We headed up to Hogsback last weekend to collect our dog and cat from Wild Fox Hill. There wasn’t much opportunity to get to the Flower Festival – we were only there for 24 hours – and the weather was very threatening. Take a look at this picture taken from Wild Fox Hill looking east across Winding Lane towards the three Hogs and you’ll see what I mean!
There was an afternoon thunderstorm flowing down the valley and when the clouds eventually lifted there was a spectacular view across to the mountains. Atmospheric is the best word for it. It was such a change for us to see the green and grey spring colours as we had just come from the reds, yellows, gold and green of autumn in Sweden.
RODDY FOX
Roddy is a self taught photographer whose first camera, a Zeiss Ikon, was bought in 1974 from a second hand dealer in Glasgow. Through the forty years since then, he's taken landscape photographs with Pentax, Olympus and FujiFilm systems for his teaching and research as a geography academic at Kenyatta and Rhodes Universities. He has always been inspired by great nature and landscape photographers such as Nick Brandt, Beth Moon, Obie Oberholzer and Hans Strand. Since taking early retirement he has been able to pursue his passion for photography, published a photobook ’Symmetry in Nature’ and held three solo exhibitions at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa.
His landscape photography is about light: often at low angles, of forests, mist and clouds, the night sky and lightning. He prints on different media depending on the affects he wants to produce: brushed aluminium for reflecting angled light; Hahnemühle German Etching paper for soft diffusion; Ilford Metallic Gloss for vibrant night pictures.
His conceptual photography uses mirroring and merging of layers to explore patterns, motifs and the feminine in nature.