Birling Gap

I photographed this on the road up to Beachy Head, in the low light just before sunset. A memorial, flowers, candles, small mementos left by people who clearly loved whoever they were placed for.

I wasn't there to photograph grief. I was there for the light, for the shape of the land, for the lighthouse catching the last of the sun on the hill behind. But the memorial was already there when I arrived, and it felt wrong to walk past it and pretend it wasn't part of the scene.

What struck me, looking at it afterwards, was the contrast sunflowers and white blossom against dry August grass, a single car passing on an empty road, a lighthouse still standing watch on the hill like it has for a hundred years regardless of who comes and goes beneath it. There's something in that juxtaposition that felt worth holding onto: the landscape carries on, indifferent and beautiful, while these small human markers insist that someone mattered here, that someone is missed.

I don't know the story behind this memorial, and it's not mine to guess at. But to whoever placed those flowers. I'm sorry for your loss, and I hope this photograph, in some small way, treats that spot with the respect it deserves.

Newbridge-on-Wye

“Gonna see the river man
Gonna tell him all I can
About the plan”

— Nick Drake

Spent the morning before watching four different YouTube videos on reading river structure. Fast water folding into a deep pool, shaded bank, slower water pooling where the trees choke the flow, textbook holding water, according to every single one of them.

Found exactly that spot on a horseshoe bend outside Newbridge-on-Wye. Fished it from half two in the afternoon to five past ten that night. Nearly eight hours. Changed flies more times than I can remember. Not one bite. Not one follow. Nothing.

At some point around eight I stopped pretending the fish were coming and just started photographing the light instead, long shadows stretching across the gravel, the pool going still and gold as the sun dropped behind the trees. Ended up going back through my own phone footage afterwards and screenshotting the best bits, because half the good shots weren't even planned, they were just there in the background of me swearing at my line.

Came home with zero trout and probably my favourite set of river photos this year. Scotland's booked. The Lakes after that. I will catch something eventually, out of pure spite if nothing else.

Dakhla

Low tide in Dakhla doesn't mess about. The sea just leaves. A kilometre of flat wet sand where the ocean was an hour before, and you can walk it.

So that's what I did, camera on my back, suitcase wheels sinking into the sand behind me the whole way, dragging it a kilometre out like an absolute idiot because I didn't want to leave it on the beach. Sun dropping the entire time. No assistant, no second pair of eyes, just me walking out, setting up, walking back to check the shot on the screen, realising the angle was wrong, walking out again.

Took about six attempts to get the one I actually liked.

Two weeks out there with the family, kite surfing on the windy days, this kind of nonsense on the days it died. Slept better than I have in years. Only real low point of the whole trip: the shower block smelled like boiled eggs, every single day, and nobody ever explained why. Everything else about it was perfect. Booking it again before the year's out.

Oxford

Was in the Bodleian earlier, the big round reading room, until I got sick of revising. Went to a talk instead. Decent event, better networking. Half the reason I stayed for the drinks after was hoping a certain girl might turn up. She didn't. Checked the room twice. Nothing.

So, single, slightly deflated, camera bag still on my shoulder from earlier, I did the only sensible thing. Went and found Oxford's brand new £185 million humanities building instead and modelled outside it at 3am like a normal person.

Nobody about. Just me, a building barely a few months old, and a streetlamp doing all the work, hard light straight down, no softness, no forgiveness. Took maybe forty minutes, freezing the whole time, checking the screen after every other shot because there was nobody to tell me if it was working.

Walked home at half three with some of the sharpest photos I've taken all year and a slightly bruised ego. Worth it.