The Road Less Travelled

While I plead guilty to hankering after Venice, Iceland’s lava beaches, and even English bluebell woods, I am beginning to think that it is on roads less travelled that I will find truly original subjects for my work. The main image accompanying this piece was made on the River Findhorn near the Moray coast last month. This is not a corner of Scotland that has been as heavily photographed as Skye or Glencoe but I found the beauty of this small canyon entrancing. As you can see, that day the light bounced off the Findhorn’s granite walls while the river itself reflected the Spring skies overhead.

The River Findhorn in spate

The digital revolution over the past 20 years has had a profound impact on the practice of photography at many levels. As a number of writers about photography have observed, one important effect is to have ‘democratised’ the medium so that it is no longer the preserve of people willing to tangle with the uncertainties of film, and the nervous anticipation of seeing how an envisaged image has manifested in the reality of chemical development. Sometimes the wait resulted in unexpectedly happy outcomes - even some wonderful accidents - but too often, eager anticipation was deflated by the reality of incorrect exposures, softness of focus, and a general feeling of disappointment that the image in the photographer’s mind’s eye, had not translated into the final negative or transparency.

Digitisation changed all this. Gradually, the increased certainties of improved automation and immediate feedback, have meant that confidence amongst photographers has grown enormously. This is no longer the realm of ‘dark arts’ but instead has become a much easier path to artistic creativity. This must be seen as a very positive development because it has made the creation of successful images relatively straightforward and has removed many of the barriers of cost and uncertainty that were inherent in the film era.

However, there is a parallel development that seems less welcome - and many of us are falling prey to it. Alongside the significant increase in people making images for pleasure, is the increased attraction of picturesque locations - and particularly those popularised through social media.

The now infamous destruction last year of the tree in Sycamore Gap on Hadrian’s Wall was notable, not only for the senselessness of the act itself, but because of the near universal condemnation it attracted on both social media and across the mainstream news. I think in part this was because this famous tree had become a ‘honeypot’ destination for many photographers seeking to make their personal image in this very well known spot.

We can all think of popular destinations that have acquired similar ‘honeypot status’, not just here in the UK but around the world. The Wanaka Tree in New Zealand and the slot canyons of Arizona and Utah are obvious examples. While the attraction of these beautiful places is obvious, it seems that it is making it harder to create images that are not mere emulations of previous work. It is also becoming more difficult to avoid crowds of other photographers in these most sought after landscape destinations which, for me at least, reduces the inherent pleasure of being in these remote and beautiful places. How many more images can there be of Durdle Door?

River Findhorn, Nairnshire, Scotland

On the afternoon I arrived at this location on the River Findhorn, I therefore found a sense of satisfaction at having discovered a quieter corner of northern Scotland that I could enjoy, not only for the potential images that were all around, but also because I had never seen a picture made in this place before - no preconceptions, no worries about imitation - just the simple enjoyment of being there. This suggests to me that I must work harder in the future to identify less obvious locations for my work, and not merely follow the crowd.

Final Judgement

As photographers, we talk a lot about the photographic process from original planning, through the making of an image, to post processing - and then what? A post on Instagram, an update to our website galleries - or a final, physical print? It may, of course, be all of these and more, but a recent experience has led me to consider whether I can truly make a final judgement about an image unless I have seen it as a final, physical print.

Winter birch - Vesteralen, Norway

I am a latecomer to printing in the digital world, which seems surprising given my love of spending many hours of my photographic youth buried in the school darkroom. So why my seeming reluctance to continue to produce prints as the culmination of my image-making endeavours in the digital era? The answer probably lies in a combination of the sheer visual power of images seen on digital screens with their superb backlighting and ease of manipulation - and a tendency to idleness on my part. But there is another factor - and that is the upfront cost and apparent complexity of printing in the digital world. A friend of mine recently suggested that the ‘Print’ button in Lightroom should be called the £5 button, given that each piece of A3 paper costs about £3 and the ink another £2!

During the analogue years of my photographic life, our choices for the final viewing of our work were limited. While it was relatively straightforward, if time consuming, to produce black and white prints in a blacked out bathroom, it was significantly more challenging to print in colour. For most of us, this remained the realm of professional - and expensive - print shops. Accordingly, for everyone working with colour transparencies, you either faced the choice of peering at tiny slides on light-boxes using a loupe, or you could load your slides into a cassette, sit back and admire your images on a white wall or projector screen. None of these options was ideal but the compromises were acceptable because there were few alternatives.

As the new millennium dawned, so the digital world swiftly overcame our early concerns. I well remember the first time I took the decision to leave my film cameras at home and to travel solely with my newly acquired Nikon D70. But while the images I made were immediately compelling - who didn’t/doesn’t like getting immediate feedback from the camera’s rear screen? - digital inkjet printing remained in its infancy and many of us were simply underwhelmed by the lack of quality produced by early printers.

However, while the lure of bright screens, the ease of posting to the web, and uncertain print quality led me to abandon the printed image for a time, the ultimate attraction of the physical print has always remained. There is simply nothing quite like holding your work in your hands or seeing an audience respond to your printed work on the walls of a gallery. So recently, I have made a determined effort to resume printing as the final stage in my photographic workflow.

In turn, the reappearance of printed images as the culmination of efforts has led to some surprising discoveries. The image that accompanies this article - a quiet moment amongst some wintry birch trees on a Vesteralen mountainside - has sat in my library for the past four months. It lacks the drama that is inherent in much of my winter work in northern Norway. It does not shout at you or command priority viewing but when I printed this image last week I was suddenly taken by its innate sense of quiet balance, which in turn reminded me of the solitude of being in the mountains and away from pounding seashores and dramatic snowstorms.

The image is now sitting on a shelf opposite my desk as I write. I am starting to think that it may be amongst my favourite images that I made last February. I am not sure that this would be my final judgement unless I had made the print which has enabled me to see its subtleties and reflect once more on the importance of a print as the final step in each photographic journey.

Midnight Ice

As my old Sandhurst Sergeant-Major might have observed, if you do not feel a mounting sense of anticipation and excitement as you sail south to Antarctica you are probably on the wrong adventure!

Tabular Iceberg, Antarctic Zone of Convergence

Steaming south across the 620 miles of the Drake Passage, you will be accompanied by albatrosses and petrels. Almost certainly, you will also see pods of humpback whales, similarly travelling south as they head for their summer breeding grounds in the krill-rich waters of the Antarctic Ocean. But perhaps most excitingly, you will get your first glimpse of ice: first small bergs already mostly melted away but then increasingly large, tabular blocks that seem enormous - and often are. You have now arrived in the ‘zone of convergence’ where the temperatures tumble and a completely different weather system takes control.

This image records my first encounter with Antarctica - even though land still lay 150 miles further on. I felt there was something otherworldly about this vast iceberg that had broken off the main continental shelf and was now drifting into oblivion - unique, awe-inspiring and ghostly in its silence and decay.

At this latitude - about 60 degrees south - and in the short Antarctic summer from November to January, some daylight is always present. I made the image just before midnight with the late sun just catching the top of the berg against the luminous darkness of the evening sky. A print now hangs on my office wall - a lasting reminder of an extraordinary encounter in the midnight sun.

The ocean waters that lie between the southern tip of South America at Cape Horn and the northernmost fringes of the Antarctic Peninsula are amongst the most unpredictable and storm-ridden in the world. For centuries, the white continent remained undiscovered by explorers deterred by the seemingly empty wastes of the Southern Ocean and the violent seas generated by the convergence of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

It was not until 1773, that an English expedition led by Captain James Cook sailed into Antarctic waters and saw southern ice for the first time. And it was not until 1820 that Captain Thaddeus von Bellingshausen, leading a Russian expedition, reported seeing 'an ice shore of extreme height' and is now credited with being the first European actually to set eyes on the Antarctic continent.

Today, while many people head to Antarctica to see the remarkable wildlife - the penguins, the huge range of pelagic seabirds, and the whales - I think it is the ice in all its astonishing forms, that provides the most enduring memories.

Frozen North

At the start of this month I returned to northern Norway, travelling from Lofoten north into Vesteralen and finally on to the island of Senja in the company of the maestro of north Norwegian photography, Trym Ivar Bergsmo. Each region is subtly different in look and feel but, throughout my visit, there was one constant - it remained bitterly cold. This made the business of capturing impactful images especially challenging as we waded through deep snow and countered the bitter windchill.

Snowstorm, Vesteralen, Norway

I made this image on an especially challenging morning in Vesteralen. There had been fresh snow overnight and as I peered into the morning gloom, another snowstorm rattled in from the sea, driven on by a sharp northerly wind.

Sitting in the warmth and comfort of my office back here in Oxford, I don’t feel that this is an image that will especially appeal to my clients. Nor is it likely to win any prizes in a landscape photography competition. However, it represents an important memory for me because I feel it conveys the sense of perishing cold I felt that morning - it was around minus 15 degrees - and reminds me again of the many difficulties, both technical and physical, that have to be overcome when making images in the intense cold. of an Arctic winter

On the technical side, a photographer has to offset for low levels of light, which means making judgements about shutter speed and ISO settings, simply to make an acceptably sharp image. The intense blueness of light north of the Arctic Circle also has to be taken into account, particularly when snow is included in the image. We all naturally associate snow with ‘white’ but in the far north, particularly during the winter months when the ‘cool blue’ is exaggerated by the absorption of shorter-wave warm colours, it literally appears blue, even to the brain-adjusted naked eye. This requires a photographer to make decisions about the white balance set in- camera and how much ‘blue’ to leave in post-production.

Personally, I find the blue light of extreme latitudes, counter-pointed by the slight warmth of the sun low on the horizon, very attractive. It is what gives the high Arctic a unique allure for landscape photographers and I feel that it is therefore unhelpful to over-correct for this naturally occurring phenomenon - it’s why we have gone there in the first place!. In turn, this means having to accept and balance the levels of blue in resulting images without making them seem too other-worldly - unless this is your intention.

Quiet Sunrise in Vesteralen, Norway

And once you have got to grips with these technical challenges, a photographer working in the north Norwegian winter has to overcome a number of physical challenges, which range from achieving a stable platform for a tripod in deep snow - a tripod which can deliver above eye-level maximum height is a godsend - to keeping snowflakes off the front lens element or, worse, a flat filter.

Finally, a photographer working in the Arctic winter also has to be able to stay warm while the wind nips and the snow drives into your body. The usual advice about layers, a good hat and boots certainly apply here. But I have found that the greatest difficulty is keeping my hands and fingers warm enough to keep working and not to have potential images spoiled by a loss of resolve as cold seeps into my hands to the point that I can no longer feel my cable release.

This year, I brought a new pair of double gloves made by The Heat Company with me. These proved to be very effective, although I found it easier to remove the whole shell mitten to operate my camera with the inner liner rather than trying to unzip the palm and thumb - I probably need to grow longer fingers! By keeping warm, I found that I was willing to stay out in the cold longer and this created more opportunities for interesting images.

Photography in Lofoten and further north is not for the faint-hearted. As the main image reminds me, the environment is often very hostile. However, viewing some of the work I created earlier this month, I am excited all over again by what a special part of the world this is, and why it is worth spending time, and making the effort, to engage with the Arctic winter. It certainly beats this year’s lacklustre winter here in Britain, and its seemingly relentless falls of rain from amorphous grey skies.

Light Falls on Ardnamurchan

A late-November visit to the Ardnamurchan peninsula, the most westerly point of mainland Britain, offered ever-changing light, quiet white-shell beaches and coastal drama. The experiment of a week of self-imposed isolation in this remote part of Scotland proved to be creatively stimulating and mentally restorative. With a little patience and willingness to ignore gloomy weather predictions, fellow photographers should consider Ardnamurchan for its diversity of landscapes, dramatic coastlines, sandy beaches and ancient woodlands.

Ardnamurchan Point from Sanna - the most westerly point of mainland Britain

There are many reasons from visiting Ardnamurchan at this less popular time of the year.  First, it felt as though I had the area mostly to myself, and during my most recent visit the white-shell beaches of Sanna and Glenuig were mostly empty of other visitors, with just the occasional dog walker for company.  The autumnal colours, particularly this year, continued to be spectacular.  At the same time, the occasional gusts of rain generated a steady stream of beautiful rainbows throughout the week; first lighting up the isles of Eigg, Muck and Rum, and then adding drama to sea lochs shimmering with tints of red, yellow and ochre.  Last, but not least, there were no midges to ruin the day and the narrow roads were largely devoid of traffic!

Incoming Tide, Portuairk

The most obvious focal point on the Ardnamurchan peninsula is the 1849 lighthouse. Built by the famous ‘Lighthouse Stevensons’ it stands 180 feet above the sea.  Despite the arrival of GPS, and a mass of other modern navigational aids, the light remains an imposing and reassuring presence for local fishermen and yachtsmen, perched above the volcanic cliffs that mark the transition between the sheltered waters of the Sound of Mull and the Sea of the Hebrides.  In almost any weather, the churning tides and steep-sided seabed produce remarkable standing waves which then collapse to pound unceasingly on the black, igneous rocks that skirt the headland.

Three miles north of Ardnamurchan Point, the crofting communities of Portuairk and Sanna overlook a string of peaceful white-shell beaches, each divided from the other by rocky intrusions and backed by high dunes of machair grass.  For anyone who loves being by the sea, these are marvellous places to be, with rockpools to explore, seaweed to gather, rocks to clamber over, shells to collect and ample opportunities simply to sit and consider how best to make images of this starkly beautiful landscape.

Salt Marsh at Kentra

Away from its seashores, Ardnamurchan also offers further opportunities to explore; ranging from the salt marshes around Kentra to the Victorian fishing pools of the Shiel River which drains into Loch Moidart at Dorlin.  And here, you also find a castle.  Not just any castle but a real piece of history in the shape of Castle Tioram, sitting alone on its own small island, reached at low water by a pebbly causeway.

Evening settles over Castle Tioram

Finally, the striking feature of Glenuig should not be missed: a narrow glen lined by ancient Atlantic oaks through which the road swoops and dips until it heads back down to the sea.  Bear left in the village past the excellent Glenuig Inn, and you reach another fine beach, this time fringed by ancient woods which, at this time of year, created a miasma of warm colours that dapple the lapping waters of the incoming tide.

Ardnamurchan may not enjoy the global reputation of Skye or Glencoe, or even Harry Potter’s nearby Glenfinnan Viaduct, but as a place to spend a creative and restorative week, I think it takes some beating.  With a little patience and willingness to ignore gloomy weather predictions, fellow photographers should appreciate Ardnamurchan for its diversity of landscapes, dramatic coastlines, sandy beaches and ancient woodlands.  It is a fine place to wander and to ponder the frenetic pace of our lives beyond.

Dancing with Eartha Kitt

The National Portrait Gallery in London continues to be one of my favourite spots. When I was younger, I quietly enjoyed its musty essence, with the great men (and they mostly were men) of history staring out of gilt frames - some works brilliantly executed - others less so. For me the NPG has always offered an eclectic visual history of Britain that has drawn me back to the NPG, time and again - to experience World War 1 generals or Victorian explorers staring out at me and imagining them sitting there while 19th century painters strived to achieve an acceptable likeness.

Having been closed since the start of the pandemic, the Gallery reopened in June this year - completely overhauled and with much greater emphasis on the women, as well as the men, who have shaped our world - and also responding to the social dynamics of our age; raising important questions about previously accepted ‘glories of empire’, and celebrating the social activists, designers and artists, as much as monarchs and political leaders, who have influenced Britain’s development - at home and abroad.

But one experience that has lingered strongly since my most recent visit, happened immediately before I passed through Tracey Emin’s amazing new bronze doors. There, seemingly dancing her way up St Martin’s Lane, was Eartha Kitt.

American singer Eartha Kitt by Russell Westwood, 1951. Reimagined in St Martin’s Lane in 2023

This was an advertising hoarding for the Gallery, using Russell Westwood’s image of the American singer from 1951. In his striking portrait, I believe that Westwood captured Kitt’s unique style and personality as one of the most famous performers of her age. I also think he has caught the passion and vigour that made her a fearless critic of the Vietnam War, and leading civil rights campaigner, particularly in her native America.

In making my image of Eartha Kitt, I have tried to use the street reflections in the hoarding glass to convey the sense that, although she died in 2008, the power of her personality lives on. And the causes in which she believed so strongly are still with us. The power of Westwood’s original photograph stopped me in my tracks. I hope that my response to his image offers the idea that an ethereal Eartha Kitt is still with us - as relevant today as she was 75 years ago - vibrantly unique - and still singing and dancing her way through London’s ‘Theatreland’.

Am I close enough?

Distinguished war photographer, and founder of Magnum, Robert Capa, is credited with the observation that: “If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.” This has long been regarded as a guiding principle for street photographers who often feel it is vital to ‘feel the fear’ and get as close physically to their subjects as they possibly can. However, more recently, a debate has emerged around what Capa actually meant by his famous maxim. Was he really talking about physical proximity or was he seeking to imply emotional immediacy instead? Or perhaps both?

Evening at Camden Lock, London - August 2023

Yesterday evening, I was wandering around Camden Lock on the Regent’s Canal in north London. Once a vital means of moving goods and supplies for the city’s residents and workers, over the past 40 years, Camden Lock, and the adjoining Camden Market, has developed as a centre for fashion, music, food - and a wonderful place simply to hang out. Like Brick Lane in London’s inner East End, it inevitably attracts a cast of flamboyant characters - and urban photographers like me.

When I’m concentrating on documenting life on city streets, I often sense the need to get close to my subjects. The resulting images can make informal portraits that say much about the city people are living in and the lives they lead. However, there are downsides to pursuing physical proximity at all costs. Most obviously, not all people like being subjected to the full ‘Bruce Gilden treatment’ with a wide angle lens being poked in their faces. Not only may this upset people but it can lead to unwanted altercations and, in extreme cases, to physical threats.

Secondly, you have to ask what you are seeking to achieve by getting so close to someone that you effectively eliminate everything else from the resulting image. Occasionally, you will encounter a person whose face or what they are wearing are the subject matter alone. When this is the case, I try to summon up the courage to ask them directly whether I can make a photograph. More often than not, I am surprised to find that I get a positive response.

But most of the time, I am more intrigued to make images in which people are but one element of a wider street scene. Accordingly, I judge that Robert Capa was seeking to emphasise emotional proximity as much as physical closeness.

For this image of Camden Lock, I found myself intrigued by the man in the smart white jacket and tie - and his seeming interaction with the couple to the right of the image. In fact, he is a street saxophonist who was asking some people out of shot whether they could mind his belongings while he headed for a loo. He was completely oblivious of the couple - who I realise are reacting to the sight of me with my camera.

Nevertheless, I enjoy this image because it seems to capture an essence of Camden Lock: people strolling and relaxing, interesting characters, street art, and the unceasing interplay of people on city streets - all overlooked by the shadows of Victorian London and its industrial past.

Am I close enough? I think I am.

Coasts and Sea: Worlds Apart

The sea is alluring.  It holds a deep fascination for so many people – particularly those of us who live here in Britain.

My home is in Oxford, which is nearly as far from the coast as you can be in the United Kingdom.  Nevertheless, it is still just an hour and a half’s drive from the south coast.  And this always reminds me that Britain is indeed an island nation surrounded by water.  Defined by our island geography and history we are a maritime nation. It is therefore not surprising that we Brits seem to feel such deep and intrinsic connections with the sea whenever and however we encounter it.

Whitesands Beach, Pembrokeshire - Wales 2020

Many of my happiest memories and experiences are rooted in adventures involving the sea and its coastal fringe.  My earliest recollections involve playing on the beaches of Pembrokeshire and encounters with impossibly old-seeming lifeboatmen who worked taking visitors across Ramsay Sound to see the rocks and wildlife that teems along its island shores and who told stories of wrecks and lives saved against the odds.

Ramsay Sound, Pembrokeshire - Wales 2020

My father had spent two years in the Royal Navy shortly after the end of World War II, and even as a slightly dour engineer, his stories of life on a destroyer crossing the Atlantic and circling the Mediterranean instilled a sense of maritime adventure of which I have never tired.

While we were children growing up in Worcestershire – another county not famous for its associations with the sea – my parents bought a Mirror dinghy which they drove to Llangorse, a lake in the shadow of the Brecon Beacons, to sail on many weekends.  It felt as though we were acting out our own Swallows and Amazons adventures, and I also recall the feeling of reluctance, as we packed the sail and ropes away each Sunday and turned the car for home.

‘Les Voiles’ Regatta, Saint Maxime - France 2019

When I was 18, a friend from school invited me to stay with his parents in the south of France.  His father owned a rather larger boat which the family sailed along the fabled Riviera and down to the then little-visited islands of Corsica and Sardinia.  This was the start of a life-long love of big-boat sailing that has taken me around Britain and Ireland, across the North Sea, into remote corners of the Baltic and down to North Africa and the Canary Islands.

I have been fortunate to have been able to spend hundreds of days at sea and to have covered many thousands of miles under sail.  And these experiences have only served to reinforce my deep love for our oceans, while also developing a deep respect for their changing moods and capacity for danger as well as fun.

Bound for St Kilda: 2021

It is unsurprising that water and the sea form such an important element of my photographic work.  A friend once asked me a tantalising question: if I could only choose one place to be to make photographs for the rest of my life, where would that be?  I was not allowed to hedge my answer so, after considerable thought, I determined it would be Achnahaird – a beach and promontory along the remote coast of Wester Ross in north-west Scotland. 

Achnahaird, Wester Ross, North-West Scotland 2022

For me, this location has so much to offer: dramatic landscapes against the backdrop of the hills of Assynt, intimate rock formations, wind-blown dunes, pounding waves driven by the prevailing westerlies, and the unceasing turn of the tide.  The common denominator is the sea, sometimes full of light but often projecting a sense of isolation, and even menace, in its breaking waves and relentless roar.

It also illustrates another aspect of being on the coast. I believe that most of us feel a sense fascination with the ceaseless movement of the sea as it meets the apparently unchanging solidity of the land. It is a moment of transformation as the sea finally gives up its energy - perhaps dramatically on a rocky shore or with a gentler sigh on a sandy beach. Even if we do not consciously acknowledge this moment of drama, I think most people recognise the remarkable interactions of land and sea, whether it is a wave collapsing on the sand after a thousand mile journey across an ocean, or just the gentle lapping of ripples in the receding tide.

*****

Both the sea itself and coastal littorals provide opportunities to make a remarkable range of images that can convey the feelings and emotions of the photographer in that place and time.  While at its simplest, a photograph is simply a two-dimensional representation of a moment in time confined within the four sides of a frame, in my work I am constantly striving to convey all the other senses that one may encounter on the deck of a boat, or standing hunched over a tripod on a wind-blown beach or balanced precariously on a rocky headland. It is all about being there.

The sea also brings its own light.  You always know when you are getting close to a coast because the light changes, becoming more luminous and more saturated with colour.  This is not mere whimsy but a real effect caused by the fact that the air along the coast is almost always more saturated with moisture due to the pounding of the sea and the evaporation of water.  Sometimes the air feels as though it has been washed clean by a night of storms.  Or sometimes it is the effect of the differential rise in temperatures between the land and the sea which often bring so-called ‘sea breezes’ as air is sucked landward by the rising air, and one starts to appreciate the unique climatic conditions which make the coastal fringe different from inland – and different from further out to sea.

Split Rock, Clachtoll, Sutherland - Scotland 2022

It is these contrasts, combined with the unique combination of sounds and smells, and even touch, that always attract me to making images at the coast or out at sea.  And it is this emotional essence that I always seek to project in my work.  Whether it is the loneliness of a far horizon, with no land or other boats in sight, or the raw power of a pounding surf-line, I find excitement or a sense of peaceful solitude that is different from my experience of the usual rhythms of life and the everyday.

At a more practical level, I think I am also attracted to making images of the sea and coast because they are in a state of constant flux.  However frequently you travel to the same stretch of coast, the light will always be different.  The tide constantly churns and smooths a beach.  A piece of driftwood or seaweed, that one moment offers a perfect leading line, is tumbled with the next surge of tide and is gone.  It is an ever-changing landscape that emphasises the weather and the light while being less dependent on the slow change of the seasons.

Canna, Small Isles - Scotland 2021

A shoreline offers wonderful opportunities to experiment with all kinds of photographic techniques. I enjoy playing with long exposures to create surreal images that we cannot see with our own eyes and which emphasise the essence of the sea interacting with the land.  Along with long exposures’ capacity to ‘flatten’ a rippling sea into a smear of light, I have also tried to use the technique to pan the path of incoming waves to emphasise their changing shape and power against the blurring, transient backdrop of the land.

Surging Surfline, Lofoten Islands - Norway 2023

A beach is a place where you can respond to how you are feeling on the day.  It may be the opportunity to tackle the grand, sweeping vista; and the challenge of placing the viewer in the moment.  It may be a day of lowering cloud, drizzling rain and poor visibility that is often perfect for enhancing colours and capturing the shadowless details of a shell or cast of boulders.  It may be a day simply to enjoy the light playing on the water.  Or it may be a day to enjoy the excitement of a thousand seabirds soaring on thermals or clattering, noisily into clifftop nests of young.  The seaborne or coastal photographer can enjoy all of this and much, much more.

The Outer Stacks and Gannets, St Kilda - Scotland 2021

As I have written about previously, last winter I travelled to northern Norway to explore the remote peninsula of the Lofoten Islands.  The temperature was relentlessly stuck below freezing creating a dramatic environment of ice-filled rockpools and snow-covered beaches.  The light was fleeting and my Norwegian friends were apologetic that I was not being rewarded with ‘golden hour’ sunlit rocks or the drama of the aurora borealis in the northern night sky.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  I was simply enjoying being there.  I was enjoying the adventure and it felt exciting – definitely an environment to be treated with respect. 

I now look at the images I made that week and I can feel again the cold that numbed my hands, the icy water that filled my boots on at least two occasions, and the frequent whiteouts of snow that revealed and then hid the coastal mountains.  It was exciting and fun.  It felt slightly dangerous and certainly adventurous. 

Lofoten Islands - Norway, 2023

Lofoten may have been photographed many thousands of times, and by photographers many times more capable than me, but the images I made that week are unique to me. They represent my response – not so much to place as to the elements I found there. 

This is what makes the sea and the coast such marvellous places for any photographer – and why I believe we will always be getting our phones and cameras out when we are by the sea. Being there is what it is all about.

Southern Ocean Rainbow: Antartica North 2022

Spring in the Vale of the White Horse

As we stand on the cusp of Spring, it feels as though we are emerging from a particularly long winter. For me at least, last November seems a long way behind us. But one of the joys of being a landscape photographer is that it forces me to observe the changing seasons carefully, noting the sudden bursts of blossom that announce the end of winter’s hibernation.

Blossom bursts forth on the floor of the Vale of the White Horse, Oxfordshire. March 2023

One of the things I always love about Spring is the manner in which the weather can be so unpredictable: one minute the sun is shining, the next the rain is crashing down in torrents. Accompanying this meteorological uncertainty is the drama of light and shadow.

To me, the Vale of the White Horse in Oxfordshire always sounds a little more exciting than it actually is. Although home to the astonishing prehistoric chalk horse at Uffington and some equally impressive Iron Age remains along the high escarpment of the Ridgeway, the floor of the Vale is a scene of quiet and orderly agriculture where we humans have more than stamped our signature.

However, for a brief moment in this image, the fleeting light of Spring combined with a burst of May blossom to offer me the sense of optimism and cheerfulness that I think we should all be feeling as we stand once more on the cusp of the summer to come.

I like the image for a number of reasons. Partly, it is the realisation of a fleeting moment amidst the rhythms of nature - two days later and the blossom had disappeared. Secondly, I enjoy the way in which a brief shaft of sunshine has created the strong Z-shape that gives substance and structure to the image’s composition. Finally, I find the picture satisfying because I hope it captures the elegiac quality of the English landscape in Spring.

For me it is a reminder that even in this sometimes suffocatingly crowded corner of south-east England - one of the most densely populated in Europe - we continue to rely on our agriculture and the seasonal elements can come together to show that ours is still a natural world.

Rock Face

Geology is often the key to understanding a landscape: its shape, its biology and its relationship with those other vital elements of water and sky. Many landscape photographers have more than a passing interest in this component of their subject matter. Perhaps it is therefore unsurprising that so many of us are drawn to making images of rocks themselves.

Jurassic Limestone, Burton Bradstock, Dorset - February 2023

Making images of rock faces is an area of my photographic practice that remains a constant. I am never bored on a rocky beach because I know I will eventually find either a natural sculpture or a recurring pattern that will draw my mind’s eye and provide me with food for my thoughts. Whether the subject is the grand face of a mountain or a more modest piece of cliff, there will be drama to capture and a story to find.

I made this particular image during a winter walk along the Jurassic coast at Burton Bradstock in Dorset. A geologist would tell you that it shows the sedimentary layers of Inferior Oolite that are so characteristic of this part of the southern English coast. But I was drawn by the sculpture of a face with a broken nose and seemingly raffish quiff of hair. This face seems to be angry, perhaps fed up with the constant battering of winter storms.

Making these kinds of images of rock faces is relatively straightforward. The most obvious challenge lies in ensuring that the light is falling so that it brings out the contours of the image while at the same time not being so harsh as to create impenetrable shadows.

It should also be emphasised that these kinds of cliff faces are potentially hazardous, especially if they are prone to erosion and subsequent rock falls. In 2012, a young woman died near this particular cliff when a rock fall occurred without any prior warning - so do take care and don’t assume that a rock face is forever.

Mindful in the Woods

There is something beguiling about trees and woodlands. And like many people, I particularly enjoy these as photographic subjects during the autumn and winter months. Shorn of leaves, there is a skeletal beauty to many trees. There is also something rather soothing about entering the silence of a wood, the quiet crunch of fallen leaves and the occasional crack of a branch or twig underfoot.

Braemore Junction, Torridon - November 2016

Many people who pursue mindfulness as part of their photographic practice find woodland an especially rewarding environment. Although I would not go so far as to describe myself as a ‘mindful photographer’ I do believe that landscape photography in particular is best achieved through adopting a mindful approach.

Woods are a good example of how this works for me. When I first enter a wood, all I tend to see is chaos - trees blocking trees, branches intruding on the edge of the frame, bright sky clashing with deep shadow and, most of all, no obvious ‘view’ to draw the eye. However, as I wander around and focus more closely on what is around me, underfoot and above my head, I invariably start to find the kinds of intimate landscapes that are just as intriguing as the tops of mountains or broad expanses of coast.

As I search for images, I think I am adopting a mindful approach to what I am doing. With my camera in hand I find myself concentrating more intently, listening with greater concentration and generally bringing all my senses to bear on the moment I am in. For a time, my mind clears of all its usual clamour and clutter, and for a moment I find the image I want to make. Sometimes, these can be quite wide scenes but more often it is the interplay of light and shade that I find most intriguing.

When the day is dreich and the skies are not delivering, I find that it is often time to head for the woods where you can happily exclude the sky altogether and where more muted light often brings out the patterns and colours of trees to optimum effect.

Cotswold Coppice, March 2023

During the recent periods of lockdown, when opportunities for travel have been few and far between, like many photographers I found many new places within walking distance of my home. Now that we are free to fly around the world once again, I am trying also to maintain my daily walks around the local fields and woods. In this era of trying to reduce our carbon footprints, I find that it is rather fun to pull on my wellies and head out of the back door into the countryside close by. Oxfordshire may lack the visual drama of coastal cliffs, empty moorland or soaring mountains - but it has woods and trees in abundance. And with a little thought and mindful concentration, I am finding that these are often just as satisfying as expanses of empty wilderness or tumbling seas. If you’ve never tried this approach, I would urge you to give it a go.

Isokon -Original Modernism

Half-way along an unassuming north London street sits the Isokon Building. Not only is this 1920s original one of the few examples of pure architectural modernism to be found in the UK but it was also home to three people who were highly influential in the development of the modernist movement: Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus; Marcel Breuer, designer of modernist furniture; and László Moholy-Nagy, head teacher of art at the Bauhaus school in Berlin - and avant-garde photographer. All left Germany in the 1930s and found sanctuary in London.

Isokon Building, London - March 2023

Modernism was an artistic movement that emerged towards the end of the 19th century and developed to its influential maturity through the first three decades of the 20th century. Its practitioners sought to address societal and cultural shifts in response to the then emerging modern industrial world. Later, it was also seen as a reaction to the brutalism and horrors of the Great War.

Lawn Road Flats, ‘The Isokon’, London NW3

Officially named ‘The Lawn Road Flats’, the Isokon was the first modernist building in Britain to embrace ideas for minimalist city living. Agatha Christie owned a flat in the Isokon from 1941 to 1947.

Making images of The Isokon remains a challenge - and I am certainly no expert architectural photographer. Lawn Road is not wide enough to offer the photographer a broad vista. Since the 1920s trees have grown and cars are omnipresent. Nevertheless, I think there are ways to convey the industrial essence of this modernist masterpiece and to offer a sense of that briefly optimistic decade before Britain was plunged, first into economic crisis and then war.

For this particular image I decided from the outset that the use of black and white would best complement the minimalist ideas of the Bauhaus movement - straight lines, subtle curves and deep shadows. Moreover, the Isokon Building is constructed in pure black and white. I therefore decided to adopt a high contrast approach to make an image that has turned the three-dimensional building into a stark, two-dimensional image - I hope an homage to modernism and to László Moholy-Nagy in particular.

Normally, I dislike overly contrasty black and white images, although they are once again in vogue. However, I think that in this instance the extremes of light and shade enhance the image, emphasising the key modernist elements of elegant simplicity that make the Isokon Building the architectural draw that it remains today.

Waiting for Summer

Like many photographers I love the English seaside. I think we are attracted by the innate sense of carefree enjoyment, laughter, holidays and people having fun that are all intrinsic to so many English seaside towns - even the ones that are too often characterised as ‘fading’. I also think that seaside towns are uniquely English - a kind of testament to the awkward relationship the British have with simply relaxing and having fun.

Weymouth Promenade, February 2023

In February, I visited Weymouth on the Dorset coast to discover what this one-time favourite of George III felt like in the chill gloom of late winter. I greatly enjoyed the weekend - and particularly the sense of local bustle that was evident even so far out of season.

But it was this image of an isolated children’s roundabout, with its chained seats, functional steel barriers and barren beach, save for the gulls, with which I was most satisfied. I feel the image conveys a ghostly presence, as though one can hear summer laughter and organ music on the breeze.

I also think it is the combination of the bright colours of the roundabout set against the grey of the sky and sea that suggests ideas from a longing for summer to come, to children and parents, ice cream and candifloss, and warm beaches and youthful flirtation. It’s all here - and not yet here.

As you will see in many of my images, I often like to approach this kind of subject from a square-on perspective. I enjoy the way that this approach breaks the traditional ‘rules’ of composition: avoiding obvious leading lines and instead allowing the layers of the image to tease and intrigue the eye. I also like the way that the frivolity of the garishly decorated roundabout contrasts with the utilitarian greyness of the harbour wall beyond the beach.

I hope that this approach makes the eye work a little harder, so that my audience may also hear that laughter on the wind and feel that the waiting for the fun and enjoyment of next summer will soon by over.

Light in the Snow

My recent trip to the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway not only more than fulfilled my continuing search for remote landscapes (see previous blog), but also left me with a heightened sense of the isolation and inherent challenges of life, north of the Arctic Circle.

Light in the Snow, Lofoten, North Norway

Accordingly, as well as striving to capture the stark beauty of Lofoten’s remarkable landscapes, I also tried to make some images that reflected my response to the intense cold, the sense of loneliness that pervades the area during the dark winter months, and my salute to those who live amongst such harsh beauty.

I made this image at around 2 pm on the edge of a snow-covered beach. The afternoon light was already starting to slip into evening - it would be dark by three. Once again, snow had blown in from the north-east, blocking out the view and rapidly transforming the landscape into a near featureless expanse of white. However, I felt that the conditions also presented a perfect opportunity to capture the isolation and remoteness that pervades this part of Norway in winter.

I decided that the light in the little yellow cabin was vital in showing that someone was at home as the early darkness crept over the land that afternoon. And I wanted you, the viewer, to ask questions about what it is like to live here - an austere existence, far from the comforts and amenities that most of us take so much for granted.

This sense of life on the edge was reinforced by one local who told me that the previous winter, driving home, he had got stuck in an avalanche which blocked the main road he was on and covered his car. He waited nine hours before a show clearance crew arrived and dug him out. He was just 600 yards from his house but decided it was too dangerous to try and return home on foot. To live in Lofoten is to accept the challenges that nature can throw at it residents.

I hope this image not only conveys the sense of remoteness and isolation that must be accepted in this beautiful corner of the world, but also encourages you to consider what it takes to live a life that implies austerity and self-sufficiency far beyond what most of us would accept in our mostly comfortable lives.

The Blue North

In January, I was fortunate to spend a week in Lofoten with a group of fellow Norwegian photographers. Lofoten is an area of northern Norway, comprising a series of connected islands that form a peninsula jutting westwards into the Norwegian Sea, above the Arctic Circle. The region had just emerged from the short period of ‘Polar Night’ around the turn of the New Year when the sun does not rise above the horizon. And it was cold - icy cold. The days were still brief but there was more than enough light to make images in the remarkable landscape - and it was overwhelmingly blue.

Flakstadøja, Lofoten Islands

In recent years, Norway has worked hard to put itself on the tourist map - think Joanna Lumley and her advertisements for holidays in pursuit of sightings of the mercurial Northern Lights - the Aurora. Lofoten has emerged as a particular destination for visitors in search of vistas of its precipitous mountains, endless fjords and white sand beaches - all punctuated by villages built of wood and painted in the traditional red and yellow that are the region’s calling card.Inevitably, it now attracts photographers from around the world.

Reine, Western Lofoten, Norway

During my week-long visit I was astonished to encounter van-loads of photographic workshops in action with serried ranks of tripods - all struggling to stay warm and focused. For this is a harsh place in winter. While I was there, a team of Japanese mountaineers had lost a member to the freezing cold and ice.

For me as a photographer, the high latitude and middle of the arctic winter presented the particular challenge of how to handle the strong blue cast that permeated almost every image I sought to make.

As this example illustrates, in the end I decided simply that I should embrace ‘the blue’. It is not coincidental that we photographers and visual artists describe blues and cyans, as the cold end of the colour spectrum, while reds and oranges are warm. This image made on a beach south of Ramberg is this colour because this is how it appeared to my eye and through my viewfinder that particular afternoon.

Through the use of a long exposure to remove the distraction of a choppy sea and emphasise the dynamic cloud over the mountains, I believe the image not only conveys the strong connection I felt to this remarkable environment, but also the feeling of cold and overwhelming sense of being alone with the elements in this unforgiving but starkly beautiful place.