What influences my photography style?

I have awoken early after losing the battle for bed space with my tiny cat Dexter, trudged downstairs, hopped in and out of the shower, made a lovely early morning coffee (the first one is the best!) and plonked myself down in front of my keyboard to write to you, yes YOU!, about what influences me to create the images I do the way I do.

Since I was first capable of reading I had my nose in a book. I was a massive fan of Enid Blytons Famous Five stories and read and reread those books countless times. I joined my local library and quickly discovered the aisle marked fantasy/fairy tales/myths. Among the dusty tomes were tales of greek gods, dark bavarian forests, hidden glens filled with pixies, castles overflowing with princesses and wizards lurking in great towers. Tales of great heroes sallying forth into danger to save the day, brothers and sisters defeating evil witches, mortals victorious against the gods. tales that sparked an imagination that has influenced my life ever since.

The Elven avenue.

I guess you could describe me as a proto-nerd, a child of the seventies that carved the way for the modern nerd to thrive now in a world where superhero movies are the norm, you can swing a plastic tube of light around making swooshing noises and not get a smack on the back of the head, a tv show like the Big Bang Theory can become so wildly popular as so many of the modern youth can relate to what they see on the screen. Sci fi and fantasy is the new cool and its down to the battered, bullied but defiant pioneers of these genres who stuck by the medium in spite of everything that was thrown at them.

And those influences even now flow through my creative mind when it comes to my woodland photography. What I see through my eyes when I head into a woodland is stories.Heroes and villains, witches, wizards, pixies and fairies. Elves walk beside me, the forest animals talk to me and the creatures of dark magic observe me from a distance, plotting my downfall. My tripod is my sword, my camera is my shield, my waterproofs my armour. My brain, released from the shackles of everyday drudgery of life and bills and depression, comes alive with the magical tales I can seek out among the silent giants of the woodland, tales whispered to me through the gentle breezes that animate the boughs and caress the leaves. I am always looking for the heroes, the central characters to the stories I want to create in my imagery. Mighty heroes like the King himself, Bruce, lord and King over all in his wood.

Bruce, over 500 years old and still mighty among his peers.

I think a healthy dose of imagination is a massive benefit to any creative process, photography included. For me this is just as much an art form as writing, painting or sculpting. Capturing the scene is your synopsis, editing is your brushstrokes, printing is the baking of the clay or ceramics. Photography IS art and as such a little piece of who you are, your essence should be in everything you produce. I was talking to a client on Sunday during a workshop and I was explaining to them how it doesnt matter that two photographers can be stood side by side looking at the exact same composition, take a virtually identical scene on their cameras but will end up with two very different looking images. That is because the two photographers have very different stories, influences and inspirations which when they are added into the creative process produce a very different final product. The beauty of the human mind is that every single one of the 8 billion plus of them on this planet are all unique, each a different story, with heroes and villains of other tales guiding their own imaginations.

This one eyed Ent is taking a well deserved nap among the safety of his siblings

I often get comments on my images saying how they evoke a feeling of a fantasy setting in the viewer. Or that someone could imagine elves hiding among the trees. Or simply the image looks like something out of a fairytale. This always makes me happy as that is my inluences they are seeing, in essence a little bit of me they are spotting in those tiny boxes of captured light on their phones.

Anyway, time for me to end this tale and get ready for the return to the drudgery of normal life, but always knowing I can return to the worlds in my mind whenever I like.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you might spot the creatures of the woodland looking back at you.

PS. Sometimes I like to add in a little something to my images, a little game I like to play with the viewer. Its been noticed a few times but not that often and it always pleases me when someone does spot them!

Anyways thats it for this week

Toodles!