The photographer
I am a freelance photographer based in the West of Scotland and live with Lynn in Glasgow and near Tighnabruaich. I specialise in virtual realities and public relations work for web sites of companies and public organisations, and I have a passion is for landscape, wildlife and travel photography.
I started photography when I was twelve years old when I learned developing and printing black and white in my first years at high school. During my university years and early part of my professional career in IT, I retained a healthy interest in photography, but it has only been in the last twelve years, that I have been taking photography much more seriously and taken the step from keen amateur and to freelance.
As I learned more about photography and the art of taking pictures, I realised quickly that my heart lay in landscape, nature and wildlife. The desire to capture the beauty of nature drives me to pick up my camera.
Travel is another fascination of mine, and in the various different places I visit, I always aim to capture the feel and spirit of the place as well as the people who inhabit them. When showing my best photos from a visit to Upper Egypt to some friends, they were astounded by the absence of pyramids and tombs, and by the way I had captured the soul of the place with images of the people and natural beauty of the country.
My photographic subjects have widened vastly through membership of Skelmorlie Camera Club, lunchtime wanders with colleagues around Glasgow and a love for our lurcher Suki and whippet Lola. To me photography is an endless journey, with so much to learn and so many places around the world to visit.
The photographs
In my view, one of the defining statements in modern photography is that “you cannot really appreciate your photography until you actually print your photos”. Even in this digital age, nothing beats the sheer beauty of a large framed print on display on a wall.
Sharing my printed and mounted photos with friends and colleagues at work to get their views on potentials submission to camera club competitions actually resulted in my first sale, a colour enlargement of the moon shining across the Firth of Clyde.
Not only did this photograph win the “night scene” competition at the camera club, but astoundingly, I sold a framed print to someone unknown who was colour blind but absolutely loved this predominantly blue tinted photo after seeing it lying on my desk at work.
Following this first sale some seven years ago, I have regularly sold printed, mounted and framed photographs. The most important aspect of sales is not the money, but the knowledge that my work is appreciated by people and has a place in their home.
My longstanding passion for panoramas became the natural stepping stone to my specialisation in virtual realities. The skills to stitch multiple images seamlessly into one single panoramic landscape are more or less identical to stitching multiple images into a virtual sphere that forms the basis for virtual realities.
So when a friend asked if I could create a virtual reality, I had to do some quick reading up on something I had never heard of. I gave it a go and as a result, I quickly landed my first commission.
Equipment
My main equipment is Canon and consist of a full frame DSLR and a 35mm film SLR with an arsenal of prime and zoom lenses ranging from 15mm fish eye to 400mm telephoto, including several tilt & shift and macro lenses.
On location I use Canon speedlights for lighting, but in the studio I use diffused lighting provided by daylight lamps. For the creation of virtual realities, I just use my full frame DSLR and fish eye lens mounted on a tripod using a specialist panoramic head.
In addition to my main kit, I often use a variety of film cameras covering 35mm (Nikon SLR’s with Nikkor AIS lenses), medium format (6x6cm Rolleiflex TLR) and large format (4×5″ Sanderson). I aim to add a 6x17cm panoramic format film camera to my set up in the near future, as this provides quality unrivalled by DSLRs for panoramic images.