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Shoot for the Moon – Capturing the 2018 Lunar Eclipse

While eclipses of all sorts happen throughout each year – from “blood moons” to annular solar eclipses, total eclipses and every partial one in between, this year’s lunar eclipse promised something special: the longest lunar eclipse in the 21st century. So the call from Rollei came – could I come across and be involved in their live shoot on Instagram, capturing the spectacle from Hamburg? Well, why not…? With a few days’ preparation beforehand and […]

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Norway’s Lofoten Islands – Stunning? Yes. “Untamed”? I’m not so sure.

It’s one of landscape photography’s “big ticks” – that shot of the fishermans cottages in the shadow of Lofoten’s mountain range in Hamnøy; one of the archipelago’s tiny islands connected by bridges that span for miles across the region. I have to admit, it’s been a place I’d been wanting to shoot for a while, so when the opportunity arose to test some new equipment in low temperatures, it was pretty high up there on […]

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Hide & Seek – Denmark’s Sand-Covered Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse, Løkken

Arriving into bad weather wasn’t on the original plan, but it had taken us long enough to get to Løkken so a determination to shoot took over – I was there to shoot the hidden lighthouse, and that’s precisely what I was going to do, rain and sand storm or not. Set almost as far north as you can go in Denmark, Løkken has become somewhat of a local tourist-trap for its beaches more than […]

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Electric Dreams : Dubai Revisited

Stepping out onto the scorching hot ground of the Red Sand Desert, I was reminded (rather cheerily) by our guide of the one thing I should be grateful for in this midday sun : “at least it’s not last month, it was at least 10 degrees C hotter!”. It was quite a contrast to where I’d been sat just hours before, being looked after in BA’s Concorde Room at London Heathrow – getting pampered (in […]

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Iceland : The Land of the Midnight Sun, Mountains & Waterfalls

What an evening – and what a view! Being lucky enough to stand in the foothills of Kirkjufellsfoss at 12:30am this summer was quite the experience, and everything I thought it would be all those months ago when we planned this trip to Iceland to see the midnight sun. Landing into Reykjavik, it was clear this was going to be a strange week – looking back to the plane in the middle of the night […]

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Stonehenge : Photographing the Inner Circle at Sunrise

Stood in the crisp air of a spring morning, enjoying the view through Stonehenge across the Wiltshire countryside; it was all too easy to forget for a moment that what I was photographing had been built over 4,500 years ago – by our Neolithic ancestors – out of 25 tonne “sarsen” stones transported for over 20 miles to be here. It was a morning that had been planned for a while – with weather that seemed set to disappoint. The nearer I […]

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Chill Out : The End of Winter in Iceland

For the briefest of moments, the sound of cracking had stopped – the huge iceberg formations that feed Iceland’s iconic Jökulsárlón (or “glacial river lagoon” when translated) had steadied and the tide was turning. While often full of baby icebergs which have fallen away from the surface of the Vatnajökull glacier, finding one of this size in isolation resting in still water (with very few people around to distract) was quite unusual. Even better, the stillness […]

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Spellbound : Iceland’s Northern Winter Waterfalls

It’s a truly amazing feeling – that moment when you walk up to a location that’s taken ages to get to, having planned it for months, with doubt all along the way that you’d even arrive – to find the exact scene you were hoping for. With a mix of relief, awe and then urgency; it was time to shoot the stunning Aldeyjarfoss waterfall, in the North-East of Iceland, before the weather closed in after our ice-bound […]

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Hooker Lake : New Zealand, Frozen in Time

That brief moment, just before sunrise, when it’s no longer night – but the day is still yet to arrive – that was the moment when I captured this view of Hooker Lake, in the foothills of New Zealand’s Mount Cook. Standing at 3,724m (following a rockslide which lost 40m in 1991), Aoraki Mt Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand, set amongst the collection of peaks which make up the Southern Alps. As with most […]

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First Light : Sunrise at Zion National Park

Zion – a National Park that I’ve passed many times, yet strangely never visited. Heading in for just one night as we travelled the long trek from Jackson to Las Vegas, I was reliably informed that there was one key “sunset shot” that was worth heading in to at least try and capture. The signs of an unlikely shot were there – the weather was closing in, loads of people around in the late season, and […]

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Roy’s Peak – Another of New Zealand’s (now) cliché locations

Over-used by cliché wedding photographers, over-“influenced” by millions of instagrammers and over-sold around the world by tourism boards, this once peaceful hiking trail and overlook across Lake Wanaka has sadly now become a magnet for “look at me” shots worldwide. Beautiful though it is, Roy’s Peak has fallen victim to the same challenges faced by “that Wanaka tree” and many other tourist traps nearby – the result of huge popularity following the publishing of (what were […]

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Tasman Lake – New Zealand’s Glacial Sunrise

It’s the shot I thought had got away – the image of New Zealand’s Aoraki Mount Cook and its surrounding range, dusted in snow, with glacial icebergs floating in the river before me. Only 3 weeks prior, our initial trip to Hooker Lake ended in disappointment. The trek to the lakefront was filled with slips, slides, falls and bumps as the ice underfoot made a (normally easy) walk that little bit more interesting. Despite the clear […]

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From 5 stars to a billion stars : Road-Tripping the Jucy way

Persuading me to leave a 5-star hotel and “rough it” in a Jucy campervan for a week or two while tearing around New Zealand’s south island is no mean feat, but just over a year ago now it was done – and with some great photography results to show for it. This year, based on that success, was the return. With a lot more clarity on our route, more flexibility in our approach and with Jucy […]

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landscapes in motion : out of this | world

Say hello to our next video portfolio – this time, “landscapes in motion”. Following the successful launch of my “cityscapes : out of this | world” portfolio video, together with the guys at ToInspire, we’ve managed to create another – giving a whole new feel to my landscape images from across the planet. This time, we’re featuring images shot in California, New Zealand, China, Iceland, Australia, Arizona, and of course my home in Dorset. As […]

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Inside Antelope Canyon – Paul’s Complete Photography Guide

It’s a location that features on the bucket list of many photographers, and it’s a magnetic one at that. Having already visited both Upper and Lower Antelope Canyon 6 or 7 times since my first visit in 2011, I still have the urge to return every now and then to capture the other-worldly scenes of light-trails, stunning rock formations and shadows throughout these two natural wonders just outside of Page, Arizona. Sadly, there is a lot […]

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Old Harry Rocks – 3rd Time Lucky

Despite the initial frustration, there’s something rather satisfying about finally getting the shot you’ve been working at for a while – managing to “beat the weather”, in a sense… Old Harry Rocks | East – Buy the open edition print Old Harry Rocks, jetting out into the English Channel – these chalk cliffs are all that remains of the stretch of headland that once joined the Isle of Wight to the mainland at Purbeck. Similar […]

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Cold as Ice : An Amazing Winter in Iceland

Iceland – a country of stunning beauty, dramatic views and amazing natural resources. In some ways, photographs of the huge vistas that presented themselves before us can never really show the true nature of the vast spaces and rugged landscape – but in others, they also capture a stillness that is easy to miss when you’re stood in huge, freezing, gusts of arctic wind… With glaciers all around, the sheer scale is something that must […]

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Venetian Nights – Capturing Venice’s Grand Canal

Ah, Venice. The Bride of the Sea, City of Bridges, City of Light, City of Water and Serenissima. A stunning place to just force yourself to get lost with no maps and wander around the winding streets, waterways, alleys and ancient buildings exploring an area that is so set back in time, it’s as close to arriving in a Shakespearean novel as you can get. My last visit to Venice had resulted in quite a few “learning […]

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9 Years in the Making : Fog City – San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge

There’s always that one shot, for every photographer out there – “the one” that just keeps getting away, the one that’s never quite right when you click the button, or the one that’s impossible to find the right conditions to capture. For me, that shot has been the same for over 9 years now: San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge in the fog. Finally, one random winter’s afternoon, I managed to break that spell – and shoot […]

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Opening The World’s Most Exclusive Gallery – In 30 days flat!

We did it!  Opening the world’s most exclusive gallery – pr@hf – on the luxury island resort of PER AQUUM Huvafen Fushi is something we’re really proud of, and it’s now all set to grow in its brand new home. As the first ever photographic gallery that must be accessed by seaplane or speedboat, there’s something really cool about the new space, and guests are loving what we’ve managed to deliver. But I thought I’d take […]

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Yosemite National Park – Capturing the Valley in Winter

Ah, Yosemite – a “photographer’s paradise” (as claimed), but a location which can equally be the stuff of a photographer’s nightmares… On what must now be my 7th or 8th time of visiting, I was determined on this occasion to get at least one shot which stood out from the millions of picture-postcard views and Ansel Adams “tributes” that I see far too often. In one single frame, almost by accident, I managed it – […]

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Through the Keyhole: Durdle Door’s sunrise, revisited

Since my first attempt to capture sunrise “through the hole” a few year back, a couple of things have happened. Firstly, I’ve managed to get a lot more familiar with my gear – its quirks and challenges, as well as what to do to get it to really perform. Secondly, I’ve seen a mini-explosion of photographers shrouding their images in fake mystery regarding “the art of capturing sunrise through the hole” at Durdle Door. If you seriously listened […]