Nine years ago Scott Engering wrote an article for HoldtheFrontPage about his decision to change career from geologist to photographer.

Since then the Yorkshire man’s career has taken him on some interesting assignments and here he tells about combining his talents on a photography in Rotherham and launching a new website.

Back in 2000, I wrote the article ‘Getting blood out of a stone’, whilst studying photography at The Sheffield College. It highlighted the twists and turns within a career that had transformed me from a geologist to a budding photographer.

At the time, all of my work had been produced on traditional film and I was able to satisfy the demand for good illustrated articles from trade magazines in both the UK and the Netherlands.

Up until then, my traditional Pentax P30T, with a couple of extra lenses, had always been able to do the job required of it and a Fuji Finepix, acquired on the cheap, had introduced me to the digital age. However, the chance to have a cover page photo was missed, because the Fuji just wasn’t up to the job.

I discovered that taking the step into the digital age wasn’t so easy. The projects that I had been involved with had just about paid my bills and enabled me to upgrade my computer and acquire basic scanning facilities, but the purchase of a new camera kit, to match the specification of my Pentax, was simply beyond my reach.

However, I still managed to use my existing resources to good effect and an opportunity to work on the restoration of the frieze sculpture at The Royal Exchange in London, provided plenty of PR opportunities in the stone restoration industry.

More often than not, my camera has just been a tool to record my observations made in other professional work but each project completed has been accompanied by publicity in magazines and the internet.

With a constant uphill struggle to keep abreast of technological advances and break into the market place, it is not always easy to keep looking on the bright side and, sometimes, it just takes a bit of lateral thinking to come up with a new idea. For me, this involved going back to my first real passion – geology.

As part of a temporary project to re-organise and catalogue the mineral collection at Rotherham’s Clifton Park museum, I came up with the idea for an exhibition of the best specimens, together with spectacular photographs of rocks and minerals, as seen under the microscope.

A suitable specimen of a rock, when cut and ground down into a slice only 0.003mm thick and viewed under a polarising microscope produces an astonishing array of vivid colours that vary according to the chemical composition and orientation of the individual interlocking crystals.

The announcement of the museum’s imminent closure for refurbishment put paid to this, in the short run, but it sowed the seeds of another idea – Glowing Edges Designs.

Of all the ideas that I have had in my working life, producing artwork was not one of them yet, having taken small steps with a few exhibitions and art markets along the way, it is these images that have generated most interest over the years and are now published on my website.