Why?

Photography has been a passion of mine off and on since I was a teenager, but particularly over the last five years, when I took it up seriously again after a break of almost a decade. I found my life was missing something without a creative outlet, and realised that through photography I could capture and share my love of the beauty of our world, whether it be wide landscapes, little details of plants, or the abstract patterns found in ice and reflections.

In my landscape and nature photography I aim to convey my reactions to the scene, the atmosphere of the place, or a story of the local environment, as well as the intrinsic beauty. In my more abstract photography I look for simple aesthetic compositions of patterns, textures and tones, either in colour or black and white.

Equipment:

Cameras

I have been taking photographs for over 20 years, buying my first SLR when I was about 15, a manual Fujica STX-1n which I used with some of my father's old M42 screw mount lenses and extension tubes. Rarely (OK, never) used now, it is still working.

In 1991 I upgraded to a second hand Minolta Dynax 8000i, closely followed by a second hand 7000i body for B&W. Excellent solid cameras, the 8000i survived a long unprotected tumble down a snow slope on Cotopaxi in Equador, and total immersion (after drying out) in a Californian stream when I fell off my mountain bike.

The move to digital happened very suddenly in November 2002 when I bought a Minolta DiMage 7 off a fellow member at the Edinbugh Photographic Society. I'm afraid the half used roll of film from then still lies in my film camera!

Good though this camera was, I missed the quality and flexibility of an SLR, and the camera had terrible battery life, was extremely slow for writing RAW files and was poor for noise an anything higher than 100 ISO. So early in 2005 I took the plunge and bought the Canon EOS 20D (new!!) and some good second-hand lenses on eBay. What a great camera this is- great handling, fast, and superb image quality usable up to 1600 or 3200 ISO.

Lenses

My landscape photography was transformed by the purchase of a Canon 10-22mm lens which as well as superb image quality, allows for the forground perspective distortion and massive depth of field that makes for dramatic images.

My most recent purchase was my Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS USM, which replaced my ageing and very much inferior Canon 75-300mm f/4-5.6 USM. The image qualtiy is a massive leap forward, and the 4 stops of image stabilisation is a huge help in low light- hand holding at 200mm at 1/15s is possible!

I gained my Associateship of the Royal Photographic Society (ARPS) in June 2006 with a panel of 15 prints on a theme of 'Rocks in the Landscape'. These were all taken on the Canon 20D with the 10-22mm lens.