Wolds Beginnings

On the origins of photographing the Yorkshire Wolds and how solutions can often present themselves given time

In 2007 I had moved back up to Yorkshire from London and in the early period of 2009 I was contacted by a local photographer Paul Moon who wondered why I was not spending as much time in my own backyard. A fair question I thought and we met up for him to show me a couple of the Wolds valleys. Having gone to school on the edges of the Wolds in Beverley I did have some idea of what they looked like but I had not fully appreciated how extensive they are. If you have not seen them before imagine narrow, twisty, dry grass valleys with agriculture inverted - the tops have crops and the valleys are used to graze sheep and cattle.

I tried an image or two at the time but it was clear the landscape was very different to other areas I knew and it was going to take a very different approach. A week before I was due to attend a second Advanced Large Format Photography Workshop this time in the Lake District I met up with Paul again early on Sunday morning. The conditions were very different - brooding skies with the potential that light might not get up at dawn at all.

I had been thinking about how on earth to photograph the Wolds well during the intervening weeks but had not formed any definite ideas. Dawn meant I had little time to think. We met at Millington Woods and drove on to Scoar Dale and walked up the steep valley sides to one of Paul’s favourite spots. We had a bit of leeway as the sun was rising behind cloud (and hillside) and there was a storm in the distance so there was not the usual hurried rush. Something clicked. Rather than reach for a wide angle lens, I set my Linhof viewfinder to 240 (short tele) and looked for a composition. It was not a particularly conscious deliberate decision, it just happened on instinct. I found the composition above with a lovely hawthorn tree and set up the camera.

A short while later the light got up, the distant storm was directly in my composition and I made the image.

I do think that sometimes the brain solves these conundrums and problems whilst we are tackling different issues and no doubt I had subconsciously identified the potential for working with longer lenses, at least as an option. When I got the picture back and displayed it at the large format workshop the following week in the inevitable ritual lightbox session it dawned on me that what I had done was shift up the gears, lens-wise so to speak. If I considered a standard lens to be a 240 rather than a 150 I could interpret the Wolds in a uniquely different way.

That day started a long friendship with Paul and saw many more Sunday mornings exploring the Wolds together.