What does it take to push a farmer to this point? The point where, fed up of thousands of disrespectful photographers, wannabe “influencers” and narcissistic tourists, they feel the only way to get them to stop damaging their business and property, is to damage those people’s photographs? I guess those visiting the lavender fields of Valensole, Provence – in the south of France, just found out. I write this, obviously, with a slight tinge of […]
Jackson Hole, Wyoming – one of my favourite towns in the world. I say “town”, rather than “city”, as while it has the population and designation of the latter, this amazing little place still manages to exude that feeling of a classic American wild-west town from years gone by. Nestled to the south of Grand Teton National Park and its mountain range which spans for miles to the north towards Yellowstone, the views here are […]
While managing to remain relatively hidden and “off the beaten track”, Mono Lake (and its Tufa State Natural Reserve) has managed to capture the imagination of photographers from all round the world for many years – those keen to explore beyond the obvious nearby locations such as Yosemite National Park and Death Valley. My first encounter of this other-worldly destination (above) was very much a “drive-by” on a road trip nearly two decades ago (from […]
The elation at making it through the storms and into Yosemite National Park in the deep winter snow soon fades as you start focusing on the next challenge in a few day’s time: Getting back out again. Awesome though it was to be surrounded by deep walls of ploughed snow on the one remaining open road in and out of the park, you know you’re only one storm away from being trapped in the valley […]
While many now focus purely on drones and helicopters to get some spectacular shots of our cities from above, I’m yet to find a long exposure image (in either scenario) that can be enlarged to a size much bigger than a phone screen. It’s obviously not a problem for social media posts, but how about when we want to print or display a cityscape at night in high resolution? For that, our trusty man-made balconies, […]
While eclipses of all sorts happen throughout each year – from “blood moons” to annular solar eclipses, total eclipses and every partial one in between, this year’s lunar eclipse promised something special: the longest lunar eclipse in the 21st century. So the call from Rollei came – could I come across and be involved in their live shoot on Instagram, capturing the spectacle from Hamburg? Well, why not…? With a few days’ preparation beforehand and […]
It’s one of landscape photography’s “big ticks” – that shot of the fishermans cottages in the shadow of Lofoten’s mountain range in Hamnøy; one of the archipelago’s tiny islands connected by bridges that span for miles across the region. I have to admit, it’s been a place I’d been wanting to shoot for a while, so when the opportunity arose to test some new equipment in low temperatures, it was pretty high up there on […]
Arriving into bad weather wasn’t on the original plan, but it had taken us long enough to get to Løkken so a determination to shoot took over – I was there to shoot the hidden lighthouse, and that’s precisely what I was going to do, rain and sand storm or not. Set almost as far north as you can go in Denmark, Løkken has become somewhat of a local tourist-trap for its beaches more than […]
Stepping out onto the scorching hot ground of the Red Sand Desert, I was reminded (rather cheerily) by our guide of the one thing I should be grateful for in this midday sun : “at least it’s not last month, it was at least 10 degrees C hotter!”. It was quite a contrast to where I’d been sat just hours before, being looked after in BA’s Concorde Room at London Heathrow – getting pampered (in […]
What an evening – and what a view! Being lucky enough to stand in the foothills of Kirkjufellsfoss at 12:30am this summer was quite the experience, and everything I thought it would be all those months ago when we planned this trip to Iceland to see the midnight sun. Landing into Reykjavik, it was clear this was going to be a strange week – looking back to the plane in the middle of the night […]
Stood in the crisp air of a spring morning, enjoying the view through Stonehenge across the Wiltshire countryside; it was all too easy to forget for a moment that what I was photographing had been built over 4,500 years ago – by our Neolithic ancestors – out of 25 tonne “sarsen” stones transported for over 20 miles to be here. It was a morning that had been planned for a while – with weather that seemed set to disappoint. The nearer I […]
For the briefest of moments, the sound of cracking had stopped – the huge iceberg formations that feed Iceland’s iconic Jökulsárlón (or “glacial river lagoon” when translated) had steadied and the tide was turning. While often full of baby icebergs which have fallen away from the surface of the Vatnajökull glacier, finding one of this size in isolation resting in still water (with very few people around to distract) was quite unusual. Even better, the stillness […]
It’s a truly amazing feeling – that moment when you walk up to a location that’s taken ages to get to, having planned it for months, with doubt all along the way that you’d even arrive – to find the exact scene you were hoping for. With a mix of relief, awe and then urgency; it was time to shoot the stunning Aldeyjarfoss waterfall, in the North-East of Iceland, before the weather closed in after our ice-bound […]
That brief moment, just before sunrise, when it’s no longer night – but the day is still yet to arrive – that was the moment when I captured this view of Hooker Lake, in the foothills of New Zealand’s Mount Cook. Standing at 3,724m (following a rockslide which lost 40m in 1991), Aoraki Mt Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand, set amongst the collection of peaks which make up the Southern Alps. As with most […]
Zion – a National Park that I’ve passed many times, yet strangely never visited. Heading in for just one night as we travelled the long trek from Jackson to Las Vegas, I was reliably informed that there was one key “sunset shot” that was worth heading in to at least try and capture. The signs of an unlikely shot were there – the weather was closing in, loads of people around in the late season, and […]
Over-used by cliché wedding photographers, over-“influenced” by millions of instagrammers and over-sold around the world by tourism boards, this once peaceful hiking trail and overlook across Lake Wanaka has sadly now become a magnet for “look at me” shots worldwide. Beautiful though it is, Roy’s Peak has fallen victim to the same challenges faced by “that Wanaka tree” and many other tourist traps nearby – the result of huge popularity following the publishing of (what were […]
It’s the shot I thought had got away – the image of New Zealand’s Aoraki Mount Cook and its surrounding range, dusted in snow, with glacial icebergs floating in the river before me. Only 3 weeks prior, our initial trip to Hooker Lake ended in disappointment. The trek to the lakefront was filled with slips, slides, falls and bumps as the ice underfoot made a (normally easy) walk that little bit more interesting. Despite the clear […]
Persuading me to leave a 5-star hotel and “rough it” in a Jucy campervan for a week or two while tearing around New Zealand’s south island is no mean feat, but just over a year ago now it was done – and with some great photography results to show for it. This year, based on that success, was the return. With a lot more clarity on our route, more flexibility in our approach and with Jucy […]
