End frame: Gateway to the Moors II, North York Moors by Joe Cornish

Michael Cummins

Very keen, amateur landscaper always trying to improve. Holiday website publisher when I can fit that in too. Husband, father, grandad, golfer. Season ticket holder at the Mighty Spireites (Chesterfield FC).

michaelcummins.co.uk

Having agreed to write this ‘end-frame’ piece for On Landscape magazine I cast my mind back to my own, early inspirations into landscape photography and recalled admiring Joe Cornish’s images in a variety of National Trust publications from the 1980s if my memory serves me correctly.

I also remember reading his book about Northumberland and a particular 3.30am start on Holy Island which fired my imagination as I wistfully dreamed of pottering around on the beach myself exploring for foreground interest and patiently waiting for the amazing light of sunrise.

Before retiring to my (second) breakfast at 6 that is...!

Later, by several years I imagine, I came across this image by Joe known as 'Gateway to the Moors II, North York Moors'. At once I could see that this is where I wanted to be with my own landscape photography in the years ahead.

But let’s face it - we are not looking at El Capitan here. This is just a simple, fairly unremarkable, but pleasing, English viewpoint.

However, the photograph that Joe managed to create with seemingly modest raw materials is at once immersive, attentively observed, carefully crafted and composed.