What is it about Scotland that photographers seem to move away as soon as they can? 
Kent in SD
As mentioned in my recent longish post:
"I started my own studio and took it, slowly, into fashion. I found myself on a lot of trips for dress manufacturers, shooting advertising for House of Fraser stores, various general advertising agencies and the IWS (the International Wool Secretariat), the latter opening the door to
Vogue in the UK, which was sort of odd in that most people do magazine work in order to attract commercial clients, whereas for me it worked the other way around. But it wasn't to last – the storm was gathering fast.
The fashion world in late-70s Scotland was contracting very quickly, and fees were tumbling because the few remaining people still buying photography knew only too well that we needed the work. We were being well and truly screwed. But nobody in my neck of the woods, really, was into calendars other than those that David Niven describes at the end of his forward to the first Pirelli Calendar Book, as featuring “whimsical terriers and thatched cottages” or, in the case of Scotland, yet more bloody lochs and snowy mountain peaks.
Now, that was quite some time ago, and most of my good clients there have either folded, been taken over by English firms or otherwise removed from the spending scene. I don't know what that scene is today for young photographers wanting to do fashion and calendars, but to all accounts, my version of it is a thing of the past. Some people made their buck shooting landscape when that meant 4x5, skill and investment. Digital and the shamateur have probably sabotaged most of that niche for the professional - others can tell you more accurately than I.
Industrial photography used to be a good number, with at least two big Glasgow studios, Studio Swain and Ralston's doing good work; Swain used to do some of my E6 processing for me. There was good business, too, with the whisky trade for bottle shots etc. Swain went kaput, and I think (but don't know) that the same fate befell Ralston's. Wedding shooters, no doubt, remain in business, but they were always considered a trade apart. Another studio doing advertising photograhy was Bryan and Shear - I don't have any recent news of them.
I guess the simple answer to the exodus is as it ever was, and why America, Canada and Australia, not to mention England, saw so many Scottish migrants... the local version of the Route 66 tale.
Rob
