Pressing days at harvest time...

Harvest time, my favourite time…

The past 6 months for me and many others, especially those in the events, creative and people business have been pretty tough. My work disappeared over night and I was pretty quickly left with the opinion that my work was pretty non essential. After 30 years of solid photography work this came as quite shock. As Spring ran into Summer things barely improved (apart from one very welcome job in the South of France )

As any great apple juice/cider maker knows (average cider maker in my case), September is the month that signals the start of harvest, and indeed I’ve been knee deep in apples for much of it. Thankfully though, as the juice has began to flow, so has the photography and video work. With the schools going back, companies and business seemed to have gained confidence and open their marketing doors. I realise that we are at a crucial time and god forbid we might be back in some kind of lockdown soon, but for me September has be a welcome breath of fresh air. As well as tending my own small orchard I’m been wandering and photographing Thatchers Cider young Katy orchards. This orchard stands next to its unruly older brother, the historic Criston orchard, where the neat rows of smaller trees in the katy orchard gives way to a patchwork of mature and awkward creaking trees, groaning under the weight of their produce. It feels great to be out in the fresh air working again. As a photographer, no matter how young or old you, you have licence to just lay under a tree, to just look and listen and if the light is just right, to capture the scene.

The ornate Katy Orchard with Crooks Peak looming in the distance

The unruly historic Upper Criston Orchard.

I amazed that I managed to find some symmetry in the old Criston orchard.

Pressing Days…
I been making apple juice up at the community field with the other ‘fieldies’ during the past couple of weeks and these long and and tiring days, full of the sweet smell of fresh juice, alfresco lunches ( using the field own harvest and washed down with a jar of last years cider ) proves a welcome antidote to the slightly suffocating summer that many of us have just endured.

My young orchard, the L’Avenue des deux Philippe. I’ve planted wild flowers and made bee hotels to encourage wildlife.

October brings the promise of cider making, which is a bit like apple juice making, but without the wasps or quite often friends for company. The sunshine often decides to stay indoors and your like to be working in light drizzle. Collecting the quite often smaller mis-shaped and spotted cider apples, beneath fallen leaves while kneeling in damp grass is for me a pleasure that brings on a sweet melancholy ( like listening your favourite Joni Mitchell or Lennard Cohen album, with a glass of red wine ) but with the thought of great cider to be made, a single variety and a if I’m feeling ambitious, which I think I am this year, a sparkling bottle Conditioned Cider.

So far October is filling up with photography and video jobs with welcome returns to some of my old and trusted clients, including more school videos and trips to the Midlands for more transport shoots with those loveable mweps and steel plated Land Rovers.

But who knows, my career at present is a little like my cider making, a hit and miss affair that can go a little flat. But as long as there is a dog to walk and an orchard to wander around, I guess I’ll get by…