On Friday I am admitting defeat… kind of.
I am going to see the doctor to discuss my ongoing mobility issues of the last few years to see if there is anything I can actually do about it, or whether the blue badge is going to become a reality at some stage - or even if I should have had one already!
5 years ago I was “T-Boned” in Ambleside by a little old lady who didn’t realise that you were supposed to give way at roundabouts to traffic driving around them. It was a tight spot, I was fully rotated in my seat to look up “The Struggle”, a small lane off at around 5 O’clock from my position and with poor visibility due to the building jutting out infront. The impact wasn’t particularly severe, and her Honda Jazz was no match for my Nissan Navara, but due to my positioning it bounced my spine and hips beyond their natural stop point causing a disc to prolapse and, it turns out, my hips to be rotated and tilted which has led to my spine also being twisted and rotated. I now have one leg an inch shorter than the other and permanent sciatic pain.
This was the moment that my career as an engineer and my plans to take over the family engineering firm came to a very abrupt halt. I tried to keep going for a little longer but when you can’t lift, can’t stoop and struggle on rough terrain a job working with rural sewage systems was, quite frankly, impossible. We were living in the Lake District, which is not a cheap place to be, and needed to think of “Plan B” rather fast.
I had always harboured dreams of going full time as a professional photographer having dabbled in the semi-pro market for some time, made a little here and there to help fund my love of landscape photography. The Lake District prices precluded trying to set up there, and our mortgage was a killer, plus the market is saturated, so we decided to head for home, back over the border and start afresh.
We had absolutely no idea where we were going! The initial plan was to aim for the central belt where there is more potential work and we have plenty of friends and family. The nice areas were too expensive, the less nice areas were… less nice. So we pushed to Stirling, which was too expensive. So was Perth and Pitlochry. We were faced with the choice of head further north into the Highlands, east to Angus or way out west into Argyll. We found a few options near Inverness so as soon as Lockdown 1 lifted we started our search and settled on an old steading just outside Drumnadrochit. Turns out we couldn’t have picked a better place even if we had done our research as the schools are some of the best in the country!
From landing it took about 9 months to pick up some regular work, just some agency photography for estate agents. The pay rates were terrible and being freelance they can get away with sub minimum wage after travel time and expenses come off. Still, I was out… I was working… and we had something coming in! This has allowed me to get to know the area though, I have started to build a reputation and a few more doors have opened up so that I am starting to hope that the next year (year 3 of being here) will be when everything starts to fall into place. I have had some early success though in that I won the Property Photography of the Year Award for 2021 and have done some work for the National Trust for Scotland at Culloden Battlefield.
The photography I love, though, is still not quite at the point of working out financially. Landscape and travel is difficult when you can’t walk far! This has combined with fuel prices keeping me local and limited my possibilities so far. However, I have a solution or two!
First up has been the drone. I am a fully qualified commercial drone pilot and have some pretty capable kit at my disposal, from the small DJI Air 2 to the still compact DJI Mavic 2 Pro and up to the big beast - a DJI Inspire 2. These are fantastic tools in the arsenal of a photographer with restricted mobility. I can set up somewhere relatively comfortable and then use the drone to cover the harder ground and get where I can’t, or at least can’t without some difficulty. I tend to use the drone as a remote camera (yes, I know that is what it is - but bear with me), often shooting from low to very low altitudes as though I was using a traditional tripod. Even when I go high it is often not "that high, sometimes shooting from around first or second floor window height. Yes, I will get the odd shot I like from 400 feet, but generally speaking I like the dynamism of a lower altitude.
My second technique keeps me local, but opens up the terrain more.
I bought an electric bike! An eMTB to be more specific - the pedal assist makes hills a breeze and has worked wonders to stop the jarring motion when the terrain changes that caused havoc to my spine! I haven’t used it much as yet since we hit the school holidays not long after it arrived, but I plan to use it much more widely once time frees up a little! This will hopefully open up some of the more distant landscapes in the locality, those that I can’t drive to, and to which walking would just cause too much discomfort to be viable. So far I have only ridden in my very local woodlands, but it was much easier than walking along the same route. I still need to work out how best to carry my kit, but I think I have a Lowe Pro Photosport backpack someplace in storage which should be ideal! Once I have some confidence and fitness back I plan to take the bike out in the car and then use it to access remote places further away! It really is a game changer, if I was more incapacitated than I am then I think the new range of offroad wheelchairs could offer a similar degree of freedom.
The final piece of the jigsaw is still to be realised, but the order is in and I am awaiting a delivery in the autumn. With the cost of fuel being such an issue I have made the leap and ordered an EV, an electric car. The cost of this will be broadly similar to buying a used hybrid and pouring petrol into it to cover my working day, but it does mean cheaper transport for those personal projects which will open up the whole region to me once more! This isn’t just relevant to the mobility challenged, true, all of us are facing tough times as prices in general soar and fuel prices in particular, but combined with the bike and drones it will open up some great possibilities. It will also allow me to get to more “roadside” locations - which is something I intend to build a whole project around in the coming months! I am even looking at the idea of creating a workshop specifically for those struggling with mobility where all locations will be as close to a parking area as possible so that I can open up great photography to those who feel excluded at present.
For now though, I am awaiting a doctor’s appointment and seeing where I go from here. I would love to get my legs back to fully functional again, my health has deteriorated massively since the accident… although I am hoping that the eMTB helps to reverse that trend over the next few months!