The drowned woodland

 My work with reflections led me this week to explore the idea of nature and woodland being merged with water and rivers. I've always loved places where two things meet, whether its where the sea meets the land, urban street clashes with plants and trees or in this case the place where wood meets water.

Reflections contain that possibility, to merge and project, to create surreal images that twist and distort. To marry these desperate elements. In this case it involved finding a patch of land that met an body of water still and shallow enough to blend these disparate elements.

By following the streams and rivers near my local parks I was able to find such places. To create images where these two worlds met, clashed and finally merged into each other. In these places I was able to create the illusion of the drowned woodland.

The canals of midnight

 I've tried on a number of occasions to try shooting reflections at night. For simple reasons really, I love photography at night and I love reflections, why wouldn't I combine the two?

Unfortunately this type of work requires an extremely ample supply of light and a relatively narrow body of still water. But after scouring Cardiff for some time a friend suggested I take pictures of the canals near where he lived. After my first shot or two there I knew that this was the perfect place to take pictures.

Even then it took experimentation, too little light and the picture over exposed leading to samey boring images, too little and nothing was visible. However by carefully choosing where I took my pictures a world emerged that delighted me.

A world of fairy tales, twisted roots and pale distorted, ghostly buildings. It was a magical world and excately what I had been looking to capture. The canals of midnight had emerged.

A neon twilight

Street photography at night is something I have a real passion for, the glow of neon lamps, the way car lights reflecting on metal and the glitter created off metal and sheet plastic all create wonderful and unearthly subjects which I love to capture.

Street signs, windows, bits of plastic and sheet metal. All of these can be used to capture and distort the way light falls and is reflected at night and these were very much the things I love to capture once night has fallen.

For when night falls the world becomes for me a neon twilight, a mysterious world rip for photographic capture.