The long, lonely and often cold journey

Stephen Hutchins

The common thread in my life has been photography. My interest has waxed and waned and reached its present level only with the arrival of digital cameras, when the ability to process and control images myself offered new creative opportunities.

I am over 60 years old, married with four children and split my time between Brussels and Sweden. Whenever family and other commitments allow, I will travel with my cameras, nearly always to the north of Europe and to the islands of the Arctic. Landscapes have been my passion from the earliest days and, apart from family portraits, it is rare for me to include people in my images.

lastchance.smugmug.com

Sometimes you start a story without realising you have done so. The narrative follows its own path, finds its own pace and carries you along unaware of its existence. You have no control of the direction, nor the pace nor the destination. My story, the one that led to this Distinction, started years ago and for a long time, I had no idea that it had begun nor where it was taking me. As the story branched and grew it took me further north, chasing the light that is unique to that part of the world. I found myself drawn to the emptiness and silence that swells and covers the land as the sun sinks nearer to the horizon, the temperatures plunge below zero and the first snows start to fall.