Alex's prize was an exclusive photography workshop at The Wolseley Centre. Here he shares the highlights of his day, as he advanced his skills with expert tips and advice from local photographer Adrian Clarke.

My photography journey began when I was very young. I was fascinated by my granddad taking photos and would use his camera when at the zoo with him to take photos of penguins and meerkats. I ended up inheriting my great-granddad’s old compact digital camera and loved taking photos of random things around my house, composing photographs of things that captured my attention and imagination and my journey has just progressed from there.

I’ve found that as a hobby, photography has an amazing community full of people happy to help and share their expertise and it gives you a great eye for imagery. 

I was fortunate enough to win the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust under 18s photography competition and got the chance to have a workshop/ lesson with professional photographer Adrian Clarke. We went around Wolseley Bridge nature reserve and Adrian taught me further parts of using a camera, such as making use of different ISO and shutter speed selections to get different effects for my photographs. I was also taught about the rule of thirds and how to make photos more visually appealing using this. It was a very fun day; I had never done anything like this before and it was great to have an experienced professional there to help me improve my photography skills.

With photography you will most likely find a certain type of subject you like to capture the most (my favourites are birds and nature). Once you find your type of photography it’s useful to look at other pictures to get ideas on image composition for that subject and then try to hone your skills.
Anything can be a subject of your lens; you just have to figure out how to make it from a snap to a picture. 

If you are contemplating getting into photography my one piece of advice is to take the plunge and just do it. It’s one of the most fun hobbies you can do. It doesn’t matter if not all of your images turn out how you wanted them to, just going out into nature and having a wander round at a nature reserve or park and capturing the world around you is something else.

You don’t need an expensive camera starting off. You could use your phone camera and if you find you enjoy the hobby then you can start to look at investing in a stand alone camera which will give you greater control over the images you can capture.

Below are some of my favourite photos I captured during the workshop. I'm especially proud of the bank vole photo, as it was so quick!

Especially now with it being a new year it could be one of your new year’s resolutions to get a photo of every season or enter a few photography competitions. Who knows where you will go with the hobby?

If you ever want to look at my latest work I have a Facebook and Instagram account both under the name Alex Hiles Photography.