Photographer

Tony Oliver

It all got serious in 1970, designing and building high definition (for the day) cameras to inspect the integrity of nuclear reactor in-core welds.

This reignited my teenage interest in photography and come the 1980s, whilst deep in a career of nuclear physics, I branched out to feed a hungry guide-book market with 'travel' photos. I traipsed around.... The Norwegian Fjords, France (a lot of France), North Wales, Ontario, Russia, Spain, Iceland and, eventually, about as far north as land allows. This had turned into a travel, wildlife and outdoor-product photographic business selling to the adventure travel industry and accompanying articles about the wildernesses I felt so comfortable in. This was an escape and transition from unclear physicist, leaving a binary world of logic, to artist and the dark mysteries of composition and light.

Today, my photography is mainly wildlife, landscape and environmental, based in The Hebrides. A compromise between the isolation I once sought in the far north and the reality of living some sort of 'normal' life, whatever normal may be.

The Isle of Coll may not have ice bears, walrus or Sabine gulls...... but it does enjoy a spectacular diversity of habitats and consequential inhabitants within. The challenges here are equally as exciting but I have, so far, not missed the 'fun' of taking a pee (or other) at minus 40° on the sea ice.