About Me
Greetings! I'm Robin McLeod from Ailsa Craig, Ontario, a village about twenty minutes northwest of London and a 2.5 hour drive southwest of Toronto.
I became interested in nature as a boy growing up on a 1-acre homestead just outside London. During summers and after school I would hike with my two neighbour buddies along the railroad tracks and explore the surrounding woodlots and fields. We investigated everything that moved – and many things that didn't.
In my mid-teens my brother acquired a collection of stuffed birds, which sparked an interest in local species, and a subsequent trip to Point Pelee during spring migration clinched it: I became a fledgling birdwatcher at the age of 16.
I caught the "bug" of identifying as many birds as possible, and the infection soon spread to encompass wildflowers, trees, and butterflies. This hands-on experience in the field was supplemented with background information in biology acquired via a technician's diploma in Fish & Wildlife at Fleming College, and a bachelor's degree in Zoology at the University of Guelph.
My curiosity for insects and other bugs was piqued in 2003 after buying a digital camera and happening to capture an image of a beetle taking flight. An enlarged version of that snapshot on my computer's monitor showed the beetle caught in the act: its elytra raised overhead like gull-wing doors on a racing car, and its wings just beginning to whir. I was hooked!
The unusual, the surprising, the new, and the strange; basically, I seek whatever fascinates: a close-up view of a bug's face... the geometry of a spider's web... a familiar object viewed from an unfamiliar angle. Old things become new again when seen from a different perspective. They may even become difficult to recognize, making me wonder, "What on Earth is THAT?"
Examining anything from a new angle forces me to think in a new way about what I'm seeing. And I love that. It's the basis for my tag line: "different views – different muse".
Photography, for me, is a personal thing: there's a part of me in every photo I take. If you see a part of yourself in there too, I'm glad we had the opportunity to share.
I became interested in nature as a boy growing up on a 1-acre homestead just outside London. During summers and after school I would hike with my two neighbour buddies along the railroad tracks and explore the surrounding woodlots and fields. We investigated everything that moved – and many things that didn't.
In my mid-teens my brother acquired a collection of stuffed birds, which sparked an interest in local species, and a subsequent trip to Point Pelee during spring migration clinched it: I became a fledgling birdwatcher at the age of 16.
I caught the "bug" of identifying as many birds as possible, and the infection soon spread to encompass wildflowers, trees, and butterflies. This hands-on experience in the field was supplemented with background information in biology acquired via a technician's diploma in Fish & Wildlife at Fleming College, and a bachelor's degree in Zoology at the University of Guelph.
My curiosity for insects and other bugs was piqued in 2003 after buying a digital camera and happening to capture an image of a beetle taking flight. An enlarged version of that snapshot on my computer's monitor showed the beetle caught in the act: its elytra raised overhead like gull-wing doors on a racing car, and its wings just beginning to whir. I was hooked!
The unusual, the surprising, the new, and the strange; basically, I seek whatever fascinates: a close-up view of a bug's face... the geometry of a spider's web... a familiar object viewed from an unfamiliar angle. Old things become new again when seen from a different perspective. They may even become difficult to recognize, making me wonder, "What on Earth is THAT?"
Examining anything from a new angle forces me to think in a new way about what I'm seeing. And I love that. It's the basis for my tag line: "different views – different muse".
Photography, for me, is a personal thing: there's a part of me in every photo I take. If you see a part of yourself in there too, I'm glad we had the opportunity to share.