My political photography started in 2012 when I embarked on a project to document the Yes Campiagn for Scottish Independence. The refferendum was coming in 2014 and there was never a more politically engaged time in Scotland’s history. As I looked for events and moments to cover I quickly realised that there were too many for me to cover alone. I put out a call for submitions and before I knew it I was managing 10+ photographers from all over Scotland. My role then evolved into one as photo editor as I curated, posted and sent out images to press and other orginisations such as National Collective, a grassroots organisation of artists that I had become photo editor for at the same time. We worked closely together and made the images free for anyone to use to help push the positive image of the Yes campiagn. Support for Scottish Independece went from around 26% in 2012 to 45% at the time of the refferedum in 2014. Not quit eenough to swing the vote in the Yes camp favour but an inmpressive gain in such a short space of time. 

After the refferendum, First Minister Alex Salmond resigned and a new leader of the party of govenrment needed to be found. Alex’s prodegy and long time collegue Nicola Sturgeon was the clear candidate. Nicola was quickly voted in as the head of the Scottish National Party and thus became the first female First Minister of Scotland. Despite the refferendum loss the country was energised politically. Nicola and her team expressed their wishes for a new kind of politics. She wanted transparancy. She wanted the public to see everthing. A tour of scotland was planned. Something akin to a band on tour. And the mood of the day was not dissimilar. I was called in to docmement the tour and given unprecisdented acccess to The First Minster in order to provide images daily for the press teams to put out. I had come up with a system wherebye I would shoot to two cards similtainoously. Not uncommon for a backup but for this I shot RAW files on one card and set up the camera interbal colours and tones so that I could shoot JPG to the other card. These were smaller files readuy for immediate distrobution. With a simple card reader and using my phone and a whatsapp group I could trasmit all of the images in near real time. One of of the images that become most recognizable from that time of Nicola coming on stage at the Hydro in Glasgow was delivered and put out in a matter of seconds. Real time authentic documentary images that told the story and captured the mood of the day. it was a powerful workflow. The RAW files could be downlaoded later and used for the archive or when high resolution images where required. 

After the  success of the tour of scotland I was asked to stay on and continue documenting the campoaigns and events. The same setup applied. Near real time delivery of images as it happened. Throughout the various campaigns I delivered images direct from planes, trains, ships, cars and helicopters. Whereever we were as long as there was wifi or mobile signal images could be delieverd. There is now an archive of thousands of images from hundreeds of events that the party can and still does use to this day for campiagns and promotions.