Photographer's Eye View: Wildwood in Kent

The Wildwood Trust is a conservation organisation based in 42 acres of deciduous woodland on the outskirts of Canterbury in Kent. The charity’s mission is to educate visitors about both current and extinct native British wild animals. And, with over 50 species on site, there are plenty of opportunities to try your hand at photographing British wild animals. 

They aren’t ‘wild’ as such here, of course; there’s very much a zoo-like feel as you walk along the winding path among the enclosures. But if you can’t get out to the plains of the Serengeti or the waterways of the Okavango for your wild animal photography fix then practising on the bears and bison of Kent is at least a start. 

Yes, bears and bison, you heard that right. Along with reindeer, arctic foxes, even wallabies* as well as species you can still see in small pockets around the country – if you know where to look – like red squirrels, beavers, pine martens, storks, cranes and choughs. It’s hard to believe all these species were once an integral part of the woodlands and grasslands of ancient Britain, living in tune with each other and keeping ecosystems healthy and balanced.

Why would I want to take photos at Wildwood?

One of the ways to create great wildlife photography is to capture an insight into the character of the creature with an intimate portrait. To do this well in the wild, you need to put in the hours watching, waiting, understanding and learning their behaviour all while hoping the light and conditions will come together at the exact moment of compositional perfection. Here at Wildwood, though, you can get close enough to the animals that will allow you to make some creative animal portraits at close quarters. 

With a standard telephoto lens that zooms into 300mm you can get super close to many of the creatures, including the reindeer and many deer species. Given that opening hours are more inline with visitor day trips, you’re more likely to encounter the animals in their daytime resting poses than their active phases in the early morning and evening. The arctic foxes looked super chilled on their bed of twigs and the wallabies were content bathing in the morning sunshine.

But that’s also the downside of using captive animals to practise wildlife photography, they’re so docile and habituated to humans that it’s difficult to create an image that feels wild at all. Another problem for photographers attempting to capture something of the behaviour and character of these animals isn’t just the lack of activity, though, it’s the extensive wire fences between the viewing area and the animals themselves. 

What can I photograph at Wildwood?

When you first walk into the site, there are a number of tightly meshed bird enclosures which are home to storks, choughs, egrets and rooks. My autofocus was more intent on the mesh than the birds. There’s a viewing window on to one of the aviaries but the glass isn’t quite clean enough to shoot through and leaves a little bit of a colour cast that can be sorted out in post production.

It wasn’t until I reached the crane enclosure (with a sleeping stork in the corner) that there was an opportunity to take a picture unimpeded by wire. But the background was so obviously not ‘wild’ and even with a serious amount of cropping and adjusting in Lightroom later on, I still couldn’t quite create an image I was happy with.

Although this stork obliged with staying still while I took a photo, it was impossible to crop in such a way as to eliminate the background enclosure.

The adorably fluffy arctic foxes were snoozing in full view in an enclosure with slightly wider wire. But when I found the perfect hole to put the lens through, I discovered that there was foliage in the way. From another angle I could create a composition with both foxes in but the inevitable effects of the wire was still visible in the shot.

The lone bison, owing to its size no doubt, lives in a much more open space but the only way to get a picture that didn’t look like it was in an enclosure was to zoom in for an intimate portrait. It locked on to my eyes and obliged with this rather stern look. I enjoyed watching the visible air come from its breath in the cold winter day but it didn’t really make for any better a portrait.

Opposite the bison were families of wallabies and deer in adjacent enclosures. Both had thicker doubled up wire up to knee height which meant that eye-level portraits were out. But the wire up to waist height had much bigger squares of view though which to poke the long lens which led to a few ok portrait studies.

It was the red deer enclosure that looked the most realistic. Even if it was a little muddy from months of winter traipsing.

The wolf enclosure certainly looked too small for the tight-knit pack that prowled and padded around it with the most amount of alertness I’d seen of any animal so far. You can see them through a screen at eye level which made a bit of colour cast on the images but did allow me to get some intimate behavioural pictures. You can also view them from above from the wooden crenellated viewing platform. 

The closest I got to observing any kind of interesting animal behaviour was when the initially affectionate wolves suddenly started brawling. I was sat in a viewing area at eye level but there was a glass panel separating me from the wolves which led to a bit of blur and colour casting on these images.

The bears were in ‘torpor’ when I visited. This is just the technical term for ‘chilling and taking it easy over winter’. They don’t hibernate as such but their heart rate and breathing slows and they sleep a lot. I deduced that we have a lot to learn from bears and I might take a leaf out of their book for the rest of January. Anyway, they had been taken elsewhere for the winter so I didn’t get a chance to see them.

There were quite a few other creatures taking it easy when I visited: the badgers, red squirrels, beavers, otters, polecats, mink, hedgehogs and wild cats were not to be seen. I did get a small glimpse of a lynx though.

Should I visit Wildwood with my camera?

Yes, absolutely. While it might not be as exciting as spotting the animals in the wild, it’s a great place to practise before you head off on that trip-of-a-lifetime safari. Plus, as a conservation organisation, you’re contributing to the greater understanding of native British wildlife.

As is a conservation charity, Wildwood is dedicated to conserving British wildlife. Their mission statement is to bring the joy of the ancient, native British wildlife to a wider public through immersive exhibits and education. The handy info panels that accompany each creature gives you contextual information on how they contribute to the wider ecosystem. They’re also striving to reverse biodiversity loss and to support rewilding programmes around the country and you can learn all about why land management with reintroductions of species is an important part of addressing climate change and ecosystem balance. In fact, though a partnership with the Kent Wildlife Trust, the adjacent woodlands of Blean will soon be home to four rewilded bison, and it’s thanks to conservation research at Wildwood. Another project they’re involved in will see choughs, the red billed and footed members of the crow family, reintroduced to the white cliffs of the Kentish coast near Dover.

When’s the best time to visit?

When I visited, it was a surprisingly sunny weekday in the depths of an otherwise bleak January. Given that the site doesn’t open till 10am, and I didn’t arrive till well after 11am, I knew I wouldn’t see the creatures at their most active, if even catch a glimpse of some of them at all. On the plus side, though, the low winter light dappling through the trees was the perfect kind of illumination to bring out the nuances of the colours of the creatures’ pelts and plumage.

Opening hours change seasonally but are more inline with likely tourist visits than the animals’ daily routines so it’s not really possible to visit early enough or late enough in the day to see them at their most active. Though, as an attraction geared towards families and kids, is best to avoid weekends and school holidays if you want some peace and quiet to watch and contemplate your compositions.

What kit do I need?

In order to get a good animal portrait without too much background, the longer the lens the better. I exclusively used my Fuji X-T4 with the 80–300mm lens, mostly at the 300mm length. But given that the enclosures are quite small, you can still get decent enough photos with wider lenses but you might end up needing to do some cropping afterwards to eliminate any tell-tale wire and less leafy backgrounds out of the picture. 

How do I get there?

Wildwood is five miles north of Canterbury (reachable in 56minutes on the high speed train from London St. Pancras) and it’s a 20-minute bus ride from the central bus station on routes 6, 7, 9 and 21A. On bike from Canterbury it’s a 30-minute ride along mostly quiet undulating country lanes. Those arriving by car, there’s a sizeable car park and it’s 20 minutes via the A299 from the end of the M2.

Where can I eat afterwards?

If after all that photography you’ve worked up at appetite, there’s a small café on site, the next nearest option is Canterbury Garden Centre at Herne Common over the road and its café serves warming soups and hearty buns. For basic supplies there’s a Co-op a few miles south in the village of Sturry and for something more filling, The Grove Ferry Inn pub on the banks of the river Stour offers pizzas and a full pub menu.

*Wallabies aren’t actually an extinct British species and they aren’t native to these shores but they have made little pockets of Britain their home.

My MSc thesis on responsible photography in UK travel publishing. Case study: Madagascar.

Here I’ve done a Q&A with myself about my MSc dissertation into responsible photography in travel media. (It helps having a split personality sometimes…)

What are you studying?
It’s an MSc in Environment and Sustainability at Birkbeck College, University of London and I’m writing a dissertation about responsible image use in UK travel publishing.

Why’s that then?
In the era of the reappraisal of how we depict our world, I’m devising a study that looks into how nature, environment, landscapes and climate issues are depicted in travel media; whether or not images chosen reflect the story they’re published with and, indeed, whether or not the story references and articulates the environmental situation in the country. I’ve chosen Madagascar for my case study.

Why did you pick Madagascar?
Initially it was suggested by the marvellous and ever-inspiring Meera Dattani. She had recently retuned from the island and published this well-researched and informative article for Adventure.com. It’s a bucket-list destination with plenty of pristine nature, and very photogenic at that. But there are many environmental and developmental issues at stake too: oil extraction, deforestation, mining, food insecurity, rapid population growth, political instability, poverty and climate vulnerability among others, that all coalesce to put huge pressures on the natural environment.

Have you actually been to Madagascar?
No, but if any commissioning editors or art directors reading this want to send me on a research trip (when we can travel again), just say and I’m there. I purposely picked somewhere I hadn’t been so that I only had pre-conceived ideas based on what I’ve seen. This may prove to be a useful standpoint or a very unhelpful one, we’ll see…

How can travel writers help you?
Have you been to Madagascar? And written about it for the British Press? Yes? Excellent, please can you send me all your articles, I would like to read them and use them as part of my study.

How are you going to use these articles about Madagascar in your study?
I’ve been devising a way of coding the text and images in order to create a dataset that I can analyse. The idea is that I will then be able to develop a broad picture of how British travel media portrays the environmental situation in Madagascar. From this, I can draw conclusions and use it to inform the creation a set of guidelines for responsible image use in travel publishing.

Tell me more about academic study into travel journalism and travel imagery…
Travel writing in the press has often been widely regarded by academia as ‘fluff pieces’ rather than ‘proper’ journalism. But some scholars have deemed it worthy of academic scrutiny. 

The first to do so were Fürsich and Kavoori in 2001 and in their seminal study into travel writing, identified five main reasons travel journalism needed to be studied more deeply:

”a) the boom of the tourism industry
b) tourism and its impact remains understudied
c) leisure is a significant social practice
d) travel journalism is an important site for international communication research
e) travel journalism has special contingencies as it is a highly charged discourse strongly affected by public relations.”

It’s this last one that led Lyn McGaur to investigate the connection between place-branding in Tasmania and the rather more destructive old-wood logging also taking place on the island. She showed that most travel journalists didn’t mention the contentious forest destruction in their pieces and, instead, focused on the pristine nature and consumable potential for adventure available on the island.  It was her contention that travel writing functions as a form of elite-place branding because of its “conspicuous proximity to tourism advertising”. Essentially, what she’s saying is that the messaging in public relations comes from a deeper government agenda intent on diverting attention away from the environmental conflict arising from the industrial destruction of ancient forest.

Another study into the connection between tourism and politics comes from Rosaleen Duffy in A Trip Too Far in which she investigates ecotourism in Belize. She points out that in tourism, cultures and societies become commodities to be consumed by an external audience. And goes on to say that “Ecotourism, in particular, is dependent on representations that present the environment as something that is available to to be discovered and enjoyed by the tourist. This encompasses notions of the exotic, the unspoilt and the ‘other’. The imagery involved in ecotourism is intended to appeal to environmentally conscious individuals who are interested in learning more about the destination.” ....” Their holidays can become quests for sights and experiences to be photographed.” 

There’s a long history of academic investigation into travel images and the role it plays in tourism marketing. It was conceptualised by John Urry in his seminal book The Tourist Gaze, first written in 2000 and in it he says “The concept of the gaze highlights that looking is a learned ability and that the pure and innocent eye is a myth.” and “Just like language, one’s eyes are socio-culturally framed and there are various ‘ways of seeing’.” He goes on to investigate how through embellishment, erasing, exaggeration, stereotyping and repetition commercial photography produces the kind of imaginative geography that become ‘place myths’. 

This has been picked up by several academics and since the advent of image sharing sites like Flickr and Instagram, it’s been much easier to track what tourists photograph and share from their holidays. One study identified three main tropes that holiday photos on instagram tended to portray:
–The tropical exotic: emptiness, exoticism and idyllic otherness
–The promontory witness: mastery of the landscape “This is MY landscape”  eg. conquering the mountain and using at the top of viewpoint, etc.
–Fantasised assimilation: appropriative performances eg. trying local customs

All three of these tropes remove local people as well as a layer of reality from the perceptible view of the country and culture being depicted.

Another study concluded that tourists do indeed close what is known in academia as the ‘hermeneutic circle’ –  tourists take pictures of the kinds of images they see in brochures, guidebooks and other forms of marketing; the myths are perpetuated and the circle of representation is completed.

Why is this important?
Now, here’s where my thinking comes in. Having worked variously in travel publishing for the last 17 years (eek, yes) as a designer/art director, photographer and writer, I’ve noticed that increasingly the images used are from stock agencies like Alamy, Getty and Shutterstock rather than commissioned specifically for the story, like they might have been 15-20 years ago. Image licensing and purchasing is a competitive business – there’s money to be made by the platforms who take a commission – but there’s less and less available for the photographer. Curiously, there are even FREE image sites like Pixabay and Unsplash which get used by online travel publications who have no budget to illustrate their travel stories. 

Where travel publications can afford to send photographers on assignments along with the writers it means there’s a connection between the images and the text in the finished piece. It means that a casual flicker-through who doesn’t have time to read the whole article (and let’s face it, in the age of shorter attention spans, we’re all guilty of that), will get a sense of what the story is about. But those who have to rely on image library shots can only articulate their story with more generic visual renderings of it. Pictures are pretty and used to lift the page rather than to communicate the story in visual form. Images from these libraries vary in quality vastly and they’re supplied by everyone from seasoned professionals and semi-pros to amateurs and holiday-snappers trying to make an extra dollar or two. (That’s not to say that amateurs and holiday-snappers aren’t going to create decent, publishing-worthy images but it’s important to point out that there’s a lot more to photography than having a decent camera and creating sharp, technically proficient images. Those who have immersed themselves in photography for any length of time understand that, beyond lighting, time of day and composition, there are contextual decisions to be made about what to put in the frame and what to leave out, when to leave the camera in its bag and not reveal certain places and situations to the wider world. There’s a responsibility associated with the way to depict and envision the world.) 

So, you can perhaps see where I’m headed with this: the vast plethora of image libraries are supplied by all sorts photographers who may or may not just be perpetuating the replication of the same image tropes they’ve seen elsewhere and since time immemorial. I want to find out to what an extent this is happening. To what extent do images of Madagascar articulate the reality of the environmental situation in the country and to what extent is it reduced to narrow visual tropes? Indeed, how relevant is it to the piece if the writing is only functioning as a conduit for the pr message to flow through?

The study comes from point of valuing the importance of visual storytelling and assessing its place alongside the texts of travel writers. I shall if course report back with my findings. Thanks for taking time to read my manifesto, as it were, please let me know if you can help in any way or want to get involved in the wider debate.

Old rubbish: in search of Tilbury’s 19th century landfill site

I’ve become quite obsessed with rubbish. I don’t know whether it’s doing this MSc, following the Everyday Plastic campaign, the fact that ‘plastic pollution’ was a term on Alamy’s image wish list or just the general media groundswell of awareness for waste. Nonetheless, I’ve somehow started a series of little rubbish photography projects, one of which led me to discover the nineteenth-century landfill site near East Tilbury on the Thames estuary in Essex.

Last autumn there was a programme on iPlayer about landfill sites and what happens to our waste.  It was a real eye-opener. They first went to a modern-day landfill site up in Scotland on the outskirts of Edinburgh and explained how these days pits are dug and lined with impenetrable rubber matting. They then proceeded to visit and dig up some historical landfill sites around the country. 

The one that struck me most was a site at Tilbury on the Thames estuary which is now being eroded by the tide. It looked like a cliff face strata comprising old clothes, bits of electrical equipment and general detritus. It’s not the only historical landfill site at risk from erosion. An Environment Agency-funded study at Queen Mary University has identified over 1000 sites around the country.

I wanted to see this for myself, so one sunny February morning I hopped on the train to East Tilbury to see what I could find. Given that I didn’t exactly know where I was going, I decided to head to the point where the Thames bends and therefore (theoretically) most likely to be vulnerable to erosion.

Just outside the town I passed a functioning landfill site between the main road and the coast. There were Keep Out signs at the mouth of the entry roads and several laden trucks passing. I figured I was in the right vicinity but began to wonder if access would be some where between tricky and impossible.

I carried on to the village of East Tilbury with the idea that if I hit the coast, I could double back and wander along the shoreline towards the landfill site. Just before the fort, I found a footpath towards the sea. It took me through the flat, scrubby floodplain cris-crossed with footpaths and protected by a sizeable sea wall. 

The sea wall

On the other side of the sea wall was a lip of concrete for walking along  with a short drop on the other side on to the saltmarsh and mudflats. I headed vaguely north along here with my eyes peeled for old rubbish.

Walking along the sea wall by the Thames estuary at East Tilbury

I walked for a while and didn’t see anything of much interest. Thankfully it was a glorious day and I got carried away photographing the creeks and water channels in the mudflats.

The mudflats of the Thames estuary looking towards Cliffe Pools RSPB from East Tilbury

When I got to the spot I had guessed would be prime erosion site I discovered it will all plugged with concrete. Of course, erosion won’t go unprotected! Dammit, this means I’d not chosen the right direction at all.

The concrete beaches protecting the land from erosion

I sat down on the side of the sea wall for a snack break and a rest and to think about what to do next. I looked back along the wall, towards the sun. There was a small beach just a little way back. I hadn’t spotted it earlier amongst the endless saltmarsh from the route I’d come. It was just a small patch of sand and the wet rocks were glinting in the sunlight. But wait: wet rocks? The tide’s way out and it hasn’t been raining. Those aren’t wet rocks. What if it’s glass, ceramic? I had to take a closer look.

I scrambled down from the sea wall and onto the mud. It was deceptively soft. I nearly lost my boot stuck down a hole and nearly lost the camera while trying not to lose the boot down the hole. 

When I got to the beach I was not disappointed. What a treasure trove of broken bits of the past. It wasn’t quite the rubbish I thought I was looking for but it was far prettier.

There were fragments of ceramic tableware, shards of glass bottles of all hues and bits of those grey marmalade pots you often see sold for princely sums in vintage shops. Some of the glass had words moulded into it, cheaper and easier than labels? Another fragment looked like the TG Green mixing bowl I have at home and there were plates of so many patterns, shapes and designs.

I came away with so many questions: how long did it take to accumulate this amount of waste, what was the lifespan of these receptacles (were the owners of these items less clumsy than me when it comes to breakable items!)? Will scavengers in a hundred years time have the same feelings when they go through my rubbish? To that last question, I rather think not.

This discovery has certainly made me think even more about what I throw away – where it comes from and where it goes – and little by little my shopping decisions are changing and my waste is reducing.

Richard and Julie at Old Leigh Studios in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

Julie O’Sullivan and Richard Baxter, ceramicists at Old Leigh Studios

You  never quite know what sort of reception you might get when you wander into an artist’s studio on a quiet Friday afternoon. Will they be hard at work? Will I be disturbing them? Will they be too lost in thought to chat to me?

No such worries here when I popped into Old Leigh Studios in Leigh-on-Sea last week. I was immediately warmly greeted by ceramicist Richard Baxter and he introduced me to fellow potter and studio-mate Julie O’Sullivan. 

Their wares are elegantly displayed throughout the shop partition of the studio alongside paintings by two other studio residents Sheila Appleton and Ian E Smith.

It turns out Richard is a little bit of a local legend in art circles: he started the Leigh Art Trail in 1997 and it quickly became an annual fixture. It’s now a week-long celebration held every June and features local as well as not-so-local creative talent. As the name suggests, it consists of an exhibition trail that takes you all around Leigh-on-Sea with many local shops and spaces becoming pop-up galleries for the week.

Ceramics by Richard Baxter

His artwork is described on his website as “reminiscent of Scandinavian mid-century modern ceramics”, and they’re also fun, brightly coloured, bold and endlessly unique. I definitely wanted to take one home. 

Ceramics by Richard Baxter

I fell in love with Julie’s ceramics. She melts little pieces of beach glass into the clay which dictates a more nature-inspired colour palette. I told her about my trip to the nineteenth-century landfill site near Tilbury and she knew about it; she’d already been! Some of these pieces of glass were from that very site. I’m sure I don’t need another little ceramic dish in my house but, oh my word, these are on my wish list.

Ceramics by Julie O’Sullivan

There was one collection Richard and Julie had worked on together and it was a commission for nearby restaurant Food by John Lawson. In the restauranteur’s quest to procure as much as he could from local sources, he sought out unique bespoke designs for the crockery. Together they created a nature inspired range of hand-thrown plates, cups and sauce pots. They, of course, made a surplus and you can buy them in their shop.

Part of the collection designed for nearby restaurant Food by John Lawson

Part of the collection designed for nearby restaurant Food by John Lawson

Visiting the Faroe Islands' most instagrammable spots

The Faroese village of Miðvagur

Miðvagur is a waterside village on the Faroese island of Vagár, just a mere hop and a skip from the airport. The houses are scattered on the slopes of the rolling green hills like a bunch of coloured blocks casually thrown at the hillside. I met Jana in the church car park at the allotted time. The sun was shining – which is no mean feat on the Faroe Islands – and I was hopeful it would follow us on our hike. Jana was taking me along Sorvagsvatn lake to the cliffs at Traelanipa. 

The Traelanipa hiking trail along lake Sorvagsvatn

Although it was after 10am, the path was practically empty of other walkers. It wasn’t till our journey back later that we saw the hoards. Jana told me that we’re walking on private land and it’s the landowner’s responsibility to keep the path in good condition. They re-gravelled it last year but it’s already showing signs of erosion under the sheer amount of visitor footfall. If the path isn’t looked after, walkers are more tempted to meander from the requisite route and that can lead to erosion and trampling of the delicate ecosystem. There’s no car-parking fee but there’s a voluntary honesty box on the gate. No one puts anything in, she says.

My guide Jana standing at the requisite instagram spot overlooking lake Sorvagsvatn and the sea below

I caught a couple of people getting their insta fix but it wasn’t till later that I looked on Instagram and found a whole lot more precarious selfies. As we walked back, I asked Jana about the sudden influx of tourists and if they, the locals, minded. She told me that tourism on the Faroe islands had really only taken off as recently as 2015 as a result of the solar eclipse. It had been heavily marketed because it was one of the few places in Europe you could see it in full and many did indeed come. Eleven thousand, apparently. It really had put the islands on the map and that, coupled with new and invigorated staff at the tourist office, has resulted in a lot more media attention throughout Europe.

I’d googled for a few image ideas and had half an inkling these were impressive landscapes I was going to witness but I hadn’t realised they were so insta-famous already. The reason for the insta-celebrity is the spot at which you can see the lake above the cliffs and the crashing waves of the sea below. You can get it all in frame if you stand on the already worn-to-mud spot. With the squalls of wind chasing about me and my perilously balanced camera bag full of kit, I wasn’t too keen. 

Overtourism is something that has been on my mind a lot recently, partly as a result of following Greg Dickinson’s articles in the Telegraph but also because, in studying for the MSc, I’ve been pondering the question of how effective money from tourism is in making a genuinely positive impact in supporting environmental causes. To visit a destination at such an early stage in its tourism journey is quite a coup, but I wondered if there were other places on the islands that were just as stunning and photo-worthy. Yes, said Jana, resoundingly. There are plenty of eminently beautiful spots, but the locals don’t necessarily want to share them all. These are places in which birds, animals and occasionally people live closely with the seasons and the land. They’ve already seen reductions in bird populations along this hike since it became so inundated with walkers. She thinks there could be perhaps one or two more spots widely marketed to the world that could take the pressure of this one and the other famous spot overlooking Múlafossur waterfall at Gasadalur. 

Mulafossur waterfall in the village of Gasadalur, Faroe Islands

Do they want more tourists, I asked. Absolutely, she says, but the right kind of tourist. The islands aren’t ready for the huge influx of mass tourism, there just isn’t the infrastructure in place yet. She then recounted a story of a Russian woman who flew in on the morning flight, embarked on the Traelanipa walk in a pencil skirt, white stilettos and a leather jacket and promptly flew home on an evening flight. We laughed. But this is a horrifying example unsustainable tourism. Where do people get these ideas from? Oh yeah….all the photos. All the instagrams. All the travel writing….

Burning the Clocks – a winter solstice tradition in Brighton, UK

The Burning of the Clocks is a winter solstice tradition that sees a 1,500-strong crowd with their lanterns parade through the streets of Brighton on the longest night of the year, December 21st.

The annual event has been going since 1994 and is created and run by Same Sky, one of the largest community arts organisations in the southeast.

Lantern kits go on sale in mid November. They cost £30 and with it you get enough bendable willow to create two lanterns along with tissue paper, glue and black paper to decorate them with. You also get four wristbands that will allow you and your group into the parade and a ring-side spot for the all-important lantern burning and firework show later on.

Crowds assemble on New Street on Brighton’s fashionable ‘Lanes’ area around 6pm.

My mate Justin and little Tulsi getting ready to parade through the streets of Brighton with their lantern

Each year there’s a theme. In 2018 it was ‘remembrance’ and lanterns were decorated accordingly.

Crowds line the streets, the lanterns are taken on a circuitous route through the city and on towards the beach.

The lanterns come in various shapes and sizes but there was indeed a clock or two to be burned. The clock symbolises the passing of time, the longer days to come and, in pagan tradition, fire has long been associated with rebirth and renewal.

This year’s winter solstice coincided with a full moon, which occasionally managed to peek out from behind the clouds. This is a rare occurrence indeed and won’t happen again until 2094!

Once on the seafront, each lantern is handed over and passed down to the bonfire.

The bonfire being filled with lanterns

When all the lanterns are in, it’s time to light the bonfire.

It doesn’t take long for the willow and tissue paper to burn. It’s then time for fireworks…

Everyone assembled along Marine Drive but some got better seats than others.

Thankfully not all paper sculptures were burned! These were so intricate and beautiful, I hope they live to see another festival!

Whitby Abbey

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I love Yorkshire. I was born in Yorkshire so it somehow (despite spending my entire growing-up years in boring Bedfordshire) feels like coming home. I’d been up in York, Harrogate and Nidderdale for a gloriously enjoyable client shoot and had been lucky with just enough interesting light to get the required shots, but I’d been itching to get to the seaside and was hoping the sky gods would bless me with a bit more of the same when I got to Sandsend. But, alas, no. It was flat and white and my seascapes were lifeless.

Not to be too despondent, I whiled away some more daylight hours by driving around to see what I could see. But after conceding that rush-hour traffic hold-ups weren’t the best of what the region could offer, I headed up the the Abbey car park to ponder. It hadn’t quite reached the magic hour of 6pm when free car parking commenced so I hovered near the car till I was certain there weren’t any payment enforcement types lurking to whack a ticket on my windscreen, and then set off to recce for the evening light. Perhaps I could do something with that there gothic ruin?

The faint sounds of walkers’ chatter on the nearby Cleveland Way receded and the late summer evening warmth had a hint of autumn bite to it. I wandered around waiting for the day to disappear into the night. The wind whistled eerily through the trees and the occasional bat darted overhead. Oh, wait. I think I imagined that bit.

I knew about the pool of water behind the Abbey and it was this that I wanted to capture. The only trouble is that there’s a 5ft stone wall around the perimeter of the Abbey grounds and it’s not the easiest of things to pop a tripod on or over. I left the tripod in the car and instead used the wall and a pair of gloves to prop the camera up and, broadly speaking, in the right position. (A little bit of wonkiness is nothing Lightroom can’t handle.) I took plenty of long exposures from different vantage points, all with me hanging off the wall (thank god I’d learned basic rock climbing techniques only a matter of weeks earlier) or putting the camera on live view to see what the composition looked like. During one exposure, a family of flying ducks noisily but deftly landed on the water. They didn’t really enhance that particular frame, I must say.  Next time, though, I shall endeavour to be less law abiding and maybe shimmy right over the wall for that optimal composition with the abbey reflected in the water.

Up Hay Bluff, Wales

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A trip across to Hay-on-Wye, ‘town of books’ on the England/Wales border for the annual literary festival is a Whitsun Bank Holiday excursion I’ve become used to over recent years. This year, however, I didn’t buy any tickets for literary talks, instead I immersed myself in the rolling hills and nature-rich countryside that surrounds the town. And I started with Hay Bluff.

The main road through Hay is often flanked with put-up stalls selling everything from recycled paper notebooks to used army boots, wood-carved creatures to sheep-skin rugs. There are usually plenty of crowds making their way between the diminutive market town and the festival site, so cars drive rather slowly through the town. This is in your favour because you won’t miss the small sign to ‘Capel-y-Ffin’, should you be suitably inspired follow on my journey.

The road out of Hay immediately narrows into a single track and before you’ve even registered the steep incline, your ears will pop to let you know you’re going up, up, up. The road twists and turns as it climbs. ‘Fresh eggs’ declares a sign at the gates of a farmhouse on one particularly curvy bend. And beware of the hens freely ranging at the next cluster of stone farm buildings.

By the time you judder over a cattle grid in a woody dell, you’re well on your way to sheep country. And they’ll probably welcome you in with some inopportune middle-of-the-road wandering just to ensure you’re paying attention to their landscape.

The terrain flattens out and you’ll emerge from the trees into the fabled rolling green hills of England (except that it’s officially Wales by this point). You can park up on the soft verges at various spots from here on in and admire the view. A little further on, however, the mighty bluff comes into view.

I’d been racing over the motorways, A-roads and B-roads from the Essex/Herts borders on which I live so it was early evening when I arrived. The sun was still high in the sky and there was practically no one around. I didn’t expect to stop for long – just a quick post-drive leg stretch and a little wander sans camera. So I was a little surprised to find myself on the top of the bluff about 30mins later.

I blame the skylarks. I’d never seen them at such close proximity before. I could hear them and see them singing. They’d occasionally swoop into the air and with a few characteristic darts and, temptingly, rest just that little bit further away from me. At the base of the bluff there’s grassy heathland, with plenty of gorse and nascent ferns awaiting their grand unfurling.

There was evidence of streams wending their way down the hillside in wetter times, cutting through the heath and making it boggy in places. In one such spot I saw an unrecognisable bird. A stonechat, perhaps? It was making a curious sounds that, if you really tried hard, you could imagine it being construed as the sound of two stones being hit together.

Having not taken the camera out of the car, I was slightly beside myself with frustration and not least because I didn’t even have the wildlife lens in the boot of the car. Still, I was free to jump over the streams and boggy patches unimpeded by the weight of the bloody thing so I rejoiced in that and attempted to commit more of it to memory than I otherwise would.

I took a barely-there, almost-trodden path through the grass up on a slightly more sheer route up. There were horses in the distance that I was keen to avoid, not least because from where I was stood it looked like a gigantic mare was straddling a foal and doing unmentionable things with it. Ah, nature.

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William Graves at Canellún

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William Graves, son of poet Robert Graves, at the family home of Canellún in the Majorcan village of Deià

When I mentioned to a PR friend that I had a commission in Deià, Mallorca he immediately offered to put me in touch with William Graves, son of writer Robert Graves and custodian of Canellún, La Casa de Robert Graves.

Apart from a vague notion that I’d seen Graves’ war poetry in anthologies or maybe even studied one once at school, I knew very little about him.

“Will you be mentioning Canellún?” I asked the author of the piece. “In passing. But it’s been done before, it’s all been said, you don’t need to shoot it” she told me. Having never even thought to visit Mallorca till the commission landed in my inbox, I was even more unaware of this little hill-top village and its illustrious past. Of course I was intrigued and said yes to the PR.

I picked up a copy of Wild Olives: Life in Majorca with Robert Graves, William’s biography of his father, and began to wrap myself up in the beautifully illuminating portrait of the village I had been dispatched to. It revealed details of how the villagers lived, farmed – and smuggled – during the civil war; introduced me to colourful characters whose actions shaped the modernisation of the region by bringing the first electricity to this mountain outpost; upgraded a rocky track into a paved road or provided the first bus service to the capital, and; there were countless anecdotes about visits to the craggy cove of a beach with its idyllic clear blue water and rocks from which to jump in.

William met me under the trellis at his childhood home and this is where I took his portrait. He’s a well-spoken, affable man in his mid-70s, a geologist by trade, which has taken him all over the world but, as he’ll happily confess, his heart has always remained in Deià.

He gave me a personally guided tour of the house for which I felt incredibly honoured. We saw the room in which his father wrote all his famous works; the bedroom in which Laura Riding – his fellow poet and lover – convalesced; the original letterpress with which he and Laura printed and published as the Seizin Press; unique batik artwork created by Len Lye; the garden and its culinary possibilities. The tour ended in the museum room in which I began to fully appreciate that there was a hell of a lot more to Graves’ repertoire than just war poetry.

To learn about the physical and emotional context in which any creative person lives and works is integral to understanding the creative process. What touched me about reading William’s chronicle, however, was that not only did I get an up-close glimpse of a great writer but I got to see a potted history of why this little craggy village had become such a draw for artists and, subsequently, the tourists who then followed them there.

Walking from Deià to Sóller along the GR221

I’d only been given a list of seven things to photograph on my Mallorca trip. The author hadn’t finished writing her piece by the time I flew out so the Art Director had to agreed that the seven-item list was all I could cover while I was there.

While most of the requests centred around the artsy, bo-ho roots of the region, one item was to cover the walk between the steep hill-top village of Deià and the coastal port of Sóller.

I’d already seen a few of the wooden signs around the village so knew which direction I’d need to head in, plus people I’d spoken to said it was sign-posted all the way. The sign posts even said how long you had left till your destination. Two and a half hours from Deià to Sóller, apparently. Great, thought I. I can walk there AND back in a day.

I’ve shot (or attempted to shoot) walking trails before and one of the main perils is picking the wrong time of day and not finding any people on the route to feature in the photos. Instead of heading out for around sunrise or sunset, as my landscape photographer sensibilities might have dictated, I set off at 10am – primetime for walkers, I hoped.

The first part of the path takes you down into a gully and eventually the rocky cove of Deià beach. No time to be lured in by the sparkling sea, I swiftly took heed of the onward path up, up into the hills and on my way.

The sky was overcast which, although not great for drop-dead gorgeous, 1k likes on instagram-type landscape photography, works well enough with capturing people – if I could just find the people – in the landscape. Very bright sun in the middle of the day will create stark shadows that are harder to improve on whereas, with a little bit of expert repro in Lightroom, it’s possible to even out the levels for an enticing double page spread.

Which I could of course paraphrase to say: I went off on a long hike on my own and had plenty of time to think about deep, geeky aspects of photography because there was no one around to yawn at me. Apart form the sheep, perhaps.

The track loosely follows the coast from on high. When it veers from the seaview, you find yourself among olive groves, citrus farmland and wooded glades.

In case I didn’t find many other walkers, I got up to my old tricks and decided – with the aid of a stone for a tripod – to put myself in the frame.

Luckily, I did find other walkers on the trail. Some looked the part more than the others. I always feel slightly culpable when deciding what sorts of people to pursue. It’s all left to chance of course, no hired models here. But colourful hiking attire always looks better against the landscape. And, often it seems to be the slimmer, fitter people you find in the colourful precision gear. I always feel guilty thinking those kinds of thoughts because I’ve seen the This Girl Can campaign, I’ve read those stereotype-busting articles. I don’t want to be complicit in perpetuating visual themes.

I did ask some middle-aged French ladies if they minded being in a picture but they didn’t really understand and probably thought I  was trying to sell them something so said no. I took a pic anyway, but can’t submit it.

In the middle of the hike..oooh, let’s say about three hours in to this two and a half hour hike, the wooden signs seemed to stop telling me how long it would take.

Not that I was complaining, it was beautiful out there. The gnarly olive trees alone will keep me in instagram posts till Christmas.

But maybe I hadn’t stolen quite enough cheese and bread from the hotel breakfast spread to keep me going all the way to the beach.

At long last, I emerged from a particularly beautiful wooded spot and scrambled up a slope to be rewarded with a view of Porto Sóller. A little further down and I though, yes this is the spot. I just needed the people now.

I lingered for some time till I could hear voices rounding the valley below. It wouldn’t be long before they reached me. Thankfully they were a smiling French couple with excellent English and were more than understanding of my long lens and how they’d feature in this beautiful vista.

From here it wasn’t far to the the beach and the end of the trail but, oh boy, it took a lot longer than the two and a half hours those early wooden signs had promised! Try five! But I wouldn’t have had it any other way, it was a glorious day’s work.

Givé the orange juice man

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I was enticed up the steep stone steps by a handwritten sign saying ‘Orange Juice café’.

“Hola,” I called.

“Hola!” came a voice from within the stone hut.

“Una zumo de naranja, por favor.” I asked, as he emerged from the hut.

“Yeah, sure”. I’d forgotten for a moment – despite the far removed landscape I’d been walking through – that Mallorca isn’t an untouched, far flung holiday destination. Of course he’s fluent in English.

I was walking the Deia to Puerto de Sòller leg of the GR221 route which runs along the mountainous north coast of the island. Oranges are plentiful in this part of Spain and so too are orange juice sellers. But, unwittingly, I certainly picked the most interesting one to tarry with while I sipped.

Givé has lived in his coastal farmstead for the last fifteen years. The tardis-like stone hut in which he does his juicing is a recent conversion and he showed me pictures of the one-walled ruin it had once been. He’s a man of many talents, and not least playing in the infamous local band Pa amb Olí.

He asked me what brought me to the area. I explained that I was a photographer on commission. He rolled his eyes a little but when I told him which publication it was for, he realised I was serious.

“There are no travellers anymore, just tourists.” He said, as we ruminated on our experiences of tourism. Deia has been a draw for foreign artists and creatives for decades, at least since before World War II when Robert Graves first set up home here, probably longer. The picture Givé revealed, however, was less of a creative haven and more of an idyll with a darker side.

Globalisation and tourism are killing local culture, he told me. Locals can no longer afford to live in the centre of Deia because out-of-towners are buying up properties as Airbnb rentals. The late-night sound restrictions imposed at the open-air, rooftop café Sa Fonda means that the parties aren’t as wild and the jamming isn’t as good. It’s the increasing complaints from holiday makers that has led to this.

I’ve heard this kind of story in other parts of the world, too. Tourism can, of course, create jobs and lift local populations from a life of poverty, let that not be forgotten.

A German couple joined me on Givé’s terrace and while he busied himself making their juice I thought a bit more about what he was telling me. I was thankful for the last vestiges of ‘traditional culture’ that meant our paths had crossed, slurped the dregs of the delicious juice and ambled on my way.

Flower Festival, Sóller, Majorca

Out of the corner of my eye I spied a woman in a long bulbous skirt and lace headscarf hurriedly making her way along the road, dragging a small girl behind her. Where was she going in such anachronistic attire and with such haste, I wondered. I followed her down a narrow alleyway which led on to a broader pedestrianized street and I realised she wasn’t the only one dressed that way.

I watched as they made the finishing touches to their costumes before following them further down the street. They led me to a much larger congregation: people were milling about, some carrying instruments and many holding bunches of flowers. The queue of folk went on and on and stretched all the way around the block.

In my very scant Spanish I asked a lady with a flute what was happening. “Est un fiesta,” she replied. “Would it be ok if I took some photos?” I asked. They were of course obliging.

An air of excitement and anticipation gripped the assembled masses. I caught a couple of girls gossiping on a step and they were perfect photographic subjects, till they realised they were being watched.

The instrumentalists began warming up and it wasn’t long till the procession began. Crowds had assembled to watch – both locals and tourists alike.  The musicians led the way and were followed by folk dressed up as kings, knights and queens. When I spotted a Madonna on a plinth being carried I knew something of a religious nature was going on. They paraded her through the streets towards the cathedral square.

Once they had made their way to the main square and in front of the cathedral, the significance of the flowers suddenly became clear: they were to dress the bottom of the plinth on which the Madonna stood to create a gigantic floral skirt.

I hadn’t initially realised quite how long it would take the townspeople to fill her skirt. I was on a schedule! I had to take the tram back to Porto Sòller. I never did manage to see the Madonna with her full skirt of flowers but I was touched by a pang of happiness nonetheless. You can plan photo trip to festivals years in advance but it’s such a treat to stumble upon one, unannounced and so unexpectedly.