Mick Durham Wildlife and Macro Photographer.

Mick Durham is a professional wildlife photographer living near Dumfries in South West Scotland. He has been taking pictures for over thirty years, at least ten of those on a professional basis. Being based in Scotland gives him access to some of Britain’s wildest landscapes – ideal for superb close encounters with our native wildlife. 

Mick Durham trained as an English and Outdoor Education teacher in the late seventies and began taking photographs as part of his work in the outdoors. His first SLR camera was an Olympus OM1 chosen for two reasons – it was small and light which made it easy to carry in to the mountains and one of Britain’s best know bird photographers, Eric Hoskins used them.  It was then that he made the change to autofocus and like many professional photographers chose to use Nikon cameras. He now shoots digitally and at the moment uses a Nikon D2x. His wildlife photography really started as an extension to bird watching, quickly developing in to a passion and a profession. He still enjoy watching birds but more often then not this is done through a camera lens rather than binoculars. 

Mick Durham tries to do most of his photography close to home, going back to locations time and time again. In this instance familiarity means greater success. He travels around Scotland for some subjects; the west coast and islands and Shetland for otters and occasionally go further afield for his photography. Norway is a favourite country.

Mick Durham has been a professional wildlife photographer for about ten years but he as been taking photographs for a lot longer. Mick bought his first SLR camera when he was still a student in the late seventies However, his passion for wildlife and in particular birdwatching soon began to influence what he photographed and slowly a wildlife photographer was born.

Like many keen birdwatchers he always keeps a diary of what birds he has seen, what trips he had undertaken and now, being a professional photographer he has turned this into much more of a working document.  He now records details of photographic trips, ideas about potential locations and any other information that might be useful to him. Thanks to the digital revolution he now no longer has to make notes of how he took particular photographs.   All this information is recorded within the digital files on the camera.

The digital revolution has brought with it the ability to produce exhibition quality prints at home. Mick use a MacPro computer and an Epson 2100 A3 printer for all his printing. He restricts digital manipulation to an absolute minimum – retouching of blemishes caused by dust in the camera, balancing colour and contrast to achieve natural looking images and the occasional removal of unsightly background elements. Mick never adds anything to his images that was not there when he took the photo.

The change to digital photography impacted on Mick’s business in a major way. Mick originally sold most of his work through a small picture agency but the owner chose the switch over to digital imaging as the time to retire. It was time for Mick to reassess how his photography should move forward. In 2005 he bought his first digital camera and set up his own web site. This original site, ‘Kinharvie Photographics’ was very much a home grown affair showcasing his work to family and friends and existing customers.