I am an amateur photographer who was born and raised on the outskirts of Glasgow, Scotland. Currently I work in the IT industry as a Linux Engineer and enjoy my photography mainly as a hobby as a way to destress and see new places.
My first introduction to photography was when I was really young. In the 80’s Coca Cola used to do promotions of free cameras with so many ring pulls… If I remember correctly, it was a Cherry Coke promotion. These were very cheap disposable cameras but they were fun at the time.
In 2001 I went on a trip around the world and I took with me an old Kodak Advantix F600 APS compact film camera and used seventeen rolls of film to record those memories, I have still got all those pictures to this day, with the negatives and the rolls of film also.
A Fujifilm Finepix bridge camera was my next foray into photography, although I found I could not get into photography at this point, I felt it was not for me, maybe because I was in my mid-twenties and I liked my weekends to myself.
While working as an IT support engineer, one of my colleagues introduced me to his Canon DSLR and I liked it so much I decided to buy my first second hand Canon EOS 50D DSLR. I paid £200 for that camera and had to drive all the way to Stonehaven to collect it. My first images that day were at Crathes Castle before going home and starting my real photography journey.
After a few years I noticed that I was getting more serious about my photography, so decided to buy my first brand new camera, a Canon EOS 6D MkII. This camera was really good, and for the first time I was seeing my photography getting better. I got a couple of good images from this camera, my first prints from that camera that are still on my wall today. Although I liked this camera, I always found Canon to be a bit counter intuitive and I never felt confident in understanding the cameras.
Which brings me to my latest camera, the Nikon Z8. This camera for me is near perfection. The menu makes sense, the buttons are also in such a way that for me, I know where the relevant buttons are even when doing night/astro shoots. If only this camera had an articulated screen and GPS then this camera, for me, would be perfection… But I doubt any camera has everything we all want.
Since using the Nikon, I noticed that I enjoy my photography much more and I try and get out at every opportunity that I can.
I am very enthusiastic about this hobby and it has helped me destress after some rough times and kept me relaxed.