Welcome back, and thank you to everyone who joined me for the first month of this series. I’ve really enjoyed hearing your thoughts on January’s images and the stories behind them.
January was about moments, those rare instances when timing, light, and opportunity come together in unexpected and colourful ways.
February turns to something quieter, but just as essential: the connections that shape the work, whether through the presence of others, or through noticing and responding to the world around me. Often subtle, often only fully understood in hindsight, these connections are what make the images possible.
'Together' - Brook Bay
At first glance, this image feels unassuming. A familiar path, the boat, a couple silhouetted against the setting sun. No vast sky, no spectacle. And yet, it carries weight.
Taken in 2016, I don’t often include people in my work. I tend to let the landscape speak for itself, shaped by light, shadow and time. But sometimes a human presence anchors a place. Here, the distant figures serve as a quiet marker of connection. They stand at the threshold to Brook Bay, a narrow gateway that opens onto one of the Island’s sweeping West Wight beaches. The boat a familiar reference point for locals, gone now, but it still tells you exactly where this was taken. What the image doesn’t reveal is where I was at the time.
This photograph was taken during a period when anxiety had narrowed my world considerably. I had stepped away from my graphic design course and was rarely leaving the house, except to head out alone at night with my camera. Photography had become both refuge and reason, a way of moving through the world without having to explain myself.
On this particular day, though, I wasn’t alone.
A friend had insisted we go for a drive. No agenda, no pressure, just the simple act of going somewhere. Sometimes I would have my camera and intention, sometimes not. But he would patiently wait. This was a cold Winter’s day in January and I distinctly remember him standing there, hands in pockets, cold setting in, while I asked for just one more shot! He never rushed me. Never questioned it.
He had started working at Ventnor Botanic Garden where I had been selling my work for around a year at that time. He suggested I use one of the spaces there for my first exhibition. It was modest. Local. Perfectly placed. More importantly, it was offered without doubt, as if it was the most natural thing in the world that I should do this.
Looking back now, it’s clear how much that belief mattered.
Confidence doesn’t always arrive as a sudden revelation. Sometimes it grows quietly, through repeated acts of support, through someone showing up again and again until you start to see yourself differently. Until you begin to believe that what you’re making has value.
This image holds that moment, even if you wouldn’t know it at first glance. A familiar path. A pause before something opens up. A reminder that sometimes the most important journeys don’t announce themselves, and that the impact of the right person, at the right time, is often only fully understood in retrospect.
Hay Bales Under The Milky Way
This image came about by chance rather than design.
I had set out that night to photograph Bierley Waterfall, wondering if it might be possible to frame it beneath the Milky Way. Once there, it became clear the location simply wouldn’t work, the waterfall sits low in a sheltered dell, surrounded by dense trees and undergrowth.
Walking back, I noticed the open field behind it. The hay bales were perfectly placed, and the land offered a clear view of the sky. The plan changed. The challenge then became one of composition, using the lines of the field and the form of the bales to lead the eye naturally upwards, towards the Milky Way. What started as a disappointment ended with a very different image to the one I had imagined.
It’s a reminder that having an idea is only the starting point. Sometimes the best photographs come from paying attention to what’s actually there, rather than what you hoped to find.
Thank you for taking the time to read and follow along. These images have been part of a process that continues to teach me to look closer, to wait, and to notice the subtle shifts in light, season, and perspective.
I hope this month’s stories encourage you to look a little longer, and to see the everyday in a new way.
Thanks again, and I’ll see you next month!
Living in a town it’s something I will never see for real myself, so thank you for sharing this video Chad, it’s truly amazing. Who would have thought you’d see them this far south.