Who am I?

First of all, welcome to my website! This isn’t the first time I have had one but its the first time I’ve had one for landscape photography.

My name is Simon Lewis and I am a landscape photographer based on the south border of Somerset UK,within a few miles of both the Wiltshire and Dorset borders. I have been involved around cameras and photography since I was a teenager, my first camera being a Kodak that my Dad gave me when I was fourteen. When I left school I applied for a YTS course with the South Wales Echo as a trainee photographer but didn’t hear back from them for a couple of months and under pressure from my Mother I found another job as a trainee butcher. About two weeks after I started that job my Mother informed me that the South wales Echo had been in touch and were offering me the position of a trainee photographer for their newspaper. My response was, and i quote “No thanks, i’m enjoying making sausages!”………if only I could go back to that moment lol.

Over the years I dropped in and out of the hobby and didn’t even own a camera between the ages of 20 and 32. At this age I was now living with my current partner Jayne and decided we needed a camera for family snaps/holidays etc (camera phones were still years away) and went out and bought a digital Kodak camera. It reignited my passion for capturing moments in time and even though you will never see any of those images as they are terrible, I thought I was the bees knees at the time!

I bought my first “serious” camera in 2013, a used Nikon D3100 with the 18-55mm kit lens. I took this camera with us to France on a holiday and loved it. The step up from point and shoot cameras was massive in terms of both quality and complexity and I began to learn the dark arts of the exposure triangle and all the other properly technical aspects of photography. I have to thank a chap called Andrew Bowkett for those early days as he was very helpful in teaching me the basics and stoking my enthusiasm too.

Like most photographers, I dabbled in many different genres to begin with but gradually fell into the wildlife photography scene. This is a pretty expensive one to be involved in too and I spent an obnoxiously large amount of money on a 300mm prime, a 500mm prime and an upgrade to a Nikon D500 body. I had all the gear but still mostly no idea but gradually learned how to use my equipment properly, eventually resulting in one of my images being shortlisted in the inaugaral British Photography awards, my proudest achievement to that point. This was also about the time I fell in with my good friend and photography partner in crime Dave Shaw. Dave, like me, was an enthusiastic wildlife photographer and for about 18 months we could often be seen in many of the local hides, making smutty remarks to each other and generally having more fun than was allowed through etiquette!

We both became a litte jaded with wildlife though when we realised our photo files contained far too many images of the same birds in the same poses and yearned for something else. This was when I decided to take the plunge into landscape. I downgraded a lot of my lenses, selling the big primes for a selection of smaller focal length lenses and a drone. Dave thought I was mad but I had a plan!

That plan went out the window when i was involved in a RTA in June 2018. I was uninjured and the motorcylcist I had hit as I pulled out of a junction escaped with very minor injuries. I had been unable to see the oncoming traffic due to the verges being so overgrown and even with me creeping slowly forward it was too late for the motorclyclist to avoid hitting me. I was found at fault even though the bike rider was on a classic bike he had just bought from a show that had notoriously bad brakes. The result was I sank into a deep depression and effectively gave up photography, selling all my gear and walking away from the one thing that kept me sane!

At this point I need to say that I have suffered with a lifelong battle with depression. This is compounded by also having an adult form of ADHD which means my moods can peak and trough for little to no reason. I have learnt to deal with both over the years and most people wouldnt know I have either. I neither seek nor want sympathy for this, its just part of who I am and why I am the way i am.

in 2020 Covid hit and during the first lockdown I realised how much I missed being outside. I reached out to my mate Dave who had continued on his journey as a landscape photographer and by this point was already proving very talented and popular on social media. He kindly lent me an Nikon Z6 that had been dropped in a lake and was nowhere near working properly but could just about take photos still. I had a fiddle with it and managed to get it functioning almost normally after some tinkering and rang him up to say it was okay and would he be prepared to sell it to me. Instead he gave it to me, a gesture that was both incredibly generous and also incredibly kind. I am eternally grateful to him for that as i probably wouldnt have been able to get back into photography without his help.

He also let me borrow some lenses and a tripod until i sorted out my own ones, which again I am truly grateful for.

So since then, pretty much every Sunday, me and Dave meet up and head off somewhere to capture the local landscapes. We have ventured to Dartmoor, the Dorset coast and in particular most of the local woods and forests. Dave has kindly shared a lot of the locations he worked hard to find while I was on my leave of absence from photography and I have managed over the last few years to build up both my skills as a landscape photographer and my knowledge of my local landscape, which is breathtaking at points! ( the landscape not my knowledge!) This culminated in me being shortlisted in the 2022 World Landscape photographer awards which I am incredibly proud of and owe to my mate Dave!

So, moving forward the plan is to keep learning and enjoying this passion of mine. I have met some fantastic people on my travels and formed friendships with some of them too. I am now printing my work and even sold a few pieces to clients which always surprises me as I constantly doubt that my work is good enough, but clearly some people like it! I am eventually going to turn pro and start running workshops and selling my work professionally, so wish me luck on that journey. It wont be easy but with the support of my friends and family I am sure it is achievable.

Many thanks for reading this and I hope this gives you a better understanding of who I am.