After All This Time

I can­not sim­ply throw myself into my pho­tog­ra­phy; it takes me time to adjust and feel that what I am doing is wor­thy. This lev­el of self-doubt is good for me. I have con­sis­tent­ly been self-crit­i­cal, which leads to doubt, but when I reach the point in what I am doing and I believe in it, then lit­tle will con­vince me oth­er­wise. I don’t mean this in an arro­gant way, but in a way that enables me to cut out what is around me and any asso­ci­a­tion with oth­er opinions. 

Much of my work is in places that I am famil­iar with, and I love to be. Even if I go off into the wilds of anoth­er coun­try, which I do often, I usu­al­ly have some under­stand­ing of what I am about to expe­ri­ence, which in a way pre­pares me for the moment I am there with a cam­era. I usu­al­ly spend over 160 days a year trav­el­ling, so to be at home is often reward­ed by an over­whelm­ing sense of com­fort and warmth. This in turn has led to ​‘home’ mean­ing one thing, and my pho­tog­ra­phy becom­ing some­thing entire­ly separate.

I live in a very beau­ti­ful part of Eng­land called Lan­cashire, which is a large area most­ly con­sist­ing of open farm­land that stretch­es from the Pen­nine Moors down to the coast. As you would expect, there are paths aplen­ty, and you can lit­er­al­ly walk for miles far from the roads and tru­ly escape. As I have asso­ci­at­ed home with a sep­a­ra­tion from pho­tog­ra­phy, I have hard­ly ever head­ed out with my cam­era in anger, so I have nev­er entered a state of mind that has led me to con­nect and ​‘see’ what is around me. I have sim­ply enjoyed being there.

From look­ing to seeing

About a year ago I was for­tu­nate to have a good lengthy break at home over the Christ­mas peri­od, and I did plen­ty of walk­ing dur­ing that time. As ludi­crous as it may sound, I had been over­loaded with the grandeur of some of the most stag­ger­ing land­scapes I had been for­tu­nate to vis­it dur­ing my year of trav­el and odd­ly sought out, and began to rel­ish, in the sparse win­ter land­scape sur­round­ing my house. I live on the edge of a pro­tect­ed val­ley park which cov­ers an area of 800 acres and is made up of wood­lands and mead­ows, through which the Riv­er Lostock runs.

After all the years of liv­ing here, I began to look around me and slow the walks down a lit­tle. It became ther­a­peu­tic, and as I had the time to tru­ly relax, I began to see my sur­round­ings dif­fer­ent­ly. I recall walk­ing the lit­tle bridges over the riv­er, stop­ping for a while and notic­ing how the riv­er flowed and how the grass­es bent in the breeze. Even after a lot of walks, it took some time to com­mit to going out with my cam­era. In a way, it was two things that I recall trou­bled me. First­ly, as much as I knew I was so for­tu­nate to live in such beau­ti­ful sur­round­ings, it felt in some way slight­ly insignif­i­cant com­pared to the envi­ron­ments I often trav­el to. Sec­ond­ly, this doubt became a chal­lenge as I often ques­tioned how I could make pho­tographs of some­thing that I thought of in such a way. Being this self-crit­i­cal and har­bour­ing self-doubt was what was stop­ping me.

This point of real­i­sa­tion meant that only one thing was to be done, and that was to go out with my cam­era and at least try. The dif­fi­cul­ty at first was one of emo­tion and pres­sure. This was dif­fer­ent to most envi­ron­ments I had worked in because I was so very famil­iar with this park­land that I was try­ing to under­stand how I could tran­scend this state and become a pho­tog­ra­ph­er in it. I came to one con­clu­sion very quick­ly. In much of my work, I try to make order out of chaos. This is, in most cas­es, a mech­a­nism of dis­till­ing the ele­ments of a com­po­si­tion and sim­pli­fy­ing it. For me, here at home, it did not seem essen­tial to do this. A lot of the small­er trees and thick­ets in the park­land would have made this almost impos­si­ble, so I accept­ed this as an ingre­di­ent and the pres­sure began to wane a lit­tle. A lit­tle chaos felt right! I also allowed myself to see the park­land in sec­tions. I began to com­part­men­talise the indi­vid­ual ele­ments that start­ed to fas­ci­nate me. 

The famil­iar became a friend

Because of the win­ter con­di­tions, there were very few leaves left on the trees, but the ones that shim­mered and looked frag­ile. The bare trees against the dark win­ter storm skies took on a new mean­ing to me, and the larg­er beech trees became mus­cu­lar arms reach­ing far above. Anoth­er fea­ture of the park­land is the ponds that appear reg­u­lar­ly. Although I was famil­iar with them, hav­ing walked past them hun­dreds of times, I had not allowed myself the time to see their reflec­tions of the sur­round­ing trees or how the reed-beds changed over the seasons.

After these first out­ings in Decem­ber, I decid­ed the safest way for me to nur­ture this new rela­tion­ship with the park­land was to make some prints. This, for me, is the com­ple­tion of the jour­ney and a way I can relate to my pho­tog­ra­phy rather than just view­ing images on a screen. For me, the fin­ished print is the final expres­sion. Still to this day, I feel at ease with black and white pho­tographs, so I decid­ed to ded­i­cate the ini­tial park­land study to mono­chrome. Hav­ing print­ed out some sam­ples, I realised that I had made a dis­tinct con­nec­tion whilst out there. The pho­tographs revealed the very essence of the place, and more impor­tant­ly, what I felt and how I inter­act­ed whilst mak­ing pho­tographs. This led me to explore fur­ther, and as a result I began see­ing the sea­sons chang­ing and actu­al­ly sought out the oppor­tu­ni­ties as often as time would allow when I returned home.

A sanc­tu­ary in black and white

Return­ing to a place again and again har­ness­es a rela­tion­ship, and if you do this in a pho­to­graph­ic capac­i­ty, it cre­ates a greater under­stand­ing and emo­tion­al bond. After only a short time, I have now become famil­iar with many of the places I have pho­tographed at dif­fer­ent times of the year and how trans­for­ma­tions dur­ing the sea­sons offer a pletho­ra of oppor­tu­ni­ties for mak­ing pho­tographs. A vital les­son learned is that you cer­tain­ly do not have to be in exot­ic or dra­mat­ic places around the world to get excit­ed about mak­ing land­scape pho­tographs. Now I see the park­land as a place where I am very much at ease, and I feel no pres­sure at all to ​‘do it jus­tice’. This phrase has often baf­fled me as I have nev­er fath­omed what ​‘jus­tice’ should be. I sus­pect it is a pho­to­graph that will attain a cer­tain reac­tion from the view­er that should align with what you felt when you were stood there. In the park­land, I just make pho­tographs of things that I deem beau­ti­ful, pho­tographs of sub­jects that moved me at the time, and I real­ly don’t care what oth­ers may think. This has been wonderful!

I now have a place to go from my front door that is not only close in dis­tance, but close in a per­son­al con­nec­tion. It is not a place of ice­bergs and glac­i­ers, dense for­est or glen. Nei­ther is it a place to hear crash­ing waves or see tow­er­ing moun­tains, but a place of ponds, trees and paths that I once paced along, but now I wan­der slow­ly with an eye that sees so much more.