Teenage life was an ordeal, till Caitlyn discovered her calm with a digital camera

All day, day-after-day, younger photographer Caitlyn McDonald wears her headphones.

It’s the one approach the 18-year-old can get via the fixed noise, chatter and distractions of day by day life.

In her early teenagers, Caitlyn was identified with Autism and Auditory Processing Disorder – a situation that impacts how the mind interprets sounds.

High faculty was an ordeal. She was exhausted, full of nervousness, and it broke her confidence.

But there’s one place she finds her calm and focus. When she’s watching wildlife down her digital camera lens.

“It is a whole new world seeing what wildlife photographers always see,” Caitlyn says.

“It’s so peaceful you can see all the animals coming slowly, seeing their different behaviour.”

Like many individuals with autism, Caitlyn – from Ardrossan in North Ayrshire – can wrestle with busy environments, assembly strangers and dealing with modifications to routine.

From dancing to boxing to pictures. Until she picked up a digital camera, she might by no means choose an curiosity.

Her mum Paula and pop John realised she had a expertise after she took a photograph on her cellular of the household canine operating on the seaside.

It ended up as runner-up in an RSPCA photograph competitors.

Suspecting Caitlyn’s canine photograph could be greater than a fortunate shot, Paula searched on-line and located wildlife photographer Paul McDougall.

His workshops educate budding photographers to be taught and skim animal behaviour.

Paula despatched him a message and defined Caitlyn’s autism and APD.

“When you meet her she doesn’t quite fit the norm for an 18-year-old girl,” her mum says.

“But the minute she met Paul, he was just so understanding, patient.

“Quite a lot of the time it is the tone of voice that Caitlyn responds to. Paul’s could be very calming and comfortable.”

Caitlyn joined her first workshop with Paul, photographing swans at Hogganfield Loch in north Glasgow in March last year.

Run in small groups, it was the ideal situation for her.

“I really feel a way of calm, which I would not if there was extra individuals,” Caitlyn says.

“I liked the primary class and wished to do it once more right away.”

She says there was an an instant bond with Paul, who understood her from the start.

Paul says he didn’t want to treat Caitlyn differently from any other student.

He says she has a fantastic eye and a “pure present for wildlife pictures”.

“On our very first workshop she solely had a really primary digital camera and he or she took this image of a swan with the solar arising silhouetting it.

“As soon as I saw that I knew she had something. After that she learned very quickly.”

Watching Caitlyn develop in her data and confidence has been superb, Paul says.

He runs newbie shoots at Hogganfield and different lochs in central Scotland, advancing to island excursions and even worldwide safaris.

Caitlyn has now photographed an unimaginable record of species throughout the nation.

Ospreys diving for fish, mountain hares within the snow, puffins with payments filled with sand eels, purple squirrels, beavers and even a lynx.

For Paul, a wildlife photographer for greater than 20 years, instructing Caitlyn has been a brand new expertise too.

Originally from Oxfordshire, his travels have taken him to Uganda, Finland, Canada, India, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

He ran photograph safaris in Kenya, earlier than assembly his spouse and shifting to Scotland to arrange Touch the Wild pictures full time.

Caitlyn was Paul’s first time working with somebody with the autism.

He says: “No matter who you’re teaching photography to, you’ve got to have patience and everybody learns in different ways.

“We actually began to attach when Caitlyn started speaking to me extra about her autism.

“When she told me about her experience at school, it kind of made me realise the difference coming to the workshops was making and I got quite emotional about it.”

Mum Paula says Caitlyn had a “rough time” at college due to her autism and APD.

She says if a baby misbehaved or a category received too hectic, it was typically her daughter who was advised to depart the room as a result of she couldn’t cope within the state of affairs.

Caitlyn could not perceive why she was the one being excluded

Paula says: “She went into her shell for a wee while, she didn’t have any confidence, she really didn’t know her direction in life.”

Caitlyn now could be unrecognisable, her mum says. Wildlife pictures has “genuinely changed her” as an individual.

The expertise Caitlyn picked up with Paul helped her safe a spot at Ayrshire College the place she is finding out for an HNC in pictures.

College life is a lot better for Caitlyn, very completely different from faculty.

To handle her autism and nervousness, Caitlyn makes use of fidget cubes and ‘calm tags’ – small sensory units she holds in her fingers to offer her focus in irritating situations.

She wears her headphones all day, giving her a buffer from the noise round her. She’s not searching for silence, however makes use of music to search out her calm.

Caitlyn will likely be listening to playlists made by her buddies or Eminem, which is her dad’s affect.

“In college, when it gets hectic or loud, the tutors will know it’s too much for me because I’ll have both headphones on my ears,” she says.

“If it’s quieter, I’ll have one headphone on and the other ear open.

“If my hood goes up it means nervousness, and you’ll see my legs wobble up and down if I’m nervous.”

With her autism, routine is important for Caitlyn and Paul helps to manage this.

He will email before each trip, breaking down the plan of the workshop day and when she can rest.

Mum Paula says that while people love Caitlyn’s photos, they don’t realise the effort for her that comes along with it.

“There could have been loads occurring that day. Mixed emotions, she’s possibly been glad, unhappy, excited, nervous.

“They don’t see the sensory overload afterwards – the noise, the anxiety, the exhaustion.

“She’ll come residence and go straight upstairs to her room, to course of all the things.”

But Paula says photography gives her daughter purpose, and because Caitlyn loves it so much she pushes through.

Caitlyn has come a long way since she snapped that picture of her dogs on the beach.

She now volunteers her camera skills at local events and has even been booked as a student photographer for her first wedding shoots next year.

Caitlyn also runs a craft stall selling notebooks, calendars and prints featuring her wildlife images. She hands out business cards explaining her autism and APD.

Her big ambition is to travel to Kenya, to photograph cheetahs in the wild.

She is already preparing for a dream expedition with Paul to Finland next year, where they hope to photograph brown bears and wolves.

It’s a massive step, but everyone around her believes she can do it. And importantly, Caitlyn believes in herself.

“Before I began pictures I had no confidence,” she says. “But I gained belief in Paul and received my confidence again.”