Scottish Nature Photography Festival

Battleby Conference Centre, Redgorton, September 9-10

There are different ways to look at a photograph of nature in action. You could simply admire the beauty of birds in flight or of a wild dog taking stock of its surroundings or of an animal-free body of water captured in a perfect light.

Scottish Nature Photography Festival event organiser, Emma Brown, prefers to view the images on show this weekend as a means to telling a bigger story.

“We invite people we feel are doing something a bit different and telling stories with their photographs rather than simply taking a set of pretty pictures,” she says.

“We prefer to tell a story through the images, such as the conservation message; it’s not that we’re selling a conservation message as such and we don’t hammer it down people’s throats, but that’s really the subtext behind it all.”

And there are certainly innovators aplenty among the list of speakers attending this two-day event.

In 2009, Will Burrard-Lucas created a remote control buggy called the BeetleCam in order to capture groundlevel images of African wildlife; Richard Peters opened up his home as a Back Garden Safari with camera traps and evocative lighting to capture the beastly guests who popped in for a visit during the night; and Robert Canis has developed various techniques to take jawdropping close-up images of some of the natural world’s tiniest inhabitants.

As well as the array of speakers, there will be workshops, guided walks, trade stands, and portfolio presentations from some newer talent on the nature photography scene.

The Battleby Centre has played host to the event for more than 20 years in both its previous incarnation as the Scottish Nature Photography Fair and since 2013, in its current guise run by the Wild Media Foundation.

“It’s been at the venue throughout its history which keeps it quite intimate,” says Brown.

“We have 135 people attending each day which is small in comparison to some of the other photography festivals around but I think that intimacy is good because people have a chance to mingle with speakers throughout the weekend.”

“In terms of the audience, there’s a good split of male and female with the majority being hands-on camerawielders in some capacity.

“Those coming are primarily photographers or people with an interest in nature photography. There will be some professional photographers as well as people who like to go out with their camera on the weekend and take photographs. And we do have some people who simply like the images and the stories that are told.

“For some, it’s also a social event in the calendar to catch up with people.”

Clockwise from top left: Arctic Terns, Iceland, by Orsolya Haarberg; Dragonfly, England, by Robert Canis; African wild dog, Zimbabwe, by Will Burrard-Lucs; and Loch Maree, Scotland, by Alex Nail.