about the photographer
My photography simply falls into the category of taking pictures of things I find interest in. I've always enjoyed being out in the local countryside since being a kid and in school holidays I just used to go and explore all day with friends, then later I'd find any excuse to go on trips further afield. The process of creating an image doesn't often start with me thinking "I must get a shot of location x" - I just go and explore and end up getting absorbed in things I notice along the way. Some of the locations on this site are well know and some are less so, but all are places that have caught my attention.
That isn't to say my shots are purely opportunistic though. Often I find something worth re-visiting it a number of times - sometimes with the aim of getting the right light for a particular composition and at other times just exploring the scene and taking shots from different angles. There are some locations that I can visit endlessly and find something totally new each time. These three shots of the same tree on the limestone pavement at Twisleton Scar in the Yorkshire Dales make a good example - all taken within a few metres of each other, but from different viewpoints under different conditions:
In contrast, sometimes I find a subject or composition that I like but it can take many visits, sometimes literally years, for the conditions to do the scene justice.
In 2006 I was fortunate enough to win the 'low light' round of Practical Photography magazine's Photographer of the Year and went on to finish second in the overall competition. I'm not afraid to experiment, try new things and to be prepared to have some 'wasted' opportunities in between the successes along the way. With all my shots though, I try hard to be true to the subject I'm capturing, rather than thinking I can some how create something better. Even when I re-tone the shots, it's in an attempt to emphasise or isolate something that's naturally there but would maybe not naturally be noticed, whether that's the powerful presence of ancient woodland, or simply the shapes in a line of weathered stones across a moor.
