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David Davidson
I’ve been photographing now for over 50 years and hope to get good at it some day. I started off exclusively photographing landscapes but in more recent years have become interested in wildlife and travel photography as well. I sell editorial images via Alamy. I do like a grand vista but also look for small scenes. I’ve not travelled much in the last couple of years, for obvious reasons, so much of my work is currently around the Chilterns where I live and it is associated with being out there in the wild walking. I prefer found images to planned ones - "F8 and be there" as another of my heroes said.
After an enjoyable day exploring many images by my favourite landscape photographers, I returned to this iconic 1960 image by Bradford Washburn. This single image fuelled my teenage enthusiasm for both photography and mountaineering. My passion for both started in the mid 1960s when I was in my mid-teens, and it has lasted to this day. A winter course at Glenmore Lodge, taught by a cadre of Britain’s finest mountaineers, fired my passion for hill walking, skiing and later rock climbing. My interest in photography developed alongside because I wanted to capture something of the magnificent snow and rock scenes that I was beginning to encounter in the mountains.
In order to satisfy my urges to be out in the hills during schooldays, I began to work my way through the mountaineering and photography shelves of my local library. And one day, I stumbled across a Bradford Washburn book of mountain photographs. I was immediately captivated by the sheer quality of the large format, monochrome aerial images and their dramatic contents. "After the Storm" was particularly breathtaking and became my firm favourite - I later discovered that It was also a favourite of Bradford’s. And since that moment when I discovered Bradford, I’ve found that we have had common sources of inspiration in mountaineers/photographers.