I never set out to create a photographic project, and certainly not a book. If someone had told me in late 2020 that I’d soon be spending most of my days walking the countryside with a camera, making abstract images of wind-blown grasses and slow-rolling waves, I wouldn’t have believed them.

At the time, I was trying to navigate a sudden redundancy that had brought my thirty-six-year career in film production to an abrupt end. It meant not only financial uncertainty but also a deep sense of personal and professional loss. On top of that, the strangeness of lockdown cast its own uncertainty across daily life. For a while, I felt adrift. Yet in the midst of that turbulence, photography re-entered my life, and it quickly became my anchor.

Photography had always been a quiet passion, lingering in the margins of my busy working life. Within days of losing my job, I upgraded my camera, and within weeks, I had left London. Suddenly, I had time, and the countryside was on my doorstep. During lockdown, when travel was prohibited, the same fields, lanes and woodlands became my sanctuary.

Photographing every day in the same area challenged me to interpret the same places in different ways.

I began to see differently. The landscape was unusually quiet, and within that stillness I became captivated by motion - not just ripples of water or grasses bending in the wind, but subtler gestures such as the sweep of a branch or the rise and fall of hills. I began experimenting with long exposures and moving the camera mid-shot, and became fascinated by how I could capture something of the ephemeral. At the time, I had no idea what I was doing in any formal sense.

I hadn’t heard of intentional camera movement and was simply following instinct, excited by the potential in these blurred, gestural images. It was only much later, when someone commented “ICM?” on a photo I’d posted online, that I discovered it was actually a thing - a technique - after looking it up. That discovery gave a name to what I had already been exploring intuitively and encouraged me to push further into abstraction. I also began experimenting with multiple exposures, intrigued by how layering could expand the possibilities even more.

When lockdown finally lifted, and I was able to travel to the coast, it felt like breathing out after holding my breath for months. After so long walking the same paths near home, the sudden expanse of sea and sky was overwhelming in its freedom. The horizon seemed to stretch forever, and with it came a sense of release I’d been craving. I spent hours on the beach, entranced by the shifting tide and the motion of the sea. Long exposures smoothed the waves into flowing veils, and intentional camera movements transformed shoreline and sky into abstract bands of colour.

Each frame felt like a discovery, a dialogue between myself, the sea, and chance. The excitement lay in seeing these images emerge, not as records of a place, but as expressions of how it felt to stand there - liberated, quietly elated, and beginning to glimpse where this exploration into motion might lead.

In many ways, it led me back to my beginnings. Looking back now, I realise my early training as a dancer left a lasting imprint on me; movement has become woven into the way I see the world and continues to shape how I engage with the landscape - and how I photograph it.

My photography became less about documenting what I saw and more about reflecting how I felt in nature. In time, I came to see that shift as both liberating and deeply restorative. The stillness of the countryside during lockdown was palpable, and within that wider quiet, I began to discover a stillness of my own. Looking through the viewfinder, I would lose myself, often entering a state of flow where everything else seemed to fall away. Photography offered a sense of calm not only when my own life had been upended, but also amid the wider upheaval of the world around me.

As the months passed, a thread began to emerge. Though the landscapes and subjects varied, the images shared a common quality: a lyrical stillness born from motion. I began to gather them into small collections – Landscape in Motion, Coastal Flow, Grasses - each exploring different facets of movement. Over time, new groupings emerged: Flora, where I’m drawn to the way the structure of flowers suggests a kind of dance, and Woodland, which centres on the flow and interplay of branches and trees. What intrigued me most was the paradox that the images with the most movement often conveyed the deepest sense of quiet, transforming the commonplace into something poetic.

It would be another three years before I considered the possibility of a book. Like many photographic projects, it evolved organically rather than from a predetermined vision. When the collection reached a certain weight, I knew it could be more than a series of images on a website or in an exhibition. It could become something tangible, a cohesive narrative. I was thrilled when Kozu Books saw the potential of the work and offered me a publishing deal, guiding it into book form.

Turning a collection of photographs into a book was exciting and rewarding, but it took time to find the right flow. The collections I had created became the foundation for the structure of the book, yet the sequencing went through many iterations, each change subtly shifting the mood and relationships between images. I enjoyed seeing how pairings across the pages could alter the nuance of the work and reveal new connections, though reaching that balance wasn’t always simple. Some of my favourite images didn’t make it into the final edit but letting them go became part of shaping something cohesive. After many rounds of adjustments, the book finally settled into a rhythm that felt authentic to the work and true to the way it had begun.

On reflection, the seeds of Stillness. In Motion were sown during those early lockdown walks. There was no grand idea at the outset; I was simply responding intuitively to what was in front of me, enjoying the serendipity of a practice where chance plays such an essential role. With ICM and multiple exposures, there is only so much you can control. That unpredictability was, and still is, a source of joy.

One reason I am drawn to abstraction is that it leaves space for emotion. By stepping away from literal representation, I can create images that suggest rather than describe, inviting viewers to bring their own responses, shaped by memory and experience.

Over time, I’ve come to see Stillness. In Motion. not as a project, but as a journey of discovery. It was born out of change, guided by intuition, and shaped by the landscape itself. There was never a plan, and that, I think, was essential. Each photograph was simply the result of being present in a moment, of paying attention, of letting chance play its part. The book gave form to that journey, but the practice remains open-ended - a way of seeing that continues to unfold.

Purchase Information

Stillness. In Motion is available from Sally's website or from Kozu Books, from £40.

Gallery

‘Vignette’
/viːˈnjɛt,vɪˈnjɛt/
Noun
1. a short graceful literary essay or sketch
2. a photograph, drawing, etc,
with edges that are shaded off ~Collins dictionary

The mountains of Torridon have a way of holding you at a distance. Sheer sandstone walls rise from the glen with an authority that resists easy capture. Its mountains are spoken of in reverent tones – Liathach, Beinn Alligin, Beinn Eighe – names that carry the same weight as their ridges and peaks. I was first made aware of these mountains three years ago, when my photographic journey began. Long before setting foot, I spent hours poring over maps and photographs, sketching out routes and viewpoints within this fabled range.

This early fascination made returning inevitable, but as a student, travel required planning and compromise. Scotland’s free bus travel scheme for under 22s offered me both an opportunity and a challenge.

The network stretches far, from comfortable city coaches to old school buses rattling along the Highland roads. But Torridon lies on one of the most restrictive routes: just two buses in and out on Tuesdays and Saturdays, providing a strict time window. For me, reaching it requires three separate connections and around eight hours of travel from the central belt of Scotland. The journey north became a kind of pilgrimage in itself – a reminder that Torridon insists on patience and commitment, before even reaching the trailhead.

The idea of merely revisiting felt incomplete. I wanted to give the journey more purpose, something that would make the effort of reaching this remote range feel intentional. On that long ride I had time to refine my aim. I set myself a challenge: to create a single photograph for each of Torridon’s eight peaks within the Torridonian Forest locality.

Not simply a record shot or a summit view, but a photo that represented each mountain’s presence and character. This demanded a slower pace. Rather than chasing every viewpoint, I had to move with the rhythms of the weather, attentive to its shifts and silences.

Backpacking gave me this freedom. With four days of food and shelter strapped to my back, I could linger when the conditions aligned, camp where the light lasted, or move on when the moment had passed. The weight of the pack was its own discipline, ensuring every stride was well measured, every stop deliberate, and every frame considered

Each mountain revealed itself differently – sometimes simply through waiting for the sun to be low enough for the right light, more often only after hours of mist or rain broke to let the light shape the landscape. What emerged was not just a record of a route, but a sequence of vignettes: eight mountains, eight photographs, each a fragment of Torridon’s story.

The word vignette feels fitting, suggesting both a short, graceful narrative and a technique for framing a scene. Together, they aim to form a portrait of Torridon – not complete, but true to the fleeting, elusive nature of this mountainous area.

Beinn Dearg – 914m

Beginning with Beinn Dearg felt fitting. It is an understated mountain – just 73 centimetres shy of Munro status, yet without the reverence or footfall of Torridon’s more famous peaks.

Sitting in the very heart of the range, it became both the epicentre for photographing this landscape and the original focal point of the trip.

I spent three hours wandering among a minefield of erratics, searching for compositions, hoping to be calm and prepared when the light finally arrived. In reality, it was the opposite. As the sun neared the horizon, the scene shifted into something fleeting and unpredictable: deep blue clouds layered high above, while white, lower clouds swirled around the summits. Panic set in. I raced between my previously scouted locations, watching how the changing light transformed each frame. Nothing sufficed.

At last, I arrived at a spot just as the foreground was descending into shadow. Ideally, I would have placed this rock further to the left of frame so that it pointed inward, but compromise was impossible.

Instead, I leaned into what the moment offered. Shadow and sun worked together, pulling the eye from the corners of the frame towards that solitary stone, now separated from Beinn Dearg by a rising line of shadow. In that brief instant, the layering I had been searching for finally presented itself.

Baosbheinn – 875m

The evening’s photography was far from finished. Having secured a frame of Beinn Dearg that felt strong enough, I turned my attention to Baosbheinn. With its long undulating spine, evoking the shape of a sleeping dragon, a faint wisp of cloud drifted from its summit like smoke.

I had climbed much of its ridge the previous day and carried with me a more personal sense of its place within the range. Baosbheinn is often treated as a lookout – a platform from which to admire the Torridon giants – rather than as a subject in its own right.

When composing the photograph, I let the light take the lead. The boulder field at my feet was chaotic, but within the disorder a group of rocks caught the sun and cast elongated shadows across the ground.

Their rhythm echoed the ridgeline beyond. I was drawn to the possibility of creating a visual echo – foreground stones arranged

like a miniature replica of Baosbheinn’s peaks, pulling the eye from right to left. In that moment, the mountain ceased to be just a viewpoint for Torridon’s giants; instead, it revealed a quiet authority of its own, connected by the rocks that lie beneath it.

Liathach – 1023m

I decided to save the privilege of traversing Liathach’s ridge for another trip, meaning I was only left to admire it from a distance, wishfully imagining the feeling of standing atop its peak. My glimpses of this mountain were handed in small portions.

However, when it did reveal itself, it was with great splendour. The light had drained from the surrounding mountains, leaving only a sharp, crimson glow clinging to the summit of Mullach an Rathain - one of the Munros of the Liathach ridge. Just as I thought the evening could offer nothing more, low cloud crept up behind the peak and began curling around the corner.

I worked quickly, using the converging lines of the surrounding mountains to draw the eye to Liathach, anchoring the composition with a foreground of neatly arranged rocks. Liathach’s grandeur was undeniable, even from afar. It was a mountain that revealed itself on its own terms as I was not to see its peaks for the rest of the trip, shrouded out by thick cloud.

Beinn an Eoin – 855m

The following morning, the weather that was originally forecast caught up with me. My short stint of good fortune seemed to have ended as I trudged up the steep 440m ascent to Beinn Dearg’s first summit, rain showers sweeping across in relentless succession.

As I reached the first summit, another seemingly targeted squall passed over me and onwards to Beinn an Eoin. A sudden patch of light broke through, illuminating one of the many lochans scattered across the glen, chasing the downpour into the distance. With the sun behind me, I watched with growing intensity as this dynamic scene unfolded. This was the moment I had been waiting for.

Starved for time and with little in the way of foreground interest, I sprinted to a pair of rocks that provided the necessary balance in this scene. Anticipation and exhilaration rose in equal measure as the first arc of colour edged into view. Slowly, the rainbow unfurled from left to right, light fighting against shadow for a foothold on the landscape until the scene resolved in full, fleeting brilliance.

Beinn an Eoin was the stage for this transformation – proof that patience and persistence, even through adversity, can sometimes coax magic form the most reluctant skies.

Meall a’Ghiuthais – 887m

At a loss for words after Beinn an Eoin, I wandered further along the ridge in search of capturing another mountain. I thought nothing I encountered would surpass what I had just witnessed.

Meall a’ Ghiuthais was always going to be one of the ‘make or break’ mountains for the success of this project. A solitary, stubby mountain which doesn’t immediately attract the eye.

This was a fortuitous encounter. Light and shadow once more wrestled above me, the cloud beginning to gain the upper hand as it swirled across the range, closing in on the surrounding mountains. In the distance, the sole-standing mountain was Meall a’ Ghiuthais – seemingly confined despite the vastness around it. I framed this photograph with striated rocks in the foreground, their lines pulling the eye into the centre and lending depth to its otherwise quiet presence.

At first, I dismissed the image. It felt forced, included only for the sake of the project and I questioned whether I would even have paused to take it on a regular trip. But the more I returned to it, the more it grew on me. I believe the reason I was doubting it, is part of the reason this image is just as special. A view and photograph that may be overlooked, but one that wouldn’t have been captured otherwise.

Beinn Alligin – 986m

The cloud settled in for good as I made the final push towards the summit of Beinn Dearg. Rain came in swathes across the ridge, turning Torridon’s usually reliable sandstone slick and uncertain. As I scrambled down, I was halted by a formidable boulder – standing defiantly amongst the otherwise obedient line of rocks beneath it.

Space to work was scarce. The ridge narrowed to barely five metres, leaving little margin for error. Each footstep had to be precise as I edged into position, seeking to line up the chain of smaller rocks, circling around the dominant boulder.

Flow has always been central to how I approach composition: how the eye moves through an image, where it rests, what interrupts its journey. While this can be refined in post processing, the core components need to be present with the composition.

As I fought to keep the lens clear with fierce, oncoming rain, I managed to capture just two photos without blemishes of rain. Beinn Alligin offered me no abundance of images. Yet that scarcity gave it weight. It demanded patience, reminding me that these summits are not easily captured, and these types of moments are the memories that will linger longest. The cloud dropped and gripped tightly on the mountains for the majority of the next day.

Beinn Eighe – 976m

This is the image that ended the stranglehold of cloud and rain. The end of the previous day, and much of the morning and afternoon, had been spent shrouded in low cloud, myself and the mountains both smothered.

Before arriving at this penultimate location, I had a formed a clear vision of what I wanted to capture. Most photographers (rightly so) tend to shoot the vast array of erratics that dominate this landscape, with the loch below acting as the natural progression to the mountain. But while scouring maps and conferring with satellite imagery, I noticed a river running from the loch’s mouth. This detail persisted in my mind. I walked its length, pausing to scout for rapids that would provide the right weight and energy to balance out the imposing cliffs.

I had timed my arrival perfectly. A reluctant shaft of light broke through, falling across the face of the mountain. It was a faint streak, but just enough to outline the ridges, emphasising its dominance. I knew which location I had to get to. This time there was no flustered running about in a panic, just a case of calmly hopping over the river back to this composition and making sure everything was in focus.

This was the most coherent scene on offer: rapids flowing in from the bottom right; complemented by evenly spaced boulders broken up by clumps of grass; all elements gently progressing towards the dominating Triple Buttress, holding the attention. After a day of silence and concealment, Beinn Eighe offered a single moment of clarity – the perseverance paying off.

Beinn a’ Chearcaill – 725m

Once the fleeting light on Beinn Eighe had faded, I boiled up a quick pot noodle by the river. It was then, almost absentmindedly, that I noticed a single, narrow strand of light sweeping across the landscape. Just ten metres downstream from the last vantage point – but facing in the opposite direction – Beinn a' Chearcaill was waiting.

I had already made one attempt at photographing this mountain during the frenzy of rainbows the previous day. In my haste, I forced two boulders into the foreground, creating an image with no purpose and no real connection.

It was the only time this mountain had presented itself and I was blinded by the rainbow, not putting any thought into the process. It was simply instinct. Ever since, I’d been quietly disappointed, rehearsing how I might explain the unimaginative result.

This sliver of light felt like a reprieve, a chance to correct my previous falter. By the fourth afternoon, fatigue had set in, yet this was the most alert I had been. Every other mountain was accounted for, but this one remained unresolved.

I worked quickly, centring the composition around a commanding boulder being held in an enclave of the river. All movement in the frame seemed to converge – lines of rock, water, and shadow – pulling the eye inexorably toward the light illuminating Beinn a Chearcaill.

A Dialogue with the Mountains

This photographic challenge shaped the trip, forcing me into a slower, more deliberate rhythm than my usual approach. At first, I found myself in a familiar cycle – racing from one composition to another, as if with tunnel vision. But along the way, that urgency gave way to patience and acceptance of the conditions. Shooting with an end goal in mind meant looking at scenes I might otherwise have ignored, noticing the quieter authority of the smaller peaks, often revealed with passing light.

These may not be the single “best” images I made in Torridon – due to the partial constraints of the challenge – but they feel like the truest representation of these mountains. Eight mountains in four days, each asserting its own character through light, weather, and form. Some demanded effort and persistence, others gave themselves generously, but all carried equal weight in shaping the story.

Presented chronologically, the images not only reflect the range’s often volatile microclimate, but also the shift in my own process – from hurried reaction to a more intentional dialogue with the landscape.

The Frith Fields lie in the south Cotswolds, and have, through care and steadfastness, been returned to native meadow. My project began with a simple idea: to photograph the fields through the seasons, and to let repeated encounters with this place reveal new ways of seeing it, and maybe to create a book.

Beneath this plan, there was also a looser purpose: to understand how one lives and works with place. Emma and Matt’s stewardship of the fields was a vital part of this. Their years of patient restoration, their belief in “doing the right thing” by the land, and their generosity in sharing knowledge gave me a strong foundation.

Alongside making the photographs, I kept a written journal, usually penned back in the studio using the images from each day to reflect on the thoughts, feelings and sensations I’d experienced. Each entry was both an anchor and a prompt, which helped me to understand and acknowledge how much the fields resisted being contained by the frame, and how my methods would have to adapt.

Inspiration

The inspiration for the work came from multiple sources. Research revealed that the UK has lost 7.5 million acres of wildflower meadow and flower-rich grassland since the 1930s¹. 1400 insect species rely on meadows for their survival, and these plants and insects help to maintain a healthy ecosystem. Meeting Emma and Matt, who had devoted years to restoring the meadows, gave me both context and motivation. Their stewardship spoke of patience and persistence, and Emma’s references to Ikigai - the balance of purpose and practice - and to Katherine Swift’s The Morville Hours situated my own efforts within a wider tradition of living with land.

Alongside this, exhibitions, reading and conversations informed my thinking.

The voices of others were important, Matt’s insights and knowledge of the wildlife in the fields, his sighting of a stoat dragging a baby rabbit, bigger than itself, across the bottom field or finding a newly born fawn nestled among the long grass—all these grounded my practice within a living network of care and observation. Later, my friend Shelley’s reflection that my work carried something of the “pastoral sublime” reframed what I was doing. Was my attention to this landscape simply about beauty? Or did it echo wider crises—climate, political, social—that haunt our times? Inspiration, I came to see, is never solitary. It is a conversation between place, people, and understanding.

Highs and Lows

There were auspicious moments when photography and place aligned, if briefly. Early morning mists rising from the valley offered fleeting drama; frosted seedheads glowed under low sun; the appearance of blackthorn blossom against a grey hedge brought a clarity where form, light, and season cohered into an image.

The low points came in quieter, more insistent ways. The fields sit on the side of a steep valley; in winter, the sun rarely lifts high enough to illuminate the fields. In summer, the opposite harsh midday light flattened the abundance in the fields into visual confusion, making it nearly impossible to render with any subtlety. There was the impossibility of capturing grass snakes, or of making butterflies feel as alive in an image as they were in flight. And at times the meadows felt constraining: three fields, always the same boundaries, the sense of repetition that made me long for the unstructured wandering which is my usual way of working.

Shifting Process: From Image to Material

The recognition of the limits of what I was able to do with the camera marked a turning point. So rather than photographing what I saw, I began to work with what I could touch. Collecting and pressing plants became a new form of image-making. At first, this was a nostalgic act, and one that echoed early photographic processes. Like a negative, pressing flattens, fixes, and preserves—pigments fade, colours shift, chlorophyll recedes. What remains is both presence and absence: the form intact, but the life altered
.
Making pigments followed, I became fascinated with the idea of making inks from the very matter of the fields—plants, soil, stones. I did a short workshop with Lucy at London Pigment, who generates pigments from materials in the landscape that reflect the city, and her relationship with colour and place.

Inspired by Fabian Miller, I began placing plants and seeds from the fields directly onto photographic paper and exposing them to sunlight, creating lumen prints. These negative images were formed not only by the shadows of the plants but also by their chemical reaction with the paper, which formed soft auras around the images of the plants. I later scanned these negatives and converted them into positives. The originals remain unfixed, tucked away in a dark drawer in my studio, like the flowers and grasses they depict, they are ephemeral, fragile —still sensitive to light, and always vulnerable to change.

These processes remain photographic in spirit, but without the lens — an engagement with light-sensitive materials, with chemistry, with the physical traces of place. Each pressed flower, pigment and lumen print felt like an attempt to bridge the gap between presence and representation.

Insights

In the end, the Frith Fields became less about making successful photographs and more about learning what photography cannot do. The camera faltered where the fields were most alive. But in that I discovered other ways of working - pressings, pigment, lumen printing — that deepened the project rather than diminished it.

Looking back, the Frith Fields taught me that photography is as much about failure as success.

I made the work by following my nose, letting process lead the way, and found myself with a collection of disparate pieces: photographs, pressed flowers, landscapes, still-lives, and ink. At first, drawing these fragments together into a coherent whole felt impossible. Then I spoke again with Iain at Another Place Press — so generous with his time, ideas, and skill. We talked about the possibility of a small publication in the Field Notes series, and I sent him a mass of files. What came back was nothing short of transformative: a design that wove together the photographs and lumen prints, interlacing them so they began to speak with one voice. Somehow it captured that elusive sense of the fields’ vitality. From this starting point, I can now imagine a larger publication, one that draws on all the elements of the process. Thanks to Iain’s intervention and design expertise, I can see the work differently — as something whole, and alive.

Final thoughts

‘The Frith Fields’ began as a simple plan to document three fields, but it became a reflection on the limits and possibilities of photography itself. In turning to camera-less processes — lumen prints, pressed plants, pigments — I found ways to work that felt more intimate and connected to the life of the fields. These processes became the breakthrough of the project, transforming limitation into possibility, absence into presence. They reminded me that photography is not only about what the lens captures, but also about how light, chemistry, and material can speak together.

In the end, the Frith Fields were less a subject, more a collaborator; they resisted simplification and offered, in return, a richer way of seeing.

The Frith Fields by Amanda Harman, Another Place press

Since the invention of photography, scientists have used documentary photographs to explain their methods, to show results, and as sources of data. More recently, some scientists are focusing on links between science and art. For example, natural scientists in the “SciArt” community (e.g.www.sciartinitiative.org) are creating art using photographs of scientific processes and phenomena, with the goal of making science more interesting for the wider public.

As a science-adjacent water expert, I’ve seen firsthand how challenging it is for environmental professionals to connect with non-specialists whose support is important to the success of their work. Water is a very technical domain, and many people lack the basic science foundation needed to understand the issues. I’ve become interested in ways artistic photography can prompt deeper conversations about underlying scientific and technical challenges relating to water and the environment.

In art making, we are most free when we are unconstrained by the tastes and preferences of others, such as gallerists, critics, and potential buyers. In contrast, when art making is our livelihood, or when responding to external drivers is necessary, the tastes and preferences of others can matter immensely.

The challenge is multiplied when art-making takes place in a collaborative setting involving non-artists. It’s one thing for the artist to consider what hypothetical audiences might prefer. It’s another thing entirely to accommodate the preferences of actual collaborators who have their own ideas and agendas.

In the context of art-science projects, trustworthiness is an additional consideration that must be balanced. Science is rooted in reality and depends on trust. Thus, photography that is anchored strongly in reality is a natural fit with efforts to bridge art and science. It helps when the answer to the question, “Is what I’m seeing in this photograph real?” is “Yes”. But photographs that are too literal, too straightforward, may fail as art.

These considerations have been front-and-centre for me during the past three years as I collaborated with water professionals through an art-science integration project funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The goal of our project was to explore how art­science approaches based on photography could catalyze engagement with local water management activities in southern Ontario, Canada.

In this editorial, I use the example of my collaboration with colleagues at Conservation Halton (CH), one of Ontario’s 36 conservation authorities. Conservation authorities are science-based watershed management organizations with responsibilities for water management, environmental conservation, recreation, and public engagement.

We chose Crawford Lake, one of CH’s properties, as the focal point for a visual story that could set the stage for conversations with community members and key stakeholders about underlying scientific and technical challenges faced by conservation authorities.

Crawford Lake is a tiny meromictic lake nestled in the limestone of the Niagara Escarpment in southern Ontario. Meromictic lakes are unusual because they have two layers of water that do not mix. Conservation Halton has been stewarding Crawford Lake and the surrounding property since 1969. The property is a centrepiece in its environmental education programming, in large part because of the strong connection to Indigenous people who occupied the site historically, and who continue to live in the region and steward its lands and waters.

We envisioned several outputs for the body of work I created during 2024-25, starting with an exhibition at CH’s 50th anniversary Gala on June 12, 2025. From the beginning, we planned to use prints, rather than just a website, because we wanted to support in-person conversations among technical experts, community members, and key stakeholders.

Curating the nearly 250 candidate images I created in 2024-25 to produce a coherent visual story for the exhibition, and then writing the supporting text, was challenging but extremely rewarding. While the photographs are my work, the story we created together is ours.

The process of creating the exhibition highlighted the tensions and compromises underlying art-science collaboration. My strong preference for photography grounded in reality was a good fit for this project, but my fondness for near-abstraction and my penchant for noticing and photographing unusual things that often are missed by other people created an internal conflict we needed to solve together.

In the rest of this editorial, I briefly explore what worked for this project and what didn’t work, using a few examples. I also present a selection of images that were not used in the exhibition, primarily because they did not meet the needs of this art-science integration project; these are among my favourites from the larger body of work.

What Worked for the Exhibition

The exhibition space at the Gala had room for 20-30 photographs, divided among the core themes in the storyline we developed. I chose 57 photographs from the pool of 250 and brought prints to a workshop for 15 CH staff.

Preferences were not monolithic, but it quickly became clear that photographs that were favoured by the environmental professionals at the workshop were intelligible, fit clearly within the themes of the story, and tended to be conventional and literal.

The photograph we chose as the opener for the visual story is a good example. It is easily recognizable as a lake in this part of the world. As a photograph, it fits comfortably within the “lake-trees-clouds-reflections” style that is common in landscape photography. Indeed, CH uses an image that looks like this on a sign that welcomes visitors to the property. Photographs like this are very accessible for a general audience.

One of my favourite near-abstraction photographs from the project made it into the exhibition, but somewhat grudgingly. At our curation workshop, this image of the lake in the early morning after a rain shower was one of two candidates for the “closer” in the visual story.

Most people preferred the other candidate, a more conventional reflection image that was easier to understand. In the end, participants came around to this image because it supported a key closing message from this part of the story more effectively; it helped that the colour palette (blue and green) complemented the Gala colour palette.

The images we used in the exhibition are the best indicator of what worked for this art-science collaboration. The photographs and text from our visual story, Crawford Lake – Where Waters Gather, are available at this link: https://www.robdeloephotography.com/Works/Crawford-Lake.

What Didn’t Work for this Visual Story

Many of the 57 candidate photographs considered at the curation workshop were not favoured simply because people preferred one option over another; this is normal and expected during any curation exercise. However, from the perspective of a researcher interested in understanding how art­s-cience approaches based on photography can catalyze engagement with local water management activities, I watched for other factors that shaped how participants responded to photographs.

I quickly realized that my delight in near-abstraction and unusual things in nature was a liability rather than an asset in this kind of project. Many of my personal favourites were received coolly because it wasn’t obvious enough what the viewer was seeing, or it wasn’t readily apparent how an ambiguous-seeming photograph supported a theme.

A good example is this eastern white cedar that is growing upside down from the side of a limestone cliff, into the water of Crawford Lake. I was excited to share this photograph with my CH collaborators because I considered it a good fit for the part of the story that showcased the ecosystem around Crawford Lake. However, its strangeness did not resonate with my colleagues, and they were concerned that our intended audience would not understand what they were seeing. Communication and understanding are essential to the success of the project; thus, the image did not make the cut.

With what I learned from the workshop in mind, I didn’t bother trying to convince my collaborators that we should use this next photograph of a vernal pool. These small, water-filled depressions in the limestone landscape are an important part of the ecosystem.

This photograph of a vernal pool delights me because it is literal, yet leaves much to the imagination of the viewer. However, it is not as accessible as the more conventional (yet hopefully still intriguing) vernal pool photograph I used in the exhibition (see link).

Final Thoughts,

In art-science collaborations, meeting people where they are – intellectually, culturally, and emotionally – is essential. It’s a tricky balancing act. The artist who is interested in successfully bridging art and science is not free to ignore the tastes, preferences and knowledge of the audience.

Many of my favourite photographs from the body of work I completed for this project in 2024-25 (reproduced on the following pages) were not used in the exhibition. Instead, the images we chose for our visual story tended to a more literal and conventional documentary style that prioritized understanding for a non-specialist audience.

At the same time, a major goal of the project was exploring whether visual stories like the one we created using Crawford Lake could motivate viewers to become interested in the technical and scientific topics that underpin environmental management. As an educator, I’ve learned that curiosity, wonder and mystery can get people to make the extra effort that is needed to engage more deeply with technical and scientific topics. Art can be an excellent way to access those dimensions.

Squaring this circle is a key challenge for people who are interested in using photography to deepen engagement with complex scientific and technical questions.

The Wyre Forest sits on the border of Worcestershire and Shropshire. Once a source of fuel for local industry, it is now the largest woodland nature reserve in England. Today, the forest is a place of dog walkers, mountain bikers and horse riders, of children playing, and remote, almost wild, outreaches. My relationship with the forest started as somewhere to go for a walk at the weekend — somewhere my son could safely ride his bike.

We live a couple of miles from the centre of Birmingham, which is itself about 20 miles from the forest. While there are many good things about living in Birmingham, it can feel claustrophobic — the sprawl, the congestion, the industry. Sometimes — quite often, in fact — I just need to get out. And that’s where WYRE began: a need to escape the city, practise my photography, and hopefully improve it. Woodland work isn’t easy, but like anything, the only way to get better is to do it. So, about 18 months ago, I started making regular trips to the forest, often on a Friday afternoon after work.

At first, my goal was simple: go for a walk, take a few photos, and unwind after the week. In truth, I wasn’t really sure how much photographic potential there would be. But I quickly realised that photographic potential is all around us — we just have to be there to see it.

It amazes me how often I’ll walk and walk, seeing nothing, then stop to take a photo, and suddenly find one or two more in that immediate area. I’m sure part of it is that I’ve paused in a more interesting spot, but I think it’s also because I’ve stopped at all. Stopping creates a photographic opportunity — which, for me at least, is the opposite of what I’d expect.

There’s always the imagining — or maybe the fear — that you have to walk miles upon miles just to find one image worth making… and even then, the light probably won’t work. While that may sometimes be true, it’s just as true that, if you stop and let your brain absorb the world around you, images present themselves.

But even knowing that, I always face apathy beforehand. Most visits follow a familiar arc — I can’t be bothered today / I won’t take any good photos anyway → No — I’m going to go → the drive, slowly unwinding from a week at work while listening to a podcast → exploring a few miles of forest → finding something to photograph → driving home, convinced nothing I took was good — but knowing I felt better for having gone.

More often than not, I’d get home and find that one or two of the images were usable. Seldom did I come back with nothing — and even when I did, I’d learned something. The more I visited the forest, the more I realised just how much opportunity it holds. As my images improved, I began to tentatively look for themes and to understand whether I could create a project from the work.

I’m not sure why my brain thinks in projects, but it does. Whenever I find something interesting, it always forms in my mind as a sequence — something more than an individual photo. Earlier this year, I decided I had enough images for a short e-book. So, trying not to overthink it, I sequenced and released it for free on my website.

There is catharsis in that for me — taking the images I’d made and putting them out there, to have a life of their own. Whether that’s for five people to see or five thousand doesn’t really matter. I can consider them ‘done’.

Well… until I inevitably decide to re-edit some of them one day.

In doing that, I allow myself to move on to the next chapter. My vision for WYRE is for it to be roughly yearly — and while I’d love others to download it, ultimately it’s something I do for myself more than anyone else.

What the next iteration or chapter of WYRE will be remains to be seen. Recently, I’ve been drawn more to the areas around the forest — to the places it shelters — and I think the work may take a more documentary turn.

I’m working on other projects that may develop a stronger narrative, but WYRE will continue alongside — a quieter study in patience, escape, and a drive to do better work; a belief that if I look, I will find.