The only thing I've ever wanted to do was be a filmmaker.
I started filming when I was 13 at the skate park where I lived in Kirkcaldy. I was obsessed with being at the skatepark, but I had a bad skating injury and ended up with a cast on my arm so I couldn't actually skate, but I was still there every day with my identical twin sister, Pip.
Pip and I were both really, really into it and pushed each other and we just absolutely love the sport and we’ve both been skating since we were 10 years old. We love kayaking, wild swimming, surfing, football – you name it.
I picked up a camera because I still wanted to be in the skate park scene and quickly realised, I loved the buzz of filming and I actually liked it more than skating.
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When I was at school I had absolutely no idea that you could actually do filmmaking as a career, that was completely not on my radar, but I continued to shoot and edit, making my first proper film when I was 17.
I wanted to do something that I absolutely loved for a job and the only thing that really stuck out to me that I absolutely loved was filmmaking, but I just didn't see how this could be a career. I remember speaking to teachers at my high school and at the time, they said they'd never heard anyone say, ever, that they wanted to go to university to study and be a filmmaker. Kirkcaldy doesn’t even have a cinema, but Fife does have a famous wildlife filmmaker and celebrated photographer in Doug Allan.
I’ve been really lucky, I studied hard at the academic side and worked as a runner for the BBC and on a couple of Netflix films and I spent some time on the latest Batman film.
What I love the most though, is being hands on, as one person with a camera and the natural world, rather than being on set with 500 people, just camera storytelling.
I've made a lot of films for BBC Scotland, several independent films and TV adverts, sequences for outdoor brands, all forms of storytelling really, which centre and revolve around the natural world.
I think if I were to tell the high school me at the skatepark, who was looking at university courses, ‘Oh my goodness, you can actually study film’ and that now I work full time filming outdoor adventures, seems kind of crazy to me!
My recent documentary Shooting Animals is currently on STV Player and it’s the culmination of a project I've been working on for years. It combines a lot of my interests - the outdoors, nature, Scotland, and filmmaking. It’s a message about how we, as a film and television industry, and most importantly as individuals can really use storytelling to help protect our environment and the natural world.
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