One of the best things that the great British weather has to offer in my opinion is mist and fog. You might think that it would make life for an environmental location photographer a bit tricky as it's kind of hard to see things! In fact it actually works in my favour as it eliminates a lot of distracting elements because you can't actually see them. When I was a student at photography college one of the first things my lecturer would do at any critique is to pull out the cropping Ls and start cropping things out of my photos saying it was unnecessary and took the eye away from the main subject in the photo. Rarely did I disagree with him and that's where my obsession with leaving out irrelevant details started. Even though I take a lot of environmental portraits where you want the scene to say something about the subject and help with the narrative for the photo, sometimes (nearly always) less is more.
So when the fog comes down I often head out with my camera, tripod and a flask of tea to see what the day has to offer. I am lucky that I live near Chobham Common, which is the largest nature reserve in the South East of England, and it is easy to wander around for hours in this fabulous space. It gets trickier when you can't see where you are going, and a couple of times I've been caught out after sunset too.
The photographs in this selection here are all taken in the mist and fog and mostly present a beautifully serene moment in time. One of my favourites is the reflection of a group of trees in the river which makes them look like a fish - the posts from the weir to the left look like little fish that the big one is eating. Although this a quiet peaceful moment, I was actually stood underneath a motorway bridge with traffic roaring over head! It's not the first time I've worked underneath a motorway either as I photographed Chas who lived there at the time.
Some of the photographs in this gallery are available as signed limited edition Giclée prints from my online gallery.
