*The following article was published on the Ayrshire People website/Facebook group* My interest in photography started when I was a teenager out doing hillwalking & hill running,I always liked to have a camera with me & just fire off some shots, one of the reasons I think I mostly shoot landscape & night photography is due to my love of the outdoors. My photography journey really started 3 and a half years ago when I bought my 1st dslr camera, level entry basic model but the 1st one I owned with interchangeable lenses, I joined various Facebook photography groups to learn the basics, regularly went up the Afton Reservoir, New Cumnock 4-5 times a month & just shot the same scenes over & over till I was happy with that scene, then moved onto the next, within a year I had bought a 2nd camera, a more professional Full Frame camera to further my hobby. I started venturing further afield out-with Ayrshire to areas in Glasgow, Loch Lomond, Galloway Forest Park etc. Some people think I’m mad heading out to remote places late at night to photograph but your almost guaranteed to have the place to your self, peace, quiet, tranquility & above all the best time to photograph, my wife puts up with a lot with me heading out till crazy o’clock so a big thanks to Amy my wife for allowing me to do my hobby. When Covid-19 and “lockdown” occurred it, I had to changed the way I went about my photography, instead of travelling miles I had to get creative & shoot in my home town, good thing was I found many hidden gems right on my doorstep that I wouldn’t have looked at otherwise. In 2018 I entered the Cumnock Chronicle Camera Club competition which I subsequently won with a shot I took down at the Barony A Frame using burning steel wool, whisk, dog lead & long exposure settings. Also in 2018 I got one of my photos picked to be featured in a national calendar for 2019. 2018 also saw Muirkirk Community Council use my photos (which I donated for free) for their community Christmas cards, they ordered 500 from a local printing company and thankfully sold 500 which was really good, I believe the profit they made went towards a defibrillator for the community. 2019 saw me delve into calendars for the 1st time, producing along with another local photographer Neil Given a calendar called Muirkirk Landscapes, we were talked into it by a few members of the community, starting off mid November which was really late to start producing a calendar we initially ordered 60 calendars & to our surprise we sold them all within 2 weeks. We will be producing another Muirkirk Landscapes calendar for 2021 and possibly an East Ayrshire landscape calendar as well, incorporating the villages around where we live. Covid-19 has had an adverse effect on these plans though as with travel being restricted we haven’t managed to shoot together since March & therefore travel to the villages we’re planning on featuring in the calendar. Hopefully in the next few months we’ll get out & get the scenes shot for both calendars. I’ve mostly commented on my landscape photography which I love doing but my favourite is shooting the Milky Way galaxy. In the Northern Hemisphere we have a small window of opportunity to see & photograph it. Scottish weather, cloud cover, moon phase all play a part in seeing and shooting the night sky. Best time is beginning of June till mid August for the Milky Way, one of my favourite places to photograph the night sky is the Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park, if you’ve never been I highly recommend it, especially from Loch Bradan, Clatteringshaws Loch to Loch Trool, all stunning places during the day but amazing under a clear moonless night. You can’t beat the feeling of setting up your camera gear, clicking the shutter button, waiting 15-20 seconds for the camera to do the long exposure shot & waiting on the results on the back of the camera and seeing the Milky Way pop on the screen. It’s well worth the drive & late nights/early mornings to get the results. Some shoots I’ll come home, sit the camera backpack down & vow not to touch it again, but next day, mood has changed, I’ll go out a few nights later and try again. I won’t Always get the shots I want. I’ll have good days & bad days but my advice for anything is just keep trying & the results will come eventually. One of the hardest parts of photography is being colour blind, I have deutan colour blindness which affect 4% of the worlds population which means I struggle with red, green, blue, purple, grey, brown, pink & yellows, when colours are mixed together I can’t pick out individual colours which means it’s a challenge sometimes to photograph certain landscapes but I know which colour I see & what it actually should be so I get by with it so don’t let anything like that put you off.
