The Quirky English Countryside
Reasons why you should visit the English Countryside.
Many British people hold the English Countryside dear to their hearts because it’s full of charm, pretty villages, rolling hills, patchwork farmland, thriving woodlands, historic sites, yesterdays battle grounds, memorials, monuments, protected areas, secret military sites and best of all the great British country pub with scenic gardens and picnic benches. All surrounded by an abundance of wildlife and farm animals, plus the occasional big cat!
With almost 90,000 square miles of British Countryside, you can’t fail to find some serenity, beauty and quirkiness.
I like to look deeper in to the landscapes, to see patterns, colour, general quirkiness and anything that I find unusual, out of the ordinary and in the everyday.
This project has taken me almost 12 months to complete or at least get to the point of publishing as a collection. I’m not sure if I’ve finished this project but my access to the wider area has become more difficult through a change in circumstances. I’ve made several hundred pictures and have edited down to the final 100 photographs.
I feel that our countryside is idyllic and just how our nation used to be. It fills me with nostalgic emotions and probably put me in a lot of danger while driving and looking out in to the great vistas and occasionally checking the road ahead!
For mobility and simplicity and with a stronger sense of security, I chose to make all of these pictures with my mobile phone. I started the project using an iPhone SE and finished it with my upgraded iPhone 7. You can see a noticeable difference between the cameras. There were occasions that I took my DSLR out with me but felt it didn’t offer me continuity. I think the quality of some of these pictures are pretty good for a mobile phone anyway. There was a time that I didn’t even consider the idea of being able to make photographs with a phone!
I’d noticed that I was being drawn to the most unusual scenes, and general quirkiness of the English landscapes. Beneath the surface there’s an element of romanticism but with a twist of rebellion to defy the romantic nature of the current state of British landscape photography. I’m not overly averse to romanticism but do find it too easy and too shallow for the thinly laid aesthetic. With so many landscape photographs sharing almost identical backgrounds, it’s difficult to see any style and it’s almost as if those kinds of pictures were made by the same photographer. Many contemporary landscape photographers are making work that either has a background featuring a sunrise, sunset or is at beautiful trophy styled locations, which is fine but not my style. So I’ve tried to be unique, to be different and to produce work in my own style and for it to be as bizarre as I felt when seeing these strange landscapes around England.
My intentions for this body of work was to document our countryside for its truthful landscape without the notion of making everything look beautiful, I wanted to find and show the bizarre in abundance, real landscapes in accessible places by the side of the road.
Each photograph is as I’d discovered it and discovered through driving over 10,000 miles.
So without further ado…
Here’s some reasons to explore ‘The Quirky English Countryside’.
Click on the pictures to view as I intend them to be seen.
Some English Countryside facts:
We have very few endemic native species of animals due to our close proximity to mainland Europe
Our only poisonous snake is the Adder
On the turn of the century, Britain discovered that 47 species of our plants are endemic to the British Isles
The number of Magpie birds has quadrupled in the past 30 years
Some reported sightings of free big cats have been noted in places like Bodmin and Exmoor
Yorkshire is the most Instagrammed location in England
Walking and Rambling is the most popular outdoor activity in England
Everywhere in the UK is less than 70 miles from the coast
The River Severn is Britains longest waterway at 220 miles
You are now more knowledgable about the English Countryside than you were before you arrived here.
Facts resource: https://www.furfeatherandfin.com/blog/facts-about-british-countryside-coast/ - 2/5/2019
You can keep up with my projects by subscribing to my blog, which is delivered by email.
If you’d like to explore my blog, please click here.
See ‘The Landscape’ next.