Part One: Swan Family on the Montgomery Canal in Mid Wales
It’s often said that the best photographs appear right on your doorstep. This is a statement that I didn’t believe once upon a time and I would regularly find myself driving up to a hundred miles in search of the perfect photograph. I would do anything I could to escape the confines of my local area, regularly hopping between the popular spots, hoping to find that unique angle and light that would get me attention as a photographer. I guess I was a little guilty of playing the ‘Instagram game’; seeing a location on the app and doing everything I could to visit when the sun was low and the colours were ‘popping’. This was, of course, how my love of photography started and I have that app to thank for many reasons. It introduced me to so many amazing photographers, it gained my work lots of admirers and it had enabled me to spend some time in the most beautiful places that our country has to offer whilst meeting some amazing people along the way.
It might be a controversial statement, but I also have the last eighteen months of lockdowns to thank too. Up until April of 2020, I’d been working so many hours with juggling a full time job that demanded ten hours of my time each day, gym and personal training commitments and trying to squeeze in photography trips over the weekend too. It wasn’t a healthy way to live. Lockdown gave me a much needed chance to slow down and think about my life and its’ course.
For those of you that have been following for a while now, you might have had a close eye on my Facebook page during the spring of 2020. It was a time when people needed hope and my local stretch of Montgomery Canal duly provided. Whist taking a walk along the canal, just outside of Welshpool on the first day of my fourteen week furlough period, I met a couple of loved-up mute swans who also appeared to be out enjoying the scenery too. This was the first of what turned out to be a whole portfolio of photographs that I took of these beautiful animals.
I shared it to my Facebook feed and received some great responses. One reply was from a local lady who was delighted that I’d shared this photo of her favourite part of her early morning running route, as she was now unable to visit because of the lockdown rules.
What followed during the next morning was the birth of my favourite photography project so far and one that made me realise that photography is about so much more than hoarding photographs of famous landmarks, and posting them to social media in exchange for the 21st century currency; likes!
For six weeks, I visited these swans every day bar two on my allocated daily walk. I watched on as the swans guarded eight eggs with their lives. This was the next photograph that I shared with my Facebook audience and I also decided to post this into one of the Welsh photography communities too. Many people in that group left some lovely words for me, as they were stuck in big cities and unable to make it out into the countryside. This gave me some much needed motivation to continue with the project, as I realised that, for a change, this wasn’t just something that I was doing for myself. I realised that other people needed to see these photographs for their own sanity while the world descended into chaos.
I watched on as the eight eggs soon turned into six. I’m not entirely sure what the culprit was but mum was on high alert from here on in.
Whilst the pen (mum) spent most of her time sat guarding the nest, the cob (dad) would parade the waters nearby, chasing away any intruders that might dare to encroach on his stretch of canal!
With the eggs laid and the intruders wisely keeping their distance, there were a few quiet weeks for my photography and people were mentioning that they hoped I hadn’t brought the story to an end already. Of course, there was only so many times that I could photograph a swan sitting on a nest and so I decided to make use of some of the beautiful sunsets to create photographs that would help to keep the story going.
Even though things were a little quiet on the swan front, my love of walking this stretch of canal definitely hadn’t died down. My daily walk to Belan locks became something of a ritual. If I wasn’t out at sunrise (or close to it at least because 4.30am is a little early to be up every day), then I’d make sure that I walked the two mile stretch in the evening. Sometimes I would take a book and spend ten minutes sitting down at the picnic area while listening to the bird song. I remember starting and finishing Ernest Hemingways ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ during this period.
It was during this first lockdown that, for the first time in my life, I began to show some interest in the species of birds and their songs. The sound of the song thrush quickly became one of my favourites and it was a far cry from the usual sound of the office telephone and demanding customers on the other end.
It was also during this time that I started to see how our life as humans was meant to be lived. There was no worrying about money, no power balances and minimal time sat staring at a screen (I say as I write this on my computer on a beautiful summer afternoon). It was complete bliss and somebody I met along the canal even picked up on the fact that I looked much more relaxed than my usual self. If that is what more time in nature can do to a man, it should be prescribed for every body.
In between the swans, moments like this with these great tits provided a much needed escape from news in the real world and my love of photography just grew and grew. Somewhere around this point in the year came the moment that I knew that I had to try to make something out of my passion for photography and the lifestyle that came with it. I’d been trying to decide between making a career out of one of my two passions for a while; fitness and photography. In being alone outdoors in the wilderness and with the wildlife, I felt more like my true self than I ever had before and my decision was made; this was going to be the future for me.
While I was busy thinking about my future and photographing away at the other end of the canal, things were developing with the swans. Dad had returned from his patrols and was on guard just a few yards away from mum who was sitting tightly on her nest. It was at this point, that I had a feeling that something was about to unfold. I began to think about some of the shots that I had been visualising for weeks and I began to update Facebook with some developments, much to the relief of my followers. The story was back.
I decided from here on in that I would visit in the morning and again in the evening so as to not miss a thing. Sometime in the afternoon of 13th May between my two visits, the first of the cygnets hatched. This is what was awaiting me when I reached my vantage point beside the A458 overlooking the Montgomery Canal. New life and new hope in a time when this world most needed it.
The following morning brought with it even more. I couldn’t quite count how many there were but my guess was that all six cygnets had hatched and were hiding underneath mum. I left them alone for the day with a big smile on my face and visited again that same evening, although all that awaited me was a sleeping family. They must have all been exhausted after a busy day. The lack of action that evening was soon forgotten about on the morning that followed…
I made sure that I didn’t hang around in bed because I just had one of those feelings that hits me as a photographer from time to time. It’s usually when I know that something special is just around the corner.
Mum was not impressed at this little one trying to show off already.
I stood and watched as the cygnets left their home of the last six weeks for the first time. Much to Mums disappointment. Here she is giving her first ‘sshh, you’ll wake your Dad up’ look.
Too late. All six were up and dad couldn’t sleep in much longer. At this point, I was beginning to wonder just what the next step of this journey was going to be. Surely they were too young to be entering the water already weren’t they?
This was similar to the photograph that I’d been picturing. Although I was expecting the cygnets to be on the nest and not queuing up to enter the water just two days after hatching. The photograph itself became Countryfile’s Photo of the Day and also won me a prize in a competition that I entered just a few weeks later. It proved to me that some of the best photographs need a story to go with. The photograph, and overall project, was responsible for changing the way that I think as a photographer.
No longer was I going to hop from destination to destination, leaving a lasting mark on this planet with lots of unnecessary travel. Don’t get me wrong, I will still be travelling around for photographs on occasions but I have learnt that there are stories to be told everywhere, including a local area that you might describe as ‘boring’, as I once did. If you’re a photographer that is reading this, I implore you to give it a go. Pick a part of your local area and explore it thoroughly, I bet you’ll be surprised at what might be on your doorstep. This is something that I carried over into the rest of the year and well into 2021 too. I’ll be writing some more to talk about these in the future.
Although I’m well and truly back into my landscape photography after this swan project, I’m now focusing my efforts on much smaller areas, choosing instead to explore these in depth and detail, which I hope will allow me to tell better stories as I write about these in the future.
The project and lockdown, I should add, also changed me beyond measure as a human being. It gave me time to connect with my home and the species that inhabit it, away from screens, telephones, talk of finances and credit limits. All of the stuff that now hurts my head when I think about them. My time alone gave me the chance to ask many questions about myself and my purpose here on this planet and it is here that my dream of educating others was born. I’m now developing some photography workshops that I will take into the world in the near future, as well as leading some one to one lessons that will help others to tell their own stories through the lens too. I don’t class myself as a wildlife photographer by any means as most of my time is spent in the mountains and woodland, but this is one photography project that I will take with me forever and I’m so glad that I have the photographs that help to tell this story.