Coast and Wildwood, Moor and Mountain 2027

Coast and Wildwood, Moor and Mountain 2027

As each year goes by designing an annual calendar gives a chance to reflect on work done the previous year, and to place these images into a sequence with others from the archive. I aim to balance a variety of locations from around the UK with a cross section of those landscape ecotypes that are this calendar's focus.

The 2027 calendar's selection has been influenced by another project. For over a year I have been working on a book, when time has allowed. This was prompted in part by a serious accident in 2024. I realised that if I were ever to write something retrospective it would need to be while I could still remember things! As a landscape photographer my focus is primarily geographic, but there is also an element of autobiography, and the experiences and ideas that inform the creative process. Its core chapter has in turn been influenced by the calendar, which advocates for the wild world wherever it still thrives. My hope is that the book – like the calendar – will appeal not only to photographers, but to anyone with an interest in nature.

I am part of a lucky generation of photographers whose careers began with the mature and settled technology of film in the 1970s or ‘80s. We experienced the full force, both positive and negative, of the digital revolution. Generative AI is the latest element in photography's technological story. But no technological wizardry can beat the simple pleasure of walking outside with a camera in search of beauty and wonder. That remains as true today as it was forty-five years ago.