Seven Sisters summer solstice

Posted on June 23, 2017June 1, 2018 by photograph

Seven Sisters summer solstice

Happy solstice. This is Sussex in summer, a glorious time of year when daylight lasts from 4am to 10pm. The Seven Sisters, the white chalk cliffs that line the coast, turn golden with the setting sun, as here at Birling Gap.

More of my landscape photographs can be found here.

You can find a short film of my Depot photographs on youtube here. It shows a selection of 200 shots covering two years of photographing this former brewery depot as it became a state-of-the-art community cinema.

The ferry on film

Posted on May 11, 2017June 1, 2018 by photograph

The ferry on film

I was asked to shoot some 35mm black and white film recently. It was a real treat using my trusty old camera and nowadays, you can get a roll developed and scanned and the files sent directly to a drop box or email account. I had forgotten that satisfying clunk of the shutter release and the anticipation of having to wait to see how the images

turn out. I shot the roll on a ferry crossing from Newhaven to Dieppe, a four hour trip that seems interminable until it is suddenly all over. Watching how people spend this time is interesting: out on the decks being blasted by the wind; cocooned inside the lounge; availing themselves of the cafeteria. Public spaces but inhabited in a private way, just getting through time.

The boats of Lindisfarne

Posted on April 27, 2017June 1, 2018 by photograph

The boats of Lindisfarne

A recent trip to Northumbria took us to Lindisfarne, an island joined to the mainland at low tide by a narrow causeway. On the beach of this remote and barren place was an extraordinary sight. The edge of the harbour was lined with large whale-like structures.

They were overturned fishing boats that had been cut in half, doors added across the flattened ends and repurposed as sheds. The graceful shape of the boats was accentuated by evenly spaced wooden struts that ran their entire length, making them look even more like beached whales. More photographs of Lindesfarne can be found here.

Lewes Priory ruins

Posted on February 3, 2017June 1, 2018 by photograph

Lewes Priory ruins

Nearly a stone’s throw from my house are the ruins of the 11th-Century Priory of St Pancras, destroyed by Thomas Cromwell under Henry VIII in 1537. I have tried to photograph this site in varying light and weather but the resulting images tended to looked more like a pile of stones than the place of great historic significance that it is.

A couple of weeks ago a freezing fog descended on Lewes, covering everything in a fine layer of frost. The air was a white haze that had an eerie, oppressive effect on the world. In this ghostly light the Priory regained some of its haunted mystery as the casualty of political power. More landscape and townscape photographs can be found here.

Bright red winterberries

Posted on December 23, 2016June 11, 2018 by photograph

Bright red winterberries

Season’s greetings to you all and wishing everyone a happy, healthy and fulfilling 2017. This seemed an appropriately seasonal photo to use this week.

I found these winterberries on Cape Cod when I was visiting for Thanksgiving. They were in abundance everywhere, beautifully bright red on their silver grey branches. More landscape photographs can be found here.

Golden California hills

Posted on October 7, 2016September 25, 2018 by photograph

Golden California hills

I returned to Northern California recently after many years away and found myself mesmerised by the light and the dramatic beauty of the area. When I lived in San Francisco in my mid-twenties and freshly out of university, I had became fascinated by the shapes of the typical California hills. There was something soothing for me in their swells and folds and wrinkles, covered in golden fur-like grass.

When I eventually moved to the South Downs of Southern England many years later, I found myself surrounded by the same curvaceous hills, only green this time instead of golden.

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Category: landscapes