Light Notes

A drone shot of the blanket bog (a type of peat bog) in the Scottish Highlands. This is from my 2019 project titled “Exporting Is Great?” which investigated the UK Export Finance department and how the UK government is helping to fund fossil fuel installations in foreign countries. Check the full project here.

Whilst peatlands only cover 3% of the worlds land area they hold Nearly 30% of all the carbon stored on land. The Flow Country which is an area in the north of Scotland stores about 400 million tonne's of carbon, more than double the amount in all of Britain's woodlands. Due to rising temperatures this habitat is at real risk from climate change, as the bog dries it releases its stored carbon, only fueling the issue.

From a recent road trip in the USA, the Grand Canyon. We were only there for a couple of days, camping near by, and wanted to do our best to catch some good light. Both sunrises were pretty flat, and the first sunset wasn’t especially dynamic. However the last evening we were there a storm blew through which meant that all the viewing points became very quiet and provided some amazing post-storm light. 

After reading about small fragments of temperate rainforest in the UK on the Guardian I decided a roadtrip to Dartmoor was needed to see for myself. Using the very helpful map I found here I decided to target two of the main patches of this rare woodland; Wistman Woods and Black-a-Tor copse. It was a dry and sunny day, not the ideal conditions for this kind of photography, mist would’ve been my preference, the soft light helping to create a sense of mystery and separation for the main subjects.