Firstly, I’d like to apologise if you used to follow my blog. I thought I could begin this post by saying “it’s been a while”, but that can’t cover my inactivity. This blog was last updated in 2015 – nearly four years to the day I’m posting this. The eagle-eyed among you will also notice that – despite previously having a decent-sized blog archive – this now appears to be the first post. Allow me to explain…
When I last posted here I was in the middle of a lot of personal ‘stuff’. I won’t go into the details, but this resulted in big, and thankfully positive, changes in my life. One of these was a move from Hertfordshire to Glasgow. I am happy to say that I settled in immediately and have loved having so many wild and beautiful places on my doorstep. However, while I was busy photographing the Scottish wildlife and building up my bank of images, I let this website stagnate. I didn’t feel I could devote the time necessary to turn it into a suitable showcase of my work or have enough time to regularly blog again – until now.
Hopefully, you will spot that the website has been completely redesigned. New image galleries will showcase my best work while the blog will remain as the place to discuss what I’m up to. I hope you like the changes.
So, why have I removed all my old blog posts? Because my photography and writing style has moved on. What I once considered to be a good blog post, I don’t enjoy reading now. What I used to think were my best images, I now feel were stepping stones to what I can achieve. Teaching myself photography and building up the blog was always going to be a learning curve. I’m happy to make a fresh start without needing to carry around the baggage of old work.
With a fresh perspective in mind, I want to share the photo above. It was taken in January at Shewalton Sandpits, near Irvine. We went there on a windy day when there wasn’t much wildlife to be seen, although birds could be heard in sheltered spots around the reserve.
At the end of our exploratory stroll, we walked to the edge of a large pond and saw a family of mute swans in the water. They began gliding towards us, so I sat down on a log next to the bank to photograph them in the fading sunlight. I assumed they thought we had food as they steadily approached. I felt positive that, as soon as they realised that food wasn’t going to appear from my camera bag, they would drift away. Yet closer they came until one swan was right next to the bank. We were quiet and still, so they allowed their cygnets to stay close to us too. I took this photo at the moment I felt they were most relaxed. After a few more minutes of watching us, the swans turned and slowly swam away.
When it came to the edit, I was surprised by the crisp detail in the original image and decided to convert it to black and white and crop it tightly. Later, when reviewing it again for the website, I felt something was missing. I liked the colour of the background behind the swan and the brown in the detail of its eye, so I decided to crop it even tighter. I also made small adjustments to the colour, rather than retaining the black and white conversion. The result captures the beauty in the swan’s eye and the sparkling water droplets on its head illuminated in the fading light.
I think this image proves that, even on a day when you think your opportunities for photographing wildlife are very limited, it’s worth keeping hold of your camera until the last minute. That might be when you get a fresh perspective on a familiar subject.