Celebrity Profile _ Sandy Cleland

      Sandy has always since his very early childhood been interested in nature but it was really the television programmes such as "Look" with Peter Scott and the "On Safari" series with Armand and Michaela Dennis which kindled his passion to record nature on film. Sandy's first venture into photography was when he was 13 years with standard 8mm Cine film.
      It was however when his Father bought him a Pracktica 1 VF with a Schacht macro Travenar lens for his 21st Birthday that he really became involved with photography. Sandy had been a member of his local camera club in Bo'ness for many years but around this time he joined the Edinburgh Photographic Society and has been a member ever since.

      Sandy has always enjoyed his membership of Edinburgh and has held the positions of President and International Exhibition Secretary. He is now the External Competition Secretary.

      The Royal Photographic Society has also been very important to him and he became an Associate in 1980 and a Fellow in 1986. Both awards were with Nature Slides. Sandy has also been involved with the Licentiateship Panel both as a panel member and a Chairman as well as being a member of the Associate and Fellow Panels for Nature.

      In the past Sandy has tended to work on individual images but now he likes to work on Panels of Subjects. This in part is mainly due to digital as it is now much easier and less time consuming to produce prints. With slides it is not so easy to do panels as each slide is on the screen as an individual image, prints on the other hand can be more easily viewed and related as a panel.

      Natural History has always been, and still is, his main interest but he also enjoys all types of photography, especially subjects such as landscape and the more creative aspects of image making.

      Competitions are themselves of no great interest but Sandy does enjoy entering National and International Exhibitions as he believes this is the only way he can keep and improve his own standards of photography. One has only to view an exhibition today to see how high the standard is and it is therefore only by entering and hopefully being successful that we can maintain our level of photography.

      Sandy gained a great deal of personal satisfaction with the P.S.A. Silver Medal for the Best Wildlife Slide of an "Alderfly laying eggs" at the Northern Counties International Exhibition. This is an exhibition he has always enjoyed being involved with. Sandy was also thrilled at being awarded the Fenton Medal by the Royal Photographic Society in 2005.

      At the moment Sandy is trying to photograph British mammals. For the past few years he have been working on Brown Hares and he is now working on Stoats. Another subject is Seaside Resorts in Winter. Sandy finds these places quite fascinating during their quiet times of the year.

      Away from photography Sandy's other main interest is of the history of the Second World War, especially some of the main characters such as Churchill, Patton and Lord Alanbrooke. Lord Alanbrooke was also a very keen nature photographer.

      Sandy does not have any special long term objectives in mind, he just likes being out with his camera. He does have one major regret and that is that he did not record more of the urban scenes and characters of the 1950's and 1960's. These people and areas which were part of his life are gone and are now only distant memories.

      Humorous things do happen to him when visiting other clubs. Sandy was once introduced as a photographer and naturist.

      Sandy also found it extremely amusing when at the end of a lecture the President announced that the following week "we will have a really good photographer".!!!

      Sandy has always enjoyed his hobby, and visiting other clubs, and meeting with other kindred spirits. Our hobby is full of extremely kind and wonderful people and he feels as enthusiastic about his photography today as he did when he first started. Today digital has given a renaissance to his photography and Sandy feels we should grasp it and it's benefits and potential.

Editor