a b s t r a c t
Flowing Sandstone
Corrie, Isle of Arran, Scotland.
Orchy Etchings
Glen Orchy, Scotland. The rock along the waterfalls at Glen Orchy is wet and dark and etched with mysterious patterns...
Elephant
Patterns of ice reflecting a Scottish blue winter sky.
Frozen Calligraphy
Broad Canvas
Broad Haven beach, Pembrokeshire, Wales.
Rock Ribbons
Lower Antelope Canyon, Arizona, USA.
Stained Slate
Abereiddy slate quarry, Pembrokeshire, Wales. The combination of colours and soft modelling side-light from a diffuse sun compelled me to make this abstract image.
Tendrils
Deadvlei, Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia. Boughs of a dead camelthorn tree in soft focus with sunlit dune behind allowed me to play with positive and negative space.
Granite Bowl
River Etive, Highlands, Scotland.
Drowned
Glen Orchy, Scotland. Something drowned beneath the deep... this submerged rock had a slightly grotesque, unsettling feeling to it, which echoed my feelings of the river itself, which over millennia has carved intricate and mysterious patterns out of the rock over which it flows. I used a polariser to remove all reflections from the water, which simplified the composition by turning the water into an inky black canvas.
Untitled
Glen Orchy, Scotland.
Loch a' Chaorainn
Achnahaird, Scotland.
Stripped
Bryce Canyon, Utah, USA. I loved the vivid burnt colours on the bark of this lightning-struck tree in Bryce Canyon.
Imachar
Imachar Point, Isle of Arran, Scotland. A study in line and texture.
Blue and Red
Strangles, Cornwall, England. For me, ambiguity lends a fascination to images. Removing context, scale, and any sense of direction, the viewer is left to make his or her own interpretion.
Emerge
Achnahaird Bay, Scotland.
Sandymouth
Cornwall, England.
Swirl
Rannoch Moor, Scotland.
Crest of the Wave
Lower Antelope Canyon, Arizona, USA. In this image I tried to portray the lines of this dry sandstone wall as its material opposite - a wave of water, which echoes how these slot canyons are formed over many thousands of years from erosion by the flash floods of summer storms.
Lines
Glen Orchy, Scotland.
Vortex
Lower Antelope Canyon, Arizona, USA. Hundreds of photographs are made of the sandstone slot canyons of Antelope every year and the challenge is to find a new interpretation.
Quartz Seams in Granite
Strangles, Cornwall, England.
Petrified
Escalante, Utah, USA. This bark belongs to a petrified 180 million-year-old tree. Originally falling into muddy silty soil next to a river, layer upon layer of earth built up on top of it over millions of years. Once fossilized the surrounded landscape then eroded to leave huge chunks of colourful logs lying out in the open; some logs are in such good condition you can count the rings.
River Etive
Glen Etive, Highlands, Scotland. I used a polariser to maximise the clarity of the river bed with its marvellous range of coloured stones.
Planetoid
Beachy Head, Sussex, England. I love photographing sand patterns; when the oblique light of the late sun casts shadows across a tiny piece of beach, it can resemble an alien planetoid photographed from orbit.
Desert Varnish
Long Canyon, Boulder, Utah, USA. Desert varnish is a coating which develops on the surface of rocks in arid environments; it's often found staining the walls of Utah's many sandstone canyons. The pattern here was unusually vivid.
Wadi Sand
Wadi Rum desert, Jordan.
Sahara
Photographed from onboard an airplane, parts of the Saharan desert are completely featureless.
Namib Sands
Namib desert, Namibia.