I was 8 years old when...

...I was given my first camera, a Kodak Brownie Twin 20. My first ever, unsupervised shot was of my younger brother and sister dressed up in  Cowboy and Indian outfits.

I took lots of photographs on that camera for many years, often trying to get more than the camera was capable of. My favourite 'Kodak moment' on that original camera was Jim Clark winning the British Formula One Grand Prix in a Lotus 49. The dust has been removed but the shot is essentially straight out of 'the Box'. I had no idea then that I would become a photographer and to this day no one, including me, knows when or how the link between taking pictures for pleasure and making a career of it appeared.

It happened just as I was about to leave school when the awkward questions were being asked about what I was going to do. Luckily the transition didn't change me. I still enjoy taking photographs, commissioned or personal, and I still keep pushing my cameras. I studied graphic design and photography and I was lucky to get work straight out of college.

I joined an Edinburgh based commercial photographers and spent four years producing high quality architectural and commercial photography. That was a great way to start but I wanted to move on to work mainly with advertising agencies and design groups, so I opened my own studio in the centre of Edinburgh. Work then was produced on transparency and black and white film and I loved shooting, processing and printing black and white. The enlargers, trays, clips, developing tanks and other bits from my darkrooms remain but I can't foresee me using them again. I produce black and white digitally now, and it's good, but, for me, that little bit of magic has gone.

I've often been asked why I stayed in Edinburgh to work - why not London. Basically, I was so very busy, and I enjoyed the variety of work. Studio still life was what I enjoyed most, working for companies like Drambuie but I felt just as comfortable shooting fashion for Ballantyne Cashmere and Pringle.

When work dried up after the recession in the early 1990's I spent almost three years living in Santiago de Chile with my wife and daughter, shooting campaigns for Advertising Agencies. Santiago has quite a few good agencies and Campaign magazine rated it as the fastest growing ad agency market at the time, with Lowe Porta, JWT, Euro RSCG & McCann Erickson etc. And of course, the weather and the wine are very good.

During my time there I was voted photographer of the year in the annual agency awards. The campaign was for one of Chile's largest insurance companies Chilena Consolidada. The Agency is Lowe.Porta.After some three years or so I returned home to Scotland and started working in Edinburgh again. The new excitement was digital which I converted to quite quickly. I now live by the sea spending most of my time on personal projects and also some chosen commissioned work.