There is one particular field that keeps catching my eye, and I keep saying out loud to Sofia, on her school run, I must bring my camera and photograph that field. She will be relieved that today, after weeks of saying this to her, I finally took my camera out and captured it.

This particular field is full of bales of hay, all rolled up tightly and strewn across the landscape for as far as the eye can see. From my vantage point, the bales spread out towards and onto a gently sloping hill. The combination of the land’s natural beauty along with the geometric man-made shapes covering it get my creative juices flowing. It’s a veritable playground of compositional possibilities. Fortunately, the sun came out on this, the last day of August, and the farmers were kind enough to have not removed all the hay.

Recording the land in Perthshire, whether its natural beauty or the way in which man works with it, is part of an ongoing project of mine to document ‘The Land’.

Now I know that a lot of people will say that photos should be edited to within an inch of perfection, but I’m going to be brutally honest now and say, I really don’t enjoy spending any more time than I have to editing photos. For me, the joy is in seeing, not in tweaking. So these photos are all straight out of camera black and whites from my Nikon Z8 set to the Monochrome profile. I retain the raw files too, just in case one of the JPEGs doesn’t cut it, but in this case, I got the exposure pretty close in camera and simply adjusted the endpoints and cropped some shots to a 16:9 aspect ratio where I felt it worked best.

It’s a place where the solitude and natural beauty really speak to me. It feels like the Scottish Highlands that my mind goes to when I look back on my younger years. Wild hills, huge bodies of water and the feeling that this place belongs to nature and not to us. You can see the video I shot there this week below.

But I thought it would be interesting to break down a few of the photos I took there during the harsh mid day light to see what worked, what didn’t and give an insight in to how I work. Firstly, a bit of context as to why I shot how I did. I chose black and white for the majority of shots, only switching to color when I felt the color actually added something to the photo. I find myself predominantly working in black and white these days, those of you who have read my previous articles will know why. I still see the beauty around me everywhere, but it feels tainted by at the moment. I’m trying to work through that and photography, as always is my crutch.

Let’s start out with this black and white shot of the dam wall and water tower at Loch Turret. I’ve marked up the photos. Green are the things that work well, yellow shows the compositional guide such as the rule of thirds or golden ratio and Red highlights the problems or mistakes.

Lighting & Exposure

The harsh light creates shadows that help add depth, particularly in black and white images. The overall exposure works well, with one caveat to come later.

What Worked Well

• Green A: I Positioned myself and composed the image to create a triangle shape from the rocks pointing further into the frame, helping to draw the eye through the photo.
• Green B: I Used the dam wall to create strong converging lines that draw the eye deeper into the photo.
• Yellow: The main subject is placed on one of the intersecting lines using the rule of thirds, giving it prominent attention and balancing the photo. It is placed on the opposite side of the dominant dam wall to help achieve balance.

Room for Improvement & Critiques

• Red A: The top of the dam wall was in deep shadow; even after lifting the shadows, it remains slightly distracting and draws the eye away from the main elements. The positioning is also uncomfortable, running into the photo about 3/4 of the way up from the bottom, which throws off the geometric balance.
• Red B: The rock is cut off so doesnt sit naturally, neither fully in the frame, nor removed entirely.
• Red C: Although the converging lines of the dam wall draw the eye deeper into the image, ideally they would have run toward the water tower.

Conclusion

• Overall, I like the photo, but with a little more thought and time, perhaps I could have lined up the elements in the scene to work even better together to create a stronger, more focused composition.

Loch Turret: The First Frame That Didn’t Work

This was the opening shot in the video, and I knew right away that it simply didn’t work but as I was in position for the video clip, I took it anyway. Rather than trying to force it, I moved positions, but it’s worth looking at why this composition fell flat:

• Red A (The Rocks): The foreground rocks are naturally drawing the eye away from the subject (the water tower) and dragging it toward the dam wall instead.
• Red B (The Dam Wall): While the dam wall is less prominent here than in other frames, the deep blocked shadows and awkward placement still pull the eye away from the rest of the scene.
• Red C (Mountain Peak): The highest peak of the background mountain sits dead center in the frame, creating imbalance.
• Red D (The Water Tower): The main subject is stranded in “no man’s land.” It isn’t centered with intent to anchor the frame, nor is it placed on any of the rule-of-thirds intersecting lines to create balance.

There are no green notes on this one—sometimes a composition just doesn’t work.

This is the frame I shot after trying to build a composition that worked better than the first image. When I’m shooting, I tend to instinctively recognise the issues without consciously diagnosing them right away. This image works much better than the first and feels significantly more balanced.

• What worked:
  • Green A (Foreground Rocks): I positioned myself and framed the shot so that the foreground rocks converge directly toward the main subject (the water tower).
  • Green B (Mountain Ridgeline): The background mountains now feel balanced, with a natural flow from left to right that leads your eye to explore the hilltops. Their placement feels right, with enough sky above them to provide proper environmental context.
  • Green C (The Dam Wall): The dam wall that caused issues in the previous photos has now been minimized by the angle of the shot, removing it as a heavy, distracting element.
  • Yellow (Subject Placement): The main subject is now placed purposefully, allowing the eye to come to a natural rest on it after being led around the various elements of the frame.
• The Trade-Off: In an ideal world, the subject could feature more prominently by being larger within the frame. I could have achieved this by using a longer focal length to compress the elements together, but doing so would have made it impossible to include the foreground rocks in the same way. Every shot is a compromise and a balance.

All of the photos here, and in the video are completely uncropped in post. I tend to prefer to try and get things right in camera but of course, if you get back home and can see an issue, sometimes the resolution of the Nikon Z8 can help out and allow you to crop distracting elements out of the frame. What it can’t do is change the position of elements, relative to each other after you’ve taken the shot.

And I’ve always run into the same fundamental problem.

I’m a stills photographer first. I’ve always felt that video is a useful medium to showcase my photography, but I’ve never quite worked out the correct format for doing it. I’ve leaned into gear reviews, basic vlogs, and documentary-style videos, but I’ve always considered video an inconvenience when I’m out trying to do both. Trying to capture video seriously impacted my ability to get what I considered good photos.

To counter that, I tried POV with a lightweight action camera so I could just run video in the background without thought while focusing on my stills. I was never happy with the results. Not technically, but in how the video represented the act of photography. It never met the vision I had in my mind of what my videos should look like and convey.

A couple of years ago, everyone was raving about the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 as giving great quality while minimizing friction. Even up until last week, I shot using it as my primary video camera. It really does make things easier when you’re a photographer first: I can slip it in my pocket, pull it out at a second’s notice, and because it’s on a gimbal, the footage is smooth. The quality is decent, and it can quickly flip from forward-facing to backward-facing. I have no complaints about it—it does exactly what it says on the tin.

But when I look through the footage, it just doesn’t match my vision.

The video coming from it looks very digital, stuck at the same focal length, with a strange floating feeling due to the gimbal. I also had some issues with micro-jitters and focus hunting during shots. All of these issues I’m sure have fixes, but given the final look of the image, I simply didn’t want to spend the time hunting them down.

During last week’s walk at Knock of Crieff, I shot just a handful of clips with my Nikon Z8 in 4K 30 using the standard picture profile. Seeing those clips side by side with the Pocket 3 footage, the difference jumped right out at me. Everything felt more natural, more organic, and infinitely closer to the feel I produce with my stills photography.

After my recent gear sell-off, I settled on keeping my Nikon Z8 and Z6III—the latter specifically for video and as a backup stills body. But I had reservations. From past experience, I know that anything that creates friction in my video process is likely to lead to me simply not recording as many clips as I need, or abandoning the video entirely.

Would the weight put me off? Would having to shoot dual video and stills become irritating? Would the dual-body approach impede my mind from getting the photos I’m actually out there for?

Now, here’s the thing. I always hear about LOG footage being considerably better than straight-out-of-camera profiles. In the back of my mind, I know this is true. But I’m not a colorist. I can work with raw photo files all day and know my way around image processing to the point that it’s second nature.

Yet, I’ve had many attempts in the past at shooting LOG video, and I always ended up butchering the grade and getting worse results than the standard in-camera profiles.

The problem is that there are so many conflicting opinions online about the process of color grading. There are countless different techniques that pull you straight down a rabbit hole of contradictory advice: Use the official LUT. No, grade it from scratch yourself. LOG is noisier, it’s not worth it. Use nodes—build a complicated node tree. Put the LUT at the start of your node tree! No, put it last.

Now, the footage straight out of the Nikon Z6III and Z8 using their Neutral and Standard profiles does look good, but it doesn’t maximize dynamic range because the contrast is baked right into the file. Sometimes that results in crushed blacks and a slightly digital look that I couldn’t help but feel wasn’t optimal. I knew LOG would give me the flexibility to create a more organic-looking video, so I had this nagging voice telling me I finally needed to sort out this whole LOG puzzle.

I spent many hours last week doing just that, and set out yesterday to put everything into practice.

If I’m going to do video regularly—which I am—I don’t want to live with that constant feeling of disappointment when the final result doesn’t match my vision. I’d noticed technical issues in my previous videos: micro-jitters from handholding, focus hunting, and awkward framing. I decided that if I’m going to do video, I need to do it properly.

And that means separating my video body from my stills body and giving them both equal weight.

It means not treating video as an inconvenience I have to tolerate, but putting the same thought and effort into it as my photography. It means bringing the gear needed to get the quality to match what I see in my mind. Ultimately, it meant tweaking every single thing—from testing mic setups to finally giving in and packing a tripod and fluid head on my hill walk.

For someone who has often espoused the benefits of a minimalist, lightweight setup, it was quite the mental leap.

This week’s trip was intended to test whether that extra weight and effort are actually worth it, and whether this workflow is right for me.

And here’s the surprising bit…

Once I changed my mindset to giving video equal weighting—in fact, priority weighting, since my video skills need more work than my stills do—I actually started to enjoy the process.

This was not a lightweight setup. I had my 30L backpack, which contained a waterproof jacket, fleece, lunch, and a drink, as well as basic essentials like a compass and first-aid kit. It also held my 85mm f/1.8 S lens wrapped in a sock and stuffed in a dry bag, along with audio gear, spare batteries, and a camera cleaning kit. Clipped to the strap was my Nikon Z8 paired with the 24-120mm f/4.

On top of that, I carried my Leofoto LM364-C carbon-fiber tripod, a Sachtler Ace XL fluid head, and the Nikon Z6III with the 14-30mm f/4 S mounted to it.

In the past, one of the main friction points I found with video was the constant setup: mounting the camera to the tripod, attaching mics, checking audio levels. So I went out yesterday with the intention to avoid most of that by simply sticking the Z6III on the tripod, leaving it there all day, and carrying the whole rig across my shoulder.

Was it heavy? Yes, if you count the kilograms. But was it restrictive? Not really.

I’m not some super-fit 20-year-old. I’m 44, my right shoulder hurts, and I’m building my fitness back up naturally through walking after a sedentary decade living in the Philippines with little exercise and a bad diet. I’m not particularly overweight, but my daughter Sofia does like to point out that I have a belly.

Yet I found the whole setup surprisingly friction-free in terms of workflow and weight. With the Z8 clipped to my Capture Clip, I could simply place the video rig down and shoot stills. When I wanted to switch to video, I could quickly re-seat the Z8 and be hands-free to focus entirely on motion.

I walked about 8km around Loch Turret. It was only on the final stretch home—where I had to rush back for about 2.5km non-stop because I was late picking Sofia up from school—that I felt a little discomfort across my shoulder from carrying the tripod and Z6III. I changed its position a couple of times on the walk back, switched shoulders at one point, and it wasn’t too bad.

The thing is, once I checked the initial video clips and saw how great they looked right there on the back of the screen, that was all the motivation I needed. It pushed me to shoot way more clips and angles than I normally would, and to actually think about how to convey what I’m doing in a video format.

And because I have so many years of stills experience, I found I was still able to get photos I was happy with in a very short time. One did not negatively impact the other in the way I used to feel it did.

Once I got home and viewed the LOG footage, running it through my simple workflow to bring the color back to a Rec. 709 look for viewing, the results instantly confirmed it: this setup, and this way of working, is worth the slight inconvenience of carrying a bit more gear. It resulted in me capturing more coverage, getting better-looking clips, and ultimately, it’s going to get me much closer to using video the way I envision to showcase my photography.

Now, could I just use one camera and make the Z8 pull double duty?

Absolutely. But the mental friction that adds is simply too much. I know I would miss both photos and video clips because it would require constantly removing the camera from the tripod to shoot stills, or vice versa—resulting in me doing both much less often. It would mean constantly switching camera settings between stills and video mode (not a massive deal, but another small point of friction), and my suspicion is I’d end up heavily prioritizing one format over the other out of sheer annoyance.

Is a single-body approach doable? Absolutely, but…

I’ve always been of the opinion that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. My mum instilled that in me. As I’ve got older, I’ve realized there are no real shortcuts in life. If you want the results, you have to be prepared to put in the effort and the work. I think that goes for content creation, photography, video, and every aspect of life. In today’s age of instant gratification, this middle-aged stills photographer is quite happy to put in the work before any rewards. I’m not quite there yet but for the first time ever, with video, I see the way forward.

At the time, I was living out in the Philippines. It was too hot for my fair-skinned European biology to stand around waiting for the light in that kind of oppressive heat. I was mostly shooting candid street and travel photography, so I decided to simplify my kit down to what actually suited my environment and the work I was actually doing. I longed to shoot landscapes again, to pursue wildlife, but the reality was that in the environment I found myself in, it wasn’t going to happen. As much as I wanted my dreams to justify keeping the gear, the reality was that I had a huge pile of money tied up in equipment that wasn’t being used. I sold everything and settled on a Fujifilm kit.

But those dreams never died, and neither did the itch—GAS returned. In this article, I am going to break down what I think led to this relapse, and how—having simplified once again down to one system, alongside several vital mindset shifts—I plan to make it stick this time.

How I got here…. Again.

I’ll be honest, I feel like somewhat of a hypocrite writing this article having declared two years ago that I’d moved beyond GAS. But hear me out, because I’m going to work through my own thought process and logic and lay everything bare, in the hope that it makes sense and may be useful to other photographers.

Why I had GAS

As a photographer, I see, I envision, I plan shots. That naturally leads me to envision what a new camera or lens can give me. It leads to thoughts such as: If I just had more dynamic range, my shots might be better; maybe a larger sensor will suddenly transform my images; that prime will allow me to create shots I can’t now; that new AF system will help me become a wildlife photographer; or, I simply need another focal length to ensure I can cover subjects X, Y, and Z as I don’t want to be caught short in the moment.

Next is my own personal situation. When I was living in the Philippines, it was difficult—10 years living in a different culture and environment from the one that I grew up in, oppressive heat, poor infrastructure, different cultural norms, and a totally different sense of humor, as well as serious marital issues, led to me feeling quite despondent. I felt trapped by my environment and situation, with no obvious path forward. I clung on to my dreams of returning to landscape photography and pursuing wildlife photography, and buying that gear felt like a step closer to making it happen.

The truth is, I wasn’t really looking for more gear; I was looking for happiness, contentment, and a way to move towards making my dreams a reality, and the gear was a physical manifestation of that pursuit. It gave me hope, it gave me a short-term buzz that the dream was still alive—and then, when I re-started this website in June 2025, it gave me the absolute justification to buy more gear because now it was supposedly for “work” and income.

The website became a viable business and, when our developmental concerns for my youngest daughter Izzy arose last year, it enabled me to move us all to the UK to access the support that we knew she needed.

But here is the truth from a photographer who has owned compact cameras, Micro Four Thirds, APS-C, Full Frame, and Medium Format systems all at the same time: not one piece of equipment changed my photography in any meaningful way.

Yes, medium format rendering was nice. Yes, the portability and computational tricks of my OM System cameras were nice to have. Yes, those incredible Fuji prime lenses and tactile dials felt wonderful to use, and yes, the AF of the Nikon Z system meant I had a fighting chance of capturing wildlife shots. But beyond my own way of seeing, beyond the basic kit of what I actually needed, the gear simply acted to cloud my vision and purpose.

Every single camera system I owned was capable of doing what I needed and producing professional-quality work if the person behind the camera was good enough. I realized that everything about buying new gear was an excuse. An excuse for me not to perform, not to chase my real dream, an excuse for my failures in life and in photography.

There are, of course, certain items that you need. If you are genuinely shooting wildlife, a good AF system is essential. If you are shooting landscapes, decent focal length coverage is needed. But when you take a look at what you shoot—and as your photography, style, and vision mature—you come to realize that you tend to shoot in a particular way and that it actually takes very little gear to achieve. Now, I’m not saying gear isn’t needed; I can hardly talk when I mainly shoot landscapes and family photography these days and have kept my Nikon Z8 because it also allows me to pursue wildlife photography. But I have sold off every other camera system by looking at what it is I actually want to shoot, what I realistically have the capacity to shoot given my location, available time, and skill level, and what I intend to do with the final images, and chosen the system that best meets my needs.

So what brought on my desire to downsize?

As those of you who have read previous articles here know, several factors have brought all this to a head for me. The financial constraints of chasing this gear treadmill led to me questioning the very viability of the business model I was pursuing. Buying in camera gear to review is expensive; I don’t get freebies from brands—nor do I want them—but we are talking about spending thousands of dollars per year just to keep up with the tech cycle. Secondly, AI is, in my opinion, starting to answer the basic questions that people are often looking for when searching for reviews of a particular piece of gear. That is only going to continue, which eats into the traffic available to independent photographers like me. In turn, I’d be fighting for an ever-smaller piece of the pie, so it’s not a viable long-term strategy, although still a profitable one in the short to medium term.

But more importantly than that, the recent upheaval in my personal life, with Izzy heading back to the Philippines, has had me questioning everything. Do I really want to go out and shoot for reviews? Is this what I actually want to do? Does it give me contentment? Does it encourage me to photograph in the way I want? Is it even a creative life when I’m tied into search algorithms, brand marketing, and feeding the consumerist machine that I naturally feel inclined in every other aspect of my life to rail against?

I think you can guess what answer I found when doing a lot of soul searching lately.

So how do you also jump off that GAS treadmill?

It’s not easy to do with the pressures of being a photographer, whether amateur or professional. Social media puts gear in front of us more than ever, often more than the photography itself. We are constantly fed a narrative that in order to compete, we have to keep up, buy the latest gear, or we are fed the fear that we are missing out if we don’t have that f/1.2 prime or the latest face-tracking autofocus.

The truth is that every camera in the mid-to-pro-level space since my Canon 5D Mark II is good enough to produce images that will meet all but the most stringent professional image quality requirements—and if you are subject to those, you likely already know exactly what gear you need. Certainly, every mirrorless camera in the last two to three generations is already good enough for general photography in terms of autofocus. Almost all mirrorless lenses produced in the last five years are more than sharp enough to print 30×20-inch prints of exceptional quality, and are beyond anything you would ever need for social media or your own marketing.

So the question becomes more personal than is this camera or lens good enough? For general photography in 2026, they almost all are, from midrange Micro Four Thirds cameras all the way through to Fuji GFX medium format. The question becomes:

• What type of photography do I want to do?
• How much am I prepared to spend in order to do it?
• What is the end goal of the photos that I am going to create?
• What compromises am I willing to accept in selecting the right gear for me?

If you can answer those questions honestly, then all the noise surrounding the latest and greatest iteration of the Sony A7 Mark One Million becomes irrelevant, because you will have selected a camera that covers your actual needs. Any future upgrade really becomes optional—a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have.

As a more mature photographer—in age, at least—I think that most photographers, given disposable income, go through a phase of buying gear. But if you look at many established, high-level photographers, you will notice a trend. They are not chasing gear. They are not hoarding gear. They don’t carry a huge bag full of every single lens possible. They use one or two camera bodies and a small selection of lenses that do everything they need and fit their style. They cannot be marketed to because they have passed the stage of having imposter syndrome; they are established, and have a vision and a way of working that gives them the confidence not to chase validation through owning the latest equipment. They simply don’t need it.

And so someone like myself can learn a lot by simply watching established photographers whom I respect, focusing on vision, goals, and purpose, and actually spending my time where my passion lies: taking photos with what I have. Accepting certain compromises and limitations means understanding that I can have all the gear in the world, but without the work ethic, practice, vision, and passion, it would just be another ornament on my shelf, gathering dust.

To be clear, this article isn’t a blanket condemnation of buying things. There are plenty of photographers who need specialized gear—a particular tilt-shift lens, demanding autofocus requirements, or a strict level of file output—due to their commercial demands. That’s a completely different story; those are genuine needs dictated by professional requirements.

There are also hobbyists who simply enjoy gear as an extension of the craft, or who shoot a wide variety of subjects and prefer dedicated tools for each job, and who have the financial means to do so. I see no problem with that if it genuinely brings you joy. It’s no different from someone buying a sports car when they already have a practical car for the week, or just about any other hobbyist indulgence.

What I’m discussing here is something entirely different: buying gear because it masks a deeper creative or personal issue, or buckling under the marketing pressure to constantly upgrade, improve, or expand your kit not out of functional necessity, but out of an inherent, anxious pressure to compete, keep up, or validate your worth as a creator.

Why did I pick up a camera in the first place? It was to record moments and freeze them in time, to be able to wonder at the majesty of the world beyond seeing it with my own eyes. And now, as I enter my third decade of photography, I see it as my way of asking questions and trying to make sense of the world.

I don’t need more gear to do that. I need more time, to look deeper, to ask more meaningful questions, and to improve the way in which I use the gear to translate those answers into my photos. That’s what all my projects revolve around.

The truth is, I don’t have all the answers—this is just my experience. I don’t know what the future will bring. There are so many things I don’t know: I don’t know when I’ll see my youngest daughter again, and I don’t know if I can build the life to bring her back. I don’t know if I can successfully chase this dream, and I certainly don’t know if it will pay the bills.

But I do know that if I don’t follow my passion, if I don’t try, then I will always be left wondering what creative life I could have had—and what life I could have given her.

In the last few weeks I’ve waved goodbye to my youngest daughter at the airport, shed more than a few tears, sold off all my camera gear except for Nikon (I sold the OM System gear too in the end) and have taken a few days off to try and recharge my batteries and reset myself to start building something once again.

With all that in mind, yesterday I went out with my camera to some local woodland up near Crieff, where I also shot my first video in some time. You can see that video below.

It’s the first in what will become a long running series and isn’t the finished product that I’m aiming for but it was a lovely morning out and was good practise to get back in to the swing of video again. The aim of these videos is to bring you along while I’m out photographing in Scotland for the projects that I’m working on, to show the area, where I am creating these images from and later, a bit of the why and how.

For now, I’ll leave you with a brief glimpse into some of the beautiful woodland near my home in Perthshire. Roll on Autumn.

As per my last article, I have taken the decision to step away from the gear treadmill and focus on photography again. So what will that entail?

Well, I’ll still be publishing to the website regularly but it will be as someone getting out and discovering life here on the edge of the Scottish Highlands with my camera. I’ll be posting more photos, updates on the projects that I’m working on, talking more about the art of photography , my workflow, challenges and more. Basically, the entire journey.

Once Sofia is back at school next week, I will commit to producing more Youtube videos alongside this website. The videos will not be about gear, will not be tutorials but will simply be quiet videos amongst the beautiful scenery and landscape here in Scotland while I am out photographing work for my projects.

You can now see the first video in what will be a weekly series where I shoot some black and white photography in local woodland.

As for this week, I’ve been minimising my time connected to the internet and just focusing on being in the garden, on walks with Sofia and just getting on with simple tasks at home. More and more I find that I long for less time online as it seems to largely have a negative impact on my state of mind.

I’ve been out with my camera too, again, just on some local walks and spending time with Sofia. Since Izzy left, I’ve found myself gravitating towards black and white photography much more, whether that’s an aesthetic choice or simply a reflection of the darkness I’ve felt since she left, I’ll leave that for those smarter than me to decide and instead leave you with some images that I took this week.

The reality is that this website and writing gear articles has allowed me to continue with—and in fact has motivated me to get out and explore—my passion for photography again. After years of thinking it was a distant pipedream that a father of two girls couldn’t possibly pursue (“the income isn’t there, it’s too risky, I should face facts that my time to dream has passed and just get a job”), I kept going.

The problem is that I don’t just like taking photos. It’s rooted deep within me to question the world, what’s happening, to ask questions and find answers, and photography is my way of doing that. So I can’t just shake it off. I can’t brush it under the carpet and simply get a job.

But here’s the issue: I love sharing what I know with others in the hope that it may help someone on a similar path discover their passion for photography. I have 20 years of mistakes that I can call on and share so that perhaps it can stop the next photographer from making those same mistakes.

However, I am, ultimately, anti-consumerist.

As I approach 45 years old, I look around at the world and I hold a certain level of disillusionment for the materialistic, self-indulgent culture that we seem to have created around us. Us photographers have always been somewhat geeky, outside the norm. I still remember my college photography lecturer being nicknamed by students and teachers alike ‘Darkroom Dave’, with its slightly sinister connotations.

But since the advent of smartphones, Instagram, and social media, photography has become hip, cool, and popular. Usually, though, the camera is pointed in the opposite direction to how I learned. My face is too tired, currently too hairy, and too self-deprecating to think that 1,000 selfies of me in different locations would interest anyone other than a psychiatrist.

The flipside to that is this has vastly increased the popularity of gear, as a flow of phone photographers look to move up to proper cameras to improve their photos. Which is great. But actually, as I’ve looked more and more into it, it’s not photography that has become popular so much as being seen in the performance of photography. Having the right camera, image, and being seen in the right place is still a thing. I am in no position to criticise it or think I’m above it, but I don’t enjoy it, and I don’t want to be part of it.

As someone who is naturally introverted, with a preference for eating camping food over Michelin-star cuisine, drawing attention to myself is not something that comes naturally. Even in my family albums, I notice that I’m often missing because I’m behind the camera—exactly where I’d prefer to be. I’m not shy, and I’m not socially awkward; I’ve just got to the age where I am very selective about who and what I spend my time on. And time is the one thing that I simply can’t make more of.

That’s why, over the coming months and years, I will be transitioning the website to be much more photography-focused. I will be getting out with my camera as I did all those years ago in the Outer Hebrides and simply being a photographer again, not a reviewer.

The Gear and How it Came to be

Because of this realisation about where I want to head, I’ve been looking at my bloated shelf full of gear, all picked for a purpose, yet somewhere along the way, the financial pressure to provide for everyone meant losing sight of that purpose. This website started out as a way to record my thoughts about gear and share them—starting at a time when I had stopped earning my living from selling landscape photography (somewhere around 2013-14) and felt somewhat lost, but knew I wanted to still have a camera in my hand.

Over the next decade, I occasionally added an article, but it slowly faded. Then, last year, I got a notification that the website had been hacked. It was riddled with malware, and GoDaddy wouldn’t help, demanding I pay to fix it. I had to make a decision: let this old friend of a website take its natural course and die, or actually do something with it.

I chose the latter. And since June 2025 until now, it’s grown beyond what I thought possible. I’m genuinely grateful that so many of you took the time to read my articles, opinions, and personal story along the way. Some of the comments and emails that I have received in the last year have genuinely restored my faith in humanity.

But this is not what I dreamt of the website becoming: talking endlessly about gear, being at the mercy of Google and trends, and part of the marketing machine (even if honestly and unwillingly) that in the rest of my life, I am trying to move away from. I don’t believe in endless gear upgrades. I don’t believe in covering every single camera or lens release just for content. To continue this website and keep it competitive and actually earning money in that way would require me to do exactly that, and it would be disingenuous.

So how did I end up with so much gear? Well, if I’m brutally honest it was a combination of factors. I still dreamt of being a photographer again but was stuck in a job I hated simply to pay the bills and fund my children. Every next camera purchase would be the one that got me out, made the difference, made me finally realise my dream. Secondly, I will be honest and say that the last decade has personally been very difficult for reasons I wont go in to here but I guess I was still looking for something in life, happiness is the crux of it. Like many people, I got a short burst of happiness when I added another camera or lens to the collection.

When I re-started this website, I found myself in the position of having so much gear it was enough to create years worth of reviews, comparisons and the like. And as it started to become sucessful, It became self fulfilling. I could now justify yet another camera purchase as it was for the website. But this last 3 months changed everything, I want to step off the gear hamster wheel for the final time.

The amount of gear I have sitting next to me right now not only clutters my room, it clutters my mind. Instead of thinking about what I want to photograph today, I’m left thinking about what camera and lens to choose or what part of the site needs new content. That combined with deeply stressful family issues has left me very low on inspiration, creative energy and motivation for the last 3 months.

The move to Scotland started out incredibly positively, I was motivated, excited and content. It slowly became a nightmare but I am determined to resurect the initial feelings because I know I am so fortunate to be living in a place of such natural beauty, to have Sofia (my eldest duaghter) with me, thriving with a great future ahead of her. It’s just going to take a while for this numb, flat feeling to leave me after Izzy (my youngest daughter) left. Clearing out my gear, focusing on what I actually want and enjoy, and using what I do have to the fullest is part of that process.

I genuinely believe we have reached the stage—or at least I have—where I could pick any of my system cameras and use them for the next 10 years and be perfectly happy with the results, as long as I simply ignore the constant upgrade/release cycle.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a good camera as much as the next photographer. But I want to use my camera to create, to get out and see, to capture life’s moments, places, and meaning in my photos. And so, that is what I plan to do, and that’s the direction this website (and my personal one) will be heading.

Less gear, more photography.

So in the last month or so, I’ve been looking to cull my now extensive gear collection down to what I actually need and enjoy using. Bearing in mind I’m now living in Scotland, the weather is unpredictable (well, we’re sure of lots of rain), and I hike in the mountains, glens, and rivers a lot. My passion is for nature photography, with interesting people and stories too.

I’ve made my final decision as to which gear I am going to keep: just two systems, both ideal for the type of photography and environment here.

I’m often asked which camera I would choose if I could only have one, and the answer is always the same: the Nikon Z8, which I’m pairing with the Z6III.

For times when I want to be more discreet, carry less, yet still shoot with something very capable and a joy to use, I’m keeping the camera system that I’ve never been able to quite shake—the one that nags at me if I don’t own it: OM System, with the OM-1 Mark II and OM-3.

The rest will be leaving next week, off to MPB, and a new chapter for me and this website will start. I’ll still occasionally talk about gear, but it will be after serious use and won’t be as frequent, because I’ll actually be out shooting for projects and for a living.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to see if this is even viable in this day and age of AI creation, but ultimately, if I don’t try, then I will never know.

So how do I plan to do this?

Well, firstly by being me. Now, people who know me may advise against that, but I think genuinely being yourself, documenting your process, your progress, and your struggles is infinitely more interesting than projecting perfection. Through a combination of articles on this website, YouTube videos focusing on the experience out in the field here in Scotland (once Sofia is back at school after her summer holidays), and my personal website showcasing the images that I make, I hope that some of you will come along for whatever the next chapter in my life has in store for me.

Last week, I wrote about dealing with a creative rut—something most creatives have to deal with at some point or another. In that piece, I touched on how using smaller cameras often helps me push through those stagnant patches. They act as a mental crutch to relieve self-induced pressure, encourage me to simply get outside, and offer a vast array of computational modes to make experimenting with photography much easier.

This weekend gave me a chance to put that exact philosophy into practice, using the OM System OM-1 Mark II on a routine evening walk.

Low-Friction Wandering

Right next to where we live in Perthshire, we’ve gotten into a wonderful habit of taking our elderly neighbours’ dogs out. It’s a beautiful little walk on the local country estate, it helps out people who can no longer take their dogs for anything more than a quick toilet break outside, and it provides a completely low-friction way for me to get out with a camera.

This time, I decided to pair the OM-1 Mark II with the OM System 25mm f/1.2 PRO lens. When I am in a creative rut, using a zoom lens gives me far too many options and quickly overwhelms my brain. The simplicity of a prime—and specifically one of my all-time favourites across any system—was designed to remove that friction and get my creative juices flowing. I keep my setup as simple as possible and only add a few essential accessories which I went through in another article.

It was early evening with the sun dropping low in the sky. As we picked up Teddy and Poppy, my mum and my eldest daughter Sofia took the dogs ahead, while I wandered slowly down the estate’s path with the camera in hand.

Working the Path

As patches of light began breaking through the huge Scots pine trees lining either side of the path, I raised the camera and fired off a few test frames. A few observations immediately stood out:

• Speed & Computational Power: I played around with the OM-1 Mark II’s handheld High-Res mode, which is dramatically more usable than on the Mark I thanks to its much faster processing speeds.
• Depth & Sharpness: Thanks to the Micro Four Thirds sensor naturally yielding a deeper depth of field for a given aperture, I was happy shooting anywhere from wide-open at f/1.2 down to f/5.6, consistently getting tack-sharp photos with plenty of depth.
• Ergonomics & Viewfinder: The camera is exceptionally quick to operate and comfortable in my hands. In the high-contrast, bright patches of the evening, the 5.6-million-dot viewfinder made composition effortless.
• IBIS Confidence: In the dimmer sections of the path sandwiched between towering trees, I reminded myself of the camera’s brilliant image stabilization. It allowed me to consciously drop the ISO to base level, shooting at slow shutter speeds that would be impossible on most other systems.

I didn’t get any keepers along that initial stretch of the path, but the strict constraints of the prime lens combined with the lightweight, intuitive nature of the OM-1 Mark II did their job. I started feeling comfortable enough to actually look and see potential images again.

The Shot Through the Trees

As we walked further in, the path opened up to fields on both sides—tonight filled with sheep and their rather large lambs bleating away after some had been separated to have their coats sheared. The light was now raking across the landscape beautifully.

That’s when I spotted a stunning view: looking through the last couple of trees out to the fields beyond, with evening light casting long shadows, the hazy mountains of the lower Scottish Highlands in the distance, and crepuscular rays piercing through the sky.

I set up the composition to create a sense of depth, using the closest trees to frame the shot and create the feeling of peering through to witness the landscape beyond. Deciding this view was worthy of the camera’s High-Res mode, I grabbed a handheld 50-megapixel file before hurrying along to catch up with Sofia, Mum, and the dogs.

Walking toward the lake, I felt a little lighter than I have lately. The fresh air, gorgeous light, and seeing Sofia in good spirits playing with Poppy and Teddy were the perfect antidote to the stress occupying my mind. We sat for a little while to enjoy the warm evening and give the dogs a few treats before heading back up the path, returning the dogs, and heading home.

Bringing It Together in Lightroom

Back at home, I uploaded the photos to my iPad—which has become my preferred editing tool, as the Apple Pencil makes working in Lightroom incredibly intuitive. I waited until the next day to look through them.

Most were average at best, but one stood out: the shot through the trees.

It wasn’t quite right straight out of the camera. I cropped it into a 16:9 aspect ratio to remove a fence at the bottom of the image. The fence added nothing; in fact, it acted as a visual barrier, stopping you from immersing yourself in the scene.

Interestingly, I had been shooting the previous night almost exclusively in black and white—largely because I’ve been so impressed with the OM-3’s monochrome output and wanted to keep things simple. While the black-and-white SOOC jpeg was genuinely lovely with great contrast and atmosphere, the warm colors of the evening demanded a color edit using the parallel RAW file.

To get it looking how the landscape actually felt:

• I gently reduced the saturation of the green channel (as OM System files can sometimes make greens a bit too garish for my taste).
• I slightly increased the orange channel and generally warmed the image up.
• I pulled down the highlights in the sky to reveal subtle detail without killing the scene’s brightness.
• I used local masks for dodging and burning to build contrast in the foreground and deepen the sense of spatial depth.

I am genuinely happy with the result. It’s the first photo in a while that made me wish I had a printer set up. (My Canon PRO-4100 was one of the casualties of our move back from the Philippines, but if I ever get another large-format printer, this on a fine cotton rag paper will look fantastic.)

Seeing Light at the End of the Tunnel

The OM-1 Mark II didn’t just help me capture a shot I felt good about; it helped me push through a creative rut by removing friction from the process.

I could easily have sat at home, letting the recent dark clouds completely take over. But by stripping away complexity, getting outside, and observing the world again with a camera that doesn’t demand a fight, I finally found some light at the end of the tunnel.

Tonight, Sofia and I are travelling 2 hours to go and view some puppies, as she has been longing for a little furry friend for some time now. If we end up bringing one home with us soon, he or she will be coming out on a lot of adventures with us, and no doubt, will inspire me to continue getting outside and taking more photos.

Since October of last year, her well-being has dominated a huge part of my mind. We worried she showed signs of autism—there, I said it, I’m no longer skirting around it with vagueries like developmental concerns. That was our worry. The signs were all there, so we planned to move back to the UK where the healthcare and support networks are in place for children like Izzy. We sold all our belongings, I spent all my savings, and we moved halfway around the world.

I then spent the next several months setting up doctor appointments, health visitor assessments, and audiology assessments, and pushing my finances to the limit paying for a nursery placement to ensure Izzy got the structure that all the professionals—and my own sister, who has worked in childcare for over 25 years—said was essential.

Slowly, we started to see improvements: less tantrums, more interaction, more confidence. All that effort, all that sacrifice, and ultimately, it has been futile for reasons I can’t go into here.

So, in the last two weeks, I’ve really been struggling to produce any content for the website, or even pick up a camera with any meaning or intention. I’ll just be honest: I feel pretty flat and numb. Sofia is still here with me, and I know that I need to work, so after multiple attempts to get out with various cameras, I turned to the ones I often do when I hit creative ruts.

The Small-Camera Crutch

You see, it’s the smaller cameras—the ones that aren’t meant to be professional-level gear—that I tend to turn to when I want to remove all pressure to produce images of any note. My OM-3 is the epitome of this: it’s beautiful, small, lightweight, and still highly capable, but I can give myself the excuse that if I don’t produce anything decent, it wasn’t me, it’s partly the camera.

I know for a fact it is absolutely not the camera, but it’s a small mental crutch that often alleviates any sense of pressure and allows me to break out of creative ruts. It works either by simply relieving my own self-inflicted pressure to perform, or by having features like computational modes that spur me on to try shots I otherwise wouldn’t with heavier systems.

This week, I’ve been out with a camera several times. On Monday, I managed to get one shot that I had the confidence in to publish in my OM-3 and Nikon Zf article comparing the black-and-white modes.

Then on Wednesday, I went out with that same mindset for a walk in a beautiful location with my mum and the OM-1 Mark II: just enjoy the walk, the scenery, and the fresh air, and if you get any shots, great.

I failed miserably.

I had the 12-40mm f/2.8 II lens mounted—a good lens, still lightweight, so easy to carry. I was actively looking for shots, playing with the built-in ND filter mode, and yet, when I came home and looked at the photos, I honestly thought: I’m not publishing those, they’re rubbish.

Sitting Under the Dark Cloud

It’s now Friday, and unfortunately, my brain has completely failed me—not only in producing any photos, but even in thinking of a topic I can muster the interest to write about. A pretty heavy dark cloud is currently sitting over me in terms of inspiration and motivation to get out and work.

But I’m not going to let that stop me.

After years of pretty consistent stress, maybe I just need a bit of time to process everything, get used to the new circumstances, and let the creative process and inspiration slowly come back to me. If I keep getting out there, keep taking a camera through habit, and just keep looking, seeing, and pressing the shutter button, it will return.

Why am I writing this article now? Because it’s the most honest thing that I have to say right now. Out there, maybe some of you also deal with creative ruts, and perhaps by sharing this, it will help someone push through just as I have done in the past.

This one may take a bit more effort to come out the other side of, but I will. And when I do, I’ll be waiting here in Scotland, with Sofia, building something safe, secure, and welcoming for the day that Izzy returns.

And here are some of the photos I took this week. I guess it’s good to show them just to fight against the perfection we see projected everywhere these days. Failing is part of succeeding, and I definitely failed this week.

Update: I’m still trying to push through this period and got an image that I was happy with in a recent article.

Then I check my bank balance, look at Sofia on her Summer break and realise that for me and likely a lot of other photographers, these epic locations are beyond our reach, our budget and our time constraints.

In all honesty, I no longer feel the pull of these Instagram worthy locations. I feel that they’re overdone, overshot and overcrowded. By staying close to home, I gain something that no amount of travel can give me: familiarity, repeatability, and consistency.

I’m fortunate that I’ve travelled quite a lot in my life and perhaps that is partly why I get a much warmer, more comfortable feeling from staying near to home. Perhaps that’s why I appreciate the Scottish countryside so much and find beauty everywhere I look here.

Even if you haven’t travelled much, I’d still argue that some of the best photos that you could make are sat waiting, right on your doorstep. Maybe it’s a local park, woodland or river, perhaps it’s the daily goings on in your particular street, the development in your local town. Whatever it is, the fact that you can access it repeatedly gives you a huge advantage and a perspective that no visitor to your area will ever be able to recreate. It’s unique to you and your location and it gives you the opportunity to make photos that say something about a place, over time—something that can’t be captured from a week’s ‘epic trip’ and some one-off ‘banger’ shots.

But Summertime is a bad time of year for photography, isn’t it?

I tend to agree that Summertime doesn’t always offer the best light. A lot of the day consists of harsh, direct sun that can create high-contrast or washed-out scenes. Sunrises are early and sunsets, particularly here in Scotland, are well beyond my bedtime. But that doesn’t mean we should skip it altogether.

There are some simple ways to still get out and make photos, even in summer. Basic ideas such as trying to photograph in the shade, doing macro photography, or focusing on small details are often heard for good reason—they allow you to work within a small area where the light isn’t at its harshest. You could take up photographing birds and wildlife as they’re busy fattening themselves and their offspring up to prepare for winter.

However, all of these suggestions require a change in subject matter which you may not wish to pursue.

For me, I’m not going to suddenly become obsessed with macro photography for one season; it doesn’t evolve my photography and the work doesn’t fit with the projects I’m working on. Instead, I find ways to incorporate the harsh light of summer into my photos, using the various tools we have as photographers to make the light and the scene work. If you can master the techniques we practise all year round and combine them with a mindset of just getting out and shooting, there are still great photos to be made, whatever the season and whatever the light.

I talk more about my process for creating photos with atmosphere in any light over on my personal site—you can read the full breakdown in The Architecture of Atmosphere: How I Construct an Image.