes visitors to the western bank of Loch Ness near Inverness.
Overlooking Corgarff Castle in the Scottish Highlands, the Cairngorms watch over the landscape of shrub brushes and grasslands along the A939 road from Nethy Bridge to Balmoral Castle. A fence line disappears into the distance on the right.
The ruins of Urquhart Castle sit on the bank of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. The castle was destroyed in the 1500’s to prevent the McDonald clan from capturing the castle from clan Grant.
Fort Augustus, at the southern end of Loch Ness, looks north to the main portion of the lake. Trees line the banks and a small bridge crosses over the narrow end.
Thought I’d provide some restaurant recommendations if you are traveling in London or Scotland. Plus I’m trying out the new multi-photo function for BlueSky. This is the remains of the pork belly bites at Temper-SoHo in London. Great steakhouse. The bites are tender with a good, spicy kick at the end. Be sure to try their margaritas.
A nun, dressed in all white, uses both hands behind her back to hold onto her head covering in the wind to help keep it in place.
Peeling paint frames a lace curtain in the wall of a building in Charlestown of Aberlour, in the Scottish Highlands.
A Highland cow, or “coo” as the locals say, grazes in a field at Balmoral Castle in the Highlands of Scotland.
Two children play on the beach on a chilly December day as the small town of Monterosso and the mountains of Cinque Terre, Italy loom over them.
At 10 pm at night, the sun has almost set over the River Spey in the Highlands of Scotland. The clouds reflect the yellows and oranges of the setting sun on the river as the green banks frame the water.
Along the A9 highway between Edinburgh and Pitlochry, a single Scotch Broom bush shows off the yellow bloom of its flowers against the green fields, trees and mountains of the Cairngorms on a rainy morning.
A wooden post on a hillside in Cairngorms National Park in the Highlands in Scotland invites visitors to place their camera facing Corgarff Castle with instructions to “View From This Side.”
A single bagpiper plays for visitors to Blair Castle, outside Pitlochry, Scotland. Blair Castle is the ancestral home of the Clan Murray and the seat of their chief, the Duke of Atholl. The current Duke lives in South Africa, where he grew up, so the castle is open for tours. The white building has been around over 700 years and hosted multiple guests, including Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who fell in love with the Highlands and purchased Balmoral. The castle also provides the garrison for the Atholl Highlanders, the private army of the Duke of Atholl, noted as the only legal private army in Europe, which was granted by Queen Victoria.
The Falls of Foyers is located on the eastern side of Loch Ness in Northern Scotland. Once written about by poet Robert Burns, it is now a favorite of hikers in The Highlands. Thick trees surround the falls.
An old Sinclair gas pump sits next to other abandoned items in a pile of rocks at Nelson Ghost Town in Nevada.
Lingering colors on the clouds over Cairngorms National Park at 9:30 pm on a May night tower over the peat-covered mountains in the background. A line of trees in the foreground mark the edge of the River Spey.
Corgarff Castle is located in the Cairngorms along the A939. It was built around 1530 but was burned in 1571 and was re-built multiple times. The white tower has a star-shaped wall around it and sits on a green hill in the midst of the peat-covered mountains of The Highlands.
Rich green fields of grain lap up against the flower-covered rocky hills in Central Scotland.
Taken through the windshield of the car, a dust storm can be seen moving across State Highway 17 in Southern Colorado, headed straight towards the Great Sand Dunes National Park.
A young man stares out the window on a bus ride from Newcastle on Tyne to Edinburgh. Our group had to switch to the bus when the train got cancelled in Newcastle due to a truck hitting abridge south of Edinburgh.
The late afternoon sun highlights the facade of Santa Maria in Via in Rome, a basilica church completed in 1513.
Two large bees climb around the flower of allium giganteum, or giant onion. The tiny purple blooms attracted a large numbers of bees in the garden in Nottingham Hill.
At nighttime a few fluorescent bulbs light up the inside of a store in downtown Columbia, South Carolina.
A single bird with white feathers flies across the green fields of Tuscany as a farmhouse in the background is lit with the late afternoon sun.