JOHN Aitchison has filmed big cats in Kenya's Masai Mara and captured the geological wonders of Yellowstone National Park but, he says, few places on earth hold a torch to the wilds of Scotland.

The Argyll-based wildlife cameraman and photographer filmed much of BBC Scotland's hit show Hebrides: Islands on the Edge, having first visited the islands and fallen in love with them 27 years ago.

"It's a gift to film," he said. "I don't know that people generally have realised how wonderful the islands are, even now, which is quite surprising. Certainly, when I first visited, it was somewhere that felt very exotic."

Aitchison travelled the length and breadth of the Inner and Outer Hebrides, spending 240 days filming over two years for the programme, narrated by Ewan McGregor. "I love coastal places and grew up by the sea," he said. "Anywhere that sea and land meet and is wild ticks all the boxes for me."

Alongside the breathtaking aerial panoramas, it is the almost soap-opera stories of the creatures it has followed that have made the programme compelling viewing – attracting a quarter of the Scottish viewing public.

"There were several that turned out to be memorable, one being the red deer takeover where one stag, really quite surprisingly, beat a stronger stag," said Aitchison.

"The seal pup in the second programme saw an extraordinary drama based around its mother not cutting the umbilical cord. The pup was shackled to its placenta and couldn't swim. That unfolded in front of me over some hours."

Now Aitchison, 47, is to have the lens turned on himself in a new four-part BBC Scotland series, Wild Cameramen At Work, to be shown next month.

Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, it documents the lives of five leading wildlife film-makers as they chart nature in some of the world's most dramatic and challenging landscapes.

Three of them – Doug Allan, Gordon Buchanan and Doug Anderson – were born north of the Border, while Aitchison and Mark Smith have chosen to make their home here.

Attenborough's voice intones: "Scotland, a paradise for wildlife and a cameraman's dream. This country, with its rugged mountains and endless coastline, has produced a generation of the best wildlife cameramen in the world.

"How did these men learn the incredible skills needed for capturing the natural world in action? What is it that prepared them for travelling the globe and enduring the toughest of environments?"

Aitchison grew up in Portsmouth but always had strong ties to Scotland through his Glasgow-born father. It was the coastline that mesmerised him. In 1994, he spent nine months on the Ythan estuary near Aberdeen, filming his first wildlife programme for the BBC.

He got to know "every stone, every turn in the river", capturing rare footage of an eider duck removing down to make a nest.

It was an experience that prompted him and his wife Mary-Lou, also a film-maker, to make their home in Argyll, where they still live with children Freya, 15, Rowan, 13, and Kirsty, 11.

"Living close to nature is crucial for me," he said. "It resets my balance being able to go outside and see what the tide is doing, hear the geese going over."

His father Brian, a navy engineer, introduced him to Scotland. His mother Elizabeth, a florist, loved natural history and took him on walks to see plants and birds.

"I remember saving up coins in a jam jar so I could buy my first pair of binoculars. I paid half and my parents the other," he said.

"They were always encouraging. My dad liked photography so the two things fused, I suppose. He made my first camera from a biscuit tin for pin-hole photography."

Aitchison, who has worked on Springwatch and Frozen Planet, credits Attenborough with stoking the flames. "The first time I ever thought about being a wildlife cameraman was watching Life On Earth," he said. "David was in a rainforest in Costa Rica talking about white tent-making bats. They make these tents by cutting stems on leaves which they fold over to keep the rain off.

"I was 14 and I remember thinking: 'How extraordinary', then I thought: 'Hang on, there is someone there with him filming. Maybe I could do that?'"

Which is precisely what Aitchison has spent the past 20 years doing. The third episode of Wild Cameramen At Work is titled Sky and sees him film young black-footed albatross learning to fly in the Pacific. It was a habitat shared with tiger sharks – prompting a question Aitchison is often asked: when an animal attacks another, why doesn't he step in?

"I can't intervene – it wouldn't make any difference anyway," he said. "I've mixed feelings because I don't want to see the albatrosses eaten, but that's what I'm here to film. I can't help but wishing they will get away. I give a cheer inside when they do."

Aitchison's next project is filming brown bears in Alaska. He insists he can never complain of being bored. "People say: 'Oh, you must be very patient,'" he said. "I suppose it's true to an extent, but you can be waiting for a week for a polar bear to wake up and not be bored once because there is so much else going on.

"There can be birds, lichen on the rocks, Arctic foxes, Beluga whales and icebergs clinking together. There is just so much to notice in the world. I suppose that is the job of cameramen: to notice and then show other people."

The final episode of Hebrides: Islands on the Edge is on BBC One Scotland on Monday at 9pm. Wild Cameramen At Work begins on BBC One Scotland on June 3, 7.30pm.

Name: John Aitchison

Age: 47

Career highlights: BBC's Frozen Planet, Big Cat Diary, Springwatch, Yellowstone and Hebrides: Islands On The Edge.

Specialisms: birds – and he admits to a soft spot for filming otters near his Argyll home.