A Bird’s Eye View

On remembering a moment of transition

In July 2026 I had to write a tribute for my dad who had passed away in June. It reminded me of so many days out we had spent together. His early retirement from teaching coincided with a passion I developed for walking the hills and from the early 1990s I took him to the tops of most of the Wainwright fells in the Lake District and several in Scotland too. My dad had also attended art college when he retired and on many of these trips he talked about the artwork he was working on and the friendships he had formed there.

I always took a camera with me to record where I had been but around 2004 saw a new passion evolve – photography in its own right. I had been interested in photography ever since my first camera – a Kodak Instamatic as a Christmas present back in the late 1970s. But this main image captured the moment of transition from an obsession with walking the hills to an obsession with making images.

I was heading up to Glencoe for my very first photography workshop and these three nights in the Lakes with my dad staying at the Bridge Hotel in Buttermere were a great way to break up the journey.

This was the last trip I took my dad up the really big hills – I had taken him up Haystacks and Fleetwith Pike on consecutive days and it had nearly finished him off there and then! Thereafter I started to take him out with me on joint photography and art sessions. I would make photographs and he would find pictures to paint.

This image was made on the final day from the top of Fleetwith Pike looking down into Honister Pass. The frost and blue sky above have created a unique bird’s-eye view – well before this kind of photography became accessible and commonplace with drones.

The next day I travelled up to Glencoe to meet David Ward and Phil Malpas for my first photography workshop. A week that would forever change my photographic life.