For me nature is the landscape and fauna and flora which exists within this landscape and in my view doesn’t include humans although there is a strong argument that it should.

I do not consider myself either a landscape photographer or a wildlife photographer as a key part of my practice, however I do enjoy photographing animals at Zoo’s especially big cats and I am look in that I live a mere 6 miles from the Clwydian Range an area of outstanding natural beauty and around 45 minutes from the Snowdonia National Park and Snowdon itself. As a keen walker and runner, the mountains and hills are a natural playground for me and naturally my camera always travels with me. 

Where my interest does interest with the landscape and nature more directly is in my personal projects around industrial heritage and archelogy. My railway project at the Talyllyn is a casing point. The railway was developed in the 1850’s as a way of moving slate from the local quarries down to the coast. This is true of most of the Welsh heritage railways. Over the last 70 years many of them have been preserved and operate heritage operations often with locomotives that worked the line in the early 19^th century. 

Today they market themselves both the on-heritage status of the line but also on the landscape and scenery. Certainly, the Talyllyn, Ffestiniog, Welsh Highland and Vale of Rheidol Railways in North Wales all lie within the Snowdonia National Park and the recently established UNESCO world heritage site.

For me this is very much where I have a strong relationship between nature and human consumption. As well as having an-going project at the Talyllyn as well as providing publicity material for them and next year running a series of photographic workshops based on the Railway. As a walker and runner, I am very much Intune with the country code and reducing my impact on the landscape as much as humanly possible. 

This week’s image is an RAF Tornado taken at a night photoshoot at RAF Cosford