on landscape The online magazine for landscape photographers

After All This Time

A personal connection

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Paul Gallagher

Paul Gallagher is recognised as one of the most accomplished landscape photographers and workshop leaders in the UK today. He has been a writer and lecturer in photography for over thirty years and runs both field and printing workshop nationally and internationally.

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I cannot simply throw myself into my photography, it takes me time to adjust and feel that what I am doing is worthy. This level of self-doubt is good for me. I have consistently been self-critical, which leads to doubt, but when I reach the point in what I am doing and I believe in it, then little will convince me otherwise. I don’t mean this in an arrogant way, but in a way that enables me to cut out what is around me and any association with other opinions.

I usually spend over 160 days a year travelling so to be at home is often rewarded by an overwhelming sense of comfort and warmth. This, in turn, has led to ‘home’ meaning one thing, and my photography becoming something entirely separate.
Much of my work is in places that I am familiar with and I love to be. Even if I go off into the wilds of another country, which I do often, I usually have some understanding of what I am about to experience, which in a way, prepares me for the moment I am there with a camera. I usually spend over 160 days a year travelling so to be at home is often rewarded by an overwhelming sense of comfort and warmth. This, in turn, has led to ‘home’ meaning one thing, and my photography becoming something entirely separate.

I live in a very beautiful part of England called Lancashire which is a large area mostly consisting of open farmland that stretches from the Pennine Moors down to the coast. As you would expect, there are paths aplenty and you can literally walk for miles far from the roads and truly escape. As I have associated home with a separation from photography, I have hardly ever headed out with my camera in anger so I have never entered a state of mind that has led me to connect and ‘see’ what is around me. I have simply enjoyed being there.

About a year ago I was fortunate to have a good lengthy break at home over the Christmas period and I did plenty of walking during that time. As ludicrous as it may sound, I had been overloaded with the grandeur of some of the most staggering landscapes I had been fortunate to visit during my year of travel and oddly sought out, and began to relish, in the sparse winter landscape surrounding my house. I live on the edge of a protected valley park which covers an area of 800 acres and is made up of woodlands and meadows, through which, the River Lostock runs. 



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