RPS Landscape Group Newsletter, February 2016

On Your Doorstep by Karen Thurman LRPS

How many of you spend time enjoying the beauty of nature on your own doorsteps? I know that for years I didn’t. I grew up in the concrete jungles of the Far East and the nature I saw was in National Geographic magazines and in zoos. I started photographing as a teenager - it was something I could share with my dad - and I fell in love with photography in general, but no one was more surprised than me when I fell in love with nature photography. Today I’m an analogue landscape photographer.

Cascade, Monsal Head

In April 2014, my husband and I discovered Glen Affric in Scotland. We’re both well travelled but nothing has topped what we saw in that 10-mile area. We were inspired and photographed a lot. Every 10 yards there was something to stop for. We’d only planned to spend a week there, but ended up staying for five (and we’ve been back a few times too). Then we started showing the images we’d made to people in towns 10, 12, 15 miles away. People thought they were images of Canada. We were surprised by how many had no idea of the beauty on their doorsteps. So we decided to change that by exhibiting what we’d seen and photographed.

One location/exhibition turned into seven and a fully-fledged, 18 month long, Arts Council-funded project, “On Your Doorstep”, was born. We chose non-iconic places - industrial locations, commuter belts, etc, drew a radius of 20 miles around the location and photographed the woodlands, streams, canals, coasts, fields and parks we found. All the photographs we exhibited were taken within a 10-15 minute walk from a car park or roadside; we didn’t want people to think they had to hike for miles to find the beauty we saw. Two of the three images shown here were taken from car parks. The third was a 15 minute amble away. We spent a month in each location photographing and preparing the images, which we exhibited the following month.

River Affric, Glen Affric

In addition, we invited people to send in their own images. We put all of them on our website and the best were also shown in our exhibitions. We really stressed the it’s not about having the right camera gear; it’s about getting out, enjoying what you see and capturing that. In each exhibition, we made sure to include images made on our smartphones as well as the DSLR and large format film camera.

Stream, Dodd Wood

Chapter one of the project finished at the end of 2015; chapter two “Forests” begins in 2016. The focus of my work will narrow to concentrate on forests and the conservation/restoration projects being undertaken, but the wider public engagement will continue as before. We invite people to wander in their local green spots, to travel through their countries, discover the magic of nature around them and send in their images. There are three easy rules: (1) images must be the senders’ own (2) they must be images of nature and (3) they must have been taken in the senders’ country of residence. We’ll publish the best ones on our website and in our new free magazine On Your Doorstep which debuts at the end of March 2016.

For more information see www.thurmanovich.com or email karen@thurmanovich.com

All images © Karen Thurman