As the year begins top draw to a close and in the lull before Christmas I have been thinking about my photographic journey. It is good to take stock every once in a while and Christmas seems to be a good time for me to reflect on where my work is going.

I have had a fantastic year photographically – maybe not quite on the same level as 2021 but still good and always enjoyable. 2022 has been the year my photography has expanded out of Suffolk and I have definitely enjoyed the challenge of photographing new places.

The year began in Norfolk with a sunrise shoot at Thornham harbour on the North Norfolk Coast. In May I went on to run my first weekend workshop in the county with a fantastic group of people. We stayed in Blakeney and had two days exploring the coast from Cley to Hunstanton.

May was a busy month as I also ran a 3 day workshop in the West Country which is one of my favourite places to explore (probably because it was my home for 14 years!) The workshop was based at Porlock Weir and we spent our time photographing the coast and countryside of North Somerset and the Exmoor National Park. I will be returning to Exmoor in May this year when we will be staying in the beautiful Harbourside village of Lynmouth.

Back home in Suffolk I embarked on a new project which had been inspired by the COP 26 climate change summit held in Glasgow the previous November. My idea was to explore our role as photographers and storytellers and invite the public to tell their own stories about Suffolk’s landscapes and their connections with them in this time of change.  The project ran throughout the summer and I was thrilled with the entries I received. In September I began organising the contributions into a new book, ‘Planet Suffolk – Love letters from a changing world’  The book is now available from my website and various Suffolk bookshops. 

Planet Suffolk wasn’t the only book I published this year. After a week exploring Coigach in the summer with my camera I spent some time working on a small project which I called ‘At the edge of permanence’. Set against the seemingly permanent mountains of Assynt the project explores life in the liminal zones; those ever changing realms where no moments are the same. The work spans several different landscapes and compares wider views with fleeting moments of change. I really enjoyed the focus that this project gave me and although it was shot over a really short time frame I was really pleased with the outcome.

As well as my book projects I have also been busy this year running numerous day workshops along the Suffolk Coast. This year I devised some project based sessions which focused on the skills required to shoot, select, collate and display images for a small project. These sessions took place at Sizewell and afterwards at my studio in Hollesley. They were really fun to run and hugely rewarding for me as a teacher. It was fantastic to see how the participants reacted to the brief and the variety and level of work produced was inspirational. I will be running more of these sessions next year with the first taking place at Pin Mill in March. 

In the autumn I spent two weeks in the Outer Hebrides on the island of Harris and Lewis. It was the first time I had visited and the landscapes did not disappoint. I came home with hundreds of images which I am still working through in Lightroom. You can read about my travels on my Harris and Lewis blog

My year finished with an exhibition and talk at the Illuminate Gallery just outside Ipswich followed by an open studio event here at Hollesley. It was really lovely and humbling to see so many people attend these events and I enjoyed chatting to you all.

Finally I would just like to thank everyone who has supported my work in 2022, by attending workshops, buying books, cards and calendars and interacting with my pages on social media. You have all been amazing and it has been a privilege to get to know so many of you.

I am going to finish this blog with a gallery of some of my favourite images from 2022. Happy Christmas and I hope to see some of you in 2023.