I have recently spent a couple of days in a local hide photographing a pine marten and red squirrels. Living where I do and getting the odd glimpse of both species, I forget that most people don’t have that privilege and, dare I say it, don’t even know of their existence.

I shot film, in the good old days of my Kodak Instamatic and Olympus point and shoot, and remember all too well waiting for the prints to come back, anticipation rising often to be reduced to disappointment at the results. What I never did though was develop anything in the darkroom.

Photography is all about being in the right place at the right time to get the light, and you’ll often hear photographers talk about ‘chasing the light’. But sometimes the weather just doesn’t play ball; you can be handed a grey, flat day when the sun stays firmly hidden. On days like that, it is all too tempting to burrow back down under the duvet, think ’stuff it’ and not go out.

Who remembers the 1980s marketing slogan “Glasgow’s Miles Better” to encourage tourists to visit and industry to locate there? I used to visit Glasgow fairly frequently in the late 1980s/early 1990s, but hardly since.

I’m often asked what I do with all the images I take. The truth is not much.

One of the best things that has come out of the trips I do is the friendships I have made. And even better when those friendships continue and flourish beyond the trips we sign up to.