Earth

As a 14-year-old boy on our return from Canada, I remember looking down from the circling Jumbo Jet at the patchwork of fields that make up England’s green and pleasant land. It seemed a toy landscape in contrast to the huge open spaces of Canada. In Europe the rural landscapes have been shaped and maintained by man for centuries, even millennia, to such an extent that the old stone walls, rustic barns and church steeples are as much part of the environment as the trees and hills. Age generally mellows man’s input and the rural architecture of a region becomes deeply embedded in its character and culture.

For all the challenges of deserts and ice caps some of my favourite trips have consisted of loading up the motor and drifting through the rural heartlands of Europe. On a long haul flight difficult compromises have to be made with what can be taken, and I often opt to travel light with just the DSLR system. So on these road trips it’s such a relief to load up virtually all the gear I own, including the heavy artillery.

Sunrise near Corton Denham, Somerset, England

It’s late June, about 4.30am and I’m in the middle of a poppy field waiting for the light. Before the sun pops over the hill and bores into my lens causing flare, I expose with the dawn sky and the poppies swaying in the breeze.

• Canon EOS-1Ds MKII, 17–40mm lens

Olive grove near Cazorla, Andalucia, Spain

We’ve found this spot in Andalucia that’s proving very difficult to leave. With the wild spring flowers growing in among the olive groves it’s a verdant, lush landscape that we’re cycling through every day in search of locations. I reckon I’ve made some worthwhile images and it’s probably time to move on, but somehow, we just can’t seem to.

• Fuji GX617, 90mm lens

Poppies near St-Rémy-de-Provence, Provence, France

By one of those typical tree-lined roads near St-Rémy-de-Provence I find this concentration of poppies. They’re everywhere in southern France in late May. I never can resist getting them in my foreground. Well, Monet did, so why can’t I?

• Fuji GX617, 90mm lens

I’ve been wedded to the panoramic format for some 17 years. I first hired a panoramic camera on trial and was so bowled over by the impact of the big 6x17cm transparencies for landscape work that I immediately bought one. Since then it and its successor have been round the world many times. As yet there’s no practical digital alternative to the big ‘pano’ and I still love the impact and quality of the format. The camera itself is big and bulky, but not particularly heavy. It’s also delightfully simple, with no electronics and not much to go wrong. Having said that it does demand a different, more rigid way of working, I have to be meticulous in the way I put together an image and operate the camera. I strongly believe you need to be diligent whatever camera you’re using, but with the panoramic it does take a while longer to set up and deploy. This can be a good thing, imposing a more disciplined regime on the business of making an image, and when you see a print from this format enlarged up to several feet wide it makes it all worthwhile.

Littondale, Yorkshire Dales National Park, England

The stone walls and barns of the Yorkshire Dales are a national treasure. It’s one of my favourite parts of England. It’s an early summer evening, about 8.30pm, and friends are waiting for me in the pub in Kettlewell, but I just can’t come away. It’s tough maintaining a social life when the days are long and the light is good.

• Fuji GX617, 90mm lens

Dawn at Compton Pauncefoot, Somerset, England

I’ve cycled past this scene countless times without it really registering – it’s on one of my regular routes from home. Then last time it suddenly struck me; there’s a shot here. Why had I not noticed it before? Either I’m just a useless photographer or there’s a lesson here; I’m not sure. So, here I am the next morning, shooting in the soft light of dawn, with traces of pink kissing the clouds and the hedgerow full of early summer colour.

• Fuji GX617, 90mm lens

In Europe the classic regions of Provence, Tuscany and Andalucia take some beating, but of course there are many, many other equally bucolic and enticing areas. Indeed part of the attraction of such trips is getting off the beaten track and discovering for yourself rural backwaters not mentioned in the guidebooks. By their very nature these are environments lacking in any particular challenge of survival or access. As always, location finding is crucial. I’ve often found myself in a region I know is attractive, with much photographic potential, but I can’t seem to express it in an image. It’s extremely frustrating, and it happens all too frequently. A mental block can develop, the harder you look, the less it all comes together. But persistence usually pays off. The location searching itself in such regions can and should be a real joy; if it becomes a chore then something is not right. Cycling and walking are my preferred ways of finding my spots; driving is OK but it’s all too easy to whizz past a scene without even noticing it. I just can’t work out though why all the randonnées seem to incorporate lunch in a sun-dappled square. All in the name of familiarization, of course.

The village of Eus perched on a hilltop with the Pic de Canigou beyond, the Pyrenees, Languedoc-Roussillon, France

It has taken me four attempts to make this shot of the church with the Pic de Canigou beyond. I’ve been battling with indifferent, hazy light. I’m still not entirely happy with it; I’d like more drama in the sky. But we’ve been camping nearby at Vernet-les-Bains in the Pyrenees for five days now and it’s time to move on.

• Canon EOS-1Ds MKII, 24–70mm lens

ITALIAN SUMMER

Day 10:

Our Italian Campaign is going well. Like the Vandals and Visigoths we marched into Italy via the Brenner Pass from Austria. We’re giving sacking Rome a miss this time but are blazing a trail of exposed images through the country, leaving in our wake vacated campsites and decimated pasta dishes. We’ve plundered the Dolomites, Lake Garda and Verona and are now pondering our next conquests. A change of plan was decided last night over our vino rosso; we’re heading on to Tuscany. We’ve been many times before, but now we’re this close, we can’t resist it. It hasn’t gelled here in Emilia-Romagna and another wasted day could result in a loss of momentum, that curious fusion of circumstance and frame of mind that determines just how productive a trip is. After a brief visit to Maranello we bomb down the autostrada and set up camp in Chiantishire. The entire population of the Netherlands is on the campsite with us but this is great. From our tent we look over a valley with vineyards, pointy trees and villas, just beyond the German’s cycling shorts drying on the line.

Days 11–15:

Our local valley collects the mist at night, so it has provided a few good dawn sessions. I love it when I can just stumble out of the tent to stand bleary eyed by the tripod without having to drive for miles. I’ve been working on vineyards, both as part of the landscape and close-ups of the ripe grapes in the warm evening sun. They’re almost ready for picking and the smell is intoxicating. The ancient village of Badia a Passignano was the setting for an evening shoot, with an olive grove in the foreground. Gutless skies and haze have continued to be a problem, but hey, life is rarely perfect. There have also been details of windows, doorways and markets to shoot in the villages like Castellina in Chianti.

Day 16:

The grape pickers turning up for work are giving me wry and bemused looks. I’m standing on the customized photographic roof platform of our Land Rover parked in amongst the vines at dawn. If this were Britain I’d no doubt have an irate farmer on my hands but not here, no one cares. I’ve got the panoramic GX617 on the tripod up here with a 180mm lens, a polarizer and a 0.9 ND grad. The sun is coming up to my left giving cross lighting but it’s having to slice its way through a heavy layer of atmospheric miasma, and the sky is just hopeless. This could be a strong shot though, and I’m not too concerned about the haze. It will soften the light a touch, which intuitively I think may help this image. Why? I don’t know, I just feel it. I’m framing so there’s precious little sky in the shot, and the lines of the vines and track lead us to the villa and valley beyond. There’s the annoying detail of our campsite on the hillside to the right, I’ll just have to annihilate our tent and the Dutch caravans in Photoshop later.

Day 17:

We’re moving on to Puglia today. As we drive away from Tuscany I see more great locations and wish we had more time. Well, we’ll just have to come back – that’ll be no hardship.