Projects and other photography
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On one level, these in-camera multiple exposures are simply a visual gimmick. The key is to find a context for the pictures so they are more than merely decorative– that they serve a story you want to tell. By virtue of the way they are executed, they bring a forced order to the most chaotic, visually un-engaging spaces, encouraging their re-examination and appreciation.
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The photographs of boats, stairs, traffic lights and motorcycles that appear in Google captchas are perhaps the most demoralising in existence. And yet...the form is ubiquitous and its significance deeply familiar to just about anyone who has ever used the internet. It’s not one that people need to have explained. And so, like any familiar form, it’s ripe for subversion, for making a statement unrelated to the original purpose of the captcha but leveraging its familiarity.
I’ve found it a useful form to talk about the biological richness of our region of central France, a way that people can readily relate to. The message is: there is lot of space in this landscape for these fascinating species. The sub-text is: let’s keep it that way.
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Dispatches from the Collapse is an exercise in “future history”. I imagined the images that make up the collection as relics found in a drawer in an abandoned house decades from now. The imagery, and messages attached to them, are from an earlier period, just as a great calamity was getting under way. The words are sometimes petulant, sometimes wise, often with an unspoken “I told you so”. Through them, I draw attention to a wide range of possible scenarios being spoken about today, in part to highlight our naivety and abject lack of preparation for a hotter, stormier, more fractious world. The pictures make the case for precautionary planning. A collapse isn’t guaranteed but perhaps it doesn’t do any harm to consider its possibility and plan accordingly.
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It’s an unconventional view, perhaps, but I see “urbex’ as an extension of more traditional “nature photography” insofar as it ,too, is about natural process and how our works as people all, ultimately, return to nature. “Dereliction and Decay” presents that process in its early stages.
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A Colour Transect consists of a photograph and colour swatches presented as a single piece of work. The swatches are sampled from the photograph, sometimes highlighting the diversity of colours in the image, sometimes the variety of different hues of one colour. The object is to simplify and clarify the image’s colour content for the viewer - and to cause them to examine the photograph for a little longer.
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“Encounters” photography is just that; it isn’t staged or intensively pre-planned and places more emphasis on conveying authentic experiences than conforming to aesthetic convention. It relies to a great extent on evoking mood, often using processing techniques to heighten emotion. This approach challenges many of the contemporary practices common in wildlife photography aimed at shortening the odds in the favour of time-poor photographers.
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The theme of this project is simple. People impose themselves and their structures on natural landscapes and nature resists and eventually breaks them down. In some of the pictures, nature has already got the upper hand; in others, there is a clear sense of the vulnerability of the imposition. Either way, nature will impose ITSELF, sooner or later.
In this project, I use treatments that emphasise the sense of impending doom or that render the landscape very starkly, further emphasising the incongruity of the structures we plant on them.
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We run photography Retreats from our home here in Burgundy. This is a selection of images of our area .
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Composing a food photograph (or still life, for that matter) is all about establishing a hierarchy. The “star” of the composition (often, the finished dish) should be placed where the viewer’s eye naturally gravitates towards with the other “actors” - ingredients, props etc. - performing supporting roles and trying not to upstage the star. Practically, that means that not every element is fully visible in the composition, since their job is essentially to frame the star and provide the depth of information to the composition They help tell the story - suggest to the viewer if the setting is rural or urban; if it’s retro. or contemporary; if it’s about sociability or being alone; whether the viewer should feel happy or sad; what time of day it is; and if it’s sophisticated or simple. Your choice of props, lighting, and the dish itself - and where to place them should all serve the central narrative.
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The Nostalgia for Snow project imagines a future without snow and, from that perspective, looks back on how things used to be. Accordingly, all the images have been treated to create a retro. look, even although they have been made in recent years. They present loss through three avenues: extinct cultural activities that depended on snow and ice (far left, ice fishing in Estonia, left, outdoor curling in Scotland); alpine plants that ran out of altitude as the climate warmed; and seabirds whose food moved elsewhere and whose colonies died out. Bearing a close resemblance to its close relative, the extinct great auk, the razorbill is a poignant addition to the collection.
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This was a multi-media project I founded in conjunction with Catherine Ann Lee to highlight how children in different parts of Europe experience wild nature and how that affects their social and emotional development. Work was carried out in Estonia, Scotland and Norway.
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Biodiversity begins at home.
Two years after I began working with a field studio, Clay Bolt and I founded the Meet Your Neighbours project, with a view to revealing the wildlife living amongst us in an extraordinary way. These small creatures and plants are vital to people: they represent the first, and for some, the only contact with wild nature. Concern for them is point of engagement with a broad range of environmental themes. Yet too often they are overlooked, undervalued.
Meet Your Neighbours dignifies these species by giving them celebrity treatment. Each is photographed on location in a field studio. A brilliantly-lit white background removes the context, encouraging appreciation of the subject as an individual rather than a species. Their own form constitutes the composition. Seen this way, animals and plants we thought we knew reveal another side of themselves, encourage a second glance, perhaps even renewed interest.
In 2015, the Meet Your Neighbours project was awarded the North American Nature Photography Association’s Environmental Impact Award.
While the project is now in abeyance, I continued to evolve my own practice.
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Offer a hungry person a single chunk of chocolate and they aren’t likely to be satisfied. But offer the whole bar and it’s a different story. The same principle applies to single, close-ups of rock, or lichens or indeed any abstract image. Present them together in a single piece of work, however, and they acquire a presence, collectively, that they lack alone.
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This gallery presents a very small selection of commissioned work. Clients have included BBC Wildlife; National Geographic television; BBC books; BG; The National Trust for Scotland; The Forestry Commission; The Woodland Trust; the WWF; the RSPB; Wild Wonders of Europe; GMC Publications; Bauer; IPC.
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Much, although not all, of this gallery represents photography from the start of my career. It is very traditional and, you could fairly say, a little naive. Nevetheless, I continue to make some pictures like these today for a general audience that is more interested in appearance than narrative.