Uncommon Views

I'm now about 1 year into a little landscape photography project and it's time to share a few details.Where I live in Surrey is devoid of stunning coastline and craggy mountains, making typical landscape photography a bit tricky. I envy those photographers who live up in Assynt or the Lake District for the ease with which they can access stunning locations (though they probably suffer greatly due to Ocado not delivering in their area).I found myself driving down to Dartmoor, to the New Forest and even further afield to find new locations to shoot. Racking up miles in the car is not my idea of fun, and it simply becomes impractical on a regular basis not to mention very time consuming. So I decided to look closer to home.Drawing inspiration from some of the excellent work shown in the online magazine On Landscape, particularly that of David Ward, I figured that the best approach is to make the most of what is nearby rather than aimlessly travelling further and further away. Previously I had spent some time trying to take a decent picture on Whitmoor Common, an area of mixed woodland and heathland a couple of miles from home. I'd always failed as it's a fairly uninspiring, flat, boggy place with none of the "big ticket" landscape features I was looking for. Here's an aerial view of the place:It's about a mile across, with woodland ringing grass/bracken/gorse, and the main Guildford to Waterloo train line running straight through it.After exploring the area in more detail while on a "1 camera, 1 lens" project with a few friends, I decided to take the total lack of any dramatic scenery as a challenge, and spend time returning there regularly to see if I could actually conjure up some interesting pictures from what looks to be fairly unpromising raw materials.My main tool for the job is my Sony A7R, and in keeping with the unconventional theme, a Canon FD 85mm f/1.2 manual focus lens with a cheap Pixco adapter. I had managed to find this lens brand new in amongst some stock being sold off from a liquidated camera store - it had been tucked around the back of the store room in its original box for years. It is a thing of beauty, though a bit on the weighty side.And to further buck convention, I figured I'd try to shoot the series with the very widest aperture rather than trying to get the whole landscape in focus, and in black & white. This often results in rather more intriguing images which suited my approach of trying to get across the feeling of the place.And so began a lovely, relaxing journey of discovery, with many early morning and late evening stops to wander around the common looking for an image, a shape, any sort of interesting composition. Being so close to home, it's remarkably easy to go out for an hour and explore a bit more. Even though I'm now very familiar with the layout, there are constant changes throughout the seasons which keep drawing me back.I'm now starting to get a deeper understanding of the Common. It's much more than a bland bit of flat boggy ground. It is in fact a protected area of lowland heath, with numerous endangered or rare species (yet to be seen let alone photographed!), and a group of eager volunteers who work alongside the Surrey Wildlife Trust to keep the Common in good condition.Here's a few more. Click a picture to see the whole gallery or have a look at Flickr here.As you can see, it's all rather unconventional, which is why I like it. I usually have another camera or lens with me, more often than not my excellent Fuji X100T, for grabbing the odd wider angle shot like the one at the start of this post, but the challenge of creating something with the 85mm at widest aperture is really rewarding.I'm also starting to add the odd glimpse of human activity into the series. Lots of people use the common for walking their dogs, riding horses, and even slacklining, so I'm always on the lookout for little scenes that show the more human side of the place.So far it's extremely enjoyable. Nearly a year in, I'm still finding much to photograph in this relatively small area and I'm not tiring of it at all. Winter is coming, and I'm hoping for some snow which was sadly lacking last year. I've found it very engaging to try and capture something new and different every time I go out, and it's reinvigorated my photography brain which was quite fried from all the sports photography I had been doing.I'm also looking forward to attending a workshop with David Ward up in the far north west of Scotland in February. This promises to be a real opportunity to try and get into David's brain and understand how he goes about seeing some of the amazing pictures that he takes. It'll be fascinating for certain.