Talking to Andy Howard about his fascinating life as a Highland wild life photographer, his love of wild creatures and the time he has spent capturing unique glimpses into their lives.
Andy was born in England and moved to Fortrose on the Black Isle aged ten years in 1980. Even before moving to the Highlands Andy’s love of wildlife had been nurtured from a very early age thanks to his parents and one of Andy’s primary school teachers. Andy’s early encounters with Scottish wildlife were during our family holidays, most of which were taken with in the Eastern Cairngorms, the Isle of Skye or at our family’s home on Mull, and it’s here that Andy’s deep rooted love for wild places grew. Encounters with Golden Eagles, otters and deer were an almost daily occurrence, each and every time these encounters were treated as something special.
Andy’s photography career began at a very young age with a second-hand Kodak box brownie, of course his skills left a lot to be desired! It wasn’t until Andy’s 18th birthday he took the leap into the world of SLR cameras. With a pocket full of birthday money he took the train to Edinburgh and made a beeline for Jessops camera store. When he was asked what type of camera he wanted, he had no idea, and just handed over the money he had. As he sat on the train heading back to Inverness he was totally perplexed by his new Minolta X300 and Tokina lens, so many numbers, dials and switches. he learned by getting out there and I’m totally self-taught, and spent a lot of money wasting film whilst learning. Gradually Andy’s images improved, thanks in turn to a couple of upgrades along the way. After the Minolta came a Canon EOS600 followed by the new high-tech EOS 5 with its infra-red eye focusing system. It was around this time that he started selling a few prints here and there, only for pin-money but enough to invest some of it back into Andy’s first Canon pro-lens. Back then it was only really professionals that owned white-lenses. The only way he could afford one was to take out a bank loan to buy it, and Andy’s parents thought I’d gone mad.
Almost instantly he felt that digital photography was going to take me somewhere. he didn’t know where, but he had a gut feeling it was going to lead to good things. In September 2011 he had a breakthrough. I’d been photographing red squirrels near Aviemore and had noticed an old birch stump close-by, and he thought to himself, wouldn’t it be wonderful to get a wide-angle picture of a squirrel on that stump. he returned the following week with the kit he needed to make that picture in Andy’s head become reality. In the end it only took and hour or so, a very friendly and compliant squirrel did his bit and hay presto, he had captured Andy’s first ‘pre-conceived’ image.
After posting it on Andy’s Flickr stream he was contacted by BBC Autumnwatch, seeking Andy’s permission to show the image on the show. It was indeed featured on the programme and was followed up by a press agency asking to run the image in the national press. This is where things started to gather pace, he had begun to take his photography a bit more seriously, and in hindsight, Andy’s ambition was well in excess of his ability! He started to improve and began to think more about how he took pictures, using his acquired knowledge not only on the technical aspects, but the importance of light and backgrounds. He fell in love with soft back and foregrounds with just the subject in the focal plane. Not favoured in competitions at present, but it’s how he likes to capture images and that should always be the number one priority, take photographs to please you and nobody else!
