Welcome to my new website. The pandemic has given me the time to reflect on my long years as a photographer and define exactly what I am trying to achieve in capturing the world around me. I have taken great care in selecting the images that you will see here to show you the landscape as I see it.
In my future blogs, I will share with you the background stories of my pictures, what they mean to me and why I take them. There are three themes to my current work and you will find them here in three galleries:
Haikus,
Land, Sea and Sky,
The Soul of Things.
Haiku
St John’s Eve
A Haiku is a three-line, beautifully descriptive, form of poetry, intended to be read in one breath. The essences of a Haiku are a focus on a brief moment in time; a use of provocative, colourful images; a sense of sudden enlightenment and illumination.
My pictures are visual Haikus which are small poetic photographs that aim to achieve the same impact as a written Haiku.
Haikus happen by chance when I am out taking photographs in the landscape. I can’t plan where and when I will get these pictures so I can’t go hunting for them; I have to rely on my intuition to recognize the moment when one starts to take shape. I shoot and then it is gone and I carry on with what I was doing. Only when I am back at my computer editing the pictures, I find I have captured something special; it is a brief moment in time, something that captures a feeling and, hopefully, gives a sense of sudden enlightenment and illumination.
Like a written Haiku, these pictures have a very definite structure and composition without which
the picture would not work.
the picture would not work.
Land Sea & Sky
I live and work in a landscape of land, sea and sky. Through my pictures, I define and share my experiences and my feelings for where I am.
For the most part, I actively plan the pictures I will take. I will have spotted the location, maybe several months before, and marked it on one of my large collection of Ordnance Survey maps. I work out the best time of year and the best time of day for the site. On the day, in preparing for the shoot, I check the weather forecast and, nearly as important, the wind direction. In these landscapes, the direction from which the wind is blowing determines the quality of light on the day. I get there and wait . . . and wait and wait.
The pictures in the Land, Sea and Sky Gallery are mostly designed to be large-scale prints because
sometimes the key focus points are small in the overall landscape so the picture works best when
these points can be seen clearly.
sometimes the key focus points are small in the overall landscape so the picture works best when
these points can be seen clearly.
The Soul of Things
Sometimes the landscape just gives you a gift. These are pictures that just happened and I was lucky enough to be there. In these moments you can see the soul of the landscape.
Is the landscape just an accumulation of rocks, sea, lakes, vegetation and sky or do certain places have a soul? I don’t know. I just photograph what I see and what I feel and at those moment I sense the landscape has a soul.
Before I finish, I want to say a very big ‘Thank You’ to Lorcan of Damn Good Digital, my very good web designer, for matching his ideas with mine in helping me tell my story to you.