Gallery

Yr Elen	The mountain of home, seen in all weathers, seen from the surrounding hills. Yr Elen loses nothing in being a little less high than its neighbour Carnedd Llewelyn. And a series of views - homage to Hokusai.
Mountains 1	Mountains, magnificent or moody, invite the wide view. The problem is not getting a picture, it's getting the atmosphere, the feel of being on the hill. How to start? There is no substitute for being not just in a valley, but being high, seeking out hidden corners and fresh vistas. Mountains provide liberation from the golden hours of sunrise and sunset, the sun raking some part of their slopes throughout the day, and their shapes and textures often benefit from high cloud.
Plants 1	Woodlands are complex, ecologically and visually. They have texture but little form, making it hard to do justice to the scale of the whole. This is true also for heath and grassland, when you bring your camera close into them. But structure can be found, and significant detail (flowers are the obvious example) isolated. Since so many British woodlands are in poor condition, with little regeneration, and much ‘British forest’ is of planted non-native species, the first task is to find quality woodland. Similarly with moor and mountain; the good vegetation must be sought.
Detail	Much photography is about form, and sometimes it becomes the key point of an image. A scientist works to extract simplicity and elegance from the confusion of the natural world – a photographer can, too. One way for a landscape photographer to work in Britain is to look for detail. We don’t have the slot canyons of Arizona, but we have naturally carved sandstone. Our mountains aren't large, but they have texture as well as intricate water and rocks. Our shores have pattern and shape varied with each tide. The nature of our land is often revealed by a longer lens and a closer view – and a simple image.
Sea and seashore	The parts of Britain’s coast that have escaped development provide refuges to celebrate – and to photograph. Beaches are refreshed at every tide; the interplay of weather, sea level, and light is endless. Perhaps our coast is at its best when partnered with mountains, where the sense of wildness is heightened.
Mountains 2	Mountains make their own weather - and weather is central to experiencing mountains. Cloud, mist, rain, snow; all shifting with the wind; pockets of light in a broken sky; the mountains and sky are visually one. Vegetation changes with the swing of the seasons - mountains brown or mountains green? Or white? And their detail can be as telling as their expanse; a patch of scree, a small stretch of water, some rocks - and we are lucky in the great variety of our mountain rocks that give rise to such a rich range of mountain shapes.
Animals	Animals large and small live in their own world, their own niche. Showing that world need not mean having every feather, every hair, every eye, crisp and distinct. Rather it can mean giving the animal its context and trying to see how it fits in its habitat.
Freshwater 1	The camera may be a flawed instrument, but only the camera lets us see the full beauty of water. It can blur or freeze water’s motion, freeing us from the eye’s tenth-second view. It can steal a detail from a mass of moving water. It can help us see order within that mass. It can preserve the transient play of light and colour on stream and lake.
Plants 2	When you close in on plants, when your view is few leaves, a single flower, some strands of moss, you have scaled down to the world of insects. But what does an insect see? We know it doesn't image its world crisply in three dimensions. Rather its view is typically bright and wide, but its eyes can't focus: only a single plane a few centimetres away is rendered sharply. And for us, such a view is refreshing and often subtly beautiful.
Rural	Every square centimetre of Britain has been altered by humans. We have built; we have replaced most native habitat by the agriculture we need to feed ourselves. The rest of the land is subject to pollution. But some changes, old or new, are more obvious than others. We rightly cherish the evidence of our distant ancestors. Some agriculture creates landscapes with their own qualities - just don't confuse it with more natural and resilient habitats.
Fragile Land	A typical collection of landscape photographs seems oblivious to challenges to our environment. Skies are free of contrails; land is free of roads; water is unchanneled by concrete. Small, old and quaint human artefacts are apparently acceptable: the upturned clinker-built boat and the old wooden jetty. Whilst it is right to celebrate our beautiful natural and managed landscapes, is it not also necessary to demonstrate the threats to them? This gallery illustrates some of those threats – not the big ones like climate change, but smaller ones, some subject to daily human decisions and – one hopes – reversible.
Freshwater 2