Many images bring back fabulous memories of a place or time and likewise a few can be a little painful to look back on.
During the winter of 2014 the UK had some extremely wet weather and Somerset was especially effected by severe flooding.
After some careful planning I today decided to venture out towards the heart of the severe flooding on the Somerset Levels.
I headed to a spot I’ve visited many times called Burrow Mump at Burrow Bridge where the floods hit very hard.
I wanted to capture some images for a new image I have an idea for and also document the severity of this major and devastating flood.
I arrived on the only road that is currently open, parked up and navigated the muddy field at the base of the hill.
The climb up was a bit precarious and I did not look forward to the journey back down which I was sure would be predominately on my ass !
The view from the top of Burrow Mump is always impressive and although the flooding had receded a fair bit in places it was still an incredible sight especially as the storm clouds gathered yet again ovehead.
After several shots of the incredible light over the flooded fields I decided to move position to try another angle, as I bent to grab my bag the tripod complete with camera toppled down the hill smashing the £1700 lens that was attached !.
It’s been a difficult few weeks as I have previously mentioned and maybe due to this I just looked at the heap of electronics on the damp hillside packed my bag and headed home.
As my mum would have said “It Don’t Rain It Pours” she also used to say things often happened in threes but I’m hoping this time that is not the case !
I’m pleased to announced one of my images has received an Honorable Mention In IPA Awards.
The awards which are in their 10th Anniversary Year received over 10,000 entries and judged by over 80 international photography professionals.
The image which was entered into the Advertising self promotion category is Untitled is one of my Life In A Somerset Landscape series.
The image features a Fox in a spring dawn at Burrow Mump at Burrowbridge on the Somerset Levels.
A new year brings a time to look at your work/life and where you want to be heading.However It was in fact last June while while in Turkey that I decided it was time to start shooting more people/life images.
I’d found myself shooting very little life based images over the last couple of years and capturing the landscape alone was no logger challenging me enough and I was getting creatively a little stale.I also needed to produce a new book (Portfolio) for the coming year so new work was needed.
I started my Professional career shooting lifestyle images of models for Clarks Shoes so shooting people whether models,celebrities or cornish fishermen (that’s another blog post !) have always featured in my body of work somewhere and something I enjoyed and felt very comfortable doing.
So last week I started to make calls to various people in the South West from semi pro cyclists to fossil hunters and introducing myself and my work and simply asking if I may photograph them.So far he response has been very good and images from my recently completed shoots will be posted here shortly.
In the meantime here is an image that I have just completed to add to my personal project “Life In A Somerset Landscape” The project features animals in well known Somerset Landscapes and has challenged me both as photographer and retoucher with this particular image taking approx 4 days to complete in post production alone.
The Fox was photographed at Secret World Wildlife Rescue near where I grew up in West Huntspill Somerset. The lovely people at Secret World where very helpful and kindly allowed me to get up close and personal with their rescued foxes and I got some great images despite falling up to my knee in a hole full of ditch water !
For the techies the layered photoshop image was a bit of a monster at well over 1 Gb in size and consisted of 30 layers which is not uncommon for some of my images.
The location in the image is Burrow Mump located on the Somerset Levels and the image is as yet unnamed so if you can think of a great title I’d love you to post your idea in the comments below.