End frame: At the Edges by Lee Acaster

Paula Cooper

I am a self taught photographer living in an area of Norfolk known as The Brecks and have the whole of Thetford Forest on the doorstep. I have lived in Norfolk for 20 years and think of it very much as my home.

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Where to start?! To try and pick my favourite landscape image was going to be a hard task. It has made me think about my own photography and the connection with what I like to see in an image. I started by thinking of photographers whose work has influenced and inspired me since first picking up a camera in 2012.

There are too many to mention but I will name a few. Valda Bailey, whose abstract landscape and nature images take me to a new imagined world. Her Unbroken Spirit images of Camargue horses galloping through the marsh take me back to the days of daydreaming about horses while in class at school.

Jo Stephen, whose woodland images make me imagine fairies will pop up and make an appearance any moment. Her silver and gold tree and Sakura images are just beautiful. She proves that artistry and creativity are more important than an expensive camera kit.

Bruce Percy, whose Hokkaido images are mystical yet stunningly simplistic.
They are all very different styles, ranging from simplistic black and whites to beautiful, soft colour images but they all let your imagination go and transport you to another world.

After going around in circles for a long while, the answer was staring me in the face, on my wall.

I had been lucky enough to win a copy of Lee Acaster’s, Shingle Street image, At the Edges, in a charity print auction a number of years ago and it has been hanging on my wall since then. (Read Lee Acaster's Featured Photographer interview).

If you haven’t been there, Shingle Street is about eight miles south-east of the Suffolk town of Woodbridge, across the marshes on the far side of the village of Hollesley. It is a desolate and eerie location and despite the name, it’s probably the only settlement in Suffolk without streets of any kind, just a long line of bungalows and cottages facing directly onto the beach and the North Sea.