Hello, I’m Gill and I write a photography blog inspired by the landscapes of Suffolk and beyond. Please subscribe to read more of my writing and visit my website to view my images.
Back in January I launched a new project which I titled the Connection Project. The aim was to bring together eight photographers with eight very different genres and styles to respond to the question ‘what does connection mean to you in terms of the natural landscapes and environments of Suffolk?’
The project was deliberately designed with a local theme as I wanted to get away from the idea that we need to travel to far flung places to make good images.
The eight bodies of work are now complete and I have compiled them all into a book which is available from my website.
In this post I wanted to talk about my own body of work, why I chose the theme I did and how I went about creating 10 images to fulfil the brief of what connection meant to me.
Right from the beginning I knew that I wanted my portfolio to speak of my connection to nature, but in 2025 I felt that this was a complicated thing. I love the natural world, I care about it deeply but I am also frustrated and saddened at the way we treat it. This conflict became the basis for my project.
I chose to portray the landscapes of Suffolk through a range of emotions depicting how I feel about nature in 2025 in the face of climate change, environmental neglect and biodiversity loss. The negative emotions of anger and fear never seem far away but they are balanced by much more positive feelings whenever I head out into the landscape.
The starting point for my project was to pick 10 emotions that I felt best represented how I feel about the natural world in 2025. After much thought I chose:
Anger, fear, vulnerability, grief, wonder, alive, peace, joy, love and hope.
That was the easy part! I then set out to portray these emotions in 10 images using landscapes and wild places in my home county of Suffolk. This was not an easy task and went against my usual method of making images. Instead of thinking how a landscape felt to me when I went out to photograph it I had to think about what emotion I wanted to portray and then think about how I could do that. The emotion came first and I then had to search out subjects and weather conditions that would help me portray that feeling or mood.
Anger was the first emotion I photographed and I did this at the start of the year when the winter storms were at their peak. I chose to work with turbulent seas and angry looking clouds and went out several times to my local beach to try and portray this raw emotion.
Out of all the shots I made this sunrise image was my favourite. I love the dark clouds, the sheets of distant rain and the texture in the churning water, but I also love the hint of red on the horizon where the sun was trying to break through the clouds. Even though it’s a small part of the image I felt it added an extra dimension to the mood.
The negative emotions were definitely the hardest to photograph because they went against everything I felt when I was out with the camera.
For fear I chose a woodland scene on a dull misty morning. While this composition naturally hinted at the trepidation we might feel on entering a dark woodland I didn’t experience it personally when I took the photo. As a result I felt the need to enhance the mood a little in post processing to really get the fear across in the image. I did this by cooling down the overall image and making the blacks stronger than they actually were. I think these subtle changes really help convey the essence of fear.
For vulnerability I chose to photograph the flocks of cormorants that I regularly see flying along the coast. I used a slow shutter speed to blur their motion a little to make them feel indistinct. I then created a composite image in photoshop using two images - one an original version and one an inverted version. My intention was for the white birds to represent our vanishing wildlife.
For grief I used a fallen tree on my local beach where coastal erosion causes the loss of about 10 feet of land a year. This tree is a pine, and what I love about it is its bark and the colour of the wood inside when the exterior bark is stripped away. To me it looks just like a bleeding wound or graze. For this image I chose an overcast, gloomy day and used a long exposure to smooth out the motion of the sea.
The next set of images I found much easier to create. The positive, happy feelings are ones which are always present when I head out to take photographs so they were much easier to tap into.
For the feelings of wonder and being alive I chose separate spring mornings in two of my favourite ancient woodlands. The wonder was created by the backlit spiders webs on dew laden grass and the feeling of being alive was summed up by the vibrance of a bluebell wood.
The final four images depict peace, hope, joy and love and for these I chose to focus on calming, misty landscapes much more representative of my usual style of photography.
I have titled my final panel ‘Emotional’ and have printed it on A3 Hahnemühle Museum Etching 350gsm paper. The images are now at the framers in preparation for the project exhibition which takes place in December. The A4 sized copies shown below will be available as a limited edition set of prints presented in a clam shell box.
When I started this project I hoped to forge links around the theme of connection. Links between myself and the subjects I was photographing, between myself and the other participants of the project and between my work and an audience.
I choose my theme because it is important to me. I wanted to speak about the natural world, about the love I have for it but also about the worry that I feel for its future.
Photography for me is a form of expression, it is a way for me to depict what I care about and express my feelings and views. In a way it is a form of therapy. It feels good to express my opinions even if they are only within an artist statement and a small collection of images destined for a local gallery.
Overall the project has been something I am proud to have instigated and something I have really enjoyed being part of. Working with the other photographers has been a hugely positive experience and it has been lovely seeing their portfolios come together.
I am now looking ahead to the exhibition and am really looking forward to sharing my images with a wider audience.
If you are interested in the project the book is now available from my website and the exhibition will run from the 4th - 12th December in the Art Space gallery in Woodbridge.
Have you ever taken part in a local photography project and if so what value do you feel you got from it? Do you feel photography projects influence the way people see the world or are they too niche to have an impact? I would love to hear your opinions on projects in general and the impact they might have locally or in the wider world. Please leave a comment below and join the conversation.
Thank you very much for reading and until next time enjoy your photography.
Gill
You said in an earlier post that your creative reserves were running low: that’s probably because you put so much into this project. An ambitious concept, but a great result.
You should indeed feel proud of it.
Really nice images. Well done!