New Beginnings

All beginnings start with an ending, in this case my retirement from the the Civil Service. As I let that door close behind me after the last twenty-two years in public service I needed something to occupy my mind. I had an abortive attempt to start a one-man drone survey business, but it became very clear that I am not an entrepreneur! As part of my re-education I had invested in a pair of drones and qualified as a drone pilot; then as lockdown bore down ever more heavily I had the bright idea of buying a camera to improve my photography skills to help with improving the drone photography.

I have had two cameras during my army service… both 35mm compact cameras of decent quality; Rollei and Olympus. They both came to grief in one way or another through service - the Rollei died in a bath of oil and petrol when I was rolled over in a Fox armoured car and ended upside down in the middle of a training area, I was gutted; that lovely camera had seen five years and a tour in Northern Ireland in my company. The Olympus that replaced it died in the mountains on an adventurous training expedition to Corsica. Not long before I left the Army I bought a Pentax SLR with a couple of lenses that taught me something of the exposure triangle and composition, at the cost of one photograph in fifty that were any good. That camera disappeared into the loft some years later with advent of compact digital camera technology that didn’t need much thought with so much automation..

So a love of photography that began in the army was reborn with the 2020 purchase of a Nikon D5500 and an 18-140mm kit lens! I struggled with focus on the camera and was disappointed with it, not that it was a bad camera, just that it didn’t seem to fit with me. A few months later I invested in a D7200 and started to really feel like I was making progress, so much so that I began to focus much more on photography. Combine this experience with the fact that it is so difficult (and expensive) to do anything serious with a drone business and leisure flying is very restricted, I’m sticking to photography and using the drone to photograph where I can.

For the future, I am aiming to create pleasing images for myself, if others like them and would like a print that would be brilliant, I’ll be happy to supply them. And who knows; a calendar, greetings cards, even a book may follow.