I fell in love with photography when I was at college in Falmouth. And that was where I also fell in love with faces.
I had hired a 35mm Pentax from the art department for a project and without realising it, at that moment my life changed. I decided to photograph the folk in my own village of Budock Water, the people who had lived there for their whole lives. Inland from Falmouth this rural community was a special place to me and it was the faces of the locals that stood out and told a story. The fishermen, the farmers, the gardeners: ‘those people looking after their corner of the planet’. Simple lives, involving honest toil in traditional jobs that just need to be done by someone. These were people I had grown up with and I had huge admiration for them, seeing them out in all winds and weathers and taking their pictures was transformative. I realised then simple act of capturing a face on film tells a story. The face says a thousand words and in that moment, I was hooked.
While I picked potatoes for a season when I was 16, I am not from a farming background myself but working the land intrigues me. It’s no surprise that I’ve built up a portfolio of work based around agricultural photography and the human story behind the hard graft. I love a landscape shot as much as the next person but the passion that started with that project in Budock all those years ago lives on, and it’s the faces of the farmers that I find fascinating to photograph..
There’s no shortage of farming photography opportunities in Oxfordshire. Sandy Lane Farm is a particularly special place that I have built up a close relationship with over the years. This organic farm is a family run business and their manual, unmechanised approach to the land is about as close to traditional farming techniques as you with find these days. Working without artificial fertilisers and pesticides means the land is carefully managed to attract a whole variety of beetles, birds and bugs - relying on biodiversity above and below ground and keeping nature in balance to bring home the harvest. As a photographer, the sun worn faces, the hardened hands stained reddish brown with the sandy soil and the ‘wild’ nature of the land offers infinite opportunities to capture beautiful images. It’s a very special place and one that is dear to my heart.
Images don’t come much bolder than the photograph I took for English Farm - in more ways than one! This organic farm breeds pasture reared 100% grass fed Longhorn cattle, beautiful beasts with a thick, rich speckled brown coats and long, curved horns. I followed the farmer into the field for some shots of the cattle grazing the land in the winter sun but I also wanted create some ‘starker’ images of the bull in the barn. The farmer agreed, I set up a white backdrop, perched myself on a barrier that I thought was a suitable distance away from the great beast that was waiting to be led into the pen….the farmer paused for a moment, grabbed a piece of plastic piping, handed it to me and said without a smile on his lips: ‘hold onto this, you may need it…..’. Taking an official portrait of a bull now seemed perhaps a tad ambitious considering all we’d have between us was my Fuji X camera and a very expensive lens. But it worked. As the bull settled, I climbed down from the bars, took a few shots of his huge, broad, beautiful head next to the farmer’s own and retreated to a safe distance. I looked at the results when I got home I knew it had been worth it - an image that says more than a caption ever could of a hardworking, committed farmer and an awe inspiring traditional breed that deserves our respect. This photograph has a timeless quality that speaks of the return to traditional farming methods and the image itself looks as if it could have been taken 100 years ago.
I had visited Blue Tin Produce near Reading as a customer for their fabulous street food style home reared and home cooked/smoked meats. Sustainability and traceability are at the heart of Blue Tin’s business both as a farm and shop and I was delighted to be contacted to take some shots of Farmer Jed. An imposing man with a wonderful greying beard and dark piercing eyes, he built the smoker they use in the shop from an old grain silo and is often found in a cloud of smoke tending to the free range pork himself. With a nod to Richard Avedon’s fiercely evocative American West portraiture, I photographed Jed in front of a white background, axe propped on his shoulder, roasted joint on pork in the other arm, staring with intent right down the lens. Uncompromising, eye catching, direct and a favourite photograph of mine and many a Blue Tin customer..
I also worked for the Princes’ Countryside Fund for a number of years, travelling the country photographing the beneficiaries of the charitable fund which supports our rural communities. This was a dream job for me since it took me behind the scenes of a wonderful selection of small farming projects, all fighting hard to make a living from the land in this tricky times. I also found myself photographing (the then) Prince Charles himself as he gave a speech at a fund event.
I hope commissions for countryside work will always come my way - the fields and views we take for granted look the way they do because of the hard work of generations of devoted ‘stewards of the land’. Farming is an unrelenting, uncompromising profession with the challenges only getting greater year on year but it’s crucial to our future on a local and global level that these individuals carry on caring the way they do. And it’s a pleasure and a privilege to record them on film
