`scp -r /Applications/XAMPP/htdocs/keypairfile.pem uploads ec2-user@publicdns:/var/www/html`

where uploads is a directory returns Permission denied (publickey). 

However

`scp -i /Applications/XAMPP/htdocs/keypairfile.pem footer.php ec2-user@publicdns:/var/www/html`

works **(notice the flag change).**

uploads is an empty folder

These are the file permissions for the uploads directory 

`drwxrwxrwx 3 geoffreysangston admin 102 Nov 15 01:40 uploads`

These are the file permissions for /var/www/html

`drwxr-x--- 2 ec2-user ec2-user 4096 Jan 5 20:45 html`

I've tried changing html to 777 and that doesn't work either.