An Introduction... of sorts

Welcome to 'Adventures of a Landscape Photographer'

The idea of starting a Substack came from a conversation with my therapist about my desire to share content but my fear of YouTube or any front-facing form of social media. I lamented the passing of a bygone age where newsletters were king and my therapist gently pointed out that there is a thriving community writing and engaging with content on places such as Substack. It’s a little strange because I feel writing harks back to an analog age, but my creative practice is firmly routed in the digital sphere. I guess this is an attempt to marry up the two, but also an opportunity to write long form about my work, inspiration and general thoughts on creativity and life. There will be no set format, but my intention is to post every Sunday. 

The first day I met my wife, back in 2011, she was carrying this camera

Writing has always been my first love. During my childhood, many an evening my parents would tap on my bedroom door to see if I was doing okay as they hadn’t seen me in a few hours. Inevitably I would be writing or drawing. Sometimes it would be fiction, sometimes it would be poetry, heck sometimes I would copy novels word for word because I just enjoyed the act of writing (yes, that sounds weird to me too).

Later came painting, well, watercolours of my favourite birds, or the sky at that particular moment. Photography was never really part of my childhood because film was so expensive and when you grow up working class like I did, 35mm film was a bit of a luxury reserved for holidays and celebrations. Still, I have this one memory of taking a camera to a week away with school. I was 10 and we spent the week at Everdon Outdoor Learning Centre. The whole week was full of nature and walks. I was in my element. I had this very cheap 35mm camera with me and two rolls of film. I remember walking through woodland with light spilling through the trees, dappling onto the forest floor and feeling the inherent beauty of it all. The same feeling occurred walking through fields of corn and each place I tried to capture the quality of the light with my camera. Weeks later, after the film had been developed, I remember my dad telling me how good the photographs were even though I felt like they didn’t quite capture the magic. Looking back, those moments were formative for me, despite not picking up a camera with any real intent till 15 years after that adventure.

I’ve pondered how I became a photographer in the first place, wondering if I just tripped and fell into a creative endeavour that filled a particular void. I’d always imagined becoming a writer, or a painter. After I completed my undergraduate degree I applied for a Creative Writing MA, submitting several short stories as part of the application process. I failed to get a place and it felt like the bottom had fallen out of me. Rejection was not something I’d experienced often up to that point and the day I received that rejection letter I tucked away my dream of being a writer, pivoting to academia. I was much more successful at that, but felt like something was missing. It took years to write for myself again. 

End of autumn, Sutton Park, 2020

If you dig around this space, you’ll find words I wrote some 12 years ago. I’ve brought them across from an old Wordpress because they’re a small reminder that this has always been in my blood, and even with no audience at all there is value in the words, sentences and paragraphs. Those blogs were written before photography really took over, during a part of my life where I travelled solo around the world, finding out who I was and slowly learning to use a camera. When I read them back there are parts where I’m extraordinarily verbose, what my UG dissertation tutor might call ‘flowery’, and occasionally I cringe at the clumsy metaphors and analogies. The words, and sentiments, however awkward I presented them, are nothing but honest and on occasion, rather raw with emotion. They mark the beginning, even if I’m only now getting started. 

Back in 2018 I was asked by Practical Photography to write a monthly column entitled ‘Adventures of a Landscape Photographer’. For the next 2 years (before the magazine unfortunately had to shut it’s doors in mid-2020) I wrote on as many subjects as I could, and enjoyed every moment of it. In some roundabout way, photography had brought me back to writing. Creativity begets creativity. I plan on sharing some of those articles here, as I feel like they deserve a home somewhere, but I hope also to continue in the spirit of that column and those articles. I know there were people who enjoyed reading my words every month and I hope they find themselves here, and although I cannot promise that every single thing I write will resonate, I can promise that I will try. For me, photography is an intuitive art form, and a lot of it has to do with how I think and feel about the world at a particular moment. Just like those early blogs from 2011, whether there is an audience or not, I feel there is value in continuing to write. I’m writing for me. To make sense… to make something. All I can really hope is that you too will find something here that resonates.

With that in mind, a heartfelt ‘thank you’ for anybody who has stuck with me till the end of this. Here’s to starting over. I hope you’ll join me for the ride.