Found in Print
There was a time when a discovery in the print media for me would have meant a photographer garnering a mention or being featured in a photography magazine. That may be changing and I am meeting the work of other landscape specialists anew in books of their own creation too. With books, I have to watch myself because I am such a sucker for those of the coffee table variety and they are rarely cheap unless I encounter clearance stock. Even so, they have given me ideas over the years so I can't fault the things for that.
Photography magazines with well-printed images are things that I find equally attractive and Outdoor Photography is a particular favourite of mine. Like any other magazine of its type, it continues to solicit contributions from readers and introduce the work of photographers hitherto unknown to me. That has helped me to build up the list that you find here with their featuring portfolio websites being a particularly useful contributor.
The mainstream photography press has played their part over time and Amateur Photographer has supplied the occasional entry after a feature took my eye. Beyond that, I'm partial to reading Photography Monthly too but I cannot remember "harvesting" anything from there and the writing in Practical Photography no longer really grabs me so that looks like it'll be left on the newsagents' shelves after me for now.
Whatever my tastes in books and magazines, I hope that something from here takes your fancy; you might discover something new along the way. It may not be the easiest time to be making a living from photography but that doesn't seem to be stopping me from finding practitioners of which I have had no previous knowledge so this list should continue to develop over time.
This is a collection of photos posted by this Inverness-based professional photographer.
All the photographs you can see here were taken using digital cameras and enhanced further on Adobe Photoshop. The only reason for the manipulation is to reflect what the photographer really saw. In any case, all digital manipulation is described upfront and further technical details of what was done are also given. A fascinating site with many superb images.
Barry Needle has done a great job here. Just how did he get brilliant sunshine for every single shot? Fantastic.
A collection of quality photos concentrating on Scotland. It's hard not to see why.
A collection of quality photos from around the U.K.
U.K. Landscape Stock Photo Library
The web address is buyimage.co.uk which gives away the reason behind this website. Nevertheless, there are thousands of photos to enjoy and, if you want, to buy.
If you ever explore Scotland's Highlands, you'll find his prints for sale in the tourist information centres that abound there. However, there is more to him than that, especially with a book on Qatar's Empty Quarter under his belt and another, devoted to Scotland's wildernesses, on its way.
The dedication of Hemant Jariwala from Buckinghamshire is not in doubt when you realise how often he heads up to the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales with his camera. He even manages good photos on days when I would give up. It is also notable that he takes his photos in the middle of the day when dawn and sunset are typical staples of the landscape photographer. Nevertheless, he takes his photos in autumn, winter and spring when this is not as foolhardy a feat as it might seem.
Part weblog, part travelogue and part photo gallery, this site is well worth a visit with some stunning photos taken in Wales, Ireland, Canada and England. Photos from New Zealand may even follow.
It was finding his book The West of Ireland that caused me to broaden the scope of this list from magazine discoveries. More recently, I was to discover that it wasn't his only incursion into publishing with a collection of photos of the Burren in County Clare spotted on a shelf at the Limerick branch of Easons more recently. The title of this one is The Fertile Rock and its publication date from 2006 must explain why it was on sale at a reduced price. Both books were published by Collins Press, an Irish publishing company. Let's hope that they can stick with doing this sort of thing since the beauty spots of Ireland need and deserve all the photographic exposure they can get.
A visit to his website will reveal that it isn't his only one either. The extensive galleries on there with prints for sale show that this German has been busying himself in his adoptive country. There is something about Ireland that makes Germans fall in love with the place and make their home there. Perhaps, the same fascination is what causes him to make photos that make the most of the countryside that he find and open our eyes (Irish ones even) to its splendour.
To a point, this is another bookstore discovery. His specialism is panoramic photography and he has a number of books to his name too. Edinburgh is the subject of his latest and it made its way home with me after a recent visit to the enticing city. He has done one on London too and I wonder if he was as challenged with the framing there as he was in "the Athens of the North". I only can imagine that it must have been a tad easier on his more rural work when creating images for his books on the Lake District and Yorkshire. It's not over yet because there's another one due out next year. In the middle of all this, he deals in panoramic cameras too as well as supplying the usual print market. He must be keeping himself well occupied.
This is the name both of a book and a website packed full of pleasing images made by Ian Cameron, yet another discovery in Outdoor Photography. Complementing this mixture is the not unusual mix of prints, calendars and exhibitions with some workshop instruction thrown in for good measure. It's not all Scotland either with images from most continents included in the portfolio too.
I think that I may have encountered his name before but the sight of a book called Cheshire Moods that he has done for Halsgrove was a vivid and potent reminder. While on the subject of reminders, his work demonstrates the appeal of what lies on the doorsteps of those of us who live in Cheshire and that can be no bad thing.
Another find in the pages of Outdoor Photography, this practitioner seems to have left his school teaching days behind him to pursue a full-time career in landscape photography. It's not for nothing that his work has been published and Frances Lincoln put out his book, Landscapes of the Ribble in 2009. His efforts always caught my eye and it's good to see him make a go of things with his medium format Mamyia and large format Ebony film cameras. Well, it does go to show that film still has a place in this ever more digital world.
Most of the photographers on this list are either based in Britain or Ireland so here's a departure, a Swedish one. He came to my notice after my finding his book on Swedish National Parks in a bookshop in Stockholm Arlanda airport. A look at the website (unusually, there are both Swedish and English versions) will confirm that his reach extends beyond his native Sweden too.
After initially coming to my notice in Amateur Photographer, this Irish operator was lost to me for a few years until recently. The main focus here is Ireland though some photos from America have turned up too. Given Ireland's under-representation in photographic circles, the man's concentration on his home country is no bad thing.
You'll find this man's calendars in shops all over Scotland so I finally decided to check out his website and there's some good stuff on there too. In addition to the calendars, there are prints to be purchased too and the rolling slide shows reveal that there is a good amount of gems here. Just have a look at the Mull and Iona gallery to see what I mean.
His authoring the One Month, One Picture column in Outdoor Photography is what has brought Bridgwood's work to my attention and very good it is too. Just take a look at the photos of Skye that he has on there to see what he can do.
This must be someone who I found as a result of the regular website review column in Outdoor Photography. His patch seems to be the north of England and there's plenty there for him to cover but he has been active in Scotland too.
The name of the website is Scottish Horizons and that more or less tells you what country is the focus of this photographer and his name pops up in many magazines that I read. To name a few, Scots Magazine, TGO and Outdoor Photography all seem to have published his work but there are others.
When you are a Scot living in central Scotland, why do landscape photography that features anything other than your native country? With all that Scotland has to offer, no one can be blamed for that and there's plenty of good stuff here.
There's a good deal of variety here with Northern England being complemented by Spain, Italy, Switzerland and the U.S.A. as well. All in all, there's a lot to be seen here and prints are available too if you so desire.
Andrew McCloy's Britain's Best Coastal Walks has been illustrated with photos from this photographer. The Scottish gallery on his website is worthy of perusal but there are others devoted to other types of photography too.
It was a photo essay on the rockier wonders of Greece in a recent issue of the outdoors magazine TGO that returned this photographer to my notice after previous sightings in a number of photography magazines. Photos of Greece appear on her website too along with others from destinations in Britain but other corners of Europe and the world feature too. It needs a longer look than I have given it so far and her photos look worthy of appearing in print too. Unsurprisingly, you can buy prints also and those on the website easily sell themselves.
What brought this Irish-based photographer to my notice was his book The Irish Light. This was crowd-sourced using Kickstarter and now is on sale online (through the website along with framed prints) and in shops such as Ireland's Eason's. Only for worries about the weight that I was carrying onto a plane, a copy might have come with me on a recent trip over there. As is de rigeur these days, there are galleries of photos on the website with photos of Irish locations making up the majority of what you'll find. Nevertheless, there are those from other places such as Iceland and Scotland too. If you want to see his work in the flesh, he has a gallery in Killarney too.
An article in Amateur Photographer about an exhibition that he was running was how John Gravett came to my attention. In an age when digital photography has been the cause of unleashing a deluge of images, the idea of using whatever light is available instead of looking only for the idealistically perfect does have something to it. His photos do show what he can do with any light, which is a bonus. Making something of whatever conditions you find has to be a real talent and that's what's needed in a time when interest in photography has exploded.
Perusing an issue of Advanced Photography from earlier this year was what brought Tony Gill's images to my attention and they seem to have a style all of their own too, a rare achievement these days. The main stomping ground is the southwest of England and there are misty scenes aplenty to enjoy here.
This is an Irish-based father and son team that I discovered in an interview published in Outdoor Photography. Clearly, the home country gets deserved attention but they do travel elsewhere too and that is reflected in the photos that you'll find on here.
It was the use of his photos in Best Loved Poems: Favourite Poems from the West of Ireland (Currach Press, Dublin, 2013) that caused me to discover Lyon's work. His living not far from Croagh Patrick has meant he has had the opportunity to photograph the well-known mountain a fair few times and he covers more than that. Whether or not the printing adds to the impression, the photos in the book do possess a soft ethereal quality that is so typical of Ireland. Some are on the website so you can take a look for yourself.
Coming to prominence after becoming the eighth Landscape Photographer of the Year, Littlejohn got himself a feature in Amateur Photographer too. His photos not only are pleasing but have a distinctive dreamy character too. His 500px gallery is just as alluring.
