I’ll admit, I have complained and grumbled about the profusion of location-busting images published to mass media platforms on line. The ‘one-to-many’ phenomena of social media leaves very little to be personally discovered or happened upon. I’m talking of course about the plethora of images taken to record every secret nook and cranny of our wild spaces and the ‘sharing’ on the internet of geotags, detailed instructions to guide the masses to every known photogenic location and online mapping which allows virtual visits to each newly discovered beauty spot before even a pair of walking boots goes into the car with a camera and a tripod.
On my recent visit to the English Lake District, I thought about taking photographs which are my response to this uber-exposure. For this project, I decided to make images which are indeterminate, but instead the small details that resonated with me when I was immersed in the best that nature has to offer.
It’s poetic and personal and the images are not headliners. The moments captured for this project are not determinable, with precise locations established. No need. The beauty of nature doesn’t always need to be pinpointed on a map, just breathed in and breathed out.
This visit to Cumbria was centred in the Borrowdale Valley where you are surrounded by wooded valleys, rugged crags, old mine workings and inviting fells which will soothe your soul. Images are everywhere you look, some showstoppers at iconic locations (if that’s what you want) and others just indeterminate fragments of the same beautiful and diverse environments.
