It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas … two days late!

This is a story of two parts that come together for the final act. Bear with me…

I have recently spent a couple of days in a local hide photographing a pine marten and red squirrels. Living where I do and getting the odd glimpse of both species, I forget that most people don’t have that privilege and, dare I say it, don’t even know of their existence.

Photography is all about being in the right place at the right time to get the light, and you’ll often hear photographers talk about ‘chasing the light’. But sometimes the weather just doesn’t play ball; you can be handed a grey, flat day when the sun stays firmly hidden. On days like that, it is all too tempting to burrow back down under the duvet, think ’stuff it’ and not go out.

Who remembers the 1980s marketing slogan “Glasgow’s Miles Better” to encourage tourists to visit and industry to locate there? I used to visit Glasgow fairly frequently in the late 1980s/early 1990s, but hardly since.

My journeys with a camera started with a photo trip to St Kilda, a group of islands off the west coast of Scotland that feel as if they are on the edge of the earth.