SUMMERS OF FIRE, AND CHAOS IN THE U.K.. PART 1.

The day I started writing, the Queen died quite suddenly, but I don't think it was my fault. Two days before the sad event, Liz Truss visited the Queen to form a new government, and nobody is pointing the finger at her... at least, not for that. Life is full of coincidences: the day Davie Bowie died I found a white Lego figure washed up on the beach, it reminded me of Bowie's persona 'The Thin White Duke', but I'm old enough to remember the character dressed mostly in black, otherwise I might have spun a spooky yarn. Odd things…

Life, Death and Landscape Photography… With a Mobile Phone.

In difficult times landscape photography can be very rewarding; and we can take good pictures very easily using a mobile phone.

Death In The Morning.

October in the New Forest in Southern England is the time of the fallow deer rut and I thought this might be a good time to consider an unusual event that I witnessed exactly 20 years ago today in the early hours of the 19th October 2000. It was shaping up to be an almost perfect New Forest morning; dawn was approaching, birds were singing and there wasn't a breath of wind to disturb the air. Ideal conditions for sound recording I though, but still I picked up my camera bag from the back of the vehicle, doing my best…

The New Forest’s Overgrazed Stream Sides and Woodlands.

The banks of New Forest streams have changed significantly over the years. Long before I started photographing the New Forest in the 1970s streamsides were steadily being opened up by livestock as they grazed and trampled these fragile areas into blandness, and it is a problem that continues to the present day. If managing the open Forest continues to prioritise traditional practices, then maybe it's not such a bad idea to refer to photographs taken earlier in the 20th Century to gain a better understanding of the changes that have occurred. Many stream banks were grazed out long before I began taking…

The New Forest’s Overgrazed Heathlands.

Overgrazing the New Forest - a major contribution to species decline. I wrote recently about ‘The New Forest’ and the obvious truth that it has a litter problem, but there is something more consequential going on that has been bothering me for years - the fabric of the Forest is being eaten away by herbivores more quickly than it can regenerate, and rather like the litter - there is no sign of a change for the better. The New Forest, for those who don't already know, is a patchwork of habitats ranging from lawns, through open heathlands to forests and…

The New Forest – Living in the Past With Lots of Litter.

For most of my life I lived close by the New Forest in Hampshire and have always considered it special, because although busy with visitors during summer, it has remained an important haven for wildlife as the surrounding countryside has steadily urbanised. The New Forest looks natural, but in reality it is heavily managed, and with increasing pressures from both inside and out, some say that it is no longer the place that it once was - but people have been saying that for generations. A more considered analysis suggests, that it is just a question of how far back…