For this exercise we were asked to consider how our own subjective attitudes toward the landscape forms our personal voice. Looking through the work I have carried out for this module, the links with my own perspective on landscape were quite clear to me.

I grew up in the 1970s in rural Lincolnshire and fondly recall being allowed to play in the woods with my sister and cousins, though I found it a little scary, particularly on one particular occasion when we spotted a bra hanging from a tree branch. We also used to play around an old scout hut, and down a lane close to our house their was a rickety farm shed full of large machinery; the kind of places I certainly wouldn’t let my own children roam alone today, even though statistically I don’t imagine them to be in any greater danger than I was. This definitely fed into my ideas for assignment one on the sublime; to me, landscape is intrinsically linked to our inner feelings and no doubt this is why I am drawn to the areas where children play today. I am also interested in family history and revisiting the locations of historic family outings, probably driven by my mother’s death when she was quite young and the family photograph albums of hers I have inherited.

The environment is also an important factor for me, and I think this feeds into my interest in how we as humans interact with the landscape, but also how we react to landscape as well. With the landscape around us changing dramatically as a direct consequence of human actions this is certainly an area that cannot be ignored by the landscape photographer, even if her work is not directly related to environmental concerns.