I’m starting a search for beauty in the everyday

Rab vows to take his camera off the bookcase more often – not just on trips away – and point and shoot everywhere except the beach

Iam learning to fall in love with my camera again. Many years ago, I first developed an interest when, taking part in a vocational course for the eternally unemployable, I had access to a darkroom on the premises. Today, computers have rendered the skills learned there hardly necessary, but I remember the feeling of magic as the images slowly appeared in the darkness. I was also inspired to get out and about, and to look at the world with a wee, square eye.

In those days, not only could I develop pictures, but I understood f-stops and shutter speeds. Today, I understand none of that, and remember nothing, either, about the chemical developing of pictures. I just set the camera to “auto” and point and shoot.

It was the mobile phone that got me started again: so easy just to take it out and snap when you saw something interesting. Better still was the ability to edit and enhance the pictures when downloaded on to the computer.

Subsequently, I invested in a DSLR (digital single-lens reflex; after the digital, I’ve no idea what any of that means) camera at the cheap end of the Nikon range, and quickly ruined it after taking pictures of the wind whipping up the sand at Machrihanish. It never occurred to me that grains of sand would get into the machinery of the camera and damage it.

And the reason why it never occurred to me? Well, the people who know me best say it’s because I’m not very bright. Could be something in that.

So I bought another DSLR at the cheap end of the Pentax range, and I have it still. The exposure on it is always too dark, for some reason, but it’s easily sorted on the computer when you get home. It has a zoom and also takes video, though only for very short spells, as it drains the batteries on which this model of camera depends (wish I’d read the small print when I bought it). Still, video is marvellous, as it also records sounds such as the lonely cry of a bird or the sea soulfully lapping the shore.

While in Skye recently, I was getting up from my desk every 15 minutes to go out and snap a new and fascinating sky or a pattern in the sea or a ghostly mist or a passing flock of birds. It was worth it, though. One of the shots was published as a newspaper’s “Picture of the Day”.

Back home, I haven’t got into the habit of taking my camera with me when I go out, say, on the suburban hill. I think: “You already have thousands of pictures from the hill.” But, yesterday, as I stood at one spot to get my breath, there was a lovely view through the trees, which framed the transmitter masts on another hill nearby.

I suppose I associate the camera with being away in other places and, every time it catches my eye as it sits unused on a bookcase, it reminds me of happy experiences.

But I have vowed to take it out more often now and to use it more creatively. I’ll probably stay away from sand, though, as I take a dim view of that sort of thing.

Picture: Getty Images. Only sand can stop Rab from taking more photographs.