Snowy Landscape Photography on the South Downs

Hopefully I'll be doing Ben Nevis with some friends in a in a few weeks time, so to start getting the legs in order and shoot a few snowy landscapes I took a hike up over the downs the other day. The depth of snow across the top was quite surprising, well past my knees in places and I somehow crossed Beachy Head Road without realising until I noticed that I was heading downhill and shouldn't be - visibility was pretty poor. There was nobody around and going past the empty pub and Countryside Visitor Centre felt rather like featuring in a post-apocalyptic horror movie, I almost expected to hear the growls of starving feral dogs at any moment. The weather opened up quite a bit around Belle Toute and I managed to get a couple of good shots:

  

I finally saw people when I reached Birling Gap, a film crew - a spooky coincidence given my earlier thoughts! They were making a black comedy called 'The Edge', which is set in a hotel with all sorts of odd happenings - I will look out for it.

 

The weather really started to close in on the way back from East Dean and I had to resort to map and compass - can't remember the last time I did this on the Downs. Getting lost wasn't the issue (just head East), but I was keen to avoid taking a route that lost me a lot of height, just to go back up again. I managed to get a position fix before visibility dropped to about twenty metres and spent the next couple of hours in a world of white navigating off the compass about 30 feet at a go.

I came up onto Beachy Brow about 50 metres from where I'd planned, which was a pretty good shot under the circumstances and trudged the last mile home - downhill all the way! The depth of snow had made for quite tough going, but it was a great day and having the Downs all to yourself is a rare event these days.

www.mickhouse.com
01323 639404
Sussex Landscape Photographer

Annual Report Photography

I'm just in the process of archiving off my hard drives and came across this project from early last year. The Woodland Trust had just bought Brede High Woods and commissioned me to photograph it for their annual report. Although it's quite large, Brede is not an easy place to photograph, there are only a couple of places where you can get any sort of overview and even then only as a fairly thin ribbon of trees (I did suggest a helicopter but sadly it wasn't within their budget). With a two week deadline it wasn't possibly to be too choosy about the weather, so a lot of time was spent trudging round the woods in the rain, covered in mud, looking for locations - great fun!

As a bonus I woke one morning a couple of days before the deadline to discover that a bigger than expected pile of snow had been deposited over the South East. It made for a slightly hairy drive to get over to Brede (we're not exactly used to driving in snow here), but you can't turn down an opportunity like that.

The snow didn't last long, the sun came out at about 9.30 and it had pretty much all melted away by midday, but it was lovely while it lasted.

Despite a lot of rain and grey skies over the two weeks there were a few periods when the weather and light were fantastic. In the end the photo's were used on a double page centre spread in their annual report and also on their annual fund-raising campaign brochure, a very nice result for one of my favourite projects.

www.mickhouse.com

01323 639404

Commercial Photographers in Sussex

Little Fluffy Clouds

I had to go into town the other day, something I try to avoid whenever possible as I don't have much patience with the crowds of full-volume baseball caps and 10 a.m. drunks that always seem to congregate in town centres. It was a perfect day so to recover from the trauma I decided to walk home the long way over the Downs. I normally confine landscape photography to early morning and late evening, but with the sky almost completely blue it was ideal for black and white shots and I had planned to do a few landscapes like this:

I soon came across a barbed wire fence with bits of wool blowing around in the breeze hanging from it and spent an hour or so laying in the grass photographing that instead. Two ramblers came over (quietly spoken, wearing floppy hats and completely sober) to say hello and see what I was up to (or possibly check that I was alive - I suppose it did look a bit odd) and apart from that I didn't see a soul.

The first thing Nina said when she saw the photo's was "Little Fluffy Clouds!" So there we are, leftover bits of sheep masquerading as little fluffy clouds, quite a nice mornings work.

www.mickhouse.com

01323 639404

Sussex Landscape Photographer