The guy on the right is sitting in the spot where it all began 30 years earlier, near Gairloch in the north west Scottish Highlands with seabirds circling the cliffs, and the sea disappearing over the horizon to meet new worlds. There wasn't a camera 'round my neck then, there was no need. Just the feelings that wilderness and boundless freedom give a small person amidst such a swathe of remote, unspoilt natural beauty, and enjoying being a solitary human amongst other beings – all things I’ve coveted ever since and returned to, just more recently with a camera.

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The first camera arrived a few years after Gairloch. I remember it was a pocket camera with actual film. I only remember it because it was red and was briefly dropped into the sea off the side of a boat during the trip of a lifetime to St Kilda. I remember the panic, but good luck prevailed, and photos and camera miraculously survived the mishap. Maybe that incident cemented the value I give photography, an enduring childlike wonder at the novelty of capturing reality in an instant. It’s magic too if, like me, you remain wilfully ignorant as to how it works....

 

So it’s in that same ingenuous spirit I create this microcosm of the internet for my photographic memories (after all, what the world needs is more photos!) It’s the unique process of recording and preserving personal, eye catching moments that’s always at the fore for me, connection with the subject over technical perfection. Whether that can be conveyed is a mystery, especially in an online world already saturated with visuals, mostly by people we will never know. The ‘luck’ element has a big part to play in nature photography, but the biggest rewards seem to come from knowing your subject; where and when to find it, how it behaves, how best to compose it in relation to its surroundings.

 

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my trusty zoom lens for helping me realise this near-lifelong dream. The boyhood interest in nature had become dormant during a couple of decades of city life; studying at art school, playing music, working, and having a child. Painting for a living was attempted but abruptly aborted when a digital camera came along – instant creative gratification and therapy – ‘back to nature’ I went, full circle. And with the lens, further reach into the natural world than ever before. I now live on the Moray coast in the north east of Scotland, an area the pandemic gave me a much richer appreciation of by way of the ‘stay local’ restrictions, delving into one’s immediate surroundings. I’d now just as happily photograph a crow as I would an eagle, though seabirds remain the favourites; wandering, enigmatic spirits of a largely untapped world, that world which so captured me up in Gairloch.

 

That’s a story, of sorts. It’s all that needs saying. I’ve an internal conflict with self-promotion, but one I hope nature wins. Less reliance on social media and paid photography sites is another intention, to bring it all together under one roof. And in a final act of indulgence, herein lies a blog, as you do. One about music, but nature too. Nature and music are inextricably linked for me – maybe it's the purity of them above all else which made it seem natural to include both here. I fancy roaming the hills with loud music all around, emanating from the clouds....

 

But the final words must be to thank the originators of it all, my parents, and give special mention to my uncle, Chris Cameron, who stoked the interest (including organising that early St Kilda trip), and to whose memory I dedicate the photos of beautiful Peregrine Falcons, which he especially loved.