Digital cameras may be the norm now for most photographers, but local wildlife shutterbug Penny Hill wants nothing to do with them.

Her first photography exhibition 'Natural Images' opens on Friday at the Bermuda Society of Arts (BSoA) gallery at City Hall.

She is proud that all her work was taken with old-fashioned Fuji film, and the images are unadjusted and unadulterated. What you see is exactly what she saw when she clicked the camera.

"I love film," said Ms Hill. "Admittedly, I have not ventured into digital at all. I do not want to fiddle with my photographs and that is the difference. With film you have an honest representation of what was taken."

If her subject allows, she often takes several minutes to compose her photographs.

"I am very frugal with my photography," she said. "I don't take a lot of photographs of a subject."

But she admitted that sometimes she just had to snap the picture and hope for the best.

"When you develop your photographs and finally see what you have, that is like opening a present on Christmas morning," she said.

Her faith in film is something she shares with another well-respected Bermudian photographer, Scott Stallard.

When it seemed like the whole world had switched to digital, Mr. Stallard helped Ms Hill get ahold of film, and secure a developing site.

She first became interested in photography as a child in England. Her grandparents lived a few miles outside of Exeter, Devon on a farm in the village of Broadclyst. "I used to go to stay with them on school holidays," she said. "I would have a wonderful time roaming about in the forest and doing these wonderful things. I could ride my pony in the forest all day without anyone worrying about me. That farm became a huge part of my early life."

When her grandparents became too elderly to keep up the farm anymore, it was sold to the National Trust.

"Before they actually had to leave I went around and photographed everything – the old buildings, the old gate and the animals," she said.

"That was the first time I emotionally engaged with the camera."

The farm is still owned by the National Trust. Three years ago, she went back to it for a visit, and showed the current occupants her photographs.

"The people who have taken it over have done a wonderful job restoring it," she said. "They were thrilled to see the way it had been."

Ms Hill first came to Bermuda in 1961 and promptly joined the Bermuda National Trust and the Bermuda Audubon Society.

"This happily continued my ongoing interest in wildlife and conservation," she said.

She recently retired after many years managing the two special libraries in the Botanical Gardens and the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo (BAMZ).

Her photographs have been printed in 'rg Magazine' and BAMZ's magazine 'Critter Talk'. Her photographs are also part of a slide collection at BAMZ.

Many of her photographs were taken on wildlife trips around the world.

"I had the luck to travel quite a bit," said Ms Hill. "They have been mainly the sort of places with good wildlife.

"The most spectacular place I went was Antarctica. I was lucky enough to get to it twice."

She visited the icy continent on MV Explorer, one of the first ships designed to take non-scientists to Antarctica.

She called her first photography exhibition "exciting and nervewracking".

"I have had photographs in the annual photographers' exhibition from time to time," she said. "I thought I probably had enough interesting images to put together a small show of my own.

"I have been working on it for the last six months, choosing the slides and getting them printed.

"I tried to spread it out over a period of time because having photos printed and framed is quite an expensive business to get into."

She is most proud of a photo she took of a baby tern chick.

"We have some special birds here called common terns," she said. "A scientific study has been done on them over the past three summers.

"The person leading this study is Dr. David Wingate.

"At one point I photographed the entire process of what they were doing, trapping them, taking samples.

"Then I also, in the midst of doing that, was lucky enough to photograph one of the chicks. It was hiding in a bed of Sea Ox-Eye thinking that I couldn't see him."

She was also pleased with a photo she took of a Gentoo penguin in Antarctica.

"I was on this stony beach just watching the penguins coming out of the water.

"Each one would spend about ten minutes preening every feather because they needed to do that to waterproof themselves. That was vital to their survival.

"So I just watched this one penguin. I took several shots of it for about ten minutes until it went back to the water."

Her show opens on Friday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. It runs until April 27.