Richard James
About me
I love walking in ancient landscapes, I find myself being a slipping glimpser.
I live in wonderful North West Hampshire, blessed with ancient and beautiful countryside and abutting the North Wessex Downs, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).
My motivation and intent on publishing through my elementary website (a work in progress) is to share my images with you, and hopefully for you to experience the varying beauty of Albion.
A particular corner of Albion currently; managing my current focus to the North Wessex Downs, an area of outstanding natural beauty (ANOB).North Wessex Downs AONB
My Artistic Intent as a Photographer
My intention and aim of my work is to communicate through photographic images the intersection of the modern landscape with our ancestors reamining visible remnants 4200 BC to 600 AD.
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Fay Godwin’s ‘The Oldest Road’ (1975) is a great inspiration to me and I make my own attempt at repicating her style of interpretation of the landscape 45 years on.
My photographic approach is one of documentary and my dominant genre is landscape.
My overall intent is to capture the intersection of the landscape with some of the remaining visible traces of our ancestors, and of course pleasing images, I hope!
I work within the frame of the Royal Photographic Society’s definitions of Documentary and Landscape Photography (RPS DG005 – Genre Definitions AUGUST 2021
I follow wherever possible landscape photographic conventions encompassing technical and creative elements such as utilising an aperture between f01-f16, an appropriate shutter speed for the lens focal length, an ISO of 100 or less (if achievable for the highest quality images) and achieving sharp images. Creatively considering, framing, composition, colour and light.
I have lived 25 miles from the Pewsey Downs for over 40 years, and despite being a keen hill walker with a lifelong interest in antiquity, in 2022 I belatedly ‘discovered’ the beauty and mysticism of this ancient spiritual and once domiciled and defended landscape.
I generally utilise a project management methodology to my developing projects as a framework for managing the process. Planning includes mind-mapping, historical and contemporary background reading, geographical mapping, site visits, and walking with intentional reverie.
My intention is to convey the beauty of this ‘quiet’ and ‘most beautiful landscape’. Most photographs include visible elements our ancestors 4200 BC to 600 AD impact on the landscape,
I like to capture undulating hills, their curves and how the geometry of the landscape in its form and features, combined with features of antiquity, meld into something greater than the whole.
I like most making these images in Spring and Summer, the light is just right.