I live in one of the most popular tourist and recreational locations in eastern New South Wales, Australia, just one hour drive north of Sydney, close to hand with over seventeen sandy beaches that stretch up this coastline, I'm spoiled for choice. But this is not where I grew up, in fact, it couldn't be far more removed. Born and raised in the South Wales industrial valley of Merthyr Tydfil, where a trip to the beach was an annual holiday event only, a fortnight at Tenby or Oxwich. That was pretty much my experience of the coast. So when I arrived here in 1982 I felt as though I were on a continual holiday.

The Entrance NSW

I have always made pictures, can't remember when I started, but mum used to let me pinch dad's camera when he was at work so I could go out over the fields and point it at anything that took my fancy; I still have a couple of those shots.

When I started to take pictures here in Australia, I had difficulty in getting to grips with the vibrancy of light and colour, I didn't know how to deal with it. So photography become a now and then pastime, but there was always this niggling little thing going on in me that photography is what I wanted to do.

Now I'm not going to bore you with life's adventure, other than to say, it happened. Since then I have made pictures of Prime Ministers, Fighter pilots, world-renowned musicians and Olympic champions. Made pictures on million-dollar ocean yachts, hung out of helicopters, I was even one of the first photographers to take pictures in the newly appointed Purnululu National Park situated in the Kimberly region of Western Australia. The area was gazetted as a National Park in 1987, I went in in 1989. But this article is not about the past, but the now.

Frazer Beach NSW

Frazer Beach NSW

In all the years I have been shooting digital, a long time now, I have never fallen in love with it, digital that is, not like I used to when shooting film on my very much loved Pentax 67. Digital from a creative point just never gave me the satisfaction of making pictures, from a commercial point, it works amazingly well. But I'm a realist and times move on. So in an attempt to fall back in love with taking pictures on a personal basis, not just as a commercial venture. I purchased a new camera the Fuji GFX 50s, in all its medium format loveliness.

Now here's my dilemma. With so many people owning a camera and the vast majority of them being landscape photographers; then, for me living in a very popular over photographed area, I will have to push myself to come up with an image that will offer more to the viewer. Creative challenge accepted.

I set myself some parameters. Light being the obvious, low light, vibrant light the list can go on. Colour, I will think and shoot in colour, why not there's plenty of it. Movement, that's a good one, the last, life. This one I decided to make about myself. The images are made along the coast that has shaped who I am in this new country I now call home. There is quite a list to this. A couple of bonus point's in this one. Not only will this keep my costs down it will also reduce my carbon footprint in the endeavour of making pictures. I figured I owe it that much, with three trips around this very big country, work-related, and five trips back and for to the UK before COVID restrictions kicked in. So, I thought this is going to be a doddle.

Putty Beach NSW

Spoon Bay NSW

This is where my problems started, thinking it was going to be easy, boy did I get that wrong. I had no idea how many people now make landscape pictures. One particular place I frequent, Norah Head, mainly because it has great a coastline with a lighthouse to boot. Well, this particular morning I get there quite early, well before sunup. First off there were a couple already set up with cameras attached to tripods and pointing at the horizon line on the hilltop.

One of those locations I came up with is a beautiful bay called Frazer beach, situated in Munmorah State Recreation Park. It's a bit more of a drive, 35-45 minutes in the car, but enough remoteness to put off many a landscape shooter who doesn't like to walk far. This place will, no matter what time of day offers something that will take a picture. But you do have to watch the swell, I have been caught a couple of times, luckily enough only getting my trousers wet and not the gear. I go back quite a bit, even to make portraits.

One of the techniques I like to employ every now and then when shooting a moving subject like water or trees in the wind is multiple layering. This technique offers up, depending on how many exposures you want, many still or moving images on top of each other. I first tried this out when I used to use a panoramic camera called a Noblex. It didn't have a very slow shutter, the slowest I think from memory was around a 1/15th, obviously not enough for landscape work; so I used to calculate the exposure needed to layer still's on top of each other without winding on. Now, these days you let the camera work the math out, so much easier. But you still need a good tripod. I quite like this method. This is one of the lovely joys of making landscape images, it affords you the time to use the technology to create, as you are usually on your own and there's nobody you need to think about other than getting what you want.

Bateau Bay NSW

Now due to the fact I'm Welsh, I do like a bit of weather, so I tend to keep an eye on the sky and if I feel it's going to offer something then that's when my wife will let me know I need to get out, but I think that's got to do more with the fact she wants to get rid of me for a while. When the sky is empty, I call it; nobodies home sky, it just doesn't move me very much, give me a cloud any day, or Welsh mist. Ah! Welsh mist, my eyes just glazed over then.

I'm not making any artistic statement with these images, they are about my home, where I live, there's no motive in them other than this is the landscape I live with every day and I chose to photograph it this way, I could have chosen a different approach and hidden the marks of man, but what would be the point, we live in the landscape, it's unfortunate that many people don't realise it.

Frazer Beach NSW

Frazer Beach NSW

I have three or four, hold on I'll just count, four filters, but I usually end up using around one the Soft Grad 0.9. Mind you the GFX can handle a lot on its own.

All my work is shot in RAW, although I'm told the Fuji jpgs are pretty good. edited in Capture One Pro, dodged, burnt and spotted, if I missed any in Photoshop, I do add a slight grain, call me old fashioned. Simple.

Photography duo Jackie Ranken & Mike Langford are well-known for their symbiotic photographic projects that have resulted in many photographic exhibitions and books, have now produced a new book titled 'Scenes from the Lounge' where they both photographed the view from their lounge over a period of ten years while living in Queenstown New Zealand.

Right from day one of moving into this view with a house, we had it in our minds to make a book of it.

This fits with our philosophy of always thinking about the final product before taking the first step into a new project. Without this way of thinking the book would have lacked structure and direction and would have probably never been fully realised.

This very selective body of photographic work spans a period of ten years while living in Queenstown in the South Island of New Zealand.

Most of the photographs have been made from inside the lounge looking out, or just outside the lounge from one of the two balconies looking over the view of the tourist town of Queenstown, the magnificent Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkable Mountain range beyond.

It was the storms that got us most visually excited.

From the safety of the lounge we would watch them grow – then quickly leap out onto the balcony to fire off a few frames before getting soaked by rain or beaten by the wind – then retreat to the lounge once more, still watching and waiting in case some more magic light appeared. Not long after a storm had completely passed, we would start shooting again. This is the period of what we call ‘Quiet Light’, when everything becomes soft, gentle and dream-like and you are left feeling like life is about to start over again. There was always a little tingle of excitement that came then.

We loved it!

Some of these images were made early in the morning, but as we really like our late morning sleep ins, it was mostly in the evenings that we would set up our tripods and wait and watch. That’s when the light expressed itself most eloquently as our view was mainly to the south and southwest.

Most of these images are true to each of our thoughts and emotions at the time of making them and not reconsiderations during post production. However, when we first recorded one or two of them, we captured them as black and white in the JPEG capture – mainly because of the drama it added as stand-alone images. We still both like this effect when they are hung on the wall as art pieces. Jackie also likes to do in-camera multiple exposures that add to the visual excitement of what was happening in the scene.

When reinterpreting the collection for the book, we felt that the images needed to be connected to each other, showing the differences in the scenes and not the processing styles. As a result, we returned to the raw capture from the camera and processed them again in colour. We both felt that this makes the book more cohesive and adds power to it as a body of work.

We have written a brief description of what was happening at the time of photographing to support each image. Hopefully, it also tells you something about Queenstown and what it was like for us to live there.

The images featured here illustrate only some of the visual stories made from the lounge many of which are in the book. We both photographed the TSS Earnslaw at least two or three hundred times over the ten years. Picking which photograph to use for each subject was the most difficult part of the edit.

The requirement was for each image to tell a new story that added to the whole. Each one needing to be different enough to keep the visual story interesting and compelling.

Seasonal changes are very dramatic this far south with temperature changes from the thirties Celsius in summer to minus numbers in the winter. The temperatures are tempered somewhat by the adjacent Lake Wakatipu, the waters of which sit between eleven and thirteen degrees all year round due to its depth. Each season is also very distinctive with dramatic changes in colour and foliage.

Our friends tease us that the hardest part of the making of these images for us was having to put down our evening glasses of New Zealand wine to take the photographs.

So, this is it – the changing play of light over a decade in time, as seen from one room – during what was the happy story of our lives in Queenstown New Zealand".

Scenes from the Lounge book is available to buy on their website, NZ$30.00 plus postage.

The Images

Mike Langford

It is fitting that this first image is a six-frame panorama stitch of the scene from the lounge made on the day that we moved in. This visualizes the foundation for what follows and gives context to the story.

This photograph isn’t a usual way of seeing, as it shows everything at once, yet at the same time, it shows nothing specific at all. Most times we like to make images that are more singular in content, more specific about a single idea or vision so that when you look at each image you know exactly what it is saying.

Jackie Ranken

As an opening image, this encapsulates the essence of what it felt like living with a view over Lake Wakatipu and the mountains beyond. Regardless of the weather or season, it was always breathtakingly beautiful The little dark speck on the lake to the left is the TSS Earnslaw making its way to Walter Peak Station on the other side of the lake from Queenstown. It gives a sense of scale to the vastness of the scene before us.

Jackie Ranken

Jackie Ranken

The long summer evenings regularly produced plays of light either on the mountains or over the lake in this case in the form of crepuscular rays over Walter Peak Station.

An in camera multiple exposure helps create a dream like vision of the TSS Earnslaw leaving Queenstown Bay and the mountains beyond.

Jackie Ranken

Jackie Ranken

Details of summer light caressing the mountains on the opposite side of the lake with the shoulder of Cecil Peak on the left and the top of Walter Peak on the right.

Mike Langford

Mike Langford

This storm came in from the north, which is behind us and in a direction, that we seldom get storms from. Even though we could smell the rain approaching, it suddenly just got dark and then it was there, coming over our shoulder like a heavy cloak of rain and darkness.

Mike Langford

This is one image that changed our thinking about the book. Originally it was captured in monochrome, as this made the crepuscular rays, as well the signature smoke from the TSS Earnslaw more dramatic. We now also like this version, as it also talks about the soft pastel light of autumn that adds a tranquility to the scene.

Mike Langford

Jackie Ranken

Skyscapes are huge and spectacular in the Wakatipu Basin. When you have lived in Queenstown for a while, you get to read and know what they mean, so you can prepare for what is going to happen next and sometimes what clothes to wear.

Mike Langford

An early morning shot of a steaming Lake Wakatipu. This doesn’t happen very often but when it does it’s a spectacular and exciting sight. This phenomenon only occurs when the air temperature is dramatically cooler than the water temperature.

Jackie Ranken

The view looking south on a winters day. This is the direction that very cold weather comes from. It comes up the lake from Kingston in a rush, turning the surface of the lake into a froth of white caps. The sky grows dark and ominous and the clouds feel menacing. Snow mostly comes from this direction, sometimes even in the summer months. It brings with it a sense of excitement!

Jackie Ranken

Spectacular gusts of wind from the west whip the surface of the lake into a visual frenzy, indicating that wind speeds are over 100 kilometres an hour. It’s sudden changes in conditions like this that make Lake Wakatipu such a dangerous lake for watercraft.

Mike Langford

Another violent summer storm this time coming from the south. Adding to the spectacle is the contrasting tranquil shaft of warm light coming through from the west in the background.

Mike Langford

Summer north-westerly storms regularly come down the lake from Glenorchy and show their raw power best as they crash into the buttress known as Walter Peak, where they can curl back into themselves creating powerful graphic shapes in the clouds. On this occasion, there was a gap in the clouds further up the lake that let a shaft of light illuminate this phenomenon in an especially dramatic way. The low angle of the light is what has given the scene the warm and glowing colour that separates it out from the cooler colours beyond in the background.

Jackie Ranken

We couldn’t put together a book of images from the lounge without including a super saturated red sunset. We photographed many over the ten years and it was like each sunset was trying to outdo the previous one in its grandness.

Mike Langford

Winter snowstorm blanketing the town and the valley. The snow seldom settles on the lake shore for long due to the moderating temperature of the lake which is only 300 meters above sea level and at 45 degrees latitude south.

Mike Langford

The hazy tranquility of the change in season looking south down the lake towards Kingston in early summer.

Mike Langford

New Year's Eve from the balcony. Queenstown has always been a party town!

Some time ago I came to the conclusion that photographs, on the whole, have little to do with photography at all. They represent something else. The million and one photographic techniques, styles and genres all lead to the same place, they make commentary on the world, about life and about ourselves. It’s probably no revelation to any artist that photography, at least photography as an artwork, draws parallels with other arts such as music, painting, sculpture and even poetry. They all play to the heart in one way or another. Songs, paintings, photographs and poems are simply messengers, tapping on the same door.

Landscape photography for me, in my little world, isn’t so much about a place, although it can be at times. It comes as a result of pondering and exploration. A need to seek a space away from the built-up world, out with nature where experiences and thoughts roam free and morph into the unexpected. It’s a place where the poet walks in, occasionally at least.

I’ve wondered about poets. It seems they were a little more prominent in days gone by, before mass media, commercialism and screens took over all our minds. My Grandmother grew up in the nineteen thirties in regional Australia. While studying the paintings of Constable, she was asked to describe the colours and features in his painting, The Hay Wain, with little more than a black and white drawing in a textbook for reference. No wonder the poets still had their voice, their words able to permeate the page in perfect form.

Eighty years on and my grandmother can still recite the flowing words of James Lister Cuthbertson’s poem, The Australian Sunrise among others. Despite her failing eyesight, the words have become a part of her, returning her to her childhood. Her experiences in nature re-lived and intertwined with Cuthbertson’s, as if shared heart to heart. It’s these glimpses of poetry throughout my life which have made me curious, what else is there to be discovered? Can landscape photography translate the same experiences of nature and life as these seemingly simple words?

The Australian Sunrise

The Morning Star paled slowly, the Cross hung low to the sea,
And down the shadowy reaches the tide came swirling free,
The lustrous purple blackness of the soft Australian night
Waned in the grey awakening that heralded the light;
Still in the dying darkness, still in the forest dim
The pearly dew of the dawning clung to each giant limb,
Till the sun came up from ocean, red with the cold sea mist,
And smote on the limestone ridges, and the shining tree-tops kissed
Then the fiery Scorpion vanished, the magpie’s note was heard,
And the wind in the she-oak wavered and the honeysuckles stirred;
The airy golden vapour rose from the river breast,
The kingfisher came darting out of his crannied nest,
And the bullrushes and reed-beds put off their sallow grey
And burnt with cloudy crimson at the dawning of the day.

If paints were never invented and if photographs did not exist, I suspect that more of us would still be writing poetry. Here’s what Georges Lafenestre had to say as he described the work of French landscape painter Paul Huet, who was influenced by Constable and whose works went on to inspire the impressionists. “It is when the artist-poet is alone, when he sinks into the woods, aimlessly, at random, in the thickets and coppices, that he feels best penetrated and revived by the diffused freshness of budding greenery and intertwined twigs, and by the quivers, splinters and caresses of light flowing through this rustling and fragrant congerie.” Such poetic words in themselves. I love how Lafenestre refers to Huet as an artist-poet, where his experience in nature becomes part of the artwork itself, it becomes poetry on canvas.

I’ve read some poetry myself, enough to get the gist and I can’t help thinking we come from the same frame of mind. My viewfinder may see the trees and the fields, but I aim to capture something else, something deeper. I may not be a poet with words, so perhaps I’m a photo-poet out in the landscape. Maybe that’s what landscape photographers are.

You use words.
I use pictures.
We can both share nature.

There’s a well known poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken, which wrenches my heartstrings every time. Frost inspired countless others with his poetry and was even acknowledged by the government of his day, with a tribute stating “…These poems have helped to guide American thought and humor and wisdom, setting forth to our minds a reliable representation of ourselves and of all men…” I for one, would like to see more of that today.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Frost’s poem doesn’t really seem to have an answer at first, it contradicts itself as the writer ponders a decision, inferred by a fork in the road in a yellow wood. The words are full of ambiguity and uncertainty, as we may feel in the same situation. What would I choose? Then, just as we are led from the visuals of a yellow wood to the decisions of life, the layers of meaning build on each other even further. The lines “I shall be telling this with a sigh…. Somewhere ages and ages hence” add yet another layer of depth. Perhaps they are a humbling commentary on human nature itself, which I’ll leave for you to ponder as the implications are so vast I can’t even begin to turn them into words. Besides, the poem will speak much more elegantly than I can. 

When I wonder and ponder in the landscape, I may not have such a way with words, but I can see them in the trees and the grasses. Puzzles of life, of the heart, revealed in every direction. Beauty. Time. Family. Danger. But strangely, it’s not the camera or the photograph which captures life in a picture, we draw these connections ourselves. We need to feel them in order to capture them and make them known. Lifelong stories, curiosities and dilemmas which float around us everywhere, waiting for their time. With a careful touch of colour and tonality, flavoured to taste in just the right way, we can create our own visual poetry, which I’ll call “landscape poetography”. I wonder if it will catch on.

Now I’m no literary expert, English was my worst subject at school, but I would liken the structure of a poem to the composition of a photograph. The way words flow from one line to another is mimicked in the line, colour, tone and layout of a photograph. Deliberate changes can throw the reader off surprisingly or make them feel uneasy. Whatever is needed to support the underlying story. Words, colours or tones could all be used to make us comfortable or mixed appropriately to raise questions and ambiguity. Photographs and poems can both be metaphorical, drawing on the visuals but meaning something else. They can both reflect the human heart.

I would be more than happy to make poetry with my photographs, but let me twist that around for just a moment. Here’s a poem I wrote about the way I feel in nature, with a camera in my hand.

Natures voice

Nature sways with inspiration,
reflecting ourselves, she is our teacher.
She shares our struggles and changing moods,
soaks in, adapts;
the dew falls upon her.
A fiery day withers and creaks,
and into our soul directly she speaks.

After writing this piece, I decided to emerge from my cocoon to see if ‘poetography’ already exists somewhere out there. You might think I would do that first, but I feared my mind would be sucked into an abyss and these ponderings wouldn’t exist at all. It turns out there are already references to the term poetography and the concept is along the same lines, the same twisted turning lines of an old tree branch. So maybe it will catch on after all. Maybe we are already ‘landscape poetographers’ and we just don’t know it yet.

Enjoy!

Using artificial light when it's dark lets photographers colour the landscape. This way, nature photography can be more open to the artists’ imagination and may give intriguing aesthetics.

One of the consequences of the lack of sunlight at night is that photographers focus their attention on the sky. Often when we hear about night photography of nature's landscape, we assume that it is some pictures in which the Moon or stars’ formations play the main role. So the landscape becomes a background or a kind of a frame for the sky. By using artificial light the situation changes 180 degrees. It is how architecture photography works after getting dark while many buildings are lit with street lamps or even dedicated spotlights. Preparing such lighting conditions in nature is probably not a good idea but incorporating smaller kinds of lighting equipment seems to be promising.

However, the above conclusion is only post rationalisation. To start the project called “Night”, I walked a path of fascination, inspiration and coincidence. I believe my fascination with the night came from two sources, both much older than my photography. The first one was animals’ activity from dusk to dawn so the reason connected directly with an interest in nature.

The second one was rather cultural as in the 90. I watched the “Twin Peaks” and “X files” series as well, as I was interested in cold war secret aircraft. So the night was a territory in my mind where spirituality, new technologies and wildlife met together. During my studies, I got SLR and DSLR cameras and I was looking around at famous photographers’ works, both representing classical and unconventional approaches to nature photography.

The key idea is to not only light up objects in the landscape but also to do it with colour filters, in other words – to colourise them. It is a bit unusual in landscape photography to build dramaturgy of a photograph by controlling the light, shadow and colour because in most cases landscape photographers rely on found conditions. Right away I felt I found a technique I could engage in and make long term use of. The sources of light that I decided to use were not anything unusual in photography – firstly a flash and a bit later a torch. But choosing the colour filters was the coincidence in all this story. Very shortly after starting my photography, I was looking for an opportunity to exchange views. That was how I met Tomasz Pućkowski who was older and had more experience in landscape photography than me. But his main job was stained glass making.

Stained glass has roots in ancient times, but its glory days were definitely in the Middle Ages when overpainted coloured glass was turning churches into more mystical places. During the secession, stained glass became popular in homes and public buildings and nature motifs, especially plants, became common.

The first one is about what they are in my hand. The stained glass pieces, cut mostly from leftover glass and with no right angles, are far away from professional looking. Often the glass is not homogeneous. The pieces have different thicknesses. Feeling them in my hand creates less of a high tech feeling, like having an old fashion wooden steering wheel aboard a modern yacht. The second one is about what aesthetic effect they give and how they influence on taking photographs. The stained glass absorbs a lot of light so to get something illuminated enough it is necessary to engage the flash several times. It is pretty difficult to overdose lighting and it is possible to set shooting parameters on feel. One does not need to count everything, just opening a snapshot and walking around flashing from time to time. I think the colourised glass gives more austere colours to my photographs as well.

As colours play the main role in the “Night” project the firmament full of stars is not so important, sometimes even a dark blue empty sky is preferable – it becomes a flat homogeneous surface, blue or purple. This is why quite many photographs have been taken at the end of blue hour. The first subjects are rocks and trees, especially skeletal, wind-shaped trees and deciduous trees without leaves. Often colours given to them are cultural related. Connecting blue and red on a single frame can be interpreted as the warmth of the fire and the cold of the night. This motif has engaged people since prehistory. In general, the night is full of similar contrasts. Darkness drives us to sharpen our senses. The world seems calm, although the approaching night is mysterious and fearful. Violet and aquamarine recall the mood of night – calm and mysterious. Lighting up leaves with a green filter strengthens their natural colour taking them to a higher level of intensity. Also having both artificial and natural lighted green objects on the same frame delivers interesting variations within one colour range.

One green is fresh and intense while the other looks soft and calm. A photograph from the “Night” project does not need to be night-looking. The idea could be to contrast a colourised object with very light, almost white, background. It is still night photography in an "after-sunset" meaning but the impression could be confusing as well as intriguing. Colourising natural objects in the night landscape also make us consider how other animals see their environment. It has been not my intention to try to imitate the sight of particular species but looking at the "Night” collection one can imagine a reflection of the natural world.

Frost. It’s quite common throughout our land and most people hardly give it a thought – other than that it can be a nuisance to e.g. crop farmers, car drivers and mass transportation systems. Frost can damage crops, lead to slippery roads, iced-up power cables, seized railway points and signals. Even worse, ice forming on aircraft wings upsets their aerodynamics hence de-icing procedures in winter.

Here in the British Isles we most commonly see hoar frost which, from what I’ve gleaned around the Internet, is formed when water vapour from low humidity air at above 0˚C is deposited onto sub-0˚C surfaces. Less common is white frost which is formed from vapour in higher humidity air (90%) depositing onto surfaces at below -8˚C. Then there is advection frost formed by very cold wind flowing over cold surfaces. There are also window frost creating lovely patterns on glazed surfaces, black frost which is actually blackened frost-damaged vegetation and occasionally rime when ice forms from rain settling and immediately freezing on extremely cold surfaces.

It was several years ago that I first properly noticed frosted leaves on the ground, their edges, veins and stalks outlined by a sprinkling of fine white crystals. I made some close-up photos trying to bring out colour and textures and sinuous organic curves contrasting against the angular crystals. Shiny/leathery holly leaves picked up blue from the clear sky above adding to the feeling of a cold crisp morning. I enjoyed the session so much that I resolved to repeat the exercise each winter whenever conditions were right – which isn’t too often in my part of the world! However, even when the promised frost fails to materialise, being out in the early morning with only the occasional dog walker for company is a pleasure in itself and with my macro lens mounted on the camera, I can enjoy exploring the skeletal remains of leaves ravaged by harsh late autumn and wintry weather.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this has become a project, but it is a subject I actively look out for in the cold season when out for woodland walks. I do have the feeling that close-up photography that records nature’s details is perhaps more akin to documentary photography rather than creative art, after all, it is nature that creates the beauty we love to photograph.

This winter I’ve been struck by how muted the colours are compared to previous years. The intense blue I’ve seen previously seems to be greyer or missing altogether and there is more in the way of browns, oranges and yellows. This may be due to differences in light, the actual tree species that shed the leaves or maybe that the leaves have undergone more decay as the frost seems to have come a bit later this year.

Be that as it may, I tell myself that it’s a harmless pursuit allowing me to revel in nature’s details and enjoy being away from daily routines, losing myself in pursuit of beauty in miniature. On my last outing, a lady approached me as I looked intently at the ground around me, asking whether I had lost something. I almost replied “only my marbles” but thought better of it and said that I was photographing frost patterns for a science project. “Oh how lovely” she replied and wandered away. What she really thought will never be known…

Bang! I wake with a start. Bang-bang! I open the shutter to peer into the blackness of the countryside. Another and another – I shout in the hope of stopping the massacre.

A cold thought trembled through me. Earlier that morning I was sitting in a Berkshire field enjoying the warm sunshine, when a family of deer meandered out of the shady woodland, to graze on the nearby grassy wasteland. I must have been upwind as a mother and young fawn strolled just feet away, unaware as I crouched in the tall Fescue blades of grass, transfixed amazement.

The next morning revealed evidence that the entire herd had been wiped out, 12 deer, the only herd in the district. This deeply affected me – my first question as I awoke “What right does a human have, to say whether or not another living species has a right to live?” The contradictions about overpopulation and why is it we look at every other species to blame but ourselves.

I think this is what triggered the making of my book The Colour of Silence.

How did it all begin?

I have taken a strange road into photography, yet it has always been part of my life. I am not talking about happy snappies, but the actual pleasure of picking up a big DSLR and making fine art images.

My true vocation started after a depressingly ignored milestone birthday; I stormed off and discovered large format cameras for sale along London's Tottenham Court Road. Later I introduced my new camera to a friend, who responded by showing me his latest panoramas he had been working on. This new style of photography completely captivated me... and that was the beginning of my new world into photography.

The artist in my photography

You could say I am quite an eclectic photographic artist – I really like pushing myself hard into the different areas that photography offers.

Concerning equipment, I am glad to say that all of my gear is almost vintage and second-hand. Apart from being careful of waste, photography is an expensive pastime, and walking into a camera shop and seeing new powerful cameras with big price tags may be very off-putting. So first I go to a friend who is a professional photographer and ask for a certain piece of equipment to borrow. If the kit appeals to me and aids in the production of a new style of photo that I've imagined, I go to a second-hand website and search for a comparable model. It's a lot of fun and gives me a lot of options.

Choosing the subjects and themes in the book

In my childhood, my favourite subject was biology - mainly due to having a very understanding teacher. I loved dissecting plants then peering through a microscope and drawing their intricate capillaries. This childhood experience has in some way influenced my excitement for discovering the little things I find in nature. Another aspect is that during lockdown we all were discouraged from travelling around. This meant I needed to think laterally about the subjects that I could access and become enthusiastic about. The process of finding the subjects that matched my interests was gradual, starting with conceptualised pieces such as the feathers. This idea is based on how plastic (now a bit of a cliché) interferes with nature. I formulated the sets based on layering with class and translucent plastic then allowed natural sunlight to play on the feathers. However it was too strong so I opted for the diffusion of overcast weather and then used long exposures to get the ethereal effect, mixing feather detail with others having a misty quality to signify different ideas such as disappearing species.

The subjects I chose were ones that could connect to make a curated and undulating journey from the beautiful (could I say traditional forms of nature photography), entertaining through to the unpleasant issue of rubbish accumulation.

The book begins with a series of close-up images designed to look like miniature worlds, reflecting the microcosm of interacting ecology that exists all around us; a bit like following in the footsteps of Darwin – “in the beginning there was the….” I wanted to draw the reader into an ‘observational’ frame of mind and show how bewitching the simplest thing can be if we just take the time to look.

The second transition for subject matter looks at the importance of trees. For me this is a pretty emotional subject because in both the city and countryside I see authorities and landowners tear up mature trees as if they are ‘sustainable’, which trees aren’t really - it takes 100 to 150 Years for a tree to get to a point where it can become an effective ‘carbon sink’, an important point that really needs a great deal more publicity around. My set of images for this section opens with a large composite of a mature oak tree changing into its autumnal cloak of gold (if the image was enlarged to its true size it would measure 1.5 meters, from which you can see every leaf in glorious detail). The following images counteract the complacency of attractive images with the shocking destruction of a mature tree in a forest, where the tree’s soul is ripped out of all existence – there should be no excuse for such an act – the tree was healthy, providing a complex ecosystem as well as effectively scrubbing poisonous carbon from the atmosphere.

It is only recently discovered that untouched woods in Poland, have very wide biodiversity – and that diverse richness when left untouched has a way of regenerating degraded land nearby; a very important lesson that is being learnt by scientists – because take one microorganism out of the equation and the system no longer has the right combination of tools to recover. I am thinking about expanding my thoughts towards making a second book that looks into this new and exciting science. Because this section was so intense, I wanted to lighten the mood with something amusing, thus the switch to anthropomorphism. It was a lot of fun making figures out of garden weeds and combining them with an amusing quote from Lawrence Anthony to create an upbeat mood change.

This ebbing flow of information from passive to acidic can be found throughout the book. I believe it is critical; otherwise, I suspect it is difficult to digest when subjects are all one onslaught of shocking information.

Collaborating with Contributors

Since I don’t have an expert naturist background even though I have a great love for it, I felt it was extremely important to not make the book about my opinions but to give it a wider authoritative context in the narrative. This could only come from professionals in nature and conservation. As I worked up each chapter and subject I spent many hours reading papers and studies, after which I wrote off to many researchers and scientists in their corresponding field of interest. It took a while but by the end, I had eight senior specialists who gave me articles to include.

Using my emotions to express a point in photography

Since lockdown prevented travel, I decided to camp in my dad’s apple orchard for most of last year’s summer. It was here, that I became aware of how a city-dweller’s view of the countryside, differs from a local farmer’s.

In the city, there is so little wildlife that the little we do see, we treasure the moment it comes into view. The farm people I came into contact with see fields as a job to be done – they flay the hedgerows, mow flowering footpaths, shoot rabbits, deer and buzzards. For me, the intense destruction was overwhelming.

The funny thing about nature is we take it all for granted – ‘It will always be there – it will grow back’. We lift our cameras and see the incredible variety that inspires us. For me I really enjoyed what the British countryside has to offer, even the mundane, as it changes my mindset into hyper awareness… spotting the contrasts across shadows or beads of sunlight that highlight in exceptional detail of small dark things hidden in woodland, making the ordinary become beautiful.

This difference between the farmers and myself became a catalyst for collating 6 years of material I had built up, which gave me the determination to portray the delicate elements I found on my walks, showing their intricate fragility. But most of all I wanted to highlight through my work a change of mindset – focusing closer to the fact that humans need to allow nature to exist making room to perform its miraculous duties.

Only as the project progressed did my solitary fears about nature's plight show themselves to be a far larger concern. I realised I was living in romantic illusions, believing that everything was fine and that difficulties only existed in faraway places like Africa or the Amazon. Following some investigation, I started posing acidic and seemingly nonsensical questions to aid my photography;

• How many people would it take to keep a tree alive until it reached a maturity of 100 years?
• With the growing human population versus deforestation, would we run out of oxygen?
• Can something be done to change a mindset of disposable?

I believed it was vital to clarify my ideas with the support of prominent scientists, environmentalists, and nature specialists, asking them about some of the themes I wanted to discuss, after creating the original artworks for the book.

The artistic influences are the result of an extensive investigation into the subject. I enjoy starting off with no knowledge at all because it allows me to connect with my readers and experience the new information through their eyes... As a result, I'll have to offer a subject in chronological order and in an understandable manner. The experts I meet keep me on track and precise on each point, advising me on how to emphasise or identify each message. It's critical that when learning new things, you don't rely on hearsay or assumptions. It gets very messy!

Could there be a different way of perceiving nature?

Nature photography, I believe, is one of the most popular areas in photography, with notable black and white photographers such as Ansel Adams, Fay Godwin, and John Sexton enriching our images of the landscape. Lucie Averill, Charlie Waite, and David Noton, for example, travelled the world to provide us with stunning enriched sunsets.

Rather than emulating these incredible artists, I choose to admire them since I felt I’d be depreciating their genius and originality if my work mirrored theirs. Also, I'd never be able to do justice to my own unique thoughts and photographic style.

In many ways, once I had come to terms with not needing to follow in their footsteps was very freeing, it meant I could experiment un-inhibited and discover where I could fit in with expressing my way of interpreting the vision or how I would push my signature style, enabling me to develop captivating photographs of mundane elements, without them becoming a cliché.

This, I believe, is my basic idea on how to structure a subject in a unique way. Being original and thinking without creative influences is essential to me. I despised it when lecturers would come up to me and suggest things like, 'You should do this – or- look at how good so-and-so designs are.' Yes, these remarks made me quite the rebel! Perhaps my obsession to be unique stems from my training as a graphic designer, when designs were only sold if they were original. This is an excellent discipline for continuing to develop ideas and moving one's thoughts forward rather than relying on trends to guide your style.

Yes, it has negatives as well! – Having doubts regarding the outcome of the handiwork being the right way to portray a message. Ideas and creative influences come from the research into the subject. This leads me to conceptualise about how I am going to explain the subject or story, where the emphasis needs to be, or what’s the best technique to help get the message across.

I think this extract is very helpful to understanding about perceptions in image making;

Perceptions shape the interpretation of information when it enters a social system from an ecosystem, and perceptions shape the decision-making process that leads to actions affecting the ecosystem. While every perception has a basis in reality, some perceptions of nature are more useful because they embrace reality more completely or accurately.~ Gerald G. Marten

When it comes to interpreting thoughts. Traditions and tried-and-tested formulas, I believe is important to let go and trust yourself. Ideas are self-contained by their very nature, as everyone has an independent opinion on a subject. However, as a photographer describing a subject, it is more valuable to create work that does not compromise the truthfulness of a situation. Purity is especially vital when dealing with a delicate subject like nature in close proximity since the reality of truth must exude in order to distil an emotion or mindfulness from the reader.

My work as an artist photographer

I like to call myself a photographic artist rather than an art photographer, as there is a quite big difference between the two. A photographic artist uses the camera much like a paintbrush. Sometimes it’s about shutter dragging but for me, it’s about making composites; each photo is an accurate facsimile of the subject – it is merely a jigsaw piece to a bigger puzzle or vision.

For this project, and for the first time I decided to capture single shots and experiment with different lenses for the first time - yes, I had to overcome my fear of the unknown. However, it allowed me to experiment with new ways of expressing my feelings and create artworks with a clear meaning that could change throughout the book. (By the way, when I say artworks, I'm referring to images, some of which are composites that have been prepared for publication.)

As an experimental photo artist, I felt it was critical to avoid traditional documentary or heightened landscape photography. The voyage heightened my awareness of the image, with some images serving as metaphors to depict the journey.

Nature is an incredibly big subject, so as the project took shape it became clear that through artistic interpretation, there was a need to reveal a narrative – a gentle curation exploring the curious and rich depth of each small subject.

To show life as it actually is, not as we might imagine or desire it to be

Covid's lockdown helped in many ways because I couldn't travel anywhere – all I had to photograph was what was around me. This is a great experience to increase one’s awareness without distractions. During my camping trip, I became a bit of a recluse, removing myself from all human interaction and technology (save the camera and hard drive) so I could focus totally on the task at hand.

I'd spend days ambling over the Ridgeway's woodlands and hedgerows, just gazing and gathering odd items that struck my eye — a skull, a severed limb intact with seeds, or upside down bugs who'd perished in the search of love. The next day, I'd play about with my freshly discovered treasures, watching their shapes change in the midday sun. Textures, translucency, and reflections within reflections would arise, each providing a unique perspective and ‘what-if' scenario. I put them on glass, plastic, and even poured syrup over them. I sprayed, splattered, and hosed until something wonderful happened inside of me!

During the experimental stage, I discovered myself and a new way of understanding the results – it wasn't what was covered, but what wasn't covered that gave me insights into the truth messages — the magic demonstrated that I could develop a metaphor language from what was left untouched. Once I had built the backbone of image style, I worked on complementary landscape photographs that might expand the context and push the story farther to cover the environment, where the small things existed.

Another reason for the style of images not to become stuck in one formula is that a book must be enjoyable before it can be educational; otherwise, people will not want to turn the page. Every page must be exciting – a new experience or bring a sense of adventure. Once that has been achieved the supporting narrative can offer something a bit different – unknown and interesting. That’s where the mountains of research and introductions to specialists are so important in the early stages.

Influences that inspired the making of the book

This quote was written by one of the contributors, it was very influential in helping me chose the right material for the book:

Our human appreciation of the natural world and its processes has been diminished during recorded human ~ Dr Alan Rayner

In the back of my mind, I noticed that today's city generations are completely engrossed in personal technology. People walking with their heads buried deep in their phones, implying they haven't experienced anything of their journey or seen the green treasures along the road. The goal of the book is to show both the distilled essences of nature and to deliver it to people directly. Demonstrating that our natural flora and fauna are one-of-a-kind gems that require people's active engagement with.

The subjects I chose were the closest I could get to something that everyone could find. That way, I could show off their beauty whilst raising awareness. We all see wasps, but how many of us notice the graphic stripes and how distinct each pattern is? We all see spider webs, but can we see how each one is unique and how they catch dew-drops? Or, if one looks through a grove of beech trees crowning a hill, can one see the golden fields behind them and how the moody grey clouds complement the corn?

The book's layout was meticulously planned to provide a balanced speed and undulations between themes. The book begins with a series of familiar but artistic images depicting a variety of things we take for granted, then progresses along the sensitive scale of awareness to the first cruel act of people tearing the heart and life out of a tree. The language moves from debate points to entertaining tales, with pauses to slow down the pace before returning to a highly charged, thought-provoking subject.

As the book draws to a close, the focus shifts to disposable rubbish from the home. It's all too easy to throw anything away, but there isn’t enough imagery to convey the magnitude of the waste problem, or pictures to show that simple packaging doesn’t biodegrade as quickly as one imagines.

I have watched pedestrians toss absent-mindedly a tin can or plastic snack packet into the side of the grassy path - when asked what will happen to it – they just say – “don’t worry it will degrade, nature will take care if it!” So I included images to demonstrate that waste doesn’t dissolve when it is thrown into vegetation – it just stays there, never truly deteriorating.

I will feel fulfilled if my book has improved a sympathetic mindset from readers displaying the beauty within the ordinary side of nature, stimulating a better appreciation for the care that our environment needs from us.

If you would like to buy a personally signed copy of
Email: at Carle at Jump4London@gmail.com

Colour of Silence is published by Happy London Press, £25.

Some wild places have the power to captivate all who visit them, not because they have unrivalled views or superior scenery but because they instil in the visitor a sense of wonder and awe. In 2018 I discovered one such place.

At this time my photography was primarily focused on the coast. I was an experienced yachting photographer and I loved the sea and this was the environment I was naturally drawn to when I ventured out with my camera. However, that all changed when I read a book by Sara Maitland called Gossip from the Forest. It featured a chapter on a local woodland that I had never explored but felt compelled to visit.

First impressions are always important and they are usually what guides me as a photographer. As soon as I stepped off the road and into the cool depths of the wood I knew I wanted to produce a body of work that captured the essence of this amazing location.

The wood is a special place that has been well documented. It has been studied by Oliver Rackham, a leading ecologist of British woodlands, and described by eminent woodland expert George Peterken as being as near to primal forest as anything else in the country. It is an ancient landscape of fairytale qualities where vast oaks, some over 500 years old, stand side by side with some of the tallest holly trees in Britain. Reminiscent of childhood stories, the area is a chaotic tangle of twisted branches where light is sparse and evergreen curtains of holly hang in the air. Dead and decaying boughs and trunks litter the floor and even on the brightest of days the air is cool and the forest dark. The treescape has a Tolkienesque quality revealed in the gnarly shapes of the oaks, the characters imagined in the deadwood and the symbiosis of its compound trees, formed as different species grow on top of one another. For all who enter this magical landscape, mystery abounds and imagination runs wild.

While the wood may have started its life as an oak wood today holly is the dominant species. The evergreen trees are regenerating at a rapid pace and tiny seedlings can be seen all over the woodland floor. But for the oaks, the future is less bright. There has been no successful natural regeneration in the last 100 years and so the dynamics of the woodland are changing. There is a conflict between the hollies and the oaks born from competition for sunlight, which over time has contributed to the enchantment of the forest but will ultimately change its nature forever.

As someone who had never attempted woodland photography before, the ancient forest presented some major challenges, the most difficult being the chaotic nature of the habitat. When I entered the wood for the first time I was confronted by a mass of trees and foliage that felt almost impossible to penetrate. Everywhere I looked the scene was busy and chaotic.

I began by getting to know the wood, visiting with my camera but focusing very much on connecting with the environment and observing the wildlife in its natural habitat. The more I explored the more I felt I understood the landscape and the trees that surrounded me.

There was something very powerful about immersing myself in this ancient oak wood. The gnarly trees have been old for longer than I have been alive and have lived through huge changes in the landscape. Most are between 300 - 500 years old and although they are hollowed and broken and are being crowded out by the surrounding hollies they are still alive and very much part of a vibrant ecosystem.

I was in awe of these trees every time I visited and felt a deep connection with the past and an almost spiritual connection with the wood. This ultimately gave me an idea for the project and influenced the decisions I made regarding photographic style.

I began taking photos in the autumn and deliberately decided to shoot on rainy days when the moisture in the air acted as a filter, simplifying the background but at the same time saturating the colours of the vegetation.

From my initial visits in the autumn of 2018, I produced a panel of 6 images that I felt showed the enchantment of the forest but also hinted at the dark and chaotic nature of the habitat. I entered this panel into the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) photography competition and was shortlisted to exhibit at the Art and Photography show which took place at the Saatchi Gallery in London. I was thrilled to be awarded a Silver - Gilt medal for my work and inspired to put together a book that told my story of the forest.

By this time I had been visiting and photographing the wood for two years. I had built up a huge collection of images across all four seasons and in very different weather conditions. However, I didn’t want to produce a book that told a chronological tale through spring, summer, autumn and winter. Instead, I chose to tell a story of a connection between two tree species (holly and oak) and also between man and the natural world.

As a regular visitor to the wood and an observer and lover of the natural world, the wood seemed to me to display many characteristics of a human community. It is rooted in time, and nature, connected spirituality (particularly in the past) to those that live among it, made vulnerable by change and afflicted by conflict and mortality. It is these characteristics that I chose to form the structure of my story.

The result is my book Rooted which I published at the beginning of December. Although this is principally a tale about a special area of ancient woodland it is also a personal story of the connection between myself as a photographer and the landscape I work in.

The wood is somewhere that has had a profound effect on me since I first visited in 2018. It has shaped my art and has provided me with a peaceful natural refuge to explore with my camera.

Whilst my images took just over two years to gather the words for the book were written in 2021 in the run-up to and during the international climate summit COP26 which took place in Scotland.

With the news coming out of Glasgow on a daily basis I found myself drawing comparisons between the threats the planet faces and those currently affecting the wood. Rooted is a story of an ancient place, battling for survival in its current form and one that in many ways mirrors man's own story.

I very much hope that I have succeeded in portraying, through my images, the magic and fragility of the woodland and my deep love for this awe-inspiring habitat.

You can buy Rooted from Gill's Website, £28