I am in the very early stages of an exciting new project! It involves photography and whisky…
There isn’t much more to tell just yet, but once I am a little more into it I will divulge what is going on. If I can get this one completed and it’s end product on the market I will be rather pleased!
Gallery Updates /
Just added quite a few photos to various galleries, trimmed down the “Latest Photos” to some of the more recent images and added a new “Workshops” gallery.
The planned trip to Orkney to work with Margaret Soraya looks to have been cancelled which is a huge disappointment, she is still running the workshop but slow sales means that she is going to take it as a solo trip rather than with help as there just isn’t the margin in it to pay me too. Not to worry though as I am debating putting my own workshop together in Orkney for Spring 2024!
Which brings me onto workshops and tuition in general.
My thoughts at the moment are to launch a 1:1/private group service for 2023 whilst I look to put some more ideas together. I don’t want to take people to the same old places that everyone else uses - I want to do something a little more unique and with my own slant on it. My background is in archaeology originally and I want to weave some of this into my offerings - I love that human and ancient element in the landscape, I love looking for myths, legend and a storied landscape to work in… and I think that would be of interest to a wider audience. We are hoping to have our own accommodation available at some stage, perhaps next year, which would allow us to operate from Drumnadrochit as a base and cover some truly beautiful areas of Scotland which are somewhat less visited by the mainstream photography workshops and tours (although many of these areas are still within striking distance - the Skye Bridge is only an hour away, Torridon and Ullapool area about the same).
Meanwhile I also plan to build the commercial photography business working both in the property and holiday markets as I am now, but perhaps branching more into the world of Corporate Photography too. It is something I can do, and as with everything I bring my own style to it!
All Quiet on the Northern Front /
I have been quietly busy the last couple of weeks, a big hotel job (photos, floorplan, drone work… the whole sherbang) which should be finished to first draft this week has been the main task. A couple of small house shoots as well - but I just haven’t had a moment to get a website update done! I have a few new photos to go up and a lot more to come.
Things got sidetracked a wee bit with a small family crisis (ongoing) and I also redesigned the car at a junction which has really slowed everything down a touch for the moment. But otherwise all good and ever onwards!
The Long Silence /
So… things got a wee bit out of hand for a few weeks there!
Work went crazy, then I had a falling out with the main client… which we have since resolved (I think) - but it was all down to a feeling of being unvalued and under appreciated for just how far out of my way I go for them and the way that I felt I was being treated as a result. I really don’t ask for much, but sometimes you just feel taken advantage of, and this was one of those situations!
On top of all this working towards a resolution though, we went on holiday to Aberfeldy (not exactly a million miles away, granted, but it was nice to have a change of scenery for a few days, followed by working towards the Creative Light Festival with the awesome Margaret Soraya and also my first large direct job which… I have since worked out… I massively under charged for!
Since getting back from holiday and throwing myself into these two new projects though I have been hugely busy and feeling like I am learning quite a lot about my own direction and how to grow the business moving forward. It has been a hugely worthwhile process!
Prepare for a bit of a photo dump!
Back to normal for the next few days - working on property photography, floorplans and a little drone work! But I have ideas for the future, and thoughts to develop. It is all rather exciting!
Being Appreciated /
It’s a tough gig when the people whom you primarily work for just show how little they appreciate the hours that you put in, the dedication that you give to the end client and the rapport that you have built up. The pay rate was always terrible, but it almost made sense with the travel allowance.
Then they told me that I was no longer eligible for that.
Working for agencies has suddenly become a great way to lose a lot of money and I am drastically changing my relationship with them as a result. There is a lot more to come on this matter, but I am working out my next steps both in terms of my own career but also helping those already trapped in this particular situation themselves and to help others coming into the industry from becoming victims of these “businessmen” who don’t really understand either photography or building relationships built on mutual trust and respect.
Price Restructuring - Property /
After a lot of chats with a number of people, and going back over the numbers over the weekend, I have come up with a pricing structure which I am much happier with and that I hope my clients are much happier with too! I want to spend the last quarter of 2022 really pushing to build more direct relationships with clients and build the business in a much more satisfying direction!
I don’t believe in the stack ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap model, I want to provide clients with a bespoke solution that fits their needs, I want to take time over each job for them and not be rushing around to fulfil overly stringent SLAs and cram as many properties into a day as is possible. Spending just a little more time on site is part of this, but spending a whole lot more time on the processing of images creates a considerably better end experience.
As we move into the autumn and winter of this year I think that competition amongst estate agents is going to ramp up, and moving into the new year I suspect this will be the case even more so. Good photography helps you stand out from the crowd, great photography makes you the one to beat! So if you are an agent, give me a call - my new pricing structure is, I think, very competitive and I know that my photography is too!
I shall be out distributing some materials over the coming weeks as I build on the success of the last 12 months.
The Problem With Agencies /
Photography agencies that operate, particularly in real estate, are designed on the urban model of loads of jobs each day that enable a fast turn around. The agency makes a fortune, the photographer makes a living and the estate agents get some pretty average photographs.
It works for some.
Working in this same industry in the Highlands and Islands is a different story. The rates that the agency pay per property are the same (woeful), the travel fees are low too… and since you work as a freelance they get to ignore minimum wage legislation too. I have had more than the odd day that once my costs are taken off (diesel etc)! If I average out my earnings pre-costs for a month of work (which is pretty close to full time) I am earning £10/hr… unfortunately I spend half of that on diesel just to fulfil the workload so I am making £5/hr net.
And yet me clients are expecting high quality, professional photography for that money. They aren’t going to get it though because it isn’t worth my time to actually do a proper job. It is a run and gun at best… although sometimes the house is so lovely, or the owner is so pleasant that I decide that, yes, I will do a proper job and submit some absolute belters… and this is where the next problem arises. The photos that I produce are sent off to another outside agency for “enhancement”. If my information is correct (I was contacted by one of these agencies who said they worked for my main employer) they use a large Indian processing house whose work is… questionable… they attempt to create an HDR image from a single jpg and then slap a fake sky on. The results can range from okay to terrible!
For this service the estate agents are being charged (reportable) around the same rate as I would charge direct, perhaps slightly more, yet if you are paying a photographer that money then you are going to be getting more thoughtful photography, bespoke processing to suit the house and HDR images that are created from 3 RAW files at different exposures to actually produce a true HDR image. Going direct is going to provide considerably better value!
So why do people use agencies?
Anyway, my plan is that over my second year in the industry I want to try and distance myself from the agency work and start getting more direct or sub-contracted work instead. It would be nice to be earning at least minimum wage by next summer!!!!
Psst... Wanna see a full house shoot? /
I often just post up a few choice images from a house shoot rather than the full thing. Just for a change here is a full shoot from a lovely wee house on the edge of Dingwall from Friday:
Multiple angles, multiple rooms - this is what I supply to the agency whom then supply the same photos to the estate agents. The ones they pick are then “enhanced” (and I use that work guardedly) to the final versions that go onto the web and into the brochure.
A Plan! /
So… today I had a couple of ideas for project themes in order to go for a professional qualification, and I have settled on two ideas.
The first is easiest to achieve, and I think - potentially - quite “nice”. Shoot a portrait of each of my real estate photography jobs of the owner hopefully expressing how they feel about leaving the place and moving on to whatever awaits them. I could set off on this pretty much straight away with minimal forward planning and I like the idea as it would be a portrait that tells a story.
The second thought is a little more up my street, and requires a lot more planning! Ancient Landscapes of the Broch People. I love brochs, always have done… always will. I spent so much of my childhood climbing around the Broch of Gurness (amongst other Orcadian examples) that they have become a part of me. There are loads within fairly easy reach of here, and many are set within dramatic landscapes. This idea really appeals to me, but it would take longer.
So my thought it that I will probably just do both! If I can put the time and effort in that would hopefully see me up the first 2 rungs of the ladder which would just leave “the big one” and I think that project would have to be a real passion piece.
Due to a lack of handy broch photos on my hard drive just now I will offer up a heather clad hillside instead!
Busy Bee /
The last few days have been busy, not particularly productive, but busy!
I have shot a couple of houses, and it looks like things are building up again with the run up to the autumn rush… I am getting this inkling that we may see a busy winter too, but perhaps not for particularly good reasons. The cost of living crisis and fuel poverty are going to bite hard in the Highlands and I can sense there may be a bit of an exodus (if we are lucky) or a vastly increased mortality rate if we are not. The country has not really recovered from the pandemic (which is also still raging but largely forgotten now) as we are plunged into a period of high inflation, high fuel costs and low wages. It is going to be a tough winter, I am just hoping that we get a mild one.
There are so many thoughts and ideas running through my head at the moment of things I want to do, projects I want to start and business ventures to pursue that I really need to get some focus and start embarking on one or two of them! But for now I just wanted to announce the new logo that we had designed by Blackisle Graphics that will start to make it’s way onto all our new promotional material as the old stuff runs out!
Finally! /
Yes, I think I have finally caught up with myself after last weekend!
2 videos edited - each from over 100Gb of raw footage and up to 4 separate cameras!
Well over 500 stills sorted, some editing but largely straight from camera (the Nikon Zs are that good that I didn’t feel I needed to do all that much to most the images). I may get a few that need a tweak requested but generally really happy with the native results out of camera!
3 houses photographed
1 family day out to go crab fishing
Yes… it has certainly been a busy old week! Looking forward to getting back to normal next week, and hopefully the new business logo will be ready too!
(and yes, the Indiana Jones font will be going…. probably)
I will try and get a little time to edit the two long videos down into 1 much shorter highlight reel too which can then go onto my own feeds and which I can share here as another new showcase. It has been an interesting experience which has brought some shortcomings in my set up to light through stress testing everything! Having previously only worked on multiple short clips edited together into one longer finished article running very long (30 minute) continuous segments really did show where I need to upgrade! I also plan on adding some additional cameras for future!
More later. But tomorrow is Monday and I am back into the fray! I will also try and update the latest images this week as I have a few new ones to go up!
I was doing oh so well.... /
Yes, my updates have dropped off over the last few days!
I was putting a lot of time into the initial video edit of the Clan Gathering which took most of my time early in the week, and it also brought my system to it’s knees! The last few days have been spent reconfiguring everything to get back up and running as well as possible whilst starting to look into a replacement. I have been talking about going back to a desktop for ages and I think that time is pretty much upon me now, but I am going to try and put it off for a little longer yet if I can (there are new chipsets on the horizon which will either make a lot of sense or reduce the price of existing options perhaps!)
I have sorted out a replacement tyre for the busted one (I can’t recall if I mentioned that, but I nearly put a hole through the sidewall of a front tyre so that needs replaced whilst I await the new Toyota…. if it ever comes!) , there was a little job on which was a bit of a challenge to find and today has been largely spent re-organising my office/stuido space into something more fitting!
Tomorrow is new tyre day, followed by a job in Inverness… it is very quiet work wise at the moment, particularly on the housing side of things. Then I think I have a few days when I can get stuck into the second day of the Clan Gathering video edit and then the mountain of stills! I have finally admitted that I need a professional subscription to WeTransfer too because the files I am sending Stateside are getting huge!
Once I have done the official edits I will re-edit everything into a highlights reel which I will also post on my own pages, so watch this space if you are interested in such Highland traditions!
Busy Weekend /
This weekend I have been busy shooting the inauguration of the new Clan Chief of Clan McBain, stills and video. It has been hectic, hard work but really interesting and fun work!
I still have loads to do, hundreds of stills to work through and over 100Gb of film (probably pushing towards 200Gb!) which I will start on over the coming days.
But for now here are a couple of shots from the weekend, one each day.
Tonight I am going to quickly catch up with the socials posting - then kick back and chill as best as I can! I am utterly exhausted!
New Video Potential /
Just a quick one - I have added a gimbal to my video kit for those steady-cam type shoots! Hopefully this will allow me to explore some new opportunities - I may add a boom soon too as sometimes a drone style shot would be great, but the logistics make it impossible!
Back to Health /
No… not me!
Magnus the kitten is back to his old troublesome ways after a brief but potentially desperate illness. It was touch and go at one stage, but his weight is back up to 100g above what it was before he got ill! We have pushed his neutering back by a month to give him a little more recovery time though as he was originally scheduled in for 18th August.
It is great to see the wee furball back to his old, irritating, antics though.
Otherwise not much doing today - I haven’t really been pushing too hard this week to be fair as we only have another week and a bit left before the boys go back to school and I have a massive job on for this weekend - a two day event to shoot.
Tomorrow it is my turn to see the doctors and try and get someone to listen to me regarding the 5 years of permanent sciatica and what, if anything, I can do about it… or whether we are looking down the road towards blue badges and ever reducing mobility. Then into Inverness for at least one shoot, perhaps sneaking a second one in if the first goes well… then home to build a really annoyingly difficult trampoline for the boys (particularly Angus).
If things stay quiet after schools go back I may make a start on the first of my big projects. Probably mostly reconnaissance and test shots to begin with as I wait for the better light and colours that come with the shift into autumn.
PS. I am also available for animal/pet portrait photography!
(Early) Thoughts on the Nikon Z /
I have been shooting with Nikons for a long, long time. I “borrowed” my big brothers F301 back in the mid 1980s so much that he got very, very annoyed and my Dad had to get me my own SLR… it wasn’t a Nikon but a Fuji with a broken light meter. I loved it, I learned a lot with it and it’s scratched and battered 50mm lens. When I eventually bought my own camera some years later it was back to Nikon. Ish. Yes, in 1994 I bought a Nikormat FT3 from 1977 - an absolute beast of a camera that has been around the world several times. I even lent it to my brother at one stage in a reversal of fortunes! I still have it, somewhere… perhaps I will put a film through for old times sake! Despite a brief dalliance with Canon and getting sidetracked by the Olympus OM System and Fujifilm, I have stuck with Nikon for most of my life.
A few months ago I decided to dip a toe in the Nikon Z waters with a used Z6 mk II, 14-30 f4 and 24-70 f4 lenses. Most of my work of late has been in real estate, but I kept the D850 and all the years worth of Nikon lenses to hand incase any other work came along that needed large file sizes. The little Z has about half of the resolution of the D850, but despite… or perhaps because of this… it fitted perfectly into the brief for my day to day work on property sales.
The smaller image size certainly helped speed up my workflow , which has been of huge benefit, but in the field it is the handling of this little camera that really shone. The live-view focus was a major bugbear when I was using the D850 for shooting houses, particularly in bathrooms with the multitude of reflective surfaces it would often struggle to lock on and rendered several shoots sub-par when a misfocus wasn’t noticed until later. Add in the inbody stabalisation and I can now do without the tripod for “standard” shoots (I still use it on HDR/Natural light work) and a form factor that facilitates a non standard grip style when shooting low (I wrap my hand around the body and work the shutter with my thumb!) and it means I am able to work through a property very quickly with absolutely flawless results.
Once I was confident that I was going to stick with the Z series rather than switching to the big Fujifilm GFX which was “Option B” I decided to add a 70-200 f2.8, an absolutely stunning lens that allows me to focus in on details, produce better portraits and also work landscapes as I often like to shoot in the medium to long telephoto range in order to compress the perspective for more dramatic results in upland areas. I also began the process of deciding whether to sell the D850 and if so what to replace it with… a Z9, wait for the fabled Z8, wait to see if a Z7 mk III would emerge or just get on with it and buy a Z7 mk II which does, after all, use the same (or a very similar) sensor to the D850 I love. After some long deliberation I decided to go with the Z7 II, a barely used example was available up the road in Ffordes so I traded my D850, almost all my F mount lenses, my Fujifilm X-T3 and all of it’s lenses and accessories against the sibling of my Z6 II. I also added an absolutely fantastic lens - the 24-70 f2.8 - as a general purpose “standard” zoom and an FTZ adaptor so that my existing 200-500 f5.6 and 50mm f1.4 (which I may be alone in loving) could live on. After an evening with the manual I have both cameras set up to function the same as one another so should be able to seamlessly switch from one to the other. To keep me on track the Z6II has a SmallRig L bracket in grey and the Z7II has a 3 Legged Thing Zelda bracket in copper! I now have the full functionality lens wise that I had between systems in the past (from 14mm - 500mm covered), I have a cracking mid resolution body and another that gives me the same 48MP files I got from the D850 but in a smaller package with much, much better optics.
And there are only a few short weeks until the good light starts to come back too! Once I have started working with the Z7 more for the work that I love doing most I will do a proper review. But for the moment here is a test shot using the big 500mm out of my office window!
We Are Fortunate! /
Today I have been shooting in Inverness, a small job on Redwood Avenue on the southern edge of the city - and only my second on that road, and in that locale! It was a lovely house with lovely owners - plus kids and grandchildren making it a very, very busy dwelling! Everyone vanished as I started work though and slowly reoccupied rooms as they were finished.
It doesn’t always go so smoothly!
I am hoping to start doing a little more video work over the next few weeks, I should try and do one on a typical working day as part of that drive - a Vlog as opposed to a Blog!
Anyway, lovely as the house and it’s occupants were it was so therapeutic to get out the car back home and just take a moment to enjoy the view as a squall of rain ran down the Great Glen towards Inverness whilst we remained under sunny blue skies!
The Life and Times of a "Less Able" Photographer /
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!
Galleries are GO! /
I know I have been talking about making the gallery sales live for… well… a long time. Finally they are up and running though!
I have been soul searching about how best to do it and decided that I am just going to go with one print size, framed and mounted, for both traditional format prints and panoramics. They are quite large, but not excessively so and are not sold from stock but printed and made to order - so it takes a little time!
I will try and cycle the prints available on a fairly regular basis so there will always be new things coming up, whilst older prints may drop off over time and may or may not return! I was going to do limited editions but I think that this is a better way - so they are limited by time rather than volume!
Enjoy!
Welcome to our new website! /
This is where you will find out about what we have going on, probably some random musings and discussions about photography, drones and Scotland.
There is a lot going on just now as we rapidly approach the first anniversary of “going pro” as a full-time photographer, the photographs and videos throughout the website will be regularly changed as I am trying to keep everything as current as possible. I may include my “photo a day” project in the blog from next year (be warned, a lot of those photographs are entirely random snaps from a phone cam illustrating daily life up here in the Highlands.
I have a couple of big projects lining up for next year, including at least one true “vanity project” - I have several that I have been mulling over embarking on and I think the first should started fairly soon, I just can’t decide if I should begin in the Autumn or in the New Year!
Finally, I have broken off the previous incarnation of the websites focus on my wife’s business as that edges towards becoming a reality as it will be an entity in it’s own right and, really, completely disconnected from what I am doing… so it really deserves it’s own space!
There are a few more changes to come with Wayward Spirit over the coming weeks though, including a proper, professional, new look and logo!
I plan to add a whole lot more to the gallery over the next few weeks - I am editing some photographs specifically for this purpose, and in the future we will get back to offering workshops again - once we have everything else up and running anyway so that you have somewhere to stay if we are running from HQ.
Year 1 has been about establishing ourselves as a working pro in the region, I think this has been pretty well achieved. Year 2 is all about growing our reputation and clientele further and building on the solid foundations of our inaugural 12 months. I am excited to see how things develop, what projects I can get involved with and where we go from here!