I enjoyed reading Damian Ward’s featured photographer this issue, and it made me think about the people I know who have been photographing for a long time and how their work has changed.

Almost universally, people have become more ‘personal’ in their work. They’ve found a niche of some sort and adapted their work to some internal, personal need. In doing so, they’ve more often than not created work that you can get your teeth into, things that might not have the instant gratification of dramatic grand landscapes or stunning, colourful intimate scenes, but they’re something to spend a bit more time with.

I’ve been watching the Star Wars spin-off called “Andor” recently, and it feels similar. Not only is it a quite surprising product of Disney’s corporate machine, but it also plays the type of long game I’m talking about. It treats the viewer as an active and engaged participant rather than a passive spectator to be ‘entertained’. In doing so, it has created something that plays with archetypes that we know and love (perhaps classic Grand Landscapes) and uses them as a way of communicating more subtle and involved ideas. If Grand Landscapes were approached in the same way, we might have them as a backdrop for an ideas-led project or perhaps represent them in unusual ways through weather, light, composition, etc. Paul Wakefield has a way of showing mountain scenes in this way, and photographers like Olaf Otto Becker or Orsolya Haarberg have their own approaches that represent classic landscape in interesting ways.

As the cohort of new digital photographers from the early 2000s has ‘matured’ in the way described above, we can find lots of interesting work from them that goes beyond the obvious, although it might take a bit more effort to find. I hope On Landscape can play a part in showing some of that work, and if you see anything you think fits the very loose description I’m trying to explain, please do let us know, as often these photographers are rarely presented to us on social media!

The last few weeks in Scotland have been continuously hot and dry, and the locals have been making the most of the last moments of midge-free sunshine. This week, Charlotte and I were climbing the appropriately named “Heatwave” in Glen Nevis and have had a few great trips a bit further afield with a stunning climb called "Cioch Nose" on the Applecross peninsula at the back of the UK's highest road, Bealach na Ba. I dared to use my drone halfway up, click here for a short video.

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