Conservation Communication

SCOTLAND: The Big Picture produces compelling visual media that promotes the benefits of a wilder Scotland for people and wildlife. We work with partners and clients to integrate science with creative communications that inform and inspire. Our work includes photography, filmmaking, book publishing, syndicated photo-stories, presentations and education resources. Our team of photographers, filmmakers, writers, designers and educators are all motivated by the need to rebuild healthy ecosystems across Scotland.

For the first time, 2020VISION brought together 20 of the UK’s top nature photographers, along with filmmakers and writers, to communicate the benefits of a wilder landscape. By showcasing heroic efforts throughout the UK to restore, reconnect and revitalise whole ecosystems, 2020VISION articulated the link between habitat restoration and our own well being. The team covered inspiring projects from the south coast of England to the most remote corners of the Scottish Highlands, including inspiring urban wilding initiatives where nature was being reintroduced into our busiest cities.

Wild Wonders of Europe brought together 70 of the continent's most talented and committed nature photographers and sent them on 145 assignments across 48 European countries. After more than 1100 days in the field, an archive of 200,000 breathtaking images had been created - the most up-to-date, cohesive visual documentation of nature in Europe. More than that, Wild Wonders of Europe wanted to showcase the rich diversity of this continent and to show that in many places, a wildlife comeback is underway, which just goes to prove that conservation works: we just need more of it.

The Scottish Wildcat is Britain's most threatened mammal with perhaps just a few hundred of these magnificent cats surviving in the wild. Highland Tiger was the first coordinated conservation effort to save this iconic and elusive predator. Extensive fieldwork to establish population size and range was accompanied by public engagement initiatives and dialogue with landowners to build relationships that would lead to wildcat protection. A wide range of media outputs helped establish this little-known feline in the minds of the general public, a process that continues to this day.

Tooth & Claw explored our modern day attitudes towards predators, exposing our prejudices and asking difficult questions of us all. The project adopted an impartial approach to some complex issues, aiming to encourage more fact-based dialogue about predator management, whilst equipping its audience with a better understanding of the role of natural processes in our lives. The legacy of Tooth & Claw lives on in other projects as our entrenched cultural values continue to dictate our relationship with the natural world.

Getting under the skin of a Scottish pinewood, tuning into its rhythms and understanding how its engine works, requires an investment in time and in 2013 I made that investment, producing my first self-published book. Scotland's Great Wood, the Caledonian Pine Forest, is not just aesthetically beautiful, it’s not just a place that harbours some of the UK’s most charismatic and mystical species, it’s a place of great symbolism. With just fragments of Scotland’s original forest left, the Great Wood, Caledonia, symbolises both the destruction that so characterises our historical relationship with nature, but more recently, our capacity to put right the wrongs of the past.