The seasons of change

A bonus of living in the UK (although it may not feel like it sometimes) is that our climate is subject to seasonal change. This brings a great variety to the range of images our shores can produce. Warmer countries may look beautiful is summery idyllic images but even in their winters they look pretty similar. This is fine if you want to holiday there but not so much if you want to capture different emotions which seasonal changes provide.

Recently, due to the number of snow flurries we've had, I've managed to capture a great number of images which reminisce of childhood memories. Children sleigh or snowmen melting – even businessmen hurrying around London with their coats drawn tight. The juxtaposition of a child’s enthusiasm compared to the cynical worker who sees the snow as an inconvenience rather than an opportunity.

In a way, that’s why I love photography. You see the same mundane things everyone else does but try and create something powerful or beautiful out of the experience. Imagining how an image looks from a different angle, through a different lens, using a different aperture or even how you can manipulate the shot through Photoshop, all these things teach you to view the world with the eyes of a child.

Snow isn't always peaceful

The seasons really allow the photographer to play with their surroundings. Golden and burgundy leaves falling in autumn, the hazy summer days spent on the grass. The location is the same but the use of the area and what it means to the people inhabiting it changes.

Even in terms of fashion, seasons dictate what imagery photographers can capture. Warm furs and long coats can create a wonderful contrast of textures from the constructed world around them. The typically pink sun-burnt skin of the average Brit, as funny as it looks, creates a positive emotional response to a photograph, which is the fundamental reason for photography isn't it?

To capture the best images, photographers may need to alter their camera’s white balance before taking their shots. In the UK, because we are further away from the equator, light is filtered through the atmosphere in such a way that it is mainly blue light which comes through. This is why our country feels so grey in winter. In summer, the light is more direct allowing warmer colours of light spectrum to penetrate. This allows for the golden, reds and yellow colours to become more vibrant. By altering your cameras settings, you can best capture the emotion in a scene.

Winter scenes also allow great images in terms of colour – or more accurately – the lack of it. Using Photoshop, you can take a fairly grey image and enhance one colour within the image in order to draw attention to it. It’s a simple technique but can be very effective.