Would you like to get to know our Professional photographers better? Our new weekly feature will do just that ... 

This week the Spotlight is on Doug Chinnery!

✭ How long have you worked for L&L?

"It must be about four years since Charlie surprised the life out of me by inviting me to join the team of leaders and Light and Land. Many of the leaders have long been my photographic hero’s and inspirations and so to be working alongside them is still a dream role for me."

✭ When did you discover photography?

"Like many, when I was very young - certainly before I was ten I was given one of those brown Bakelite Kodak cameras and snapped away with it. My real interest became cemented when my step father gave me a medium format Russian twin lens reflex Lubitel camera when I was about 12. He was the one to teach me about the ‘Exposure Triangle’. From then on I was truly hooked."

✭ Which camera do you use?

"I use many, including my iPhone (which I use a great deal and will soon be running a workshop for Light and Land - teaching ‘iPhoneography’ with Paul Sanders), my Canon 5D mk3 which I use for its wonderfully creative multiple exposure function and for my macro work through to my main ‘workhorse’ camera which is my Fuji X-Pro2 system. I also still love shooting on film and regularly use my 1970’s Hasselblad 500C (and overtly covert Charlie’s CVF-50c Digital Back) and my medium format pinhole camera made from rosewood and brass. I also still shoot on a Polaroid camera and an old bellows Agfa camera. I view all of them as tools which give my images a certain look or feel. I just choose the ‘tool’ which will produce the image I am looking for at the time."

✭ Favourite place you’ve visited?

"I am never happier than when I am in Scotland. I have a deep love for many places in the Highlands, the Cairngorms and on the Hebridean islands. If there is anywhere else in the world more beautiful, more diverse in such a small area then I have yet to find it."

✭ What’s your favourite image of yours? 

"I know many photographers struggle to find a single image as their favourite but I don’t. I knew it the moment I released the shutter several years ago and I have yet to make an image I like more. I particularly like the fact hardly anyone else ‘gets’ the image. When I show it to people and tell them it is my favourite, they give me a ‘look’. That one you are making right now ;) Even my wife won’t let me have this image up anywhere in the house except in my studio because she doesn’t ‘get’ it either. Why do I like it so much? Well, snow is my favourite weather. I shot it locally - within a few miles of home. I love symmetry and it has a measure of that. I love the fact it is square - my favourite format. I love the muted and soft colour palette. I like the central placement of the trees. I also love the fact that three birds flew into the scene and that they are blurred. I often say that ‘sharpness is overrated’ and so a bit of blur always pleases me. Where the birds are in the frame, their spacing and the amount of blur is perfect to my mind - so everything, in that moment, came together to make an image which I wonder if I will ever improve upon?"

✭ What’s your favourite food?

"Easy. A Bacon Sandwich. Fresh crusty white bread, butter, thick, well cooked smoked bacon, tomato ketchup and a mug of tea. We could discuss the merits of pepperoni pizza, of course, and I wouldn’t fight you over it as they are very fine too. But I think the bacon sandwich has to win in the end."

✭ If you could be any animal what would it be? 

"A dolphin. To swim like that! How wonderful."

See all of Doug's upcoming tours and workshops here.