James Lomax - The Walking Photographer

Blackbeck Tarn is one of my favourites. The first time I saw it I was wandering up from Honistor and saw Great Gable not knowing which hill it was or where it was. Years later it all became clear but I remembere the haunting first impression when I explored for the first time. I became lost, dropped down the hillside, and saw Blackbeck Tarn.

Lake District Outlooks: Blackbeck Tarn

Sunday June 16, 2013

British Hill Power: Mountain Video: This is a fun video. After I made it however I pondered it’s style, and reflected on the excess of such material and what we might think about it. When I studied video at university, one of my tutors made a comment about the running scene in the film Chariots Of Fire. He praised it and thought it was one of the best examples for the use of music. I remember thinking at the time,…
Wild Camp Walking: Wales: After walking in Wales quite extensively for about six years I’m still evaluating, comparing, and coming to terms with the place. I don’t feel familiar with Wales as I do with the Lake District, which is partly based on experience of the towns and guest houses where I stayed before I started camping. I got to know a few people, especially in the Eskdale valley where I stayed at a farm house, the daughter worked…
Mountain Morning: EXTRACTS FROM A PUBLICATION My Dad tried to wake me with cries about the rising sun and a comet – Kohoutek – and how splendid it was shooting through the skies. He’d enjoyed the astronomical news and was having fun. I had a medical appointment once and he drove me to the hospital for eight thirty, delaying his working day. I think I got the bus home but the outgoing journey was problematic. It was an…
The Red Dust Of Lies: Why Nature Heals: Our age is the age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds of exemption from the examination of this tribunal. But, if they are exempted, they become the subjects of just suspicion, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination – Emmanuel Kant,…
Lake District Walking At Buttermere (2): I got so much great footage walking across Red Pike, High Stile and high Crag – then further to Haystacks and Fleetwith Pike – there was sufficient material for another video. That’s what you see here. I don’t talk and narrate so much in this video but the talking I do is only here (not in the other video) and towards the end of the day at Fleetwith Pike. If you liked the first video you will…
Why I Walk And Escape: The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori EXTRACTS FROM A PUBLICATION Technology is often an extension of human faculties. A microscope, telescope and camera extend our vision. The telephone extends our ability to talk. A computer extends our nervous system, thinking, and emotions. A bicycle and car extend our capacity to walk. However technology doesn’t always work. One of the most frustrating experiences I know is working with a slow computer… Technology deadens us and so…
Lake District Walking At Buttermere: Red Pike, High Stile and High Crag are the three peaks on the ridge walk above Buttermere. I think it’s one of the very best Lake District walks with spectacular views. On one side you see Grasmoor, Dale Head and distant Skiddaw and Blencathra; on the other side you enjoy Great Gable, the Scafells and Pillar. This is hill walking at its best. When I set off on this walk I wasn’t sure if I’d continue…
Lake District Attractions: Castlerigg Stone Circle: I have fond memories of this place – Castlerigg stone circle, in the hills above Keswick in the northern Lake District. In warm summer time I have undertaken long walks, and short rest walks, then come up here in the evening to round off the day. I had some food with me once but it’s a bracing place, very exposed, not really suitable for a peaceful rest. I prefer to have food down by the…
Peak District Walk: Clough House And Cumberland Brook: From Manchester and other areas too what’s remarkable about the Peak District is how easily you get to it. As such, there are plenty of attractive day walks like this one, starting at a place called Clough House then climbing up beside Cumberland Brook to finish, if you wish, with refreshments at the Cat And Fiddle pub. I decided not to visit the pub actually, because I wanted the outdoors not rip-off UK prices. As…
Peak District Anniversary And Political Reflections: The Peak District National Park became the United Kingdom’s first national park on 17 April 1951. Statistically, the area is enormously popular sitting as it does between Manchester and Sheffield west and east, and north of Nottingham and Derby. It’s accessed quite easily from Manchester, indeed you can reach its edges in around thirty five minutes. This reason alone is why I’ve become increasingly fond of the place and I think this is more than…
Spring: Fog Lane Park Manchester: About ten days ago the media were saying the bizarrely long winter we’ve had would continue until the end of April. I knew it was nonsense. That is, it might be true, or it might not, and it was mere entertainment material which sells newspapers and generates internet gossip. It still might be true, or it might not, but current indications are spring has finally, belatedly, but convincingly arrived. The dreadful cold has stopped, we’ve had…
Walking The Peak District: Above Erwood Reservoir: What I show in this video is a lovely short walk along a place called Foxlow Edge, which is above Erwood Reservoir in the UK Peak District. I think this winter has been record breaking, not so much for its general severity as it’s prolonged nature. Back in November 2012 I remember feeling right, here we go again, several months of depressing gloom in another British winter. And it hasn’t yet stopped – I refer to “winter”…
Thinking Photography: The Decisive Moment And Landscape: In this video I present a few ideas about photography and how they apply to outdoors photography in particular. I describe the ‘decisive moment’ and how it’s a useful concept, and how you are involved when you photograph nature, mountains, and the landscape, and how that differs from ‘street’ photography. Henri Cartier-Bresson was a famous photographer who coined the phrase ‘the decisive moment’ which in some respects lies at the heart of photography. Walking the hills,…
Peak District Walking: The Goyt Valley: I’ve heard the Peak District is the most popular UK National Park. I find this curious because it is not, surely, the most attractive or adventurous place compared for example to the Lake District or Snowdonia. It consists of relatively flat and gentle hills and peat moorland, divided into the Dark Peak in the north and the White Peak in the south. These names refer to gritstone and limestone respectively. Other reasons why the Peak…
My First Wild Camp: Wild camping is a means to an end, which is a greater and more prolonged immersion in the hills. It’s the hills – nature – which is really the point of it. Otherwise, you would do it in the city if it were possible, or your back garden which is pointless. Camp sites are an intermediary experience and I remember my first time there too, the joy and fun and glee of it, waking at…
Mountain Photography And Camera Exposure: If you described the process of riding a bike it would be impossibly complex. The weight of the bike is here so adjust your body weight there. Control the handlebars as you turn the corner selecting the right line. Allow your body to shift slightly left and right but note if you go too far you will fall, according to the laws of physics. Then the more subtle parts of it: find a pace which…
Landscape and Robert Macfarlane: I’m interested in the ways in which our minds, and our moods, and our imaginations, and our identities, are influenced by the textures, and the weathers, and the forms, and the slopes, and the curves and the creatures remembered and actual of the places we inhabit Robert Macfarlane has carved out an important place in nature and landscape literature with his three books Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, and The Old Ways. …
Chorlton Meadows Nature Reserve: Outdoors Photography: I’ve written about Chorlton Meadows before at my web site, and will now describe my interest with specific reference to photography: why is it interesting and what does it mean when I go there repeatedly? As I considered this subject what occurred to me is the nature of craft. Photography used to be a craft; it still is in some respects but it’s also radically different from what photography used to be. Everyone’s got a camera…
Walking In Wales: Moel Siabod: A few years ago I read an account of walking Moel Siabod in north Wales describing how wonderful it is. He was a walk leader with a school party and explained how he met one of the group years later who conveyed how memorable it had been. Some days are like that: a perfect combination of weather, light, colour, mood, and adventure. The guide said Siabod is a slightly neglected hill, but this is one…
Lyme Park in Winter: Lyme Park is a National Trust area situated between Disley and Poynton in Cheshire. At the centre of it there’s a heritage property which has been used for period drama filming: think Jane Austen and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. For walkers this is not its main attraction and after visiting the park numerous times I’ve never been near the building. The grounds are extensive but it’s the rear of the park which is most wild…