Majestic. Beautiful. Tranquil.
East Anglia
Further afield
Aurora
My love of the night sky was kindled when I was 11 years old, inspired by an introductory book about amateur astronomy that my aunt gave me. I would spend hours on clear nights in our dark, rural Northamptonshire garden learning the constellations and - after my parents bought me a telescope for Christmas - observing and sketching distant galaxies, star clusters and nebulae.
Since then, the stars have always stirred something deep within me. Their seemingly eternal, unchanging and familiar nature helps to ground me; no matter what challenges there are in the bustle of daily life, when I look to the stars I feel all of my burdens shrunk and contextualised against the backdrop of the majestic heavens.
It seems to have been great comets - those occasional ephemeral visitors to our skies - that have led me to pick up a camera and point it skyward. In 1997, I drove with my dad to a Pennine hilltop, away from the light pollution, to capture Comet Hale-Bopp on his film SLR; we had surprisingly pleasing results, with the comet’s splendid dust and ion tails bright against the backdrop of the stars of Perseus. 23 years later, NEOWISE - the cosmic messenger that brought welcome distraction during the pandemic lockdowns - tempted me back out with my basic Canon DSLR. The resulting images - terrible though they were - got me completely hooked and obsessed with showing the night sky above the landscape.
And that’s what brings me joy. The simplicity of being out in the landscape, listening to nature’s weird and wonderful nocturnal soundtrack, with a camera and a tripod harvesting ancient light as it ends its unfathomably long journey and meets our fragile and beautiful planet. And with that harvest, creating images that convey the Universe’s breathtaking silent beauty.
Why I shoot the night sky
About me
I live on the edge of the Cambridgeshire Fens, the flat, low-lying fertile region in East Anglia, with my wife Esther and our two boys. During the day, I work in finance for a software company. At night, whenever I can, I am out in the Fens or further afield with my camera and video equipment to capture the starlit sky and my adventures chasing it.
The Fens at Night
Covering some 1,500 square miles across Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk, the Fens is an area of natural and reclaimed marshland renowned for its fertile soils and rich biodiversity. Lying just barely above - and often below - sea level, the Fens are defined by their flat, seemingly endless plains and huge skies, which draw the cloudscapes and starry firmament down to form a vast, immersive three-dimensional landscape.
Water and its management play a key role in the Fens. The very existence of this remarkable landscape is down to the ingenuity of Dutch engineers and their wealthy aristocratic sponsors, who created the extensive network of drainage channels and pumping stations that take water from the low-lying expanses out to The Wash. Traditional Fen life revolves around these rivers, drains and channels, together with the dykes and banks that enclose them and the waterfowl, fish and eels that dwell within them.
When night falls, the air becomes heavy with dew. Gathering mists betray the shallowest of depressions in the fields. The honks of the ubiquitous geese, the excited whinny of little grebes, the shriek of muntjacs, the bark of foxes, the clumsy shuffling of a badger, all provide a reminder that under the enveloping darkness, the Fens teems with life.
Out with the camera, my senses are heightened. The magical sounds seem amplified in the darkness while the thick dew-filled, earthy air fills and cools my lungs. And above my head, the familiar constellations continue their nightly march across the sky, stretching infinitely from horizon to horizon.