I think this was the first ‘proper’ planned image that I took. I used to travel to Paris regularly for work and so decided to occasionally take my camera gear. I had been inspired by Julia Anna Gospodarou’s images of Paris and tried to plan my own of the Louvre. I had this composition in mind beforehand and turned up at about 1900 to find it swarming with tourists, brides having their photos taken and folks generally hanging around. But the sky was lovely ! I set up my tripod and took a three-shot panorama of the sky which I then planned to stitch together. I then waited….and waited… at around midnight with my tripod still in the same location it was all quite apart from a solitary figure sat near the far pyramid. I then shot the foreground, again as a three-shot panorama but with a 7 shot exposure bracket at each position to capture the dark shadows and bright lights inside. Once home I stitched them all together to create this image – and I still like it after all this time :-)

This was taken on another work trip to Paris but in middle of the afternoon. Place du Trocadero is always very busy so I had a long exposure in mind to reduce the effect of the people. As it was I managed with 60 seconds which cleaned the foreground sufficiently to create the kind of image I had in mind. I then developed this further in photoshop adding gradients and luminosity masks to control the highlights and shadows.

My image ‘The Crown’ was taken at the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool on a sunny afternoon. As I was walking around the exterior I came across this location as I looked up it reminded me of a crown. In post processing after converting to mono I took down all the contrast in the sky and darkened it as much as I could. I then added gradients to draw the eye up to the top of image which I lightened to be the focal point of the image. The result is a very stylised image which I appreciate is not to everyone’s taste but I enjoyed creating it.

Sway was the image that started to change how I saw my photography after I was asked if I wanted to be a photographer or an artist with a camera. Sat on the shore of Loch Ness I saw a small bog bean blowing in the wind and I had the idea to create a multiple-exposure image to capture the movements. I took about 9 images looking at how the image was building on the back of the camera. Once back home I then took the raw files into photoshop and using a combination of different blend modes and masks I created the final image with was fortunate enough to win a Highly Commended in the 2023 Landscape Photographer of the Year Competition.

A friend of mine asked if a fancied a day’s photography in Oxford as her daughter was at University there. So after wandering around shooting the local scenes she asked if I had ever doing any panning. I said once and it was really hard  So we gave it a go across from the examination building on a main road. It was pretty hectic with cars, delivery vans and pedestrians all competing for space. My camera was set at f16, 1/20s with manual focus set to the far side of the street. I then tried to capture a cyclist in the middle of the arch. It took around 30 images before I found one I thought was good enough. Once home I made it more high-key to hide the pedestrian crossing in front of me, using the bollards as anchor points to the frame. I thought it turned out OK for panning with a medium format camera.

In Dec 22 I took a trip to Bath with the purpose of shooting more creative (ICM and ME) images. This image is one of the ones I liked the most created using both multiple exposure and ICM. I think it has a slight apocalyptic feel to it, almost like an aftershock, with the trees looking a little vaporized and the building echoing themselves.

My first real foray into ‘photography’ started with a two-day trip to London to shoot long exposure back in 2018. I had been (and am still) inspired by long exposure B&W photographers like Jay Vulture, Joel Tjintjelaar and Julia Anna Gosparadou and this was initially shot in that vein as a black and white image. But more recently I have revisited it as a colour image and I really like the softness and symmetry of the result.

This was taken on a photography trip to the South Coast and is of the sea defence at Pett Level beach. I spent a while trying to get the composition right so that each of the posts had their own identity and didn’t overlap. I then tried various exposures to get the waves as I wanted them and blended a few together in post. The final image reminded me of skyscrapers rising out of the clouds.

This was taken on the beach in Hunstanton Norfolk where the cliffs have these wonderful red stripes in them. I wanted to try some ICM to show the never ending relationship between cliff and sea by merging them into each other.

This is perhaps a return to a longer exposure classic image but I like the relationship between the abandoned water towers of the Sizewell nuclear power plant and the birds that have now made it their home. This four-minute exposure softened the sea and sky to provide a contrast against the stark rigidity of the structures.

Shingle Street is another well known Suffolk location. The day was very flat when I visit with little interest in the sky. But I thought a wide X-Pan style composition suited the scene well, enhanced by being processed in mono.

Sometimes you can’t pass a location without taking a more classic view. I loved the relationship between the two boats on Aldeburgh beach, set against the softly setting sun. I focussed stacked two images to ensure sharpness in both boats and found that a 10 second exposure softened the sky a little to complement the quiet nature of the scene.

The same is true for Southwold – another classic location which calls out for a classic view. When I arrived (early I thought) I found about another 15 photographers already there! The curse of popular locations  So being restricted where I could setup my tripod, I tried to ensure several things in the composition; the pier legs had separation from the rocks, the marker out to see didn’t break the horizon line and that the crescent moon provided a counterpoint between the marker and the end of the pier, whilst using both the rocks and pier as leading lines through the image.

This image takes its name from the time at the end of my long exposure. A day in London gave me the chance to try a longer exposure of the Queen Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben within it. It was an eight-minute exposure to completely smooth out the water in Thames and to allow the cloud movement to develop. At the end of the eight minutes I took a single exposure of the clock face and added the hands back in to replace the slightly blurred ones from the longer exposure.

This is one of my more recent mages from a trip to the Hartland Peninsula. As the morning sun reflected off the waves I took a series of images at around half a second exposure as they moved around the rocks. This was my favourite of the set as it provided a golden glow to the waters.

This is a rock abstract created from the wonderful geology in Hartland. I love all the triangles in the composition and the gold veins that seem to run through it. Using a longer focal length lens I settled on this square composition and took a focus bracket which I then stacked in post, thus ensuring sharpness from front to back.

Whilst shooting waterfalls in the Hartland Peninsula I noticed all the little flowers that were growing on the wall alongside it. It seemed a very stark location and the flowers were being battered by the harsh wind. So I tried to create an image that captured that mood; a bit lonely, dark and cold.