The Bearded Skot

I remember my first camera. In fact, I still have it, an 110 film camera. It has zero controls, and I no longer have the photos I took with it. I do, however, have two undeveloped rolls from my childhood still sitting inside. Maybe at some point, I’ll see what thirty years has done to them.

My grandfather was a photographer with a home darkroom, and my father always carried his Ricoh KR10 and my grandfather’s Pentax K1000. I have them both now. I shot with the K1000 all through high school, along with a Ricoh XF30 that belonged to my mum. While most of my friends were using 2MP phone cameras, I was still shooting film; I’d get three rolls for £1 from Poundland and drop them at the Boots by the Bigg Market in Newcastle.

It wasn’t until 2006 that I finally moved to digital. I bought a used Canon Rebel XTi (the 400D in Europe) from eBay, importing it from the States because the exchange rate made it so much cheaper. Armed with a 50mm f/1.8, the 18-55mm kit lens, and a Sigma 55-200mm, I shot with it for years. It travelled the world with me. Sadly, most of those photos were backed up on a 500GB external hard drive that eventually failed, meaning the majority of those travels are no longer recorded.

In 2013, I got the Canon EOS M, my first mirrorless camera. With the 18-55mm and 22mm lenses, I was over the moon—it was smaller, and the quality was better. My first trip with it was to Spain, where I cracked the screen. To this day, that crack is still there, and the camera still works. It remains the only brand-new camera I’ve ever owned.

After that, I started shooting products and fell out of love with photography. People say, ‘Turn your hobby into a job and you’ll never work a day in your life. ‘ Well, that’s not always true; you may just find you no longer have a hobby.

The images here are from that first trip: Malaga and Sevilla in the summer of 2013. It was hotter than hell, which I didn’t handle well. I also wasn’t a very good photographer then. If I’m honest, I took a lot of shots, and most of them weren’t great. Some are decent, but more due to luck than skill. I decided to show a selection with my original edits rather than reprocessing them now.

Sevilla, 2013. A city of incredible light and, as I quickly discovered, unbearable heat. Looking at these shots from my first trip with the Canon EOS M, I see a photographer who was still figuring it out. I still haven’t—relying more on the beauty of the architecture than actual skill.