The ambition is, over the next 10 years, to get a truly detailed picture of the movement and behaviour of individual otters. As far as I know this has never been done before and can only be done because of client images and the fact I will be working the same territories day in day out for years. I don't take a camera with me when guiding otters, too hard to deliver a top quality workshop if I am muscling in, so it will be your images that enables me to log which individual we are watching and what they are doing. This is really exciting as it shows that wildlife photography can really be a force for good.

Why is this important! Well if we know what individuals are doing, we know much better the population turn over and can link that too activity in the loch. Otters are apex predators and therefore what they eat and how they are doing is a great indicator of the lochs overall health. This means if Otters are going well, we can look at activities that have happened and do more of it, like our oyster reintroduction - see below. Likewise if suddenly Aragon and Merry disappear at the same time from the same territory  then we can look to see if something has changed for the worse in the loch and campaign to stop it.

What has been surprising and really nice for me, and this is where the technical bit of this part of the newsletter comes in, is that it has given real purpose to my Otter photography beyond getting good images.

As a pro my ambition is to get top quality amazing images (please note the word 'ambition' in the sentence there!!). The main reason for my photography is to showcase and advertise workshops so people want to come out with me (and to a lesser extent for articles and rewilding work). Hence the need for the images to be as eye catching as possible. In our new instagram world we all live in, getting that stand out image can feel very daunting and an ever increasingly difficult task.

This means in the past when going out photographing Otters and I did not get good enough images, I had that weird mixed feeling where on the one hand I had had an amazing day out but on the other hand I felt disappointed I had not nailed that award winning or insta popping image!

The joy now, is that the pressure has eased and I am finding I am enjoying the photography process much much more. I still want to get good pictures but if all I manage is a few record shots then they are now really really useful to further this citizen science project.

In conclusion it has been very liberating as a photographer to know even the crap shots matter now!

Maybe you too can find purpose for your hobby and make it all just that bit more fun!