Nature Unlocked

Our resident photographer Paul Moody currently has an exhibition of his work at Greenhill Arts in Mortonhampstead (Thursday 20th May until 3rd July) and then down at the Fingle Bridge Inn from mid July until the end of August. The exhibition is a celebration of our wonderful landscape and the wildlife that inhabits it and most of the images on show are taken in Fingle Woods and the immediate surrounding area.  All the pictures were taken during the last 15 months covering the three lockdowns."Walking down the empty lane from my house to Fingle Gorge I was very conscious of the stress caused by the pandemic and the upheaval the world was experiencing. Conversely, the surrounding nature thrived, being immediately apparent that it was impervious to our human plight.The absence of noise and people's interference in the woods made me see and hear nature like I was experiencing it for the first time.   Like being at sea or in high mountains, this local natural landscape made me focus, more than ever before, on simple sights that we take for granted. Anything from a small insect and rushing water to busy birds and the empty woods, nature seemed to be, for a change, dominant in all our lives.The quintessential English landscape is dominated by the human hand. Mostly cultivated fields, roads and plenty of buildings occupy the vista wherever you look these days. Only the firmament and the weather are out of our control and of course there is the possibility that our human super species may eventually change this too? That is another story, but for the time being nature seems to be on everybody's lips and hopefully the past 15 months will be a wake-up call for us to provoke a more mindful approach to nature and our own future.I do not strive for technical perfection or even look for interesting subjects, it's more the emotion in the image I am after. Working this way, I can feel more creative, and the results become a soothing mental tonic.Every one of these images has a story to tell, from the dramatic sunsets to the damp woods, it is my way of inheriting the spirit of the landscape.