Loch Ardinning wildlife reserve is ten minutes drive from where I stay. It’s a small area of 350 acres, just north of Glasgow, with the small loch as the centerpiece and a variety of landscape types and vegetation. The vegetation and animal habitats are protected by guiding people on well defined paths, all managed by the Scottish Wildlife Trust. Despite its proximity to a busy road and popularity with everyone from dog walkers to families to groups of inquisitive students, the experience of a landscape is undiminished.
I never intended this as a project. Like everyone else, I found the reserve a convenient way to refresh and exercise, a respite from everyday urban activity. However, I often found myself stopping to look and contemplate. Then taking a tripod and camera and stopping, looking and becoming immersed.
The accessibility of the reserve meant frequent visits over the course of the seasons and years. The variety of vegetation, the gorge, the rocks the moorland I find engage me as much as any wilderness. Although managed the place is wild.
The scale of the reserve suits me. I do not need high mountains or deep valleys. Indeed, the small scale of the reserve works for my practice of closer photographs. In any case beautiful and pleasant though the reserve is, the pictures are not necessarily about place. Each picture is a recognition, a combination of elements both formal and conceptual creating an image that speaks to more than vegetation, rock, water, ice, air and light. But, in the end, all that matters is the vegetation, rock, water, ice, air and light.
