Sgian Dubh

[geoffm]

Does anyone know what happened to Sgian Dubh (Black Knife)? He used to post fairly regularly on here, had his own blog
http://qajariaq.blogspot.com.au and took awesome black and white photos. Everything stopped in June 2010. Just wondered what happened to him.......
Geoff

[Yakdiver]

Sgian Dubh ?? I thought I was on my kilt forum for a second

[Mark R]

He wasn't real, and his images were (attractive) fakes. Oddly he seems to have been some kind of Walter Mitty type.

Google 'bouldering' and 'Si O'Connor'. If I remember correctly, he produced a very similar climbing blog along with arty photos used to advance claims for outlandishly hard first ascents. My understanding is that these claims are now generally discounted in the climbing community.

[EdS]

I believe he is now "Tadhg Mac":

http://www.fluidr.com/photos/sgiandubhqajaq

The images are still quite attractive and the style of writing very familiar.

[Douglas Wilcox]

Despite not being "real"' I actually met him. I delivered a black Anas Acuta to him at Tarbert on one of my trips to Harris. In person, he was very grateful and had a modest and self effacing manner.

It's a strange old place, the Internet, so much so, that I much prefer Lightroom to Photoshop. Not only is it cheaper but it means your photos take much less space on your hard disk.

Douglas

[Mark R]

Sorry, I should clarify - certain of his shots of impressive paddling were faked. Certainly the guy can take a great photo.

Whether the guy's claims to have paddled solo around the entire Faeroes and suchlike stand up, I have no idea. I think I do know what the climbers would have to say about them.

I don't even know the guy's actual name - apparently he used various similar but different titles in his internet guises.

Yes, an odd place, the internet.

[Richard Barrett]

I live on Harris, but it's not me. My fantasies are in a different class altogether

[Mark R]

The climbers seemed to think he lived near Portree, and (despite various claims to be Scottish, Irish or Scandinavian) was boring old English.

All very peculiar...he was making claims to have accomplished the hardest bouldering moves ever achieved (his blog was called V15). I have no idea how or whether any of this has bearing on his paddling persona, but I do recall that S. Dubh and his blog went quiet at the exact moment he was IDed as 'Si O' Connor'.

[Grahamd]

I think the photographs are amazing.

[EdS]

This:

http://www.redbubble.com/people/tadhgmac

always makes me smile.

I have never been able to fathom what the end purpose of it all was, especially the climbing persona where he was gaining a reputation beyond even these shores.

For someone who comes across as intelligent, articulate and with a wonderful eye for a picture, his desire to invest so much time in something which was always destined to come tumbling down around him has always puzzled me.

At least he's making amends by helping crew the lifeboat now and, so far ar least, not single-handedly.

[PeterG]

Great pictures, more art than reality; whatever that is. The size and shape of the hatches on his Anas acuta give away his use of digital enhancement, and some of the mountains are not quite like that in the flesh. I still like the pictures.

[geoffm]

All very interesting.I did have email discussions with him in the past so I am pretty sure he was real.
Manipulated or not, his images are stunning.
There is a lot of bullshit talked about manipulating images since digital came along. You can make a good image better but it is very hard, unless you are very talented indeed, to make a bad image into an exceptional one.
But I do agree that a "manufactured" image is wrong (parts of different images combined).
Geoff
www.geoffmurray.com

[Kayaks'N'Beer]

But I do agree that a "manufactured" image is wrong (parts of different images combined).

Disagree Manipulation is art unless you try to pass it off as real, then it's fake, eg any photograph that's ever appeared in an issue of Vogue, in the history of ever

[JonC]

I live on Harris, but it's not me. My fantasies are in a different class altogether

LMFAO Coffee just spat all over keyboard!

[Jim]

Did he leave that long ago? Wow.

Defintiely claimed to be Skye based, to be honest he did have good photos and sometimes had interesting things to say but often used to use some kind of, I guess it is a form of poetry? Either way I found a lot of it unintelligable. Definitely added something to the board though.