LANDSCAPES
The majority of images that hang in The Wynd Gallery in Hexham, and that are here on the website, were captured with little forethought or planning in mind. They were, more often than not, moments stumbled upon by chance. Over time however, patterns have emerged, as have themes, styles, and favourite locations. And as a result, unintentionally, the majority of the landscape photography here at The Wynd Photographic has coalesced into collections almost of its own accord. By presenting images in these collections, alongside other photographs that they share a connection with, the hope is that each will help to illuminate the other, adding context, depth, and perspective.
If you lived here, you’d be home by now
A single woodland over several years. Visits to Swallowship Woods started as a daily pandemic exercise. But they very quickly became, and continue to be, the source of a growing photographic record of an enchanting and constantly changing world, just a mile up the road from Hexham town centre.
Shadows from the lakeshore
On the western shore of Derwentwater in the Lake District, there is a small bay. It has a jetty running from it, two ivy covered trees hanging over it, and from it you can see north to Skiddaw, south to Borrowdale, and across the water to everything in between.
It is a magical spot. And every so often, when the mist descends, it can become something else entirely.
Those fools of time, those senseless things
A stones throw or two from Gairloch, in the north-west of Scotland, there is a fishing village perched on a hillside. At the bottom of the hillside is a strip of pebble beach which seems, according to OS maps, to lack a name.
A week long stay in the fishing village, booked for mountain scrambles and cliff top hikes, was spent walking very slowly, looking down at the shapes and patterns of the beach with no name.
Frosted fields and lamplight
If you are in Angel of Islington, North London, and you’re on the main drag with the tube station on your right, you can just head the way you’re facing. Stay on the road you’re on for 278 miles, then take a left. Then, after 17 miles, take another left. Then, after 400 metres, take a right. Then you’ll be at Tyne Green Country Park on the outskirts of Hexham, where this collection of images was captured.
If you’re not in Angel of Islington in North London, your route will likely be very different.
Swell, then rush, then pause
Not everybody realises that if you take all of the seas and oceans of this world together, and look at them as if they were one body of water, you would be dealing with something that really is very big. Very big indeed. So big in fact, that when compared to all of the land of this world, the amount of the surface of the earth that is just sea or ocean is lots. A really big proportion, some would say.
It stands to reason therefore, that when there is lots of water, and it sits alongside a substantial amount of land, that there are many, many miles of what experts refer to as ‘coast’.
A way by the fellside
A selection of favourite images captured at favourite spots across a favourite part of the country. The national park is changing constantly - not just with the seasons but with the growing numbers visiting each year and the shifts in dynamic and energy that can bring.
For many, walking the hills and valleys of a place like the Lake District is a way of getting away from crowds, not following them or competing with them. All the images in this collection are from visits where that sense of space has been possible, and where there wasn’t a dickhead in sight.
And only then, the light
A ridge of mountains runs almost the entire length of the island of Madeira; dramatic peaks and sheer faces of warm weathered rock, lush forests clinging to seemingly vertical hillsides and crags, all connected by a network of roads so steep they don’t make sense.
The weather rushing in from the Atlantic often catches on this ridge, particularly at a point where it starts to flatten to the west of the island. And something about the mix of elements, of altitude, and temperature, has produced over time, a gnarled, bulbous, ancient, laurel forest that sits within a sea of mist almost twenty-four hours a day. It is as magical as it is ominous. And then there’s the cows.