Dead Woman’s Ditch, Quantocks

“Bewitched”

I love revisiting places in different conditions. Although I thought this image would be nice when I first set up, I could have done with a bit more snow to simplify the scene, but I was happy enough. Then the mist rolled in and transformed the scene and the slightly scrubby ground mattered less. When I first started focusing on landscape photography in 2019, I was living between London and Taunton and I was surprised by how little inspiration from the Quantocks I could find online. Now that I am more familiar with the landscape—and landscape photography in general—I realise that I was looking for the wrong thing. These hills—nestled between the Somerset towns of Bridgwater, Minehead and Taunton—lend themselves much more to close study than grand vistas. This image of Dead Woman’s Ditch in Over Stowey illustrates this point.