I connect more deeply with a photograph much later. It’s still the same image I took some years before and maybe edited, perhaps shared as a note at the time but digging through my archives, I get a far better idea of what I’m about. What kind of photographer am I?

There are places in this world that I’ve a very strong bond with and have resonated with me each and every time. I know that’s where I take my favourite photos such as the one above. I love available light and prefer these scenarios compared to much of the other stuff.

I think it’s a trick that I learnt as a concert photographer many years ago. I loved the arty atmospheric artists the most, Rufus Wainwright, Elvis Costello for example. The light would often be simple spotlighting with simple backlighting. Nothing else. Visual poetry as much as the songs they performed.

Photograph the same location at different times of the year

I started a project back in the winter of 2022 and then kind of forgot about it. I chose a location and decided to photograph it in the starkness of winter. It was freezing cold but the landscape took on a timeless beauty, all of it’s own.

I’ve written about this location a lot in the past. You can imagine the ghosts of its Roman past when this would have been a bustling town. One day, thousands of years ago, the inhabitants abandoned the place. This has forever baffled archaeologists and historians alike.

For my family and I, it’s a favourite place to explore and the source of countless photos on my part.

We revisited the location literally just two weeks ago, one evening and the light was cooling after an intensely hot day. It looked just as magical. My tree had somehow protected the grass below from burning to a crisp, unlike the rest of the pasture.

Silchester has a number of springs and in this weather it’s easy to spot subterranean details appearing. It’s been awhile since I put my drone up but last time, it looked something like this.

You can make out, sort of, some variations in the colour of the ground where Roman Baths would have been, close to natural springs or streams as a source of water.

This is all thanks to different cameras and a lot of time. These photos have all been taken over several years. It takes an age to build a story sometimes.

Even longer to discover your favourites. The images that make you the photographer that you are.

Photo tours and photo walks

I used to run photowalks. Quite often, many favourites would materialise from these gatherings and picking the most unlikely venues we could possibly imagine. Nothing glamorous. Just historic. Made a huge difference to the way in which we live today.

Take Farnborough in Hampshire for example. A town that doesn’t value itself very highly. If it were a person, it would turn up in the same beaten clothes every day and never have a wash or clean its teeth. It’s a scruffy town, has it’s nice roads full of gorgeous big houses. It’s been home to some very significant people in it’s history, from Napoleon III to Samuel Cody. Much later the people who built crucial aviation technology that’s helped protect us from some of history’s biggest arseholes from taking over our country.

It’s not all war, war and more war though.

Eventually, what used to be the RAE, Royal Aircraft Establishment opened to the public. The FAST Museum opened and later the Samuel Cody exhibition opened as a permanent attraction and many of the old sound tunnels became listed and you can visit them in chosen days.

I took a bunch of people for a walk around the site that’s now open to the public.

It’s an industrial looking place but in that, I found a kind of beauty.

Hope you enjoyed this photo ramble today. Things become more interesting when you revisit them many years later. They may also have changed in the time since the photos were taken. Preserving history for generations to come. Our job as photographers becomes more and more important.

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Welcome to a resurrection (if you pardon the seasonal pun?) of a blog project, I started some time back and then stopped for awhile. Rambling photographer is making a return but this time is going to be more closely associated with the map of the UK, its history and putting those photos on the map. I aim to return to the concept of being a rambler with …

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Over the past weekend, I had a bit of time to do just that. So popped my Ricoh GR3X in its little carry case,…

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I would love to know where this all began? Does anyone know?

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It’s not often we find churches to be open, so it’s rare that we’ve been able to step inside but there is a…

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After all these years of passing by, of glimpsing it from the road and wondering, I finally stepped inside Mattingley church. It’s strange how you can live somewhere for decades and still carry these small, unfinished pieces of curiosity with you. This was one of mine.

The cold hit me immediately. Not the gentle chill of old stone, but something sharper, more penetrating. Cold as charity, as they say. Perhaps that’s fitting for a building that’s stood here since the late 15th century, its timber frame holding firm through five hundred winters. The walls tell their own story through the herringbone pattern of brick nogging, each parallelogram-shaped brick apparently made right here from clay dug at Hazeley Heath. There’s something quietly remarkable about that, about a church built from the very ground it stands on.

What strikes me most, now that I’m finally inside, is how unusual this place is. It’s Grade I listed, which you might expect, but the structure itself is timber-framed rather than the stone you find in most churches of this age. And then there’s the curious detail that it has no patron saint. Some believe the original building might have been a moot hall, a place for community meetings, before it became a place of worship. That ambiguity feels appropriate somehow, as if the building has always been slightly unknowable, slightly apart.

Standing here with my camera, trying to capture something of its character in the thin winter light, I’m aware of all those times I drove past without stopping. We do that, don’t we? We defer the things closest to us, assuming they’ll always be there, always waiting. Today the wait was over, and even in the bitter cold, I’m glad I came. Some places need to be experienced, not just observed from the outside. Mattingley church is one of them.

Last week we dodged the rain, as if we had some form of magical powers or more likely, blind luck. We had a very special destination in mind, one that I had last visited with my parents as a young child but could barely remember, if truth be told.

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The current building dat…

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Constructed in the style of an Early Christian basilica, the church features a clerestoried nave, a presbytery separated by a prominent arch, and the foundations of a semicircular apse. Notably, it was built using reclaimed Roman materials, including stone and brick tiles, likely sourced from the nearby Roman towns of Lactodurum (Towcester) and Ratae Corieltauvorum (Leicester).

Throughout its history, All Saints’ Church underwent several modifications:

• 10th Century: The original two-story porch was elevated to form a west tower, and a stair turret was added.

• 13th Century: A south aisle was appended to the nave, a south chapel was constructed adjacent to the presbytery, and the apsidal chancel was replaced with a rectangular one.

• 14th Century: The west tower received further heightening, culminating in the addition of the current broach spire.

Significant restoration work occurred in 1865–66 under the direction of vicar Charles Frederic Watkins. This project involved removing portions of the medieval chancel and uncovering the subterranean ambulatory that encircled the original apse. Additionally, the southeast chapel was shortened, and the south porch was dismantled to reveal earlier stonework.

Today, All Saints’ Church stands as a testament to early medieval ecclesiastical architecture, reflecting the rich history and architectural evolution of the region.

I visited All Saints back in September last year and filmed it with my Insta360 X3. The music is something I wrote last year.

I’m looking forward to producing more of these during 2025 and beyond. Let me know of the places you’d like to see included here.

I’ll take myself and my 360 camera to film some suggested places.

So to get this going, here’s a little clip from a bigger video that I’m editing. Beautiful Silchester, on the borders of Hampshire and Berkshire.

Apologies for the upside down bit as I wrongly assumed that the camera would automatically would flip the right way up!!!

I’m having fun with the Osmo Action 5 camera, learning how to get the best colour out of my videos which are filmed in S-log and graded later in post production. I’m doing all of this on my iPad Pro M4 which I also use a lot for music production. Check out Modulations my other Stack.

The church featured in this video is gorgeous and is called St Mary the Virgin and the What 3 words location for it is

I’m sharing a what3words address to help you find this specific location. Tap to see exactly where it is:

///install.bluffs.messy

https://w3w.co/install.bluffs.messy

It’s located along the old Roman walls of Silchester, what was once called Calleva Attrebatum. In future posts we’ll take a peek inside as part of my ongoing exploration of Britains churches. There’s around 16,000 of them and not sure whether that includes the wider variety of other religious buildings. I’m up for exploring the lot.

Reminding me of “Withnail and I” when they go on holiday by accident, have you ever been to a town by mistake? I mean we had no intention of visiting Marlborough last weekend but we ended up in the lovely Wiltshire town without the intention of doing so. The thing is, Hungerford, our planned destination for the day was practically inaccessib…

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Ffestiniog Mountain Railway

Who doesn’t like a s…

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Last year we went on a fantastic light trail through the woods and around the lake at Wellington Country Park just south of Reading in Berkshire. We enjoyed it so much, that we went again last nig…

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Yesterday we met up with my parents for Sunday lunch and went to our favourite pub in the city, The Wykeham Arms …

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Yesterday was a lovely day weather wise so thought you guys might like to join me for a walk.

As a photographer I want to be able to vlog more effectively and to be able to share or publish my video fairly quickly. So whilst the Sony gear I use for stills is the heart of the operation, I need something small and unobtrusive for recording my commentary and exploration of locations for the videos I make.

Now…

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Last week we stayed quite literally at the start of the Llanberis Path in Snowdonia National Park, as my friend Paul wanted to hike to the summit at night, to witness the Harvest Moon, it’s an idea the two of us started talking about in November of last year and over a Christmas catch-up we had it booked for September, allowing for plenty of time to pla…

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