Featured Photographer – Paul Sutton

Artist’s Website

Paul Sutton is a self taught photographer who regularly likes to venture out into the diverse landscape that the UK has to offer. During the summer months, this usually means a ridiculously early start culminating in a late finish too.

Having learnt to traditionally process and print both black & white and colour images, Paul now feels that the Digital Darkroom has become a more immediate extension of his ‘traditional’ beginnings. Photography also features in his profession as a Graphic Designer and this is where Paul feels he gets his compositional ‘eye’ from.

Paul has been published several times in National Magazines and had some good exposure through these publications both with his work and with the articles he’s been commissioned to write for them.

Being out in the open is where he feels most comfortable, either with his camera [and MP3 player] or playing a wide selection of sports. He lives in the North West of England with his Fiancé and soon to be wife Fran and also his 15 year old step-daughter Beth.

(Photographs courtesy Paul Sutton, Copyright © 2011, All Rights Reserved)

Solitude in Silhouette

This particular shot was taken on my second visit to Crosby beach, where stands the art installation ‘Another Place’ by Antony Gormley, a collection of 100 life size Cast-Iron statues of the artist stretching over 3 kilometres of sand. On this particular occasion, the tide had been out a couple of hours and the beach was still nice and damp and littered with lovely pools to reflect the fabulous conditions that were available for a good hour.

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Coastal Convergence

On a brief detour to Saltburn-on-Sea I was just in time to watch the high tide begin it’s retreat. On went the wellies and a quick scout around found me looking at this composition. I took a number of shots, but this particular one captured the movement of the waves and the clouds which seemed to mimic each other creating a slightly unsettling twisting motion at the end of the pier. A simple mono conversion helped to concentrate the eye on the pattern available.

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Shepherd’s Warning

A very early start saw me setting up on the (recently closed) West pier at Whitby waiting for sunrise to occur. On the drive over, a decent sunrise looked anything but likely, but with a little patience and some test exposures the morning fell in to place. As someone said before me “I love it when a plan comes together”.

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Ingleborough Daybreak

After an early alarm call, a near two-hour drive and a good thirty minutes walk and climb onto Twistleton Scar End, it was ‘mildly’ disappointing to be met with a stiff breeze and rain blowing into the camera lens and filters. Though in the distance you could make out the promise of what was to come. Navigating the limestone is difficult and precarious at the best of times, but when the light did finally materialise, I was lugging my 6′ 5” frame around it like a ballet dancer [of sorts] trying to maximise the conditions available – this being probably my favourite shot of the morning. The drive home didn’t feel so bad after that!

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Brandlehow Burst

During the summer months I somehow managed to persuade my Fiancé, Fran to do a dusk to dawn shoot in the Lake District … surprisingly, she was quite keen on the idea. After a relatively restless 4 hour sleep in the car we made our way down to the landing stage at Brandlehow on Derwentwater and were blessed with a fabulous dawn and a multitude of colours for a good half hour. A little later on I decided to put on the Lee BIG Stopper and capture some of the cloud movement. During this 90 second exposure, the sun made it’s way over the distant fells to provide a lovely burst of light to just lift the shot.

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 Pier Persistence

I had initially headed to Southport Pier a couple of nights before this shot to capture the sun setting at the very tip, only to be thwarted by a low cloud bank. Staying determined, I ventured out again – with more success this time. Using a longer focal length of 86mm on my 70-200mm lens enabled me to foreshorten the elements I wanted to capture in this shot. A 0.6 Lee ND Grad [hard] helped me to just hold back the sky enough.

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Photo Travel Review Magazine recognizes Paul Sutton for the excellence of his work.  He is a premiere landscape photographer who is widely recognized for his subjects and his compositions.  His work is world class.  In addition to his website, his works may be viewed at 1x.com and at 500px.