One of my own personal ways of creating what I think are ‘more interesting’ landscape photographs is to become more interested in the landscape I’m photographing. Whether this is learning about the plants and animals that live there, about the history of the land and how we use it or about the very ground and rocks beneath our feet. This spring, I met a geology professor when walking off Ben Nevis and he (David Dobson) talked about a series of geology walks he was planning to run in the Highlands. I expressed an interest in attending and, later in the year, he said he’d like to take me on a test walk near Ben Nevis to see how they would go. I eagerly agreed.

The day was spent walking from Glen Nevis up to Stob Ban, taking detours to check out various geological features. To learn about how the rocks beneath our feet are formed, how they are shaped over millions of years all the way up to the quite recent ice ages that carved out our crags and glens, was fascinating. I felt like a child again, being able to pick up random bits of interesting rock and asking “What’s this then?” or “Why does it look like this?”. The story that built up changed my appreciation for the landscape I was walking on, and it opened up many more avenues of exploration. Although what I learned may not directly make my photographs more interesting, the knowledge will inevitably affect what I want to include or exclude, subdue or prioritise in my images and hence make the images more personal to me. If they also trigger a viewer’s curiosity about what I’ve photographed, even better!

Hopefully, David Dobson will be writing an article for On Landscape in the near future, which I’m really looking forward to. You can participate in one of his upcoming geology walks, which will be advertised on his website here. David also has a YouTube channel called “One Minute Geology” where he summarises aspects of UK geology.

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