Camera Clubs are great for improving your photography in a friendly, supportive environment. They’re not always the best place to learn who you are as a photographer.

The camera club aesthetic, basically, is:

• Your main subject must be bitingly sharp.
• Don’t blow the highlights.
• Use the rule of thirds.

You get the idea.

A lot of these rules are good photographic principles to live by. Learn them, internalise them, and – once you’ve gained enough experience – feel free to break them whenever you want.

Bearing that in mind, what score do you reckon a camera club judge would give the photos at the top of the page? Personally, I think they would do well to score 13 or 14, and yet I’m hugely proud of them both.

The first image is of the Firth of Forth on a dreich, stormy day. It attempts to convey an impression of how it felt to be standing on the shoreline in the wind and the rain. It isn’t sharp. There’s no real subject. There is hardly any colour variation between sea and sky. But that’s how it felt. The wind and rain in my eyes, obscuring my vision. The sense of emptiness – no birds in the sky, no boats making their way back to harbour. Does it capture a sense of what the Firth of Forth actually looks like? No, of course not. Does it capture a sense of how I felt on that bitingly cold day? I hope so.

The second image shows a restaurant window in Morningside. Those abstract shapes, viewed through frosted glass, reminded me of the Manhattan skyline. It was a day of very little inspiration. I went out to shoot street portraits, and came home with almost nothing. Almost, but not quite. A found skyline in a grubby window rewarded me with a pleasing abstract.

And when I follow the rules? This photo of a friend of mine is probably an 18 or 19 in a camera club competition. It’s a cracking portrait, but it isn’t who I am as a photographer.

I guess that’s the lesson. Camera clubs can teach us how to make technically better photographs. And without knowledge of those technical skills I could never have done justice to my friend with this monochrome portrait. But the photos I love – the photos which matter to me – aren’t always the same as the photos that do well in camera club competitions. I hope I never stop taking that type of photograph: the ones that leave camera club judges scratching their heads.