Besides the logistics of having to move house, my current reliance on mobile internet and just trying to get my head around the seeming permanence of my daughter Izzy’s absence, I have found myself completely ignoring my cameras for large parts of the last couple of weeks. I just didn’t have it in me to be inspired to shoot, or to even think about shooting. It’s the first time that has happened in a while.

I rarely stop working or trying to move forward with whatever plans I currently have in life, but in the last fortnight, I have given myself permission just to be, not just to have a physical break from taking photos and working flat out, but to actually switch off from it all, to try and find myself, to do things for me for the first time in a decade or more.

Sofia is off at horse riding camp this week which has given me days where I am not tied to the school run which has allowed me a little more time.

We moved out of our family home last week. I still have a lot of Izzy’s clothes and things here so packing those up was incredibly difficult and emotional. Once the sheer logistics of moving had been handled and the house emptied, I went back on my own to the house, under the excuse of checking for last remaining items, but really just to try and process everything and say goodbye to the house which carries a lot of memories, of Izzy, of the sounds she made, of the little habits that were formed in that environment and of the pain that house represents.

I took one last look down towards Izzy’s playroom, one last photo of where her cot used to be, a single toy and unused baby changing mat was all that remained.

Closing the doors to that house felt like …. Well I don’t even have the words to describe it.

After those two shots, I needed some time to myself and that’s what I’ve been doing.

I have consciously left the cameras in the bag. I’ve gone out, without a camera, without any thought other than to just be, to spend time in nature and focus on myself, on giving myself space to try and recover.

When I first came to Crieff at the end of January this year, I saw the mountains above Crieff and set a goal in my mind to get fit enough to make them my playground, similar to my days on the Isle of Harris where I would run up mountain paths, walk for hours in the hills. That kind of fitness gives me freedom to explore, to not feel constrained by my own inability to summit the hills and explore them.

I’ve spent a lot of time walking this summer, local paths, woodlands , country estates but as I hit 45 last week, I wondered if I was even capable of getting back to that level of fitness. not running over mountains but at least being able to climb them.

This week was the week where I said, I’m going to try, even if it’s a struggle, I want access to the freedom that the mountains bring me. On Wednesday, I walked up my local glen, with Luna, our 5 month old puppy and cut up a track straight towards the mountains lining the east side of the loch.

I was pleasantly surprised by how I managed the incline. Luna and I made it to about half way up the mountain side when we ran out of time. I took a few photos on my phone but didn’t even bring my proper cameras with me. This trip wasn’t about photography, it was about pushing myself. 10 years of poor diet in the Philippines and a generally sedentary lifestyle isn’t the ideal base for hillwalking in Scotland, so small steps are needed.

Yesterday, I left Luna behind and encouraged by Wednesday’s efforts, I decided to attempt the largest of the mountains on the east side of the loch. It was one that way back in January, I had picked out as the hill to target. it’s only a Corbett, but as a first venture up in to the hills again after more than a decade away, I felt it was a challenging but not overwhelming summit to attempt.

This time, for the first time since taking those photos in our old house, I felt the urge to bring my camera. I strapped the z8 and 24-120mm f4 on to my backpack via a PD Capture Clip and set off down the loch-side path towards the old track that climbs steeply towards my intended target, Auchnafree. Thinking about it, an aptly named hill to try to regain my freedom on.

At the end of the loch, the sound of the Red deer rutting echoed around the Glen (note to self to return with wildlife kit soon). I crossed burns that cut across the path, and flowed down in to Loch turret below. Finally, after a hour I turned towards the steep track that cut up the side of the mountain and immediately saw the challenge of its relentless climb towards the top. I knew this was going to be heavy on my legs and lungs but onward I headed.

I was right, the climb was relentless. I steadied my pace, not wanting to blow myself out too early. Every few hundred meters, I would pause for a breather, grab 60 seconds of precious fresh Scottish air and then continue the hundreds of meters toward the summit. The air chilled to what must have been just above freezing point with the strong wind chill turning my hands red with the cold.

But I was determined to get to the top. I hadn’t come this far to turn give up and turn around. As I rounded the next corner, the steep inclined levelled out to reveal the boggy, plateau at the top. I navigated my way around a larger area of dark, sticky looking peat bog, as red grouse , spooked by my presence called loudly as they flew away in panic. Finally, after 10 minutes of marching through heather, the wind now howling around me, my jacket quickly slipped on and cinched down, I reached the summit.

There were no good photos to be taken on this flat featureless summit but i took some shots on the way up. What I had learned is that by putting the camera down and giving myself permission to just take some time out, I actually found myself and my focus again.

I’m simplifying my life in every single area to focus on what is actually needed. I find that when things get complicated, when I have pressure coming from all angles, the best thing that I can do is remove clutter, remove any additional need to have to think, and to simplify everything.

Financially, I’ve cut everything but the essentials. Gone are all my monthly subscriptions —I now have one, and that is the Adobe Photography plan. Gone is any non-essential expenditure, and after the warning signs of May’s traffic drop, I immediately started looking for a new house, a smaller, more affordable house. We move next week, just in the nick of time after September’s catastrophic traffic decline for my website.

While initially I was left scrambling to find a fix for the problems I was experiencing, a moment of clarity came over me: I’m not going to fight the system, I’m not going to complain, I’m not going to be angry. Instead, it’s forced me to re-focus on what inspires me, what motivates me, and what helps me to do what I love to do.

Part of that was culling the superfluous camera kit that had built up over the last 3-5 years, the majority of which has now been sold off to MPB. The second was to strip my photography back to basics with my Nikon Z system. I have a decent collection of Nikon Z glass still, but in the last two weeks, I’ve found myself gravitating back to my instincts to tell stories with my photography, to work on projects, and to not try to be all things to all men by trying to cover every type of photography.

I’m the kind of person that really enjoys taking photos of most subjects, whether it’s wildlife, landscapes, street photography, or people, but that core desire for my photos to form part of a larger narrative leads me back to my project work. And in re-focusing on those, I’ve also re-confirmed my preference for shooting primes.

Yes, zooms give a lot of flexibility to get different shots in one outing, but after heading out with my Z8 with the 35mm f/1.8S attached alongside the Z6III with the 50mm f/1.8S, that way of working—knowing the focal length, removing choice, and just having to work with what I have—forces me to really look at a scene, to move around it, to vary angles, to find a way of bringing the various elements together to form a coherent frame. I enjoy that way of working.

And I’ve come to realise that it immerses me in my subjects far more than simply being able to rotate the zoom ring to frame up a shot. The images I end up creating looking better, have a coherence between them that I simply don’t get when using zoom lenses, and I think for me, most importantly of all, this way of working truly immerses my brain to a point that I attain total focus.

I find this state almost meditative. For those moments when I’m working a scene, I’m no longer suffering the physical ache of missing Izzy, my youngest daughter. I’m no longer nervous in the pit of my stomach as to whether I can pay the bills in two months’ time, and I’m no longer thinking of the response I’d like to send to my wife but don’t when she gaslights me again. I’m just David, trying to take the best photo that I can of that scene in that moment.

I’ve taken to keeping my kit on me at most times, safely stashed on the backseat of the car during the school run with Sofia. Last week, I spotted a beautiful scene with local farmers harvesting potatoes in the morning light, a huge flock of birds in their wake picking up the scraps. It was stunning.

So after I dropped Sofia at school, I returned to that spot, parked up my car, and headed out: with my Z8 + 35mm, Z6III + 50mm, and Zf + 85mm fitted into the ThinkTank Retrospective 30—which is simply the best shoulder bag I could find to accommodate that three-camera, three-prime setup—slung over my shoulder, I wandered into the field.

I watched the tractors methodically harvest the potatoes and load them while moving into the containers, ready to be shipped off to market. They were further away from me than when I had initially passed them on the way to Sofia’s school, and now the huge flocks of birds had sadly gone. A telephoto zoom would in theory have been useful to gain the reach I needed, but instead, I wandered into the field and simply watched the vehicles as they moved further away.

I could see where they had harvested and knew they would head back towards me on their next run, so I moved around and checked compositions so that when the brief moment came, and they moved into shot, I would be able to get the shots I wanted.

One of the farmers’ vehicles, a Land Rover Defender, synonymous with the countryside, was parked near to where I was standing. I ended up using it as an element in the photo, which had I had a zoom lens attached, I likely never would have done. Due to the constraints of the primes I was using—their inability to reach close enough to purely focus on the tractors working the fields—I had to search for and use other elements in order to complete the frame, and I think as a result, produced a much more interesting photo than would have been the case had I simply attached a zoom lens and been able to focus purely on the working vehicles.

Not only did I have to work the scene, which kept my mind focused, but for those 10 minutes, I was completely at peace.

Since I’ve re-focused on simplicity, a simple life with just what I need and nothing else, since I’ve drawn a line as to how much abuse (and yes, I’ll finally call it out for what it has been) I’m willing to take from a partner, and focus on the things that I can control, there has appeared a small light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve started building out the website that I want to create with davidjfleet.com, this website has seen a slight upturn in traffic which may give me a lifeline and potential runway to be able to build on, and in one week’s time, my decision a few months ago to move house will reduce my outgoings to a significantly lower level. Combined, all those things, I hope, will free up my mind to actually focus on the good things in life.

Since the move, I started to find my feet and get more photography time again and what started out with writing 70% of the time about gear, through the lens of a photographer with 20 years experience and based on cameras and lenses that I owned myself, gradually flipped that stat on its head as I found myself longing to pursue the art of photography much more so than to keep banging on about gear that in all honesty, was more than good enough for making prints and artwork 5 years ago, if not longer.

I used to earn my living soley from landscape photography. These days my tastes have changed and I find myself much more interested in stories and time. I don’t restrict myself to one genre but I consider myself to be somewhat of a documentary photographer.

In April, at any given time I would see 150+ people browsing my website. As I sit here now, there are 15 of you reading through various articles, 10 minutes ago it was just 7.

So what happened?

In May 2026, my traffic had been climbing consistantly since I restarted this website back in June 2025. Google as far as I could tell, wanted real people talking about gear and offering insight. I’ve been a professional landscape photographer, I’ve run a camera store and I have used virtually every camera system available. Great I thought, I’ll simply write no nonsense articles about the (at the time) large collection of gear that I owned, pulling from my experience. I’ll shoot all my own photography which will give me a great excuse to get out with the cameras more and I’ll also write more philosophical articles on photography and life which interest me much more. It seemed to work. Around April I reached 180k sessions and assumed the next plateau of traffic would come before another potenital climb.

I had held off on putting ads on my website while I still lived in the Philippines as I wanted to keep the website as clean as possible but with the move to the UK requiring us selling off all our belongings in the Philippines and the huge expense of setting up home in the UK, in January, I joined Mediavine and ran ads and alongside the affiliates I had within certain articles, my income grew and it looked like my family and I had a secure future, a decent income, enough to give my daughters a good life and allow me to pursue my passion.

Then around May 27th 2026 something happened, the growth didn’t materialise, I noticed strange traffic patterns on some of my most popular articles and then it hit. A huge drop in traffic, almost overnight. From 180k down to a level which suggest just over 120k sessions a month. My income is directly tied to the level of traffic that this website receives. That was a 33% hit in income that would filter through in 2 months time as I’m paid 2 months in arrears. Seriously concerning but alone, survivable.

However, if my traffic could drop by that much overnight, it caused me to worry , I mean seriously stress that this isn’t safe, this isn’t something to build my daughter’s future on.

The other problem

I mentioned my youngest daughter and her developmental concerns earlier. As soon as we arrived in the UK, I registered her with the local GP, I immediately explained our concerns and we got her registered with the local Health Visitors. They are in place to assess children’s needs, social, developmental or otherwise. She was assessed and the brevity of our concerns was confirmed.

She needed referals in literally every area of devlopment. Her scoring was like a hammer blow to us. She didn’t just slip into the referal category, shes was virtually off the scale. We arranged audiology assessments to rule that out, we arranged further visits from the health visitors, we had my sister, who has worked in childcare for over 25 years come and spend time with her to give us a no nonsense opinion and I pushed my finances to the limit getting Izzy 3 days a week in a local nursery to give her the socialisation and structure she desperately needed. She started showing signs of improvement, of seeing that cheeky glint in her eye that she has when she has been mentally stimulated, has started to pick up on the routines and is seemingly content. But behind the scenes, the pressure was mounting. My wife had been granted a visit visa only, as we opted for the fastest option to get us all over to the UK.

Eventually, after much discussion, most of it heated, myself and professionals insisting that the least disruptive option to Izzy, of remaining in the UK was for the best, my wife left the UK with Izzy and is still currently in the Philippines.

So what’s this all got to do with the algorithm breaking my website?

My initial concerns about the first traffic drop were not revolving around having an extravagant life, material possessions or anything fancy. I’m quite a simple person. Let me walk outside in fresh air and pay the bills and I’m content. All my hobbies are free. My concerns were whether the traffic level would allow me to still get Izzy back to the UK , to still fund my wifes very expensive spousal visa and both of their flights. I had no savings as I spent them getting us to the UK. I had no fallback anymore as I had prioritised getting Izzy to where she needed to be. I had to be able to save up the money to get them back here.

Apart from the obvious disruption and lack of available care for Izzy in the Philippines, my income was no longer certain and along with it, if Izzy had to wait until I have saved enough for my wife’s visa before being able to come back to the UK, it created uncertainty around how long that would be exactly.

When we moved to the UK , given the continuous growth of the website, along with me folllowing every Google guidline that I was aware of, being a real person, a real photographer and taking all my own photos, writing all my own words and giving opinions that I felt were useful, even when it would probably result in less people purchasing through my affiliate links, spending my savings seemed a small and necessary risk to take. Now as Izzy was being removed from the UK, I was absolutely unconvinced and made my concerns heard.

Since that intial drop, I have never been able to work out what it is that Google was doing. I’ve spent hours trying to work it out. I continued writing in the expectation that this new level was simply Google resetting my baseline traffic and that continuing to write articles would at some point lead to renewed growth, or even just stabilisation. At this level, the finances were tight but maneagable. It held for a couple of months and I started to work on my projects and photography. Moving away from the gear voluntarily.

I realised two things. Earning a living as an independant photographer writing about gear was getting cut off as Google controls the doorway and they are implementing AI answers to everything that they can. They’re using independant writers knowledge experience and often the exact words and photos we produce in order to cut us out and steal the entire pie.

Maybe they would do it slowly and leave me a year or two’s runway in which I could build up my photography work, which would be fine. I have a passion for photography, for documenting life, culture and the land. I have a lot of experience printing, having previously earned a living selling landscape prints, I love to create projects. I would simply transition over to that and hopefully within a year or two I would earn a meagre but very satisfying living actually doing what I love rather than focusing on gear.

But Google has yet again thrown a spanner in the works. This last week has dealt the death blow to that timeline. My taffic has now dropped to a level projecting to be around 24k sessions per month. From 180k to 24k in 3.5 months. If you are on the average salary of $65,000 per year in the USA, that percentage drop in your income would leave you with $8000. And I wasn’t earning the average salary.

My ability to get Izzy back to the UK now has a runway of two months. I have 2 months of income earned up until this point in which to discuss with her mother why it is necessary ( a difficult discussion indeed) , to get Izzy back here now, while I still can, to book flights, to renew my passport and to move house as I am having to downsize and to try to get my head out of this black cloud hanging over me in order to think straight, be productive and see the future clearly.

All I know right now is that I’ve been getting out with the camera more and more recently. Once again it may just be the thing that saves me. I have sold off almost all of my gear and have removed all distractions. Reviews of the first 2 cameras ever loaned to me, sorry, not going to happen, guides, settings, best lenses articles, all out of the window because of the algorithm, I have been forced in to focusing purely on what I actually want to do and that is to have a creative life , even a modest one, where I can provide for my children, give them a safe and secure environment and hopefully, never have to rely on Google or their algorithm ever again.

And on that note, if you want to follow along with how this all works out, see my current photography projects, or support me in anyway, as well as be notified when print drops happen, then now is the time to subscribe to my personal website and my Instagram where all my focus and attention will be from now on.

To everyone who has read this website, who has offered words of thanks, encouragement and particularly the thoughtful comments and emails I have received, I want to say a huge thanks. They really did mean a lot.

I talk about one of the deeply personal choices that I’ve made on my personal website which I feel is a more appropriate place platform for that particular article. I hope it gives a much deeper understanding to those of you who are generously following along with my journey.

Read more details in the article here.

Yesterday, I headed out for the second time this week with my Z8 and 180-600mm in tow, tripod packed, and walked onto my local patch of woodland, open fields, and burns. It was a little later than I’d hoped for, after having dropped Sofia off at school, so I didn’t hold out much hope. But as I’ve found in the last few months, waiting for the perfect conditions means I’d drastically reduce the number of outings I take.

In the end, I was blessed with some fantastic encounters, discovered new areas, and found one particular location that I will be returning to with my full wildlife setup to try and capture the best shots that I can.

Gear Notes & Reflections

I took the decision over summer to reduce my kit down to just one system, in large part because of my heavy investment in Nikon Z wildlife lenses. Although I currently own the 400mm f/4.5 and 800mm f/6.3, it is usually the 180-600mm zoom lens that I take on these kinds of trips.

It’s heavier than the 400mm f/4.5, but it’s so flexible that it enables me to react to a wide variety of subjects, which is incredibly helpful when I don’t have one specific location or species in mind. On the Z8, I’ve found that it focuses fast enough even to allow me to capture fast-moving birds in flight, as well as being sharp enough to capture fur and feather textures satisfyingly.

The only areas where I feel the primes do better are in a slight AF speed advantage (marginal), the ability to isolate subjects, and—as I found in my latest outing—when the light levels drop, the aperture does sometimes force me to push the ISO higher than I’d like. No deal breakers, and at the price, it’s a fantastic lens.

I’ll be heading back to these spots to document the incredible wildlife we have right here on our doorstep. I can honestly say that simply searching for and being in the presence of these animals gives me a deep sense of peace and solitude that I’m truly grateful for.

As for the Z8, it continues to impress me and leave me wanting for nothing, whether I’m tracking birds in flight, shooting landscapes or capturing video clips of these beautiful animals. You can see my full review to learn more about it or see how I set it up for wildlife photography,

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.

See how I’m using my gear and how simplifying my kit is working out.

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.