The joy of connection

Finding new inspiration for a new year.

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.

Happy new year to you all and welcome to my first free post of 2025.

Before I begin I would just like to say thank you to everyone who has subscribed to my Substack over the past 18 months. I can’t believe that I now have just over 1000 subscribers and I appreciate every single one of you.

Moving forward I have slightly restructured how my Substack will function. For 2025 I have introduced a paid subscription level, but after much thought I have decided that I want to continue writing free weekly posts. Instead I have decided to introduce an extra weekly post for paid subscribers called inspire. These posts are geared towards providing inspiration both in the field and afterwards in post processing. There will also be a monthly photo challenge with additional monthly posts detailing the challenge and providing some ideas for tackling it. Subscribers will be able to share their images in the paid subscriber chat. I hope this will turn into an inspiring community where we can all share our images and support each other.

To sum up For the Love of Landscapes will now feature:

• Weekly blogs on a Monday morning - available to all

• Monthly photo challenge with an additional monthly blog on the first Monday of every month - paid subscribers only.

• Inspire - an additional weekly post on a Thursday which will be more technical in nature and will focus on fieldcraft, post processing and how to approach different aspects of landscape photography - paid subscribers only.

• If you would like to consider upgrading to a paid subscription it costs £5 per month or £50 for the year.

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On the last morning of 2024 I went out for a sunrise shoot with two fellow photographers. We decided to head to a section of the Suffolk Coast which has become very popular with landscape photographers. It is a place I know well, as it is my local beach, and one that I have written about several times before. It consists of a wide section of shingle shoreline with a small bungalow perched on the waters edge. The building could not really be described as attractive but its straight lines and triangular roof contrast really nicely with the curves of the shingle banks. This is the iconic shot that everyone comes here to take, but to my mind there is so much more to this location than a single composition.

Arriving in the dark we head along the edge of a little creek towards the sea. The tide is out and I can just make out the texture and patterns in the exposed mudflats as we walk. Every so often we disturb a wader from its rest and their alarm calls follow us along the path. Ahead I can hear the bell on the channel marker buoy tolling as the waves hit it. It is a sound I can hear from home, usually in the summer when the windows are open, and it is something that I have grown to love.

Approaching the beach the grassy path gives way to shingle and walking quickly becomes much harder. The sea in front of us shimmers in the pre dawn light and a scattering of tiny shingle islands fill our view. To our left is the end of Orfordness spit, the longest shingle spit in Europe and a site synonymous with the invention of radar. I can just make out the radio masts, tall metal towers only just visible through the mist.

This beach is not every photographs cup of tea. It could be considered an empty landscape, one that consists of nothing more than stone and sea. But from frequent visits I know it to be so much more than that. Photography here, as in many landscapes, is about perception. Looking at the obvious, searching out the less obvious, finding the details and understanding what makes the place special or interesting.

I decide to focus my morning photography on the shapes of the shingle islands, hoping for some dynamic light to bring the images to life. As I photograph I watch the world around me come to life. Curious grey seals frequently pop their heads above the water, while a flock of cormorants, hundreds strong, head along the coast towards the more distant islands.

To me these small observations are all part of the joy I get from being out with my camera. They are the things that connect me to the natural world and are the main reasons that I love landscape photography. This may sound odd as I don’t often photograph wildlife but to me everything is connected. To understand a landscape you have to understand what lives there and once you do you realise that you cannot have one without the other. A landscape without its wildlife would be a desolate and soulless place indeed.

A few weeks ago I received a complimentary copy of a new book ‘The story of nature’ by Jeremy Mynott. I had supplied an image for the book so I was interested to read the text. The opening chapter includes the following quote:

‘Nature has been an inspiration for human creativity from earliest times and in many spheres of art, poetry, literature, music and science. If that spring dries up will we seek another source or just work from fading memories? ‘

As a nature lover and photographer who takes their inspiration from the natural world I have no wish to ‘work from fading memories’. I read so much about the nature crisis and I see the decline through my own experiences but like many I am unsure what to do to help.

This image of my local beach was taken on a winters morning a few years ago. The sun had just risen and the light was reflecting off the water and interacting with the mist rising from the surface. I felt the profound beauty of the moment and I hope that is what this image depicts. But I worry that despite its beauty this image doesn’t tell the whole story and actually portrays a lie. This landscape looks pristine and beautiful, but where are all the birds that once would have graced this estuary? And what about all the rubbish on the tide line? Is it wrong to ignore all this?

In the half century that I have been alive wildlife populations globally have plummeted by a staggering 73%. As a youngster I remember watching flocks of waders on this coast that just don’t exist in the same numbers today.

Being in nature and forging a connection with the places I photograph is what drives me to make and share my work. But the landscapes I work in are changing at an alarming rate and it seems to me that as a species we are just letting this decline happen. We know what the problems are but we do little to change them.

I wish I could use my work to make things better, but I have no idea how to do this. It all seems too big and too daunting. However I do know how nature makes me feel and maybe this is a good place to start.

I have always had a love of the outdoors which was instilled in me by my parents. It was them who encouraged me to interact with the natural world, to photograph and draw it and enjoy adventures walking, swimming, kayaking and bird watching. I will be forever grateful for this gift. It has taught me so much about wildlife and the environment but it has also taught me about myself and now I feel that it is a gift that I would like to pass on.

I am not really sure how best to do this but as a start I have decided that 2025 is going to be my year of nature connection. I am going to do everything I can to share my knowledge and love for the natural world with anyone who wants to listen, starting with free monthly photowalks, a new collaborative photography project on the theme of ‘connection’ and plenty of landscape and nature inspired images and posts.

I know it isn’t much in the grand scheme of things but I hope that the more people learn about nature and experience it for themselves the more they will care about it.

I also hope that you will enjoy seeing where this journey takes me.

Some recent posts I have enjoyed on a similar theme

Howling to the Moon

We should care about jaguars, not Jaguars.

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I have spent a long time thinking about how I can help the nature crisis and the only thing I can think of to do is to use my work to help facilitate nature connection in others.

As landscape photographers the natural world forms the basis of our work. However our impact upon it is not always small. Do we have a responsibility to help tackle the issues the world faces today? And if so how? I would be really interested to read your thoughts so please leave a comment below.

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Thank you very much for reading and until next time, enjoy your photography.

Gill