LUMO: Once upon a time…

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­This post was published in the first issue of LUMO magazine and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the publishers.

I can’t comment for other working photographers but the Good Old Days when my phone rang regularly with big fat juicy commissions, the days when clients came to me almost waving a cheque in my face, they’re now gone and I know they’re not coming back. Gone too is the worth of charging around the planet cherry picking images of charismatic megafauna and blue chip landscapes. A quick search of Alamy’s online image library will reveal no fewer than 30,000 polar bear images and a similar number of Utah’s iconic Monument Valley. Does the world really need any more ‘hero’ images which whilst undoubtedly spectacular, lack context and impact? The digital era has changed everything and The Good Old Days are fast becoming just a distant memory.

Continue reading “LUMO: Once upon a time…”


Help for Heroes

I have to apologise: I might have brought you here using a misleading header for this post. I’m sorry. I do want to talk about Help for Heroes, but environmental and social heroes rather than the military type. For some, there is no more worthy an act than sacrificing your safety for your country. For me, it is just as important to celebrate the selflessness of those who give their time and expertise to make our communities – and therefore the world – better. Continue reading “Help for Heroes”


2014: A year for doing?

Although I’ve never fully understood the significance of New Year as a watershed for reflection, evaluation, goal-setting, I nevertheless find myself doing exactly that around this time. 2013 was a busy old year with precious little time to come up for air, but it also turned out to be a bit of a turning point. Continue reading “2014: A year for doing?”


A.M.A.N.D.A. August ’12

I don’t get out much. That’s not a complaint simply a consequence of rural living and middle-aged indifference. So when I was alerted to the upcoming opening of the 2020VISION exhibition in Edinburgh, it was gladrags and mascara time for me!

Breakfast time came and went. Lunchtime came and went. It was a busy, busy day. But tea…tea was something I could catch up with during the ‘nibbles’ session that all these events provide. “A glass of wine madam?” Now I’m old enough to know that an empty stomach and alcohol only leads down one road, but before I knew it, there was a glass in my hand and I’d set off.

The location was stunning, the exhibition well received, the speeches inspiring and I have to say, the serving staff were VERY efficient. “Another wine madam?” And so many people I hadn’t seen for ages. “Another glass madam?” And the music was so uplifting. “A top up madam?” Oh what a wonderful evening. And then, a burning sensation in my back: Pete’s eyes. OK, I knew I was tipsy but his glare suggested something on an altogether different level.

Do you remember the Dick Emery show? Do you remember the old woman who used to smirk and utter the words “Oh you are awful but I like you” before pushing some unfortunate soul into a ditch? Well according to Pete (and he claims to have witnesses who will testify at my trial) that’s who I resembled. As many of you know, he’s prone to embellishment but he might have a point!

So here I was, 130 miles from home and with Pete staying in Edinburgh for the night, my taxi driver was tapping his fingers waiting for me to stop blethering (have you noticed how it takes an hour to leave a party when you’ve had a few?) My driver in this case was Andy Parkinson, one of the 2020VISION photographers and guide (the very next day) for our Shetland tour. Pete got weary of glaring and Andy replaced him. “Are we going yet Amanda?” Can we get off now Amanda?” “It’s a long journey and I’m up early Amanda.”

A quick stop at the services and a bag full of munchies later, I was feeling much better and Andy and I enjoyed the journey up the A9 having a good old blether. For the record, I dropped him at the airport nice and early and felt fine!

So the moral of the story? Do you know what? Stuff the morals, we all had a great time and the fact that I don’t get out much made it even better! “One for the road madam?”

“Actually no, I’ve probably had enough now thank you.”


2020VISION: end of Chapter 1…almost

Since late 2009 I’ve been working almost exclusively on a major project called 2020VISION. Regular readers will be familiar with my ‘2020’ exploits and musings. Together with many of the UK’s most creative nature photographers (and then there’s me) I’ve been up and down the country gathering images that tell the story of the repair and reconnection of some of the UK’s ecosystems and the services they provide to us all – clean water, fresh air, productive soils to name a few.

I’ve got to say that the last two years have been a real cocktail of emotions and a roller coaster of fortunes.  The 2020VISION message is very much of the moment but has coincided with huge cuts in public and NGO spending, forcing the small team of us that manage the project into some very tight corners. Yesterday however, saw the first major milestone completed – the 2020VISION flagship book.

I find working on a book a tortuous and time-consuming process where attention to detail is paramount. Factor in the number of fingers in the 2020VISION pie – photographers, conservation bodies, scientists, publishers, government agencies – and the pressure to ‘get it right’ is significant. So did we get it right?  Well for someone normally very critical, I think we did indeed get it right and the 2020VISION book is befitting of the project overall. Of course the proof is in the pudding and it will be the readership, which ultimately determines the book’s success.

I’m now working on the 2020VISION outdoor exhibition, which launches in July in Edinburgh, after which I’m looking forward to having a bit more time to get back to basics. In the meantime, here’s a date for your diary: August 1st – the publishing date for the 2020VISION book. It will very shortly be available for pre-order in our store and on this one occasion, I’m going to swallow my pride and get down on my knees to beg you to buy it. There’s blood, sweat and many many tears (did I mention many tears?) gone into this book and for that reason alone it should be on your bookshelf!


How bad should we feel?

I sometimes find it difficult to pitch this blog. On the one hand, I’m concerned (as we all should be) about environmental injustices and to that end, open dialogue is a food that nourishes fresh perspectives and values. On the other hand, I’m a photographer and my guess is that most people visiting this blog want to see pictures or at the very least, read material that is directly relevant to nature photography. I’ve heard many negative comments about photographers getting all too worthy and I definitely don’t want to fall into that trap – please prod me if that is becoming the case!!

So is it my place to slap the humble readership of this blog around the face and make it feel so guilty about its environmental performance that it feels compelled to go and live in a cave? Of course not. It’s my place to try my best to inspire and send folk away with a nice warm fuzzy feeling – isn’t it? The fact is I’m not sure, and my indecision was crystallised just yesterday.

Chris Packham is writing the foreword to the upcoming 2020VISION book and I’ve just received his draft text. Now I’m a great fan of Chris’ straight-talking pragmatism and I agree with most of what he says. But in this case, I was a tad surprised about his views on the lack of merit in modern conservation, not to mention wildlife photography. I see his point but having read the piece I felt a bit worthless and deflated. In this state of mind am I best placed to go out and do my bit to inspire others? Probably not.

And then this morning, colleague Niall Benvie sent me a raft of material from the very clever people at Futerra, a London-based company committed to creative environmental communication (check them out). Their first document, ’10 rules for communicating sustainability’ centred throughout on positivity, encouragement…even love. Rule 6 says “avoid too much guilt.”

It’s very easy to report bad news and over the years, photographers with a mind to effective communication, have been as guilty as anyone for doing just that. But does it work? Well, for what it’s worth, I think it does…for a while. But in the longer term we become fatigued with guilt and not wanting to carry around such a burden, we simply shed it, block it out.

I’ve got to say I kind of enjoy discussing the sensitive issues that govern our way forward as a species but increasingly, I recognise that I’m perhaps more productive going back to basics and producing (and showing) imagery that make people feel good. This based on the perhaps naive assumption that if we feel good, we’re more likely to do good. At a time when the role of visual communication has never had such an exciting songpost to sing from, it’s critical that as photographers, we pitch our message sensitively and creatively.

And whilst we’re talking about warm, fuzzy feelings, make sure you check out 2020VISION’s daily WOW Factor image here. There’s no message, no agenda, it’s just nice!


From Headlands to Headspace.

Almost 2 years ago to the day I pressed the shutter with my camera pointing at a pure white ptarmigan high in the Cairngorms and in doing so bagged my first shot for the 2020VISION project. Last week I took my final images for the collection and what a difference in habitats. The Cairngorm Mountains are high, rugged and remote. Morecambe Bay is low, flat and surrounded by industry. As such, it’s not the easiest place to work, but with the expectations of the project itself, my colleagues within it and the height of the nature photograph bar generally set very high anyway, it’s been a long time since I’ve found anywhere, or anything, that is easy to put your own stamp on.

The forecast was mixed and with a short window of opportunity, I have to say I felt a wee bit pressured. The likes of Chris Gomersall, David Tipling, Danny Green and Mark Hamblin had already fed fantastic images into the story I was following – that of the UK’s estuaries and saltmarshes being ‘More than just mud’. So my task was simple : evocative scenics in dramatic light. Sounds straightforward on paper – trouble is I don’t know the area very well so I had to hit the ground running.

One of the great things about the internet is the ability to research locations and to see what other photographers have done where. Morecambe Bay is seemingly not a landscape photography magnet and I found little online that suggested obvious starting points. I sat in my campervan with a cup of tea and pondered. What were the key elements I needed to articulate here? The only word I could come up with was ‘Bigness’. Morecambe Bay is Big. Big skies, Big views…just Big. But also flat, so I needed some viewpoints and assuming dramatic skies – a pre-requisite for this type of work – I needed to get close to water to show that light to its best effect.

With these types of jobs I tend to find that working and then re-working the same few locations is more productive than charging around trying to cover everything. And so it was that over 4 days I began to gravitate towards the area around Arnside and Silverdale (fantastic cafe at RSPB Leighton Moss by the way) with dawn shoots further west at Grange.

Through a set of contacts I managed to coerce a couple of cockle fishermen to ‘model’ for me. The cockle beds in the Bay are closed presently so I’d like to point out that no cockles were harvested during the making of these pictures. The shoot however, did in many ways reflect the backdrop to why 2020VISION had chosen this location. There’s a big project underway in the area appropriately called Headlands to Headspace. This is an ambitious undertaking with the objective of rejuvenating the productivity of the Bay. I don’t just mean economic productivity, I mean ecological, cultural and even social productivity: allowing the world-class wildlife of the Bay to prosper and to allow people to benefit from improved ecological integrity – this very much includes those who make their living from harvesting natural resources.

Morecambe Bay is ostensibly a land of contradictions where natural beauty struggles to shake off the shadow of heavy industry. But it’s by no means unique in that respect. The secret perhaps – and it’s a tricky one – is not a war between one or the other, but an imaginative and sympathetic accommodation of both. Headlands to Headspace is just about right. Standing out on the mudflats at dawn with a peregrine calling nearby and with Bigness in my viewfinder, Headspace was what was offered and we all need to take up that offer when it’s made available. It’s fair to say that over 2 years working on 2020VISION I’ve had plenty of Headaches but when that memory fades, it will be the magical Headspace moments that stay with me.


Hiding to nothing.

I like to stay the right side of the line between insightful observation and a rant. Make no mistake however, this is a rant.

I remember years ago when Mark Hamblin and I embarked on the Tooth & Claw project being accused of condoning raptor persecution simply because we chose to take an impartial standpoint in our commentary on the issue. So if we didn’t condone the killing of raptors we must surely condemn it? Well no, we are simply presenting the issue impartially. Ah, you’re sitting on the fence then? By the time this scenario had been replayed a dozen or so times, you realise you can’t win.

And so more recently to Frozen Planet. It is to my mind the greatest natural history film ever made and undoubtedly attracted an audience that wouldn’t otherwise engage. OK so they filmed a few seconds of a six-part series in captivity and arguably, cocked up the explanation but is that really the series’ legacy? Last night I sat and watched the spell-binding Earthflight. As has been suggested elsewhere there are factual errors and some dodgy bits of continuity, but have you ever seen such visual splendour?

In a world where the demands placed upon those of us who do their best to create inspiring visual imagery are being cranked up as each day passes, should we really be so cynical, so pedantic even, and crush the very innovation we so need and indeed, crave?

Perhaps as I approach the half-century mark I’m just getting weary but honestly, you do your best to do your bit, you dare to take a risk, put your head above the parapet and what happens? It gets blown off – often by those who sit alongside you in the trenches. So I’m going to make a plea to those who sit in judgement over others – you know who you are – to consider the blood, sweat and tears that goes into some of these media projects and to recognise the sacrifice that is an inevitable part of their creation.

I spent 4 years working on Wild Wonders of Europe. Now don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t have traded that experience for anything but most of that 4 years was sat in meetings, writing strategies and managing petty politics – a far cry from the perceived ‘glamourous’ lifestyle of the nature photographer. Moreover, most of us involved with managing Wild Wonders went without remuneration for that whole period. The same is true of my involvement with 2020VISION.

So back to the plea. Innovation is something to be encouraged, nurtured, celebrated. The pool in which the nature photographer drinks is shrinking but surely that is no justification to criticise those who try to dig a new pool? None of us are perfect, we all make mistakes but the choice is clear to me. We embrace new projects and ideas with all their inherent fragility and foibles or we wallow in the increasingly polluted shrinking pool.

So there we are, my rant for January. But hold on, this is not me feeling sorry for myself – I hope I’m old enough to look after myself. No, this is me rattled and I’ll tell you why. A young man called me the other day with an idea for a photographic project in his local community. “Would it work?” He asked. “What happened if it didn’t?” And then the words that set me on fire: “I don’t want to be seen as a failure.” If our young talent is being stifled because of the fear of critical peer reviews, we’ve got something very, very wrong. I told him to go for it but as I put the phone down I have to say I felt like I’d thrown him into the lion’s den.


Favourite 5 images of 2011: No.4

Back in April I spent a few weeks for the 2020VISION project just about as far west as Britain will allow. The Outer Hebrides is a challenging environment and for a good part of the time it rained – that was inevitable. One evening more out of hope than expectation (it was raining again) I visited a remote beach bathed in aquamarine waters. Just before sundown, the rain abated and I took my chance working feverishly for an hour or so before the light became impossible. There are lots of images like this one but only this was taken by me, alone on that Hebridean beach.


More than just a bog…a headache.

Working up in the Flow country of northern Scotland recently, I was reminded why celebrated landscape photographers in say, Estonia or The Netherlands, are pretty thin on the ground. Capturing the essence of very flat landscapes is damned difficult. And along with 2020VISION colleagues Lorne & Fergus Gill, Rob Jordan and Mark Hamblin, I was aiming to capture more of ‘the essence’ of this wild place; to tell the story of why this is ‘More than just a bog.’

Basic ingredients: flat, wet ground and big skies – none of the foreground lochs and boulder-strewn moorlands of the classic Highland landscape; no rushing burns or mountain backdrops. In fact stripped of most of the usual contributory components, my head was sore from the constant scratching.

But work hard – and in this case, work together – and the story starts to unfold. Reviewing my initial images, I was disappointed but having secured several timelapse sequences, and knowing what was coming from the rest of the team, it all started to take shape.

This massive area of blanket bog – the most expansive of its kind anywhere – has a story to tell but it’s a story hidden in the layers of carbon-locking peat that make up its very existence. Those layers of peat draw on centuries of accumulated decaying vegetation – it’s an historical story. Yet the significance of peat bog as a carbon store is only just coming to the fore and it’s the future more than the past, that this wild place will influence. Photographically it’s not easy but the reasons for protecting it are manifest.