New Location, Same Focus

Tom White

Tom is a freelance journalist and photographer based in the North East, his work has taken him across the UK as well as around the world.

tomwhitephotos.co.uk

They say familiarity breeds contempt. Although I’m not sure that’s always true, or at least I hope it isn’t when I think about my wife and children…

However in my experience that can sometimes be true in regards to the landscape. The places on our doorstep are often the places where we hone our craft, the places we visit most due to how easy they are to get to (this has probably been truer than ever before, given the last year of restrictions we’ve had here in the UK). But can this regularity sow the seeds of insouciance?

This year marks 16 years since I moved to Newcastle in the North East of England and on my doorstep I’m blessed with many wonderful places to visit with a camera. From that list the Northumberland Coast is probably the most well-known, a place of pilgrimage for photographers across the country, drawn in by its rugged beauty. But during that time I have ebbed and flowed in how much I have shot year to year, the initial buzz of Bamburgh when I first picked up a camera soon waned before it returned as I discovered new places that didn’t involve cloning out other photographers afterwards.

Some of those places involve wonderful outcrops of rock, often quite well-known now as well, such as Howick, Rumbling Kern and Spittal Beach. I first visited them around nine-years-ago and while I still love to visit, there is the nagging thought in the back of my mind that I won’t manage to shoot anything much different to what I have already.