Another year of the Natural Landscape Photography Awards has passed and our final judging was just over a couple of weeks ago. Our fourth year ran very surprisingly smoothly with over 12,000 entries and I’m now finishing off the book to go to print at the start of November.

The results are fabulous, as ever. If anything, the quality has been going up or at least the entered images are showing a diversity and creativity that we didn’t see as much of in the first year. We had some especially strong images in the Intimate Landscape category.

I thought our readers would like to see a few of the winning images (the ones I particularly liked) and also some of the images that didn’t make the awards page but have been chosen to be printed in our book.

Photograph of the Year - John Hardiman

Our winner by John Hardiman was a really interesting photograph. Something that grew on our judges as they looked at it repeatedly over the nearly three months of judging. In the end, it was easily our panel’s favourite for “Photograph of the Year”.

John Hardiman

John has contributed a short essay for our book which I’ve included at the end of this for you.

Living on the Edge Project - David Southern

I’d like to include the winner of the Project of the Year as well, as it embodies the idea of a project so well.

David Southern’s work on the North East coast of England has resulted in some fabulous photographs, including his sandstone abstracts which you can see in our Featured Photographer article about him.

This time he moved his attention to the seaweeds that live on that same coast. Over three years of photography, the work was distilled into eight wonderful and varied images which you can see below. If you want to read more about them, you’ll have to wait for the NLPA book which will hopefully be finished around Christmas.

"The aim of this project was to showcase the rich beauty of the seaweeds that thrive on my local shoreline. Seaweeds make for an attractive photographic subject. They have rich diverse colours, rhythmic shapes and are naturally arranged to artistic affect by waves, currents and wind.

I set out to concentrate on only a few varieties photographed in a living state on both the upper and lower shore. All the images in the project were captured within a 25 mile stretch of Northumbrian coastline.

It is during the late spring and summer months when most species look at their best. It is also at this time of year that have the lowest ‘spring’ tides and when the kelp forests are fully exposed and the thongweed thrives.

Out at these furthest margins of the land surrounded by such elemental nature it is easy to forget that these important habitats are under threat. A changing climate is affecting the distribution of the kelp forests and marine pollution is evident in even the most remote stretches of coastline. Marine forests provide a vital role in capturing carbon as well as providing a nursery habitat for a myriad of marine creatures."

A Selection of Images from Vol 4 Book

Finally, here’s the promised selection of images that I found particularly engaging.

Mathias Libor

Northern Norway has no shortage of prominent mountains or pine trees, but to combine the two with such finesse requires great skill. The flat light allows us to see both elements unembellished, with the snow adding a sense of quiet. This places a greater emphasis on the composition, which has been expertly crafted. The slightly elevated position shows the pines diminishing into the distance, creating an important sense of perspective. The twisted foreground trees frame the mountain without competing with it and every brand and twig seems to be in exactly the right place.

Puneet Verma

I think it's fair to say that we all like the occasional god ray but these images are particularly heavenly. Puneet's photograph's rays could well be extra-terrestrial they're that out of this world. The image works so well because of the perfect central trees, their cast shadows and the stunning receding valley hinted at beyond.

Brian Pollock

This expansive vista over Loch A’an in the Cairngorms is more reminiscent of the Norwegian Fjords than the Scottish Highlands. It’s a perfect example of a panoramic vista. Shot in soft light of sunrise it illustrates the expansive nature of the landscape but also introduces a complex foreground to bring depth to the scene.

Franka Gabler

The creative potential of drying mud seems to always gift us with wonderful and personal images. Franka's graphic creation uses triangular motifs surrounding that single peeling back flake, opening like a birthday present. The black and white treatment works well here and creates high contrast on those cracked edges, adding to the three dimensional feel.

Katarzyna Gubrynowicz

We initially presumed Katarzyna's photograph was some form of multiple exposure but in reality, it's a natural optical illusion created from an extraordinary shaft of light illuminating just the tips of skeletal trees as a hill rolls off into a small valley. The way the light seems to reincarnate a section of forest is quite magical. There are also some subtle but useful darker bands of trees which create interest in the otherwise homogenous areas of forest.

Duncan Wood

The colours of Autumn in the Scottish Highlands may not quite live up to the Colorado with its stands of aspen, but for sheer variety and texture, it's hard to beat. Here the colour of late hearther, birch and spruce, plays background to a set of seemingly floating, elderly birch branches festooned with Old Man's Beard (Usnea Subfloridana) and Shield Lichen (Parmelia Sulcata).

Claire Ogden

When abstract photographs are this abstract, it’s difficult to break down their success in formal terms. There is some compositional structure, but it’s instinctive and relies on visual balance. It’s the colour that engages the most, a raw, Pollockesque splatter of maroons, oranges, blues, greens. The white threads a crazed pattern throughout. An expression of abstractness!

Tristan Todd

The thing that immediately stood out about this photograph is the incredible sense of luminosity of the sunlight on water. With modern camera sensors, the temptation that many succumb to is to reveal all those deep shadows. What is the point of all that dynamic range otherwise? However, by keeping much of the image in deep shadow, letting the highlights almost blow out and having a suggestion of flare/glow around the brightest area (that clump of trees in the foreground), Tristan has almost made us squint at the intensity. And what a composition, even the triangular boulder in the foreground seems to point at the scene and shout "Look at this!". There is almost too much to like here!

Chris Darnell

The “Bear and Rabbit”, and “Stagecoach” in Monument Valley are familiar to most photographers ‘but’ these conditions and this perspective reveal them in a very different context. The intense contrast between the sunlit and shaded areas is moderated by the beautiful mist of a temperature inversion. We particularly liked that we can see the continuation of the ridge with specs of sunshine and the frost tipped desert scrub in the top left.

Pre-order Volume 4 Book

The fourth book is available for pre-order here and hopefully will be complete and sent out for Christmas (for UK and European delivery).

If you'd like to see all of the images that received awards, you can view them on the Natural Landscape Photography Awards website.

'Choice’ is at the heart of the collecting process; a word which expresses its special dual nature as the selection and as the allotment of value, whatever form this value might take.~Susan M. Pearce

Photographs are of course about their makers and are to be read for what they disclose in that regard no less than for what they reveal of the world as their makers comprehend, invent, and describe it.~A.D. Coleman

As photographers we are all collectors of images. We might sort our images in different ways (in digital catalogues and galleries, in Instagram feeds or Pinterest themes, in portfolio boxes … ) or with different subjects (family, holidays, workshops, or on-going project ideas, …)¹ but we will all have multiple collections in one form or another. Our collections may not, of course, be limited to photographs; we may have other interests from stamps to train numbers to works of art. In some cases, collecting might become a passion, or even a compulsion². One of the most well-known collectors of photographs is Elton John, who has employed a full-time curator, Newell Harbin, to build up one of the most extensive private collections of 20th Century photographs, many of which are displayed on the walls of his several houses (though he has some 8000 in total, having started his collection before some major art museums started to take an interest in photography). He is reported as saying that photography is ”the love of my life, in art terms. I love surrounding myself with them”³ and that the reason he works so hard is so that he can collect (though reportedly he has slowed down to only one or so a week now…)⁴.

Elton John with part of his collection of photography⁵

The excellent photographic collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles was formed by purchasing the collections of a number of private collectors, including those of Bruno Bischofberger, Arnold Crane, Volker Kahmen/Georg Heusch, and Samuel Wagstaff, Jr. Other extensive collections include those of Artur Walther (a former partner in Goldman Sachs); David Dechman (CEO of a wealth management company); Andrew Pilara (an investment banker); Michael Wilson (producer of many of the James Bond films); Bob and Randi Fisher (son of the founder of Gap); Peter Cohen (another investment banker); and Jamie Lee Curtis (the well-known actress). So, to have a significant collection of celebrated photographs (including celebrated landscape photographers) evidently requires considerable wealth today!

So what about the rest of us with much less disposable income. It does not cost that much to build up collections of our own images of course (even if we could not have done so if digital storage had not become so cheap so quickly⁶). Perhaps it costs a little bit more for a collection of reproduction prints or books (I suspect that many of us already have too many photo books⁷). And there may still be current photographers that we admire whose original prints are not tooooo expensive (especially those who sell digital prints and are not so well celebrated). And perhaps it might be worth investing what might seem a considerable sum for something we consider particularly special (even if this might then compete with an investment in new gear). But certainly, for most of us, any thought of systematic or compulsive collecting of originals would be out of our reach.

Unless, perhaps, it is only in the form of digital files. In a recent book, the Swiss author Mona Chollet (currently Editor of Le Monde Diplomatique), discusses her passion for collecting all types of images under different themes on Pinterest⁸. She will scour magazines, postcards in Museum shops, other digital sources and imaging streams, for images that attract her and which she relates to strongly. These are by no means limited to photographs but include art from around the world and she suggests that

they are the equivalent of the list of things “that make the heart beat faster” drawn up by Sei Shônagon, Lady-in-Waiting to the Empress Consort of Japan in The Pillow Book written in the 11th Century⁹~Mona Chollet, D’images et d’eau fraiche, p.23¹⁰

Such a collection can clearly become compulsive, but has an associated difficulty of dealing with what is essentially choices from an infinite gamut of possibilities, what she calls the “vertigo of the elusive”. She notes that “I felt the almost irresistible force of attraction of this infinite labyrinth, it sucked me in, it siphoned off my attention, my energy, it wore out my eyes.” (p.86), raising the question as to whether this is something to be enjoyed or regretted. Her collection is frequently revised and rearranged because, as she writes,

“..it is also the inside of my brain that I organise, it is the neural connections that I hope to encourage; it seems to me that I am working to increase my mental clarity. To sort, eliminate, reorganise, is to update a body of books or images, and bring it into line with the evolution of my tastes and interests, and thus create a magic mirror which will show me the way, and indicate which subject I should follow now~op.cit., p76/77

The book has, as a subtitle, “what our collections say about us”. We do not perhaps have to be quite so passionate about collecting images as Mona Chollet, as to reveal something about our tastes and interests in what we choose to show others, either on our walls at home, in the galleries on our photography web sites, or sometimes, if we are brave enough, in exhibitions.

Objects are not inert or passive; they help us to give shape to our identities and purpose to our lives. We engage with them in a complex interactive or behavioural dance in the course of which the weight of significance which they carry affects what we think and feel and how we act.~Susan M. Pearce, 2013, p18¹¹

Because showing our collections to others (whether of our own images or of our collections of other photographers or artists) does surely reveal a lot about us. Our own images will reveal our (good or poor) technique, our (good or poor) sense of composition, our tastes in subject matter. Our personal selection of others, especially those we have spent real money on, will reveal the things that make our hearts beat a little faster, though that can, of course, change over time so that some reorganisation and replacement might be necessary. And, we may not need to spend so much.

Nowadays I am recognised as a bona fide collector, but I doubt there are any other collectors who buy so much with so little money. That’s because I leave the collecting of already recognised pieces [and signatures] to others: I concentrate on beautiful things that have yet to be recognised. In short I have always collected things with little market value.~Soetsu Yanagi, 2018, p246¹²

I can remember two important images that sort of started my collection of the images of other photographers many years ago now. Both were not so expensive. The first was one of Ansel Adams, Frozen Lake and Cliffs, Sierra Nevada, 1932¹³, not perhaps one of his best known, but which revealed to me the potential of achieving abstraction in landscape photography. It was not too expensive because I only have a reproduction print, but it was framed and on the wall of my office for decades. The second is the Lynch Clough image of John Blakemore from his All Flows series¹⁴, which I also only have in reproduction, and that only in book form (and at first I only had a photocopy that is still in a box somewhere¹⁵). That image showed me how water could produce fascinating abstracts, something I have been exploring ever since (and perhaps was trying to do even before… it is a very long time ago now). Later, as money became a little less of a worry, I have original prints from John and Eliza Forder and Paul Kenny to Fay Godwin, Michael Kenna and John Sexton (all when prices were still not toooo expensive!)¹⁶. My first purchase from Paul Kenny, Blackstone, Bright Water, 1992¹⁷, led to a great admiration of his work, and a small collection of his images¹⁸.

Ansel Adams, Frozen Lake and Cliffs, Sierra Nevada, 1932⁹

John Blakemore, Lynch Clough¹⁰

My very first Paul Kenny, Blackstone - Bright Water, 1992¹¹

The point is, I think, that a collection does not need to be large to be personally important. While clearly any collection that is only stored on Instagram or Pinterest does not involve great cost and can be so enormous as to be difficult to control (a little like our own archives of digital images), those that we might put on the wall when space on the wall is limited will have a particular significance. Being built up over time, they are part of our history and development as photographers. They reflect where we were as well as where we are now. They will generally have been chosen with great care and get to be changed from time to time as we ourselves change.

What is true of all objects as such is equally true of those groups of objects that we call collections. They, too, as collective entities as well as in terms of their individual components, have histories which can be traced, and are susceptible to analysis, which, viewed from the appropriate perspective, will reveal the very important part they play in the construction of power and prestige and the manifestation of superiority. They too, are active carriers of meaning, and have a very large share in the creation of individual personality and the way our lives are shaped.~Susan M. Pearce, 2013, p.20

For me that also tended to be the case when taking my own images in the days of film. I had a sort of unspoken question when thinking about taking an image (at least for those when not directly documenting family or travels). Would it be likely to replace one that was already printed or on the wall? If not, then why not wait or look elsewhere because film exposures were limited, and enlargements were expensive (and, of course, even more so now). That inevitably changed with the collection of digital images. Storage is now cheap, multiple variants on an image and bracketing of exposures or focus are cheap. The problem is much more how to organise the collection and decide on which of the variants of the image appeals most. This choice might also change over time so perhaps it is worth keeping all of the variants for now…… It is all too easy to be a little lackadaisical about managing our own collections (and their back-ups – also an important consideration).

Better than one already printed and framed? Val de Nant, Valais, Switzerland (Taken on Ilford 120 Delta 100 in 1997)

But collections require research and careful consideration - in short, a commitment of significant time. To be successful they need regular arranging and managing and rearranging and re-evaluation. There will be moments when choices are made that become more or less fixed – when we finalise a book of our work, or publicise a portfolio, or decide to print and frame an image, or to make a new purchase – but, as in the case of the on-line image collection of Mona Chollet, we are more and more faced with the immensity of the task created by the sheer number of images that build up over time.

Photography is all about such choices. This starts with where we choose to go, the equipment we choose to take, where we choose to stand and what composition and settings we choose for an image, and the moment we choose to take an image. The choices continue with what to keep of all the images taken. There are ways of limiting that task, such as giving star ratings in camera when first reviewing images. Some systems then allow only the chosen starred images to be downloaded for later storage and post-processing. Our starred images can then be kept in categories by themes or places, as digital galleries or printed portfolios.

In some cases we can follow this outcome, if not the process, of selection, such as in the book produced of The Portfolios of Ansel Adams¹⁹. In some cases, we can see how a collection can become addictive, such as in the enthusiasm of Martin Parr for his wonderful Autoportraits (started well before the age of selfies, but which he has followed up more recently in Death by Selfie)²⁰, or the attempt by David B. Jenkins to photograph all the See Rock City farm barns scattered through multiple US states²¹. At this point, the question of when collecting crosses that border to addictive hoarding becomes an issue. Perhaps in the cases of the famous photographic hoarders such as Vivian Maier and Garry Winogrand there was a problem of choice from all the negatives that they had taken (or was just that the act of photographing was more important than the results).

In the late 1990s, the popularity of relational model theories, such as self-psychology, led to the application of these theories to describe collecting as well, which pose the idea that collecting establishes a better sense of self. The psychoanalytic perspective generally identified five main motivations for collecting: for selfish purposes; for selfless purposes; as preservation, restoration, history, and a sense of continuity; as financial investment and as a form of addiction. Addictive collecting was termed hoarding and reflected a "dark side" of collecting behaviour.~Susan M. Pearce, 1994, p.157²²

Is there a little of that compulsive hoarding behaviour in us all as photographers²³? An imperative feeling of need to add to our collection of visual memories so that they do not get forgotten²⁴. Our collection of images shows that we were there, that we had that experience (which is surely one reason why over-processed and artificially generated images are so dissatisfying). That imperative explains, perhaps, why we are enthusiasts, and why, in some cases, we are prepared to carry equipment to higher elevations and more extreme environments to record the experience. It might also explain why we will try to emulate the work of other photographers we admire and might want to include in our collections, including going to some of the classic landscape locations.

A Classic Location: Lower Antelope Canyon, Page, AZ (taken on Ilford 120 Delta 100 in 1996). Still on the wall.

A Classic Location: Bisti Badlands New Mexico (taken on Fuji 120 Reala in 1996)

A Classic Location Val Versasca, Tessin, Switzerland (taken on Fuji 120 Reala in 1997)

Fortunately, such dark psychotic behaviour seems to be very well-hidden in most of the landscape photographers I have encountered (including at the On Landscape Meeting of Minds sessions when we still had them). They seem to be mostly a very cheerful and supportive bunch. It would, however, be really interesting to hear a little about your own collections and attitudes to collecting in the comments.

References

1. See A Classification of Landscapes in Issue 294
2. Following the death of former Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, it was revealed that he had devoted significant resources to collecting some 25 thousand paintings, many of them not very good by all accounts, including purchases made on television auction shows, see https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/world/europe/berlusconis-art-collection.html,
   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/31/silvio-berlusconi-art-collection-italy-lucas-vianini-curator?ref=upstract.com,
   https://www.thecollector.com/silvio-berlusconis-worthless-art-collection/ )
3. see https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/elton-john-tate-modern-radical-eye-photography/index.html
4. Part of the Elton John and David Furnish collection can be seen in the exhibition Fragile Beauty at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London until 5th January 2025 (though if you are not a member it will cost you £20 to do so). See https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/fragile-beauty-photographs-from-the-sir-elton-john-and-david-furnish-collection
5. Taken from https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/sir-elton-johns-photography-collection-unveiled/
6. I remember a professorial colleague who worked on the processing of radar rainfall images, proudly showing off his new 256Mb hard disk system that had been purchased for his research group in the late 1980s. It had cost £250,000 (or approximately £1000 per Mb). Compare that to a 128Gb SD Card (about £0.0002 per Mb) or a Terabyte Raid Systems today!
7. And there are, of course, guides available as to what landscape photography books you should have in your collections, see https://photographycourse.net/best-landscape-photography-books/ or https://amateurphotographer.com/book_reviews/the-best-landscape-photography-books/ . You may not agree with those choices!
8. Mona Chollet: D’Images et d’eau fraiche, Flammiron, 2022 (in French)
9. From Wikipedia : Sei Shōnagon (c. 966–1017 or 1025) was a Japanese author, poet, and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi (Sadako) around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is the author of The Pillow Book (makura no sōshi). The work is a collection of essays, anecdotes, poems, and descriptive passages which have little connection to one another except for the fact they are ideas and whims of Shōnagon's spurred by moments in her daily life. In it she included lists of all kinds, personal thoughts, interesting events in court, poetry, and some opinions on her contemporaries. While it is mostly a personal work, Shōnagon's writing and poetic skill makes it interesting as a work of literature, and it is valuable as a historical document.
10. The translations from D’Images et d’eau fraiche are mine throughout
11. Pearce, S., 2013. On collecting: An investigation into collecting in the European tradition. Routledge.
12. Soetsu Yanagi, 2018, The beauty of everyday things, Penguin Books
13. https://www.anseladams.com/frozen-lake-and-cliffs-sierra-nevada/?doing_wp_cron=1706804874.2047240734100341796875
14. https://www.johnblakemore.co.uk/collections/landscape-all-flows/products/lynch-clough-from-sequence-all-flows
15. Actually in the pre-internet days I even had a collection of simple photocopies of images that I thought important. The quality was appalling of course, but it was still a reminder of something that had had impact on me. It is so much easier now with digital collections, even if available images are often limited in resolution.
16. I once had the chance to buy a copy of The Sea Horizon by Garry Fabien Miller, with tipped in original colour prints, in a bookshop in the Charing Cross Road in London but £75 was much too much money for a book on my budget at the time. How I wish I had a copy now (apparently only 750 were produced and many of those were destroyed in a warehouse fire). To get an idea of some of the images, taken from his house near Bristol looking across the Bristol Channel, see https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2013/sep/12/garry-fabian-miller-sea-horizons-photographs
17. https://paul-kenny.co.uk/gallery_283322.html#photos_id=5010416
18. See https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2022/01/full-moon-over-mayo-paul-kenny/
19. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/447910.The_Portfolios_of_Ansel_Adams
20. See https://www.lensculture.com/articles/martin-parr-martin-parr-s-hilarious-self-portraits; https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2016/feb/19/the-many-faces-of-martin-parr-autoportrait-returns-in-pictures; https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/society-arts-culture/martin-parr-interview-book-death-by-selfie/
21. See David B Jenkins, Rock City Barns: A Passing Era, 1996 at
    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3201274-rock-city-barns;
    https://blueridgecountry.com/newsstand/magazine/rock-city-barns-disappearing-icons-of-the-blue-ridge/
22. Susan M. Pearce, The Urge to Collect, in Susan M. Pearce (Ed.) Interpreting Objects and Collections, Routledge, pp157-159, 1994.
    This is a subject of serious academic research in psychology– see for example, Nordsletten, A.E. and Mataix-Cols, D., 2012. Hoarding versus collecting: where does pathology diverge from play?. Clinical Psychology review, 32(3), pp.165-176.
23. See The Road Not Taken article in On Landscape Issue No. 306

Défense d’entrée

After some years of wandering and photographing the mysterious Thèze valley in South West France - a valley barely 500m wide and a few kilometres less that its 26 kilometre river - a ‘Défense d’entrée’ (Do not enter) sign and barrier went up in front of an informal path which follows the river to one of my favourite late winter scenes of golden ochres, soft browns and purple-reds. At the same time, a French flag was raised above the fisherman’s cabin in view from the barrier.

This region is often now seen as idyllic for its relatively untouched landscapes of mixed woodland, rocky outcrops, rivers, extraordinary light, and the possibility to explore fairly freely. However, until the 1970s it was an area of subsistence farming; life was very hard and most of the land was used for crops: maize, wheat, vines, walnuts, vegetable gardens (and earlier hemp, unPl colonial industries replaced it).

For centuries, farmers worked small plots of land that covered the hillsides and were separated by dry stone walls, of which many ruins remain. Those who had plots in the valley that bordered the river were bound to keep their part of the river edges ‘clean’ to reduce flooding, and they farmed right up to the water edge to maximise crop yields.

The landscape would have been a very different place to photograph then as black and white photographs of the valley from the early 20th century corroborate. Farming practices and policy have a huge effect on the landscape composition.

Land as Archive

When we photograph landscapes over time, we are witness to landscape transformation, and photographs create visual archives of the land. These changes are constant, some obvious, some less so, and some intangible, as over time, we also learn about places and they become imbued with meaning, difficult to shake off. Practice builds up the personal, not just informative reading of landscape, stories give depth and our own life path figures; the camera moves more into the shadows and the light.

Interviewing neighbours, both in their 70s, who have known each other their whole lives, they tentatively talk about their fathers being deported to work farms in Germany in the second world war. “Your father too? My father too”.

In this cradle, we see the effects of deep time and the changes of the last couple of centuries. Geological crevices carved out from millennia-old rivers form the valley where the early trade tracks took farmers to the watermills with their grain, later replaced by a tarmacked road used by the Nazis as they murderously returned north, and we now drive to find the best photographic spots.

This road also enabled the development of an industrial size quarry in the 1930s which replaced the many small quarries that previously peppered the valley. This quarry was controversially expanded just a couple of years ago after debate in the community around job creation and environmental damage. The opening, always a large mouth of geological data, now jaggedly zig zags deeper into the hill.

Oaks, Maples, Hornbeams rise up on the hillsides

As most of the next generation have left for work elsewhere and a European directive has come in to protect waterways with a non-cultivable ‘natural filter’ on either side, trees and bushes have flourished, and new ecosystems have developed. A few areas of agriculture remain, such as a sole walnut grove, some maize for animal feed, and some small poplar plantations, which are noteworthy for their regularity, but this small, beautiful valley has never been so wooded.

As I have photographed over the years, I have become more attuned to seemingly endless diversity in form and colour. Each moment brings a different set of variables, which in turn affects compositions. A warm, long autumn means the leaves fall late and are unusually lit by the lower winter sun. A particularly beautiful January shines light on ‘bare’ silver lichen-covered trees. This year’s wet weather means summer landscapes are more lush than usual, the strong mid year sun creating radiant streams of light into woodland groves.

The river itself, which shimmers in early morning light, is difficult to photograph as the border vegetation blocks views. This beauty belies the fact that the river is no longer fed by its source as further north there are places where the bed is dry and completely covered by a tunnel of brambles and blackthorn. This may be due to plots no longer being cleared or perhaps because of a mechanical cleaning of the river bed which damaged the limestone floor.

Enormity and the minute is in every click of the shutter

A few weeks ago, I parked up by the large craggy overhanging rocks near the quarry to look West to one my favourite panoramas, an unassuming swathe of mixed woodland that gets bathed by the setting sun so as to bring forth the delicate trunks of young growth and gentle swirls of foliage. It took me a moment to realise, a ‘time-stood-still moment’ of unwilling admission, that a recently planted field of wee poplars was growing in front of the woodland.

It would be around 20 years until I could return to the vista I like to photograph, the time for the fast growing crop to mature and be cut for wood for industry. A non-amount of time and a painful amount of time for me to be cut off from the endless mystery within this area of land.

At a similar time, I went back to the ‘Defense entree’ barrier, slid past - I had made some calls and been told I could ignore it - and walked past the fisherman’s hut. The French flag was on the ground, scrunched up in the muddy grass of the wet spring we were having. The village baker said everyone in the fisherman’s association had fallen out with each other.

The river here curves and drops enough to create quite a noise of rushing water, unusual in its energised movement through and onwards. It will continue past disused mills (saw; wheat and walnut), the picturesque village football grounds, a buried medieval graveyard and fortified tower, and a site of prehistoric finds. Just a few more kilometres and it will reach the Lot river, to then be taken West to the Garonne and eventually out to the Atlantic.

As photographers, enormity and the minute is in every click of the shutter knowing the landscape is in constant flux through growth and decay, human intervention and experience.

It gains momentum from some unseeable distance, beginning beyond comprehension. Hidden forces make it swell and pulse and breath forward, backward, and side to side - it is ceaselessly in motion. As though from an invisible channel deep within, it begins to have a sense of form and direction that is outside of the realm of choice, ambition, or direction. The form, which at first is obscured and buried beneath itself, starts to make itself known, to be distinct and recognizable, to impinge itself upon from where it came; it is unignorable. Suddenly - with all of the forces that inspired it, all of the distance it has traveled, all of the power that it can generate - it leaps forward with a restless desire and reaches towards the emptiness in hopes of an unknowable end.

At the apex of its power it is imposing, beautiful, unstoppable, dangerous, and necessary - and there is nothing left for it to do but to see itself out in a brilliant cacophonic crash of sparks that diffuse into the depths, once again part of the great unseeable force that, without a sense of agency, begins the process anew in an endless cycle. Despite this, evidence of its existence and influence remain on the edge of the vast expanse, shaping and reshaping that which holds it.

We are upon the wave - this particular, unique combination of time and space that is a small part of the grander cycle of existence. Like waves, the human realm unfolds in similar cycles and movements, in violent crashes and unseen channels, reality being constructed through the destruction of the past and the future being shaped by the consequences of the present. If we are lucky (which, if you’re reading this, you probably are), we have the chance to actively engage with the cycle, to be a part of the wave instead of a passive onlooker, to assuage the striving and helpless desire to influence, impose, and demand, to understand our small yet still (relatively speaking) significant role in this. To be, in more simple terms, alive to the facts of living.

The realms of art - and by extension (some) photography - are not exempt from this inherently cyclical, wave-like nature. The evolution of art is unimaginably complex and defies any “real” explanation beyond “this happened then this happened then this happened,” leaving us with a trail of loose artifacts and remnants of what the humans before us might have thought, might have been like, might have seen and experienced - a vague shadow of the long-gone, full-blooded echoes that thought and felt and lived. Looking backwards towards the overwhelming, expansive horizon of the past requires some simplification if we are to make anything useful out of it. Even in individual lives this must be so.

What results in this backwards looking exercise is what we call “art history:” the categories of inclusion/exclusion, the dividing lines between names, peoples, and cultures, the illusion that it was meant to be because it happens to have happened, the path to here and now. Yet we don’t often think of ourselves as being inside the path of history, as influencing and being influenced in the present.

Let’s consider a recent wave in photographic history: the “straight photography” movement started by Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham, John Paul Edwards, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, and Edward Weston (among other less prominent members), which began with the infamous Group F64. The primary photographic aesthetic of the time, Pictorialism, is not easily defined but can be summed up as: prioritizing artistic expression (whatever that meant to artists of the time) and visual beauty over the “simple” act of documenting reality, often achieved through soft focus, often heavy manipulation, and subjects that were intended to evoke strong emotional responses. To grossly simplify, Group F64’s goals were to differentiate photography from other fine art mediums (e.g. painting) by embracing the inherent qualities and strengths of the camera - the ability to record, in precise detail and sharp focus, real entities (objects, nature, people) in the physical world.

From our privileged position today this may seem silly; of course cameras capture the physical world, and of course they can represent its beauty in astounding fidelity and accuracy while at the same time expressing something of the artist. But Group F64 had a tough go at it, struggling against pervasive biases and misunderstandings in the establishment circles of art, their particular wave defiantly forming against the shapeshifting expanse, hurtling towards something as yet unknown. There are many reasons for their success, some being: 1) advancements in camera technology continuously improved the ease of accurately representing the physical world as well as the quality of the representations, 2) a few particularly strong-headed members of the group (as well as some outside the group, such as Alfred Stiegletz) ceaselessly promoted the philosophical and artistic positions that bound the movement together, and 3) unpredictable changes in the cultural landscape that happened to align with their movement made their photographs, which were continuously improving in quality, more appealing to a broader public (again, simplifying a hugely complex series of events impacting untold numbers of people into a small number of words).

This success did not happen overnight; yet within the full course of what will be known as photographic history, this period of time is just a single wave in the evolution and unfolding of our most cherished medium. And even within Group F64, not all members were fully in agreement on the limits, strengths, values, and uses of photographic art, and, even as it was being formed, the far-ranging consequences were not yet understood by the artists themselves.

Heading back to today, we take the current state of photography for granted, as if the current aesthetic preferences of photographers and non-photographers comes from some unknowable, inherent source. We are still, 91 years since the founding of Group F64, in the wake of their wave, influenced in subtle and obvious ways by the consequences of this movement. Though photography has continued to evolve into a multitude of things, nature photography remains entrenched, from a cultural and historical point of view, in the works of Group F64 (most prominently, Ansel Adams). This is strange, especially considering that the art of painting has transformed and evolved tremendously in style and form since the 1920s: surrealism, art deco, social realism, abstract expressionism, pop art, minimalism, modernism, and postmodernism being a rough sequence.

Similar arcs are followed in any such artistic movement: a new idea or method emerges, subscribers of the past ideas cry foul in indignation, the revolutionaries hold their ground, converts emerge slowly then all at once, the new idea becomes the old, and a newer idea comes to start the process again. The most critical juncture of this process is the emergence of new ideas, ideas formed not in isolation but in the messiness of a present that is irrevocably and intrinsically born from the past. It may be that a single person is the source of a novel technique, philosophy, idea, or approach; it may also be that a change arises from a collective, semi-conscious shift in cultural attitudes. Regardless, a wave crashes.

Most importantly, whether we like it or not, we are upon a wave ourselves - right now, right here. At some point in the future, the art that is being made today will be known and categorized as “X period” or “X movement,” and the personal, unique, passionate, unclassifiable work we make will fall into some human-made bucket. As experiencers of art, we have agreed that it is helpful to group, categorize, and define work within concepts because it gives us greater context and understanding for why an artwork exists in the way that it does. Why does a van Gogh have such bold and visible brushstrokes, use such vivid and intense color, depart in such a way from observable reality? The easy (and boring) answer is that he was part of the Post-Impressionist movement; the complex (and interesting) answer is, in a way, unknowable.

Will we, in our position of privilege as tacit ambassadors, take responsibility for the role we have in the unseen consequences of the unfolding of the medium which we claim to love, or will we act in the darkness of ignorance and egocentrism, under the illusion that we exist in a vacuum of free will and self-determinism?

Beyond the wave that we all sit upon, there are our smaller, more subtle individual splashes. We each have our set of influences, our personal history that makes us the photographers (or artists, if you use that term) that we are. We emerge quickly from the salty soup and slip back into it even faster, barely noticeable. Despite the transitory and feeble influence we may have, it is influence all the same. Knowing that we are upon the wave, that we too have influence and are influenced, where does that leave us?

As artists, it’s natural to desire uniqueness and individuality in our work, especially if we claim to make expressive and personal art. Novelty and the emergence of new ideas is critical to how art develops; without novelty, uniqueness, and individuality art would be stale, boring, and useless. The difficult truth is that not all photographs (or art, more generally) can be truly unique, that within any medium there is a process of unfolding both for the individual and for the collective community of artists, that categories of art exist on continuums and are useful in giving viewers a place from which to experience art, that creating art is as much about understanding the history, nuances, and limits of what came before us as it is about our attempts to chart a personal path through the haziness of our point of view.

Setting aside the larger facts - that I was born in 1990s, that I grew up mostly in California, and that I have my own specific combination of genetics and environment - my photographic influence can be backtracked like so: the first landscape photographer that I knew and interacted with in 2020 is my (now) friend Martin Gonzalez who in turn introduced me to his inspirations (Eric Bennett, Alex Noriega, Sarah Marino, Guy Tal, TJ Thorne, Ben Horne, Jennifer Renwick, and Brent Clark), leading me down a path of consuming and being inspired by how these artists saw the natural world, discovering who in turn inspired them while at the same time learning that there was a loose community of similarly-to-me influenced photographers making images in the bounds of my newly found aesthetic preferences, and over time actively attempting to learn more about the history of photography and other mediums of art in order to understand the evolution that led to today. I know this is a precariously poised unfolding that could have gone in various, undefinable paths.

This, of course, is only part of the story. The point is that we all have a story like this; we all come from somewhere, artistically speaking. To recognize this within oneself privately and publicly allows one to consciously strive to use their influences in a way that respects others’ contributions to the wave and to themselves without attempting to copy or recreate, to understand that - though their images may not be 100%,

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the flexibility and control you have over your reaction to new information), this points to a sobering truth: all art is derivative (even that photo of wet mud in pre-dawn light you took just last week). This is no excuse for intentionally derivative and duplicative art or art that is clearly attempting to supplant and displace original works with nothing new to add. What I hope to impart here is not hopelessness but hope. It’s ok to not make hyper-unique, wholly novel, influence-free work; it’s ok to be influenced by what you consume and what came before you. Within the constraints of creating art upon this particular wave, there is plenty of space for your personal point of view, your uniqueness, and your particular splash. In fact, it is these constraints - the limits imposed by the aesthetics of today and the unknown possibilities of the future - that create the next wave, and you may be lucky enough to find yourself upon it, again at the edge of discovery and consequence.

In summary: don’t strive for or even hope for ultimate individuality, be aware of and proud of your influences (and be honest about them), be upon the wave and embrace being a part of it but don’t let yourself be consumed by it, remember that what you do today matters not only for yourself but for the next generation also.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

All is calm, expectant and at rest. You are out of the world’s chatter, its corridor echoes, its muttering. Walking: it hits you at first like an immense breathing in the ears. You feel the silence as if it were a great fresh wind blowing away clouds. ~Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking

As we are all landscape photographers, I am, of course, mostly talking to the already converted. But there is a great deal of evidence that walking is good for you, even if the recommended daily dose of 10,000 steps has recently been revised to suggest that only 3967 is sufficient¹. As well as the general benefits of being out in nature, recent research studies have suggested that walking can reduce the effects of weight gaining genes, reduce cravings for sugary treats, reduce the risk of breast cancer, reduce joint pain, and boost immune function². It has even been suggested that it might boost creativity³. And in my experience, it just helps you to feel better. Many recent popular books have stressed the benefits of walking for both health and temperament.

Some that can be recommended include The Salt Path on the coastal paths of South-West England by Raynor Winn (though its sequels a little less); A Walk in the Woods on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson; Wild on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed; The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, by Robert MacFarlane (actually multiple walks); How to Walk by Thich Nhat Hanh, and In Praise of Paths by Torbjørn Ekelund. There are also many well-known older books, including Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson, written in 1879⁴. This is a classic case of the Englishman (or in his case Scotsman) abroad finding it difficult to accept local advice, but the book became celebrated enough that the route he took through the Cévennes from Le Monastier to Alais (now Alès) with Modestine (his stubborn and resistant donkey) is now known as the Stevenson Path. Other classics are John Hilaby’s Journey through Britain (1968), describing his walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor, published in 1977 but describing part of his walk from the Hook of Holland to as far as Constantinople in 1933/34 (there were 2 further volumes, the last published posthumously).

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move, to feel the needs and hitches of our life more readily …. And when the present is so exacting who can annoy himself about the future. ~Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a donkey in the Cévennes

Passed on the GR70 Stevenson Path: Fencepost with gorse and GR waymarker

The Stevenson Path is actually a somewhat longer route starting in Puy-en-Velay⁵. Many other well-signposted long-distance paths are already well known, such as the Pennine Way, the pilgrim routes to St. Jacques de Compostelle in Spain, and the network of Sentiers de Grandes Randonnées in France (the Stevenson Path is the GR70)⁶ . More recent additions include the Rota Vincentina or Fisherman’s Path in Portugal⁷; the High Scardus Trail in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia⁸; the West Highland Trail in Scotland⁹; the South Downs Way in Sussex and Hampshire¹⁰; and by combining the Welsh Coastal Path with the Offa’s Dyke Trail you can now verify the size of Wales by walking all the way around it¹¹.

All, intentionally or not, draw in ancient and modern mythologies of walking - from pilgrimages and diasporas to flâneurisms and derives - as part of their effect. … it is assumed that the artist/walker comes and goes, does no harm. It is assumed that the artist loves and seeks to protect the landscape through which he moves. ~Andrea Phillips. Walking and Looking¹²

On the TransSwiss Trail: The packhorse track to the St. Gotthard with waymark

As a way of travelling, of course, it is slow, but with patience great distances can be achieved, and at a pace that allows you to look at the flowers, listen to the birds, rest by running waters, and chance by photo opportunities. Such opportunities are not generally planned, but are rather serendipitous, views passed by en route. This means, however, a degree of concentration is required to spot those opportunities when they arise, something that induces focus on your surroundings as you walk. But walking allows that in ways that faster means of travel by bike or car do not do so to the same extent. With speed comes other things to concentrate on.

Walking is the best way to go more slowly than any other method that has ever been found.~ Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking

Of course, walking was once a necessity to travel anywhere if you were not rich enough to afford a diligence or horse – hence the expression to travel by “Shank’s pony”¹³. In print, walking has been recommended by writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) in his book Reveries of the Solitary Walker (1778) that he had been working on in the months before he died (albeit, that the book is primarily an extended complaint against those who have persecuted him – his house in Môtiers was literally stoned in 1765).

I can find no manner so simple and effectual, to execute this purpose, as to keep a faithful register on my solitary walks and the reveries which accompany them; when I find my mind entirely free, and suffer my ideas to follow their bent, without resistance or control. These hours of solitude and meditation are the only ones in the day when I am entirely myself, and for myself, without diversion, or obstacle; and when I can truly say, I am what nature designed me.~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of a Solitary Walker, 2nd Walk

Rousseau’s writings later inspired the Prelude of William Wordsworth (1770-1850). Others who have been inspired by walking have been Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) in his lecture on Walking delivered in Concord in 1851; and the French philosopher Frédéric Gros who wrote a Philosophy of Walking published in 2008.

Walking is not a sport. Putting one foot in front of the other is child’s play. When walkers meet, there is no result, no time: the walker may say which way he has come, mention the best path for viewing the landscape, what can be seen from this or that promontory.Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking

The philosopher Immanuel Kant (1728-1804) never left his home village of Könisburg but would take a walk every day at 5pm regardless of the weather and always alone because, breathing through his nose, he did not want to have to talk to someone. The route he used is now known as the Philosopher’s Walk. He did not walk for exercise (in summer heat he would go very slowly and rest in the shade) but to clear his head from the imperatives of thinking and writing. Another philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), was even more committed to walking particularly when he was staying at his house in Sils Maria in the Engadine in Switzerland. He would walk for up to eight hours a day as an aid to thinking (and coping with migraines), scribbling notes as he went. Many of his (rather dense) books were composed in this way, including Thus spake Zarathustra (there is a Zarathustrastein at the edge of Lake Silvaplana near Sils Maria).

Walking remains a relatively cheap way of travelling (depending on how far you need to pay for accommodation if walking long distances) but takes time. While the slow speed is an advantage for the photographer, taking the camera for a walk also has some disadvantages. One is the additional weight that needs to be carried, especially if walking for many days, which with digital might also require a need to recharge batteries)¹⁵. The second is that in focusing on potential images, especially the small-scale details, the need to look around means that you spend less time looking at where you put your feet, increasing the possibility of tripping over something¹⁶. I also find that the continued concentration can add to the fatigue, especially when walking with others so that it is only polite not to spend too much time exploring a potential image giving rise to a certain stress in taking an image quickly.

Passed on the TransSwiss Trail: Detail of reflections on the Doubs River

You might already know the types of things you expect to see, from looking at a map, reading a guide, searching Google Earth, or using apps such as Photopills¹⁷– the mountain views, the tumbling streams and waterfalls or wide tranquil rivers, the wild flowers, the old farm buildings and alpine chalets, or sometimes the railway lines or motorways at the bottom of the valley. But you still need to find the image or thought (there is perhaps an analogy here with the strolling street photographer or flaneur). As Susan Sontag put it:

The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnaitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque'.Susan Sontag, On Photography

On the TransSwiss trail: roads at the bottom of the valley - the old road, the new road and the railway climbing towards the St. Gotthard Pass

Finding the image for the landscape photographer will always be a challenge: It might be a detail, a particular play of light on the landscape, or the anticipation of a composition of elements coming into alignment to left or to right as you approach. And do not forget that the image might be behind you, so that it is worth looking back now and again.

It is one of the secrets of walking: a slow approach to landscapes that renders them familiar. Like the regular encounters that deepen friendship. Thus a mountain skyline that stays with you all day, which you observe in different lights, defines and articulates itself. When you are walking, nothing moves: only imperceptibly do the hills draw closer, the surroundings change. ….. When we are walking it isn’t so much that we are drawing nearer, more that the things out there become more and more insistent in our body. Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking

A conjunction of elements coming into alignment, Val Roseg, Switzerland

This results, however, in a third disadvantage of taking a camera for a walk in that it can break up the rhythm of walking, punctuating the progress with a series of pauses. Such pauses can be a good excuse to stop when tired or going steeply uphill, but rhythm is important in walking. The continuity and simplicity of the rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other provides the opportunity to create distance towards the goal for the day and away from the stresses and strains of everyday life. There are not too many decisions to be made and those are simple: where to place the next foot (rather important on rough ground when traversing steep slopes or on forest paths with roots); and which way to turn when you meet a junction¹⁸.

The further I walked, however, I found, in contrast, that my mind began to quieten down. And emptied. I stopped thinking, and instead focused on my tiredness. The weight of my feet. The pain in my back. And I began to wander and wonder whether walking could provide a way through the thoughts that dominate my work. A way through intellectual practice. Cliff Andrade, Researching Walking as Art Practice, 2021¹⁹

One satisfying element of walking a long-distance path (whether designated or, even better, of your own invention from studying the maps) is the sense of progress through the landscape without having to return to your starting point. This is easier, of course, in some places than in others. The public transport system in Switzerland has allowed me and my partner Monique to follow some of the national trails in sections of a few days without having to carry too much weight (important now we are over 70 …. even if I am still a bit jealous of those who can backpack both camping gear and large format film cameras into the wild²⁰). In recent years, we have completed the Via Jakobi from Lake Constance in the north to Geneva in the South; the Crêtes du Jura down the western frontier with France; and the TransSwiss Trail (from Porrentruy in the west to Tessin in the south-east, in that way. All have been extremely rewarding.

Passed on the TransSwiss Trail: The Reuss on the approach to the St. Gotthard

Such walks are liberating as well as keeping us in good shape. Even if not taking the camera for a walk, the physical effort does not leave much energy for other worries. Such multiday walks do not allow any control over the light, of course: you have to be pragmatic and accept the serendipity principle in balancing progress in distance with the time spent in waiting for the right light… and the patience of your walking companion(s). But staying overnight, particularly up in the mountains does allow opportunities at the beginning and the end of the day²¹ (and at night for the astrophotography enthusiasts, though it is quite a good idea to get some rest to be ready for the following day!).

Serendipity: View of a glacier avalanche below the Breithorn from across the Lötschental

First light on the Breithorn from Obersteinberg

Early morning light: the Jungfrau from Lauterbrunnental

But at every junction of course we have the Robert Frost problem of the road not taken. We will often have a goal in mind in deciding which path to take: the continuation of a long distance route, some new valley to explore, some col to traverse, the evening’s accommodation to reach. It is convenient to follow the marked paths, but what about the “roads less travelled by” that might “make all the difference”. It is a similar problem to that of choosing what to photograph: of always going to the classic landscape photograph locations or seeking the serendipitous surprises of some road less travelled. Why follow the herd? Of course, on most long-distance paths herds of sheep or goats are more common than herds of walkers – with the exception perhaps of parts of the Camino de Santiago de Compostella route in the south of France and northern Spain. In that case if you are not a pilgrim yourself and really want to make images of landscapes rather than other pilgrims, then it might be better to choose another route!

Passed on the TransSwiss Trail: Spring in the Val de Doubs

Actually, going on foot in the 21st Century already represents the road less travelled by, whatever path you might choose to take. And, as Rebecca Solnit puts it in her book Wanderlust, walking provides a way to “find what you did not know you were looking for”. Many of the photographs taken along the way are just recording the journey, allowing us to “possess the moment” (Sontag again) and add it to our store of visual memories. But, with luck, just occasionally the opportunity might arise for something better, that combination of elements coming into alignments in just the right light - unplanned even if not exactly unlooked for because, with a camera to hand, we are always looking for that opportunity. To quote Rebecca Solnit again, walking supplies “the unpredictable incidents . . . that add up to a life …” and, for those who do not walk, denies “a vast portion of their humanity.”

What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.Henry David Thoreau, Walking, 1851

There is nothing like walking to get the feel of a country. A fine landscape is like a piece of music; it must be taken at the right tempo. Even a bicycle goes too fastPaul Scott Mowrer (1887-1971)

Viewed from the TransSwiss Trail: morning mist above Worb

Passed on the Stevenson Path: Tree and Rock with Lichens

Passed on the TransSwiss Trail in autumn

Passed on the TransSwiss Trail: Cappella dei Morti south of St. Gotthard Pass

Spring white narcissi on the Col de Lys

Passed on the Stevenson Path north of St. Jean du Gard

Passed on the Stevenson Path: Trees with Lichen

Passed on the Stevenson Path: Lichens and Moss

Sefinental near Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland (taken with an IR Converted X-E2, giving extra weight to carry)

References

1. See https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/aug/09/3967-steps-a-day-the-new-magic-number-for-a-healthy-happy-life
2. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/5-surprising-benefits-of-walking
3. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xlm-a0036577.pdf
4. Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes can be read at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/535/535-h/535-h.htm
5. https://www.gr70-stevenson.com/en/trail.htm. The journey was repeated (with donkeys) as a way out of depression by Christopher Rush in his 2006 book To Travel Hopefully, published by Profile Books, and in a very amusing retelling, by Hilary Msacaskil and Molly Wood, in Downhill All The Way: Walking with donkeys on the Stevenson Trail, also published in 2006. One of the first recorded followers of Stevenson was John Alexander Hammerton as recorded in his book In the track of R. L. Stevenson and elsewhere in old France that appeared in 1907 (but in his case on a bicycle, which in some places may have been no less of a hindrance than a donkey).
6. https://www.gr-infos.com/gr-fr.htm
7. https://rotavicentina.com/en/
8. https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/hike-albania-kosovo-macedonia-high-scardus-trail#
9. https://www.westhighlandway.org
10. https://southdownsway.org
11. https://undiscovered-wales.co.uk/2020/11/14/what-its-like-to-walk-right-around-wales-tips-and-tales-from-the-trail-with-seasoned-hiker-michelle-gollins/. The size of Wales is commonly used as a unit of area – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement#Wales. England is 6.275 times the size of Wales.
12. Andrea Phillips, in Walking and Seeing, provides a more philosophical discussion of the place of walking in contemporary art, but with a focus on the urban landscape. As an example of the type of exposition: “Walking, in this sense, is one marker of an economy of art in which the desire for process-based, participatory, embedded experience has replaced ideals of abstracted contemplation for reasons that compound a schism between ethical engagement and aesthetic representation. Walking has enchanted us precisely because of its own unfinished nature, because it does not seem to acquire a regulatory air, because it is a proposal, not even a maquette or a map, that which Giorgio Agamben would call a 'means without end'." (Cultural Geographies, v12, 507-513)
13. This phrase seems to be of Scottish origin, a play on the word shanks, meaning legs. It is first recorded in The Tea-Table Miscellany: Or, a Complete Collection of Scots Songs, published in 1729 by the Scottish poet, playwright, editor and librarian Allan Ramsay (1686-1758)
14. See, for example, https://walkingart.interartive.org/2018/12/hbm-walking
15. I try to travel as light as possible, either with an Olympus TG waterproof camera with an added telephoto lens (but the lack of a viewfinder is always a bit frustrating) or with Fuji digital cameras and their smaller “fujicron” prime lenses. Both are more than adequate for prints to at least 25x25cm. I did once set out on the Via Jacobi in Switzerland with only 2 spare batteries for the TG with the idea that would only allow an average of 5 images a day to concentrate the mind on choosing only the best. I found that this was a good discipline, but that walk had to be cut short, so I never actually ran out of battery.
16. Something I am somewhat renowned for amongst my nearest and dearest. Fortunately, no injuries have resulted (yet)!
17. See https://www.photopills.com
18. However, it is always worth being careful at junctions, especially where interesting long distance paths are both marked with the same type of trail blazes (red and white bars in France, Belgium and Switzerland, for example). I have once or twice followed the bars, thinking I was on the right track, only to realise that I had missed a turn at a junction of two trails).
19. See https://www.walkingartistsnetwork.org/2021/06/14/researching-walking-as-art-practice where Cliff Andrade describes the start of a walk from John O’Groats to Land’s End in the Walking Artists Network (WAN) blog.
20. See, notably, Alex Burke at https://www.alexburkephoto.com
21. I learned this at an early age when Youth Hostelling in the Lake District with some friends in about 1965. Staying at the Black Sail hut in Ennerdale, which faces west, the setting sun dipped below a layer of cloud, with the reflected light making the cliffs at the head of Ennerdale glow orange. I still have the Kodachrome slide somewhere …..