Wildlife photographer Laurie Campbell says there's no place like home when it comes to capturing great images of the natural world

Published on Monday 12 January 2009 19:16

WHEN Laurie Campbell set up in business 25 years ago, he was a pioneer. Now, thanks to advances in digital technology and cheap air travel, wildlife photography is an international industry, setting its sights on the rarest species on earth.

Click here to view Laurie Campbell's pictures

Last year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition received more than 32,000 entries. The winning picture of a snow leopard in the Himalayas, by American photographer Steve Winter, is one of just a handful of images in existence of this rarest of cats in the wild.

None of this bothers Campbell very much. He has always preferred to train his lens on the wildlife of Scotland. While others are mapping out ever more exotic territory, he is increasingly finding his subjects within a stone's throw of his own backyard.

Sitting at the window of his home just across the Border in rural Berwickshire, he points out the goldfinch feeder where he photographed a colourful aerial squabble; the field where the barn owls hunt at nightfall and the space underneath the hedge through which a badger creeps every evening for a meal of leftovers (the Campbells have named him Bertie).

If Campbell wants to venture further afield, half an hour's drive will take him into the Lammermuir Hills, or to the seabird colonies at St Abb's Head, or to the Tweed, to watch otters scampering about on the banks of the river.

"Some of my best pictures are taken close to home," he says. "I'm not a twitching wildlife photographer who'll go to the ends of the Earth just to photograph a certain species of bird. I tend to be the opposite. When I'm in contact with birders, I often say proudly that I've never seen an avocet (the rare wading bird which is the emblem of the RSPB]. I think sooner or later they'll head north, but it doesn't really trouble me too much."

Campbell, 50, has a patient serenity about him. Perhaps that's what you need when your job can involve spending days and nights in a cramped hide concealed by heather and branches waiting for an appearance by an elusive golden eagle. "It's definitely a lifestyle job," he says, philosophically.

Although he has photographed rare creatures, from sea eagles to Scottish wildcats, the challenge that gets him out of bed in the morning – sometimes at 3am to be in a hide before daylight – is to do with the beauty of ordinary things. "I feel it's more of a challenge to produce interesting pictures of common things which will make people sit up and take notice, compared to all these rare and glamorous things. A lot of TV programmes gravitate towards things with big teeth. I think there are so many other stories to be told.

"I do detect the beginnings of a fast-food approach to wildlife photography. We've all seen pictures of brown bears grabbing salmon in a waterfall in Alaska. You might think they've been taken by someone living out in the wilds; the reality is that the National Parks Board have set up a scaffold for photographers, and you book your place about 18 months in advance by the square yard."

When Campbell was invited to take part in Wild Wonders of Europe, the biggest ever project of its type, involving 58 photographers working in one another's countries to capture images of the continent's wildlife, he asked for a special dispensation: to stay at home. He will work on images of the bottlenose dolphins of the Moray Firth, and otters, both on the West Coast and on the riverbanks of the Borders.

"I've spend a lot of money over the years commuting to places like Skye, Mull, the West Highlands (to photograph otters]. To me that's old hat now, I'm much more excited about photographing otters in a different environment where you never thought you'd see them. I've known these rivers all my life and until five years ago had almost never seen a dropping of an otter, let alone the animal itself. Today, I could take you to three places where I see otters with cubs within 20 minutes' walk of home. That's a really encouraging sign."

Campbell was arguably Scotland's first full-time nature photographer. He is a regular contributor to calendars, magazines and postcard ranges as well as illustrating books on golden eagles, badgers, and Highland cattle. An exhibition of his work currently at Waterston House, the Scottish Ornithologist's Club headquarters at Aberlady, spans 30 years of photography, and show, both classic images and artistic experiments, from sanderlings on the edge of focus to a swallow swooping over a silky sea.

Campbell's love of the natural world and of photography have gone hand in hand ever since he first explored the fields and woods of the Borders with "an Instamatic from Boots which my gran got me". After school, he spent two years working at Edinburgh Zoo – "I'd read too many books by Gerald Durrell" – before studying photography at Napier University. "They'd never had a wannabe wildlife photographer, but I had a way of twisting a lot of the projects round to suit wildlife."

After leaving college, he briefly worked with landscape photographer Colin Baxter before launching on his own with "a Morris Minor and a tent out of Woolworths". Now, he has graduated to a camper van, but still spends many nights in cramped hides covered in camouflage netting.

It's the kind of job that involves going the extra mile. And sometimes that mile is up a mountain with a dead stag tied to your rucksack as bait for golden eagles. "I was once flagged down by Northern Constabulary at 2am on the A9 to ask, 'Why have you got a dead deer hanging off the roof rack on your camper van?' Answer: if you're going to photograph eagles, that's what you need."

Even with a dead deer, a photographer might still spend three days and nights sitting in a hole in the ground near a known eagle perch without seeing a single bird. In fact, it was on the ninth night that Campbell got lucky. "What if I'd given up on the eighth day? I feel, as you go along, you earn certain pictures. I wouldn't say I'm a patient person, it's as much persistence and being determined to see something through. You get to the stage where you have invested so much time in the subject, you can't give up and say it's all been for nothing.

"I welcome the chance of sitting for three days in a hole in the ground, as long as I'm comfy, and with technology you can be. The more comfortable you are, the longer you'll stay, the more you'll see. Time goes very quickly. To a lot of people it's boring, but I find it a fantastic antidote to the stresses and strains of modern life."

He rarely comes back empty-handed, whether his quarry is a rare bird or a colourful patch of lichen. And there is always the unexpected gift of a surprise encounter with an animal – even if, as on one occasion, nature fought back in the form of an irate capercaillie. "It flew past my head to attack my friend," Campbell grins. "He was on his back. This was a 17-stone ex-police officer!"

In the last two decades, Campbell has seen Scotland's wildlife become a tourist attraction. Since the success of the BBC's Springwatch programme, he has found he needs to book the Islay ferry well in advance. Visitors – many with cameras – queue to visit the osprey hide at Boat of Garten, or to see the Moray Firth dolphins at Chanonry Point.

Campbell's decision to concentrate on his backyard strikes a chord with recent work by nature writers Richard Mabey and Mark Cocker. With mounting concerns about carbon footprints, it is time to consider the true cost of pursuing the rare and exotic. For Campbell, the reasoning is simpler still: if he works close to home, he will be able to spend more time on his subject.

When he was commissioned to illustrate a book on badgers, he decided to work with the local sett until they were accustomed to his presence. Patiently, every night, he sat on the same log, wearing the same clothes. "I fed them dog biscuits and handfuls of raisins and nothing bad happened, and after a while, I could literally follow them around.

"The highlight of that project for me was being scent-marked by a badger – it just wiped its backside on me. They only do that to another badger. To get to that stage with an animal, you need to put a lot of time in. If I'd had to get in my car and drive, even as little as five miles, I'd never have got that amount of contact as I had.

"A few years ago, I took my older son Ben out badger-watching. There was no sign of them that night and eventually he went back to the tent. Unknown to me, the five badger cubs had found their way in there and he was feeding them honey sandwiches. When we went to parents' evening, the teacher said, 'You've got to watch some of the stories Ben is telling.' I had to say, 'No, it's absolutely true!'"

&#149 Laurie Campbell's work is on show at the Scottish Birdwatching Resource Centre, Waterston House, Aberlady, until 4 February. For further information, call 01875 871 330 or log on to: www.the-soc.org.uk/waterston-house.htm