It can be almost as much of a psychological game as it is a visual craft.

It is easy to burn through hundreds of pounds of fuel trying to get to an elusive shot that you spotted out walking one day when the conditions weren’t right, or tramp dozens of miles through ankle deep bog in the hope that you find a composition worth coming back to sometime in the future when the light is better. Of course, all this time you are carrying your camera, tripod, lenses and a bag full of filters… why join the gym when you can lug 6kg of electronics and glass up a hill to mix and mingle with the midgies?

Let’s be honest, when you think about it like that landscape photography makes very little sense. You’ve gotta love it really.

It’s a solitary pursuit, and sometimes pursuit feels like just the right word; like you’re chasing something that’s perpetually just over the horizon…. The difficulties just make it all the sweeter when your car doesn’t break down, the conditions are right (when you are actually there), the composition comes together and you nail the shot.

When you get home you make yourself a brew and process the shot to a finished photograph. And then maybe the file just sits there on a hard drive, loved by you but unappreciated by the rest of the world who will never get the chance to see it. Maybe it pops up on your screensaver from time to time when you’re not there to see it anyway: you’re probably in the next room with your maps looking for your next photograph. It seems like a terrible waste after all that effort.

Sure, these days we can share these things online; Facebook, Flickr, Whatever. Perhaps you’ll print a few favourites to hang around the house. Perhaps you’ll even take the plunge and put on an exhibition somewhere. Perhaps this is the true test: does your photograph stand up to being printed and framed and put on display for the public? Certainly, there is a singular satisfaction in watching someone losing themselves in a landscape photograph you have taken. Does the photograph you are so proud of capture the soul of the place and convey it to someone that hasn’t been there personally, or is it just another glorified snapshot that only you can truly love?

Does it really matter?

When I shoot landscapes I shoot them for myself. Yes, ok, so I sell the prints and yes I do enjoy seeing other people taking something from a good shot. But that is not why I leave the house at 4am to tramp through blinding hail and 40mph winds at -6 to get in position before sunrise. I shoot landscapes because I love being out there.

Mostly, I shoot landscapes because when I get it right I can look at that print on the wall and, just for a few moments, I can be out there again.

Happy New Year folks – all the best for 2012!

Given the tens of thousands of entries that they receive every year I’m quite chuffed to have made the cut! Not only that, I received a personal mention in the introduction to the book from Charlie Waite, which made me smile.

I’ll be heading down to the private viewing of the exhibition at the start of december, after all t’s not every day you get to see your own work hanging in the National Gallery. I might just take in the Da Vinci exhibition in the gallery while I’m there….

I used to do this quite a lot, either just around Glasgow or I’d pop in the car out to the highlands (one of the great advantages of living in Glasgow is the magnificent scenery that’s less than an hour in any direction). I was pondering this recently one evening with a wee dram and ended doing the impulse purchase thing on eBay. Honestly, I sometimes think that you should have to pass a breathalyser before going on that site.

A few days later a beautiful handmade walnut 6×12 pinhole camera appeared on my doorstep.

Until that moment I confess that I had never had any particular desire to get involved with the old-school photography thing, despite the resurgence in Lomo and the myriad apps offering “classic” filters that are making all things old very trendy at the moment. Getting back into film when I’ve invested so heavily in the best digital bodies seems totally counter-intuitive. Let’s not even think about how many thousands I have spent on lenses, just to go out and buy a camera that renders them redundant with a 0.24mm hole in it’s front.

I’ve got to tell you: I love it!

It’s just so gloriously pointless! I have the skills and the means to produce beautiful, tack sharp images in almost any context and have the results printed by dinner time. Starting afresh in a medium that makes takes exponentailly longer to produce any sort of image, and makes it impossible to get the image quality that clients demand and deserve is willfully self-indulgent at best. And I think that’s exactly what I needed: something just for me.

Just picking up the pinhole camera strips away all the usual technical concerns about focal points, sharpness and general image quality and leaves you with the very bare bones of image making. All you really have going for you is your composition. Without a viewfinder you are forced to slow down, even more than you normally would when shooting landscapes. The compositions that you might use when shooting with an slr don’t work as the vignette and the blur becomes so heavy towards the sides of the 6×12 frame… and the long exposures forced by an equivalent aperture of f250  mean that you can’t capture a moment – you capture a period of time. All these things make you approach everything in a completely different way to how you normally would, and that is never a bad exercise for any photographer.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love nailing a great shot at wedding, or racking my grad filters for a good landscape. But I have discovered a little niche, not new to anyone but myself, and in exploring it I am rediscovering that excitement at trying something completely new. Since that night when I mixed my Talisker with a little eBay I am once again to be found lurking in the darker corners of the city with my tripod for no particularly good reason. I am finding pleasure in my mistakes as much as my successes…. I could more reliably produce the pinhole effect from my digital files if I really wanted, but it’s really all about the new techniques and the process of taking the photographs that I’m getting so much enjoyment from.

I am also definitely noticing that I am approaching my more traditional work (or perhaps more modern work?) with a fresh eye. And I guess in a roundabout way that’s the point I’m trying to make: sometimes you’ve just got to try something completely different, just for the hell of it. It does you good.

There were plenty of other acrobatic displays and aircraft attending the Windermere Air Festival, and loads going on on terra firma but for me those were the real stand out moments. I was there to photograph the weekend for Bluestone Events who took over the running of the Festival this year from the local Rotary Club. To say that they did a fine job would be selling them short – the grounds were packed and the weekend was fantastic!

I’ll just let the photographs speak for themselves.

As is often the case with events that you’ve not covered in the past I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this… I figured it was worth checking it out, and I’m glad I did. For a start, if I’m still running around like them when I’m 40 I’ll be happy and some of them we well into their 70s!

The atmosphere for the event was great too. Several of the teams were reunions from when the players used to compete together back in their university days. Some were family teams, others cobbled together from odds and ends of other teams. Everyone was just there to have a good laugh, no stress, no hassle just lots of hockey, fun and (from what I hear of the nights out) lots of partying. At the end of the day I was there to cover the matches but it definitely makes the week a lot more enjoyable for me when everyone’s on such good form. A few of my photos are up on the BBC Scotland website but I thought I’d post some more on here anyway.

Before you ask, no, the medieval jousting and falconry photographs are not a mistake, they’re just there because apparently Air New Zealand and Events Scotland can throw a good party when they want to!

Cheers guys.

The whole magazine has had a huge facelift this month, with a new layout and several new regular features being introduced. When I bumped into the assistant editor in Keswick last week he was telling me that they had decided to hold my article back for this special re-launch – I was quite chuffed at the time and I’m even happier now that I’ve seen how good it looks! They have done a great job with the new design and (as biased as I am) I think that my wee article looks rather good in there.

In fact, it is quite an honour to have such a big photo article in the magazine at all: they only run one every three or four months and when you consider that the last two were by Colin Prior and Joe Cornish they clearly have very high standards.

Hopefully this is just the first article I’ll write for TGO, but I guess for that to be the case I need to stop sitting at the computer and get out on the hill! And on that note, I’ll leave you all to it – remember pick up a copy of TGO and let me know what you think….

Dougie

Given the weather, we couldn’t really make much use of the abundance of nature just outside so we had to find a spot indoors that was suitable. Given that they were there to give lectures (and sing!) I thought it would be appropriate to shoot them in the theatre. You may call me Mr Booth if you wish.

We didn’t have a lot of time in there, and at the end of the day lighting in the stalls is kind of dull. Thankfully I had my flash gear with me so we managed to cobble something together fairly easily. It helped no end that the three of them were so easy to work with and we could have a bit of banter – once I got over the fact that was photographing one of my personal climbing heros I might even have started to enjoy it just a little.

I think the photograph even came out pretty well in the end!

Well, almost.

It would inaccurate to suggest that the weather didn’t have any effect on the weekend, and indeed when we arrived on site on Sunday morning the wind had done some serious damage to the site overnight. The ground was saturated, the gazeebos had been gazunked (yes, i made that word up) and the main marquee in particular was in pretty poor shape. With the weather having wreaked such havoc you would have been forgiven for thinking that the game was up for the weekend, but you’d have been wrong!

The runners still ran, the bikers still biked and the triathletes put in an incredible effort in exceptional weather.

All in all, it made for a slightly surreal day: triathletes making their transitions while workers dropped the marquee and delegates recovered their stalls. All the events that could be relocated or rescheduled were, and there was even a lecture going on the corner of one marquee while we hastily filled it with the contents of another that had been damaged…. I didn’t meet one person that appeared in the least bit phased by the whole thing.

All in all I think that sums up a lot of what mountain sports are all about. Nature is always going to be the boss, but when she decides to give you a bit of a scolding you pick yourself back up and get on with it.

See you all there next year!

I was driving north to meet them on friday night ahead of the wedding saturday when my car gave a little kick and a splutter and coasted to a stop. It did this between two blind corners immediately below the summit of the Rest and be Thankful in the pouring rain and resolutely refused to start. This would be inconvenient at the best of times, but on the way to photograph a wedding? Nightmare.

I have never in my life been so grateful to have mobile reception. And AA cover.

I ended up being towed all the way back to Glasgow in the wee small hours of the morning where I had to wake up my poor dad to borrow his car to get to the wedding. He hardly batted an eyelid – what a guy!

When I finally arrived in Kames, after less than four hours sleep but with plenty of time to spare (and several hours before the trumpeter’s trumpet, but that’s another tale) the discussion was all about where the ceremony would take place. Col and Gem wanted to hold it down on a local beach but there were some fairly heavy showers passing through. In the end, they decided to take a gamble on it. Sometimes gambles pay off, others they don’t.

Did the rain stay off? No.

Did anyone care? Absolutely not.

In all honesty I can’t imagine the day working out more perfectly. Everyone had a brilliant afternoon, getting blown around a bit, getting a little wet from time to time and revelling in every moment.

From a photographer’s point of view it made for a very interesting set of challenges: keeping the front of my lens dry, shooting the ceremony through a standing crowd and even just getting pictures of people rather than umbrellas was tricky…. But when a shot came together, it really came together. I could not possibly have wished for a more magnificent backdrop and the light in-between showers was nothing short of perfect.

Add to that the plainly evident glee on everyone’s faces and it really was the kind of day that is every wedding photographer’s dream.

Given the roller-coaster that the weekend turned into I thought that I’d post a handful of preview photos. They are just very quick-and-dirty edits I made this morning as I backed up all my files from the day (with a bonus shot of the transport arrangements for the families, just for Gem’s dad!). Thanks for the chance to be part of the day guys – I loved every minute of it!

Now, I’m off car shopping.

More will follow shortly, but the shop is now fully functional so feel free to pop in and have a look around.

If you have any feedback (or spot anything that doesn’t work as it should) then let me know in the comments! On that note, I owe a huge debt of thanks to Ruth and Sara for helping me out with all that complicated coding and styling stuff – they have both displayed the patience of saints with me over the last two weeks, so thank you ladies.

I think perhaps a little launch deal might be in order… How about we take 20% off any prints purchased through the site before the 31st May. That’s including Limited Editions! All you have to do is enter the codeword “tripodmonkey” in the Coupon field at the checkout and the discount is applied automatically!

Now, need I point out that people love receiving fine art prints as presents?

Spread the word folks!