Introduction and Photography Highlights

A puffin on the Isle of May from a trip last year.

Wildlife photography began, for me, when I was given my first simple camera for my 12th birthday. With this I photographed ducks at a pond and zoo animals - in fact my first ‘good’ photo that I remember being pleased with, and getting printed, was a photo of a jaguar at Edinburgh Zoo. I already had an interest in British wildlife at this point, particularly badgers, and so naturally I wanted to capture images of these too. What I quickly realised, however, was that this is not quite as straightforward as capturing portraits of captive creatures.

A jaguar at Edinburgh Zoo.

My first real success with British wildlife was photographing bottlenose dolphins at Chanonry Point (a special place that I will write a separate blog post about soon). For this, I ‘borrowed’ my mum’s Nikon bridge camera which was more than capable of capturing these dolphins at such a close range. I even managed a few shots of the dolphins breaching (something which I ironically struggled with on my recent trip to Chanonry with better equipment). This was probably a bit of a fluke, but it gave me the belief that I could capture some great images of wild animals in the UK.

A bottlenose dolphin at Chanonry Point this year.

After this, however, before purchasing my first DSLR, I decided that I wanted to capture video footage of wild animals with a camcorder. This experience proved invaluable: whilst much of the footage is nothing special, I spent immense amounts of time both enjoying nature and observing interesting behaviour. This knowledge of the natural world still helps me to this day as it allows me to predict where wildlife will show up and allows me to remain (mostly) undetected. Fieldwork is, of course, just as important as the act of photographing itself.

Me and my Nikon D5500 with the 200-500mm lens.

In 2018, two and a half years ago now, I purchased my first DSLR camera - a Nikon D5500. I spent hours and hours researching the best camera for me, regardless of whether it was Canon or Nikon, and this was by far the best within my budget, especially with its 24.2MP sensor. Being on a budget, the longest lens I could afford was the Nikon 70-300mm. This combination, whilst limited in some ways, was incredibly exciting to use. It gave me images that were far beyond anything I could have previously captured. One of the reasons that I switched from video to stills was a fascination with this idea that a DSLR, with a fast shutter speed, could capture a moment in time that even the human eye could miss - it gave me a new perspective on the natural world. The obvious first goal then, was to capture birds in flight and the local buzzards provided great opportunities for this. They often came just about close enough for the 300mm range and I got some pretty nice results.

A buzzard photographed near home in Edinburgh.

A year later, however, and I was already dreaming of bigger lenses: specifically, the Nikon 200-500mm. After reading several good reviews on it and finding some very reasonable second hand prices, I decided to go for it. At this time I had also had a bit of luck in winning a couple of large bets, so naturally I wanted to invest this money into my photography (this is definitely not something I would recommend though! I took advantage of a couple of free bets and got lucky). It took me a while to get used to this lens but, paired with the D5500’s sensor, I soon started to get some photos that I was really happy with. Some notable highlights of that first year with the lens were a family trip to the Isle of Arran (where I photographed common seals, otters, red squirrels, and much more) and a trip to the Isle of May to visit the puffins.

My Arran portfolio.

This year, despite the obvious restrictions to photography (and life in general), has also been fairly successful in terms of wildlife photography. In fact, thanks to a new photographic technique, it has arguably been my most productive creative period. This technique is commonly known as camera trapping: where a DSLR camera is connected to a system of sensors, triggers, and flashes which are set up and left to capture images on their own when an animal passes through and triggers them. I will write more in-depth about this topic in another post but needless to say it has allowed me to capture images of badgers that would not have otherwise been possible. Essentially, then, it has allowed me to fulfil my childhood goal of capturing badgers on camera.

A badger in my garden in Edinburgh.

Other highlights of this year have included photographing peregrine falcons, dolphins, and a very friendly otter. Again, I will talk about all of these experiences in-depth in other blog posts but I hope that this post has provided you with a good introduction to my photographic life so far. In future posts I hope to talk about not only this year’s experiences, but certain locations, species, and techniques in detail, hopefully providing some insight and tips into how I take my photos.