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Andy Gawthrope
Andy was born in Scotland and in his formative years taken on trips to the glens and lochs of the Highlands and to the Western Isles where a love of the outdoors was forged. Andy overwintered at Halley station in Antarctica in 1990/91 whilst working for the British Antarctic Survey and took his first camera, a Canon AV-1, where his passion for the outdoors coincided with photography.
On return Andy started rock climbing and mountaineering, interests that led to even greater exploration of the outdoors. Sometime in the late 1990's the passion for the outdoors and interest in photography merged and Andy can now be found in the outdoors with a camera capturing its beauty in photographs that can be shared with others.
Prior to last year, I hadn't done much woodland photography but this year I set myself a goal very early to make the most of Autumn and when lockdown's ended, I started exploring local woodland with the intention of identifying compositions. This didn't really work as it was too difficult to pre-visualise how they may look in Autumn whilst swathed in a cloak of green. But it did give me a good understanding of geography including paths and, notably, areas that definitely wouldn’t work. e.g. the small pockets of evergreens.
I strive for a realistic look in all my photography; not the punchy, ‘smack it too em’, heavily saturated colours associated with a lot of social media. My aim was to make photographs that conveyed the beauty of natural woodland through utilising shapes, arrangements and colours. I hope I’ve managed to achieve that with these photographs.
Three of the photographs are from near the old market town of Wickwar in South Western England and the fourth - with sticks on the forest floor - from the Forest of Dean.
