Back in May, Theo Bosboom and I asked readers to fill in a survey on the environmental aspects of landscape photography, not really knowing what to expect. 276 of you answered, many at length, and the results are published in full this issue. The headline numbers are reasonably encouraging: 86% of us take most of our photographs within 250km of home, and 43% took no flights at all in 2025. Set against that, though, only a third of respondents intend to fly less in future, nearly half have no plans to change, and 70% still reach for the car, mostly still running on fossil fuel, for local trips (poor public transport still an issue). And there’s an obvious catch with a survey like this: the photographers doing the most flying and location-hopping are probably the ones least likely to have filled it in.

While we were publishing the results, a rather more direct reminder turned up close to home. A wildfire broke out near Ryvoan Bothy in the Cairngorms in the middle of July and, driven by strong winds, spread as far south as Aberdeenshire before crews got it under control. It’s the kind of thing that makes the survey’s numbers feel a bit less abstract (local photographer Graham Niven has taken some incredible photos).

Which brings me, a little incongruously, to a wedding. We travelled south to Gloucester a few weeks ago, and stood through the vows and speeches in full black tie in what turned out to be 36-degree heat. There is nothing like a dinner jacket in that kind of heat to concentrate the mind on the climate - it’s one thing reading about record temperatures, quite another feeling your shirt welding itself to your back during the photographs. Not quite the flash flooding or 40C bushfire heat we keep reading about elsewhere, but a minor inconvenience that made me think of the survey results all the way home.

None of which is to say any of this adds up to a tidy conclusion - it doesn’t, and Theo and I were careful not to turn the survey into an accusation. But do read the results in full, as they’re more interesting and more useful than the possible echo-chamber version we feared.

Local photographer Graham Niven’s work documenting the wildfires. Please see his Instagram and website for more work.

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