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"Images of the landscape have fascinated me from a young age. Not the stereotypical sweeping vistas of the rolling hills and plains, but the more subtle details that lay hidden within, waiting to be revealed.
Although I spend much of my time exploring the open landscapes of the North West, especially Derbyshire, Cheshire and the Staffordshire Moorlands, I have never set out with the deliberate objective of documenting them through a camera lens. Nor have I sought to portray them as idyllic, beautiful, dramatic or pastoral; though one could well fit or apply such adjectives to these environments. What I do seek to convey in my work is some sense of the natural spirit of these places and their elemental nature.
My photographic techniques are traditional, often painstaking and entirely dependent on the available light and the actuality of the landscape. I do not seek to ‘re-enchant the land’, my images are unenhanced and they are as they are. I do not use filters nor do I manipulate, clone or re-colour my work using digital techniques.
The concept of revealed images conveys something of what matters to me in photography and excites me about physically existing within the landscape, the combination of chance, circumstance, light and discovery. I believe this to be a significant privilege; a kind of upside to the human condition if you like. I hope that some element of that feeling is captured in the images here."
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