Nathan Still Photography

Welcome! Nathan is a Photographer with a passion for the natural (and urban) environment, with an interest in bookmaking, print media and publishing.

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2025 - New Beginnings, New Stories

Dearest Tumblr Followers,

thank you for being patient as I've only realised I haven't posted in a while, since October 2024. Whilst I've been away from Tumblr I've continued to find myself as a Photographer, outside of the expectations and pressures of those around me.

Leading up to the end of 2024, I discovered I enjoy creating and shooting narratives, a story with depth. I also enjoy the social aspect.

I also don't want to follow in the same footsteps as everyone else when they shoot images; I'd like to do something a little different, I'd like to offer a different approach, focus and style of storytelling.

A couple of weeks in bed with the flu meant I had time to reflect and research into alternative ways of telling stories which didn't involve me constantly chasing people and getting nowhere. Sure, I'd considered community events but I've also learned the only person in life you can please if yourself, as a person and a Photographer.

Then, I stumbled across a genre of photography called found still life which is a subset of documentary. Found still life involves photographing inanimate objects you might stumble across in your everyday life, without modifying the composition or placement of the objects as you would in a studio.

Found still life (and still life in general) is definitely a genre of photography I'd like to branch out to, to keep my approach simple, develop my observation skills and incorporate mindfulness into my practice, to slow down and take my time to look for and create a considered shot. I'd also like to shoot for black and white to simplify my practice even further, as shooting and editing in colour is often an unnecessary challenge.

My aim of venturing into found still life photography is to be present and connect with a residential area in a subtle way, to identify, shoot and share images of inanimate objects which characterise the place I've called home for previous two years now.

The image below represents the beginning of me venturing into this sub-genre of still life photography and continuing to find my voice and perspective as a Photographer.

Keep creating everyone and stay safe.

Nathan

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Follow The Forgotten Wilderness on Facebook

The Forgotten Wilderness is now on Facebook.

Thank you to everyone who has engaged with my posts regarding the Forgotten Wilderness project so far. It is gratifying to see the project (and the woodland land depicted) start to gain some awareness online.

Please go and follow The Forgotten Wilderness which is now on Facebook, you'll receive regular updates and behind-the-scene snippets from the project as it continues to develop.

See you on there!

Much love, Nathan.

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The Forgotten Wilderness - Update

According a recent find from the Woodland Trust, only 7% (out of 13%) of total woodland land in the UK is deemed to be 'fairly good ecological condition.

Thank you for being patient as I edited the most recent shoot for The Forgotten Wilderness. Below are a couple of shots from the final edit, three bracketed exposures (1 shot exposed correctly, 1 underexposed by 1 stop and another underexposed by 1 stop) merged together in Lightroom to create an HDR image. Please, I'd appreciate it if you'd share this post to aid in raising awareness of a forest which is overlooked by Harlow Council.

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Project Update - The Forgotten Wilderness

The Forgotten Wilderness is an ongoing project, a documentation, of an overlooked, undermanaged woodland space, through the year, through the seasons. The aim of the project is raise awareness of overlooked woodland space in the UK. Woodland space in the UK only accounts for 13% of overall land.

The woodland is on two different regions in Essex, one part, which is accessible to the public, is owned by Harlow Council, the other half of the woodland, when you cross the little river which runs between the land, is owned by Epping Council. On this shoot I decided to stay within the Harlow region of the woodland to continue the documentation and project. I also decided to continue with the development of my practice, using a tripod, live view to compose the shot, focus and meter the exposure and a shutter release cable to release the shutter.

The woodland is situated opposite a nursery which packs (and possibly, distributes) salad. My recent visit unearthed a lot of significant disruptions to the land. The salad packhouse opposite has recently replaced their metal fencing with wooden boards; the metal fencing now lays on the forest floor, disregarded, adding disruption to the natural life cycle of space, possibly affecting the biodiversity within.

Long tree trunks, which were probably tall trees at one point in time, lay on the forest floor; branches and plants are scattered, clearly the forest has no structure or does not undergo regular maintenance.

Interestingly, at the beginning of the year, myself and my partner got into contact with a few people with from Harlow Council, who identified the area as an environmental hazard due to old sofas and bags of disregarded household waste decomposing on the land, generating air pollutants and carbon emissions as a result.

The two people we spoke to from Harlow Council suggested ways of going about rectifying the situation and mitigating any further decline of the area, action is yet to be taken by the organisations which were suggested to lend a hand.

Please share this post and offer some support in raising awareness of this piece of woodland. Pictures from the shoot to follow shortly.

The Forgotten Landscape (Ongoing) / Projects | Nathan Still Photography

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Leechpool and Owlbeech Wood in Autumn. camera: Sony a7 iii lens: Tamron 24mm f/2.8 Di III OSD flickr // instagram

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The beautiful Lake District, September 2024

Fujifilm X-T2 / XF18-135mm f4-5.6

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"A contact sheet is a record of a journey, of a pursuit. It carries all the wanderings around an idea, or as some would have it, a vision. In the process of making a selection from digital files, what is often lost is the chance to go back, to retrace one's steps - to follow the original journey." - Stuart Franklin

I've recently returned from a trip to York which I found quite transformative in terms of my practice and purpose as a Photographer (see the screenshot above of a page from the contact sheet of the final edit)

Inspired by one of my previous tutor's approach to documenting their travel experience in the West, I decided to document my journey. Although, what started as a representation of a personal journey, of travelling to a new place and realising the importance of the need for familiarity and structure, become a very subtle investigation into the sociology of tourism, the relationship between people and place, through landscapes and observations.

On a personal note, this shoot, this journey, allowed to revisit my initial training, the building blocks of documentary photography (the establishing image, the detail, the informal portrait, the relationship, the environmental portrait and the observed portrait)

Eventually, as time went by, I looked briefly into link between sociology and photography through a Google search (photography is championed by many sociologists as a qualitative research tool) I became a sociologist with a camera through a newly discovered sociology documentary approach. I became an observer, storyteller and sociologist.

Instead of my practice being about purely photography, on this occasion, my practice has evolved into a form of Phenomenography.

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Development of my Practice - Stepping Outside of my Comfort Zone

I don't usually shoot in shot light, on an overcast day. Usually, when the sun is high in the sky, contrast, deep shadows and extremely bright highlights, is when I choose to shoot. Although, I've recently discovered what a challenge sunlight poses, both in practice out in the field and during post.

Without realising before, I'm trying to consider how to expose for equal amount of detail in the shadows and highlights, most of the time I'm in a position of either exposing for the shadows or the highlights, whichever, I usually loose detail in the foreground or little areas of detail, which is just as difficult as trying to rescue some of blown out highlights from complete oblivion.

Following a bit of research, I decided to venture out and photograph on an overcast day, using a tri-pod, live-view, exposure compensation and the blur-focus method, the result of this much slower, considered process towards my landscape photography practice is the image above.

I'm quite pleased with it as a first attempt, the aim of using exposure compensation was to lighten the shadows in the foreground to bring out a bit of extra detail of the tree and space between the branches, without sacrificing detail of the highlights in the background, which creates a minimalist, white background, allowing the autumnal colours of the leaves to stand out, to pop out from the frame.

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Possible new editing style! - Courtesy of Christian Mohrle

As part of the ongoing development of personal project Transcendence, I've experimented shooting in overcast light instead of sunlight (which makes exposing for both the highlights and shadows quite difficult) and a new editing style, courtesy of Christian Mohrle from Germany.

Instead of my usual process of correcting white balance and using curves and level to add contrast, I've applied masks, the colour range tool, linear gradient and temperature adjustment tool in Lightroom Classic to add a warm, autumn feel, enhance contrast and specific colours within the shot through subtle adjustments.

The decision to start shooting under overcast light enables me to not rush about to explore, the softer light means I'm able to take my time and embrace a 'slow productivity' approach to photography.