From a photography perspective woodland, including forests, are chaotic, hard to photograph places. The techniques required are common to photography generally, especially Landscape, but I believe observation especially important as it’s foundational to identifying compositions in messy woodland environments.

At Hartland Quay and the surrounding area it’s the sea cliffs and their eroded remains protruding from the sandy beach like skeletons of long dead creatures that I find most interesting. They were laid-down as sediments in a shallow tropical sea, rich in marine life during the geological Carboniferous period and have been compressed and transformed into alternating layers of sandstone, shale and limestone during the intervening millennia.

The long, often blue sky days of summer are a photographically challenging time but this year I wanted to make the most of them by doing something different and pushing my photography into an area not previously explored. After much deliberation two ideas remained. The use of colour, patterns, shapes and textures as a primary subject with images bias towards simplicity and the second idea was to photograph people rock climbing.

Like many photographers, the Summer is not my favourite time for landscape photography. I find it hard to get inspired and I'm not sure I fully understand why. Last year the profile of Infrared photography was raised in the media by multiple YouTube influencers and this got me thinking about my summertime doldrums!

The Three Brooks Nature Reserve is the gem of Bradley Stoke. At 110 acres (roughly 62 football pitches) it provides a biologically diverse, green space for the community.

Last year I started to explore ‘The Forest’ as it’s known to locals. This summer I spent lots of time exploring a handful of areas with a mind for Autumn woodland photography. This really helped identify those places that didn’t have potential meaning I could focus on selected areas during the Autumn period.

On the Western edge of the Cotswolds is the village of Cranham. Hidden away under the trees in this traditionally sheep farming area are decades-old drystone walls which are now gracefully decaying.

To the East of Wickwar are several small woods. Nestled within the young, straight trees are curvey trees. These contrast wonderfully against their straight neighbours.

Battery Point at Portishead is one of those places I've known about for years but never actually photographed as its so close to home. Partly due to Covid travel restrictions I made it a bit of a mission recently.…

This was one of the early outings this year with the new Fujifilm GFX100S. Using greater than ISO 400 on my previous landscape camera would have resulted in significant noise, however, the GFX100S is a monster. The above photograph was made at ISO 1250 and has little noise. Its Dynamic range is also significantly wider making this high contrast image possible with a single exposure.

In an age where image manipulation is so prevalent the statement 'A photograph never lies' has, unfortunetly, lost its meaning. But whilst this photograph is pretty much how it was, I can tell you that those nice warm colours lie!

I could imagine them silently multiplying until they had consumed the ice like tiny preditors…

The ground was much more alive with small red/purple flowers than it had been on my previous visit but the fog muted all colour and everything looked very flat in colour images. With the muted colours, shapes became the dominant feature and the just visible outline of the old chimney and ruined power house seemed to scream Cornwall!

I’m not sure whether the sign was genuinely for some past event that I’d missed or whether some bright spark had spotted the scene and erected the sign. But whichever it made me giggle. :-)

Avoiding the temptation of arboretums, I made a concerted effort this year to explore somewhere not far away, somewhere I really should know much, much better. The Forest of Dean is about 15 miles away and sits between Chepstow and Ross-on-Wye on the Western side of the river Severn. This year I started by thinking carefully about why previous trips hadn't worked and what I could do better.

Christmas day 2019 was the best day of the entire Christmas week in Cornwall. The strong, gusty winds had stopped and there was a bright, diffuse light thanks to some thin cloud. The day had started early with a successful trip to Porthgwarra for sunrise - more on that in a later post - followed by a lazy hotel breakfast and planning for the rest of the day. Given the bright, diffuse lighting I thought Sennen beach would be good for some intimate landscapes.

For me, Cornwall is the very Western tip of the county, the area bounded by Penzance, Porthcurno, Porthgwarra, Lands End, Sennen Cove and St. Just. Rock climbing at Sennen, Chair ladder or Bosigran has given me a feel for the place! The fantastic rocky sea cliffs with coloured rocks, white sandy beaches and turquoise seas - a spectacular place. For all those reasons it's a busy place in the summer months, but in the middle of Winter - much, much quieter :-)

The cloud was forecast to clear about an hour before sunset as a high pressure system rolled-in.  My hope was that it wouldn't completely clear leaving some nice thin clouds and making for a colourful sunset.  So, after arriving at my accommodation, I sat and considered a plan for the evening.  Should I try Feather Tor, Great Staple Tor or even Great Mis Tor?  They are all open to the West and low-angled evening light.  Was the cloud going to clear sufficiently to make a longer walk-in worthwhile?