FEBRUARY 2024 - Filming Beluga Lagoon Concert

Had a fun night filming Beluga Lagoon In Aviemore. There were 1100 tickets sold in 3 minutes!!! They also sold out the Barrowlands in 2 minutes.

Pretty fun to see behind the scenes of there first of a row of bigger concerts. As in previously they played to 250-350 audience so this was 4 times the size of crowd and Glasgow Barrowland will be 8 times the size I think.

Andrew is going to make a little documentary of this year as they do their gigs and asked if I’d film a bit of them BTS and on the stage as they played. Andrew had three songs he wanted recorded fully and the sound was being recorded on the decks at the back. Rupert Shanks a good mate who also lives in Aviemore was keen to help to. So Rupert was on a long lens at the back while I did wides on the gimbal from the stage and elsewhere.

The concert was brilliant and the whole band put on a great show:)

A chilled night as Andrew said to enjoy the night too. Hopefully myself and Rupert will be free to film the other venues throughout the year. Was a late finish as we all had a few beers after:)

Beluga Lagoon Band doing their thing:)

JANUARY 2024 - Live drone from Scotland

A fun day and adrenaline fulled as normal with a live drone. Today I was experimenting with the Mavic 3 Pro CINE for the live drone and a bit of use of the Inspire 2 with x7 Camera. Wildly the image for the £5k drone is better than the £21k drone lol.

We were filming Carol Smillie for the ITV Competitions that run over ITV This Morning, Lorraine etc. Hadn’t filmed Carol Smillie since covid and she said she hadn’t been filmed since then either lol.

Jordan Summers was on ground camera and Rich on sound and Athene directing. Great team for the day. We also got to stay in Cameron house always a bonus.

I’ve done live drone a dozen times now or so and it still remains exciting work as you know a lot of folk are watching if you did anything wrong. Also making sure the drone is in the right spot and flying perfectly as no second take chances:) So much fun.

Inspire 2 with LiveU ready for filming

Experimenting with the Mavic 3 pro CINE live. Image is way better.

NOVEMBER 2023 - Aerial filming in the Western Isles, Scotland. Filming Highland Cows for National geographic.

A lovely day out filming Highland cows on north Uist with a great bunch of people. Carriane MacDonald and her mate and Angus MacDonald and his wife.

The plan was to film the cows going over to a tidal island for the winter. They’d walk a few kilometres down the road then head onto the sand and make the 3km crossing over the tidal sand at low tide. This all needed to be done at low tide. I’d got a friend of a friend Archie to drive for me so on the drive I could fly from the car and keep up. As the cows wouldn’t stop for us. Angus would lead the cows while Carriane and her mate would push from behind.

The day went very smoothly once I swapped the inspire 2 drone for the Mavic 3 Pro CINE so I could fly in the winds gusting 40 mph at times. I even had to rush off the island as the wind got worse and worse they cancelled all the ferries for the following days. Great to see these lovely looking cows doing the crossing though.

This will be shown on next years ‘Europe from the Air’ on Nat Geo channel or Disney Channel.

OCTOBER 2023 - Aerial filming in the Lake District for a Light Show

A fun weekend with CC-Lab and a few film buddies. Rupert and Andrew from Scotland and Fred from England along with Amy and Olly from CC-Lab:) We were filming a wolf made of lights plus a bunch of other pieces during the day. Was pretty different and fun.

Rupert (director), Andrew (ground Camera), Me (aerial filming)

OCTOBER 2023 - Filming with Helly Hanson and Arrochar Mountain rescue

Today was filming a training day with Helly Hanson and AKA presented by Arrochar mountain Rescue team. Was all about breaking down the barriers in the outdoors. It was a fun day meeting all these people. Ed Smith was doing the photography on the day too, always good to work with Ed.

OCTOBER 2023 - Aerial filming Mountain biking near Aviemore

A fun day out with locals filming for the Capercaillie project about different groups working together for the benefit of these big birds. I was filming some mountain bikers with the drone to go with Katrina’s ground footage she had filmed before. Was fun filming and a bit of exercise.

OCTOBER 2023 - Aerial Filming the floods in Scotland

I spent a couple of days filming the River Spey in flood as often documentary makers are looking for shots of the Spey in flood so I thought I should catch some of it and plus it is very interesting to see it from the air but also devastating seeing what it has done to peoples properties too.

SEPTEMBER 2023 - Aerial filming in Tuscany, Italy with GCN

Awesome time as drone pilot out in Tuscany with GCN. A lot less full on than my Swiss trip last month with GCN:)

Had a great time filming a gravel race called Grinduro in the lovely Tuscany area in Italy. Hank was the very enthusiastic presenter and Stefan the equally enthusiastic director. We made a few films here and the main event was filming the race itself which involved driving round and grabbing shots of Hank as we went. Hank also Gopro’d much of the race as we could not follow a lot of it down closed off gravel roads.

The race feel itself was very chilled and fun and we stayed on a campsite by the beach in 33 degree heat each day so it was lovely:)

The start line was pretty hectic with 3 other drones in the air lol. But we managed to work around each other. I used the Mavic 3 pro CINE where I could and the Mini 3 pro in places near people and buildings:) a few pics below….

Final evening Tuscany filming sunset on the beach for a sequence with Hank.

A Tuscan village and church

AUGUST 2023 - Some of my Aerial Filming in the new GCN Doc

The short documentary of the Tour Des Staions Ultimate 1000 that Oli raced in, is out today. Such an amazing effort Oli did cycling this, he had only ever cycled a race up to 380km previously.

Beautifully edited by Stefan Darque who was also directing and main camera, driving was Steve of Elmy Cycles who did a brilliant job staying awake for it. It has turned into a great little film and I believe a longer version is coming. Lots of shots from the air here from myself:) Have a watch in the link below.

AUGUST 2023 - Aerial filming in the Swiss Alps for GCN

This was a pretty fun yet crazy filming job making this documentary. Fun because we were in the Swiss alps and with a great team of people. Stefan as director and first camera, Oli racing his bike, Steve driving the van, James riding the motorbike and myself doing the aerial filming.

The crazy bit was we did a 37 hr shift on day one of the race filming, and driving for Steve then we got about 3 hrs sleep the next night and 3 hrs the following night. (James stuck to his legally insured 10hrs a day driving:) So there really should have been two crews covering this! But GCN does like getting free overtime out of everyone lol! But we just got on with it in a very happy way as we were there and needed to film it and support Oli and everyone. Hopefully it all looks good when it comes out tomorrow on the GCN channel:)

I also got to see the North Face of the Eiger which I’d always wanted to do and Oli got an amazing position in the race for it being his first Ultra race.

The race was the Tour Des Stations 1000 Ultimate. Meaning 40 racers would do 1000 km and climb 26000m in the race! Oil did it in 72 hrs which is incredible! Need to watch it to see how he did:) A few pics of the lovely Swiss alps below.

Some hairpins

The hotel from Goldfinger

The North Face of the Eiger

JUNE 2023 - Myself as a drone pilot in the papers for advertising the new National Geographic series 'Europe from Above'

Appeared in a few papers over the weekend to advertise the National Geographic series called Europe from above. I shot a few of the UK parts of it mainly in Scotland with Barra airport, Up Hella Ya in Shetland, an Archeological dig on Holy Island where a few. Great to be involved in this and the second series for me. Below arte a few paper articles and seemingly it ran in around 100 regional papers too. Nice phot of me in the Sun lol.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22629778/brits-never-heard-traditional-events/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12178487/UKs-ancient-traditions-leave-modern-day-Brits-baffled.html

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-unknown-traditional-uk-events-30193275

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-unknown-traditional-uk-events-30193038

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1779034/top-traditional-uk-events-competitions-cheese-rolling

Me and my Inspire 2 drone with the X7 camera that I use to shoot the series.

MAY 2023 - Filming with drone and camera in Argyll at the Taynish National Nature Reserve

Fun day filming with Ian Dow. Perfect sunny day filming for Tiny Ark a Dublin based film company who I last filmed several years ago for. The weather was lovely and sunny and had no idea these big Oak (plus many other trees) rain forest exists. They have a proper canopy and ferns growing out of the oak branches like you see in botanical gardens lol.

Had a bunch of large Landscape shots to show the position of the forest in relation to the surrounding mountains and Sea. Then got creative with far more fun shots flying under the canopy through the trees in lovely slow cinematic shots through this cool habitat.

Then we did an interview with Ian with our first midges of the year biting us as we stood still for 30mins. Then a bunch of Close up shots and slo-mo with the GH6 ground camera. A good day exploring and being creative with the forest.

Definitely worth a visit: https://www.nature.scot/enjoying-outdoors/visit-our-nature-reserves/taynish-national-nature-reserve

The canopy from above

Screen grab of forest

MAY 2023 - Australia camera and drone filming with ITV 'This Morning'.

What an awesome trip to be lucky enough to be asked to go on. A long trip for work but very worth it. I sorted an online drone licence to use my Mini 3 Pro drone and bought a second one so I had a backup for the trip.

We did a lot on this trip with John Torode doing activities and cooks at different spots in Western Australia. John is a superb presenter to work with on these programs and he had just done two weeks filming with his wife before we arrived.

Our team was Will Thomas directing and using one of my cameras on cooks wor interviews when required. Nigel Francis a brilliant fun sound was doing the sound. Alice was producing the food side of things and Jonah (Johns son) was along to help out. Malta from Western Australia was sorting locations etc on the way. We all got on very well which makes these busy trips so much easier:)

There are many highlights from the trip and the locations and the short films we make will all be very different. Here are a few pics to give you a flavour of what we got up too. The videos will be out in September on ITV This Morning:)

The whale sharks we filmed. Pic by Ash who was doing our underwater filming:)

A cook on a boat a first for me:)

March 2023 - Aerial filming on Beluga Lagoon feature

Back with the Beluga Lagoon team to film on their feature for the last bit. Again another great week working with this team:)

FEBRUARY 2023 - Camera operator and Drone for BBC Education in Edinburgh and Borders.

A few days making four films for BBC Education geography lessons:) Just me on my own following a shot list and script for plate shots for animations. A fun few days fitting things in-between the weather.

January 2023 - Camera and drone operator Aberdeen and Ballater for ITV 'This Morning' crime segment.

Did an interview with a murder detective and GV’s for this in December in Aberdeen city but today we were out in Ballater to film some more pieces and interview around the village. Pretty chilly day but nice sunshine and an interesting days but some gruesome facts and scary what humans can be like.

Isla was presenting this piece and Dom directing and using my second camera. With myself on ground camera drone and sound.

Ballater from the Air

My setup for the interview with the detective and Isla.

January 2023 - Camera and drone operator in Sardinia with Gino for ITV This Morning

Always great to head to Sardinia to shoot with the ever very funny Gino and the great ITV ‘This Morning’ crew. I was doing camera and drone here and Ashley Gadd from fresh audio was doing sound, Harry Bott was directing and Julia Alger was managing the food side of things for Gino.

Surprisingly for this time of year we only had one indoor cook and the rest was pretty sunny for January and we had a great time touring round different areas in the inner part of Sardinia. Mainly within 30mins oil Gino’s house.

Gino kept us entertained and ever professional and quick at what he does.

SEPTEMBER 2022 - Director of Photography and Aerial Filming in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales

Green Space Dark Skies Light Art Project all over the UK

So for this whole month I was on this project with my good friend Rupert Shanks. Rupert was directing and I was Director of Photography for the month. I mainly filmed with the Inspire 2 during each shoot alongside Phil and Tom of Pivotal films from Northern Ireland. We then had a variety of camera folk. Fred, Mike Webster, and good mate Andrew O’Donnell. Then Jason, Olly and Amy from production done by CC-Lab who were great to work with.

This light show was a concept by John and Mark to make an art installation on the highest peak in each country in the UK. A pretty hard thing to do mainly thinking of the weather on these peaks and whether you could actually film it. Also if volunteers will be keen. But all worked out amazingly. We had a few exciting days with weather but got there in the end.

The first shoot on Scafell Rupert was on another job so I had to fill in directing. This was fun as none of us new each other and was the first time filming together and figuring out how the light team and camera team can all work together. And a few plans changed at the last minute and a camera team looking at you for what we should do different. Was quite a bit of adrenaline but all worked out well and got some great shots with the 550 people on the mountain!

The finished film below which aired on Countryfile and has been seen by 5.5m people at time of writing this. Opening shot is mine:) Plus the sunrise shots on the thumbnail and at the end:)

MARCH 2022 - Aerial filming in the Highlands at Creag Meagaidh

Today we were filming Guy Robertson soloing a few different ice climbs on Creag Meagaidh for an Alastair Lee climbing film. Was a good day out and some good exercise for the day as had to carry all the kit to the top to start:)

AUGUST 2021 - DECEMBER 2021 lots of work

So these months just got so busy I just couldn’t fill in my blog or take on anymore work. Which was great. This year became my busiest year yet even though it started slow after covid lockdowns. I think winning a BAFTA for Aerial Cinematography under factual Photography was the reason for this.

As I’ve been busy this year too I’ve decided just to skip the rest of 2021 and try and catch up with 2022 lol.

Heres a few pics from some jobs:)

Glasgow University standing tall:)