Colin Prior

I am deeply passionate about making images. Most of my waking hours are spent thinking about photographs I would like to make and planning how best to go about creating them.

From about the age of six, I realised that I shared a deep affinity with the natural world, something that continues to grow within me and is largely the driving force behind my work. Over time it became clear to me that whilst I was fascinated by wildlife it was the landscape, which provided me with the greatest potential to express my feelings about the world. For within it lay the building blocks of great images and it was simply up to me to arrange them in a way that I saw fitting.

Through trial and error I began to understand the language of composition and more importantly the way in which the eye and brain responds to it, a discipline, which is ongoing. For me, the ultimate expression of photography which transcends all others, is the landscape photograph where the combination of pre-visualisation, meticulous planning and ethereal light can transform the mundane into the sublime - from the ordinary to the extra-ordinary. Capturing those moments which will never again recur is a theme which I have pursued with passion and whilst my work posses a strong sense of place, it is always about the moment.

I have come to realise that I never intentionally go out to photograph what’s there but rather what’s not. The irony is that what I seek, in reality doesn’t exist. It is for this reason alone that landscape photography for me is so unique.

At an early stage in my journey, I was drawn to the panoramic format. Its 3:1 ratio is to my mind the most visually exciting format ever to be designed for landscape photography, with the ability to create a visual experience. The combination of 120 roll film and the camera’s large format lenses creates an aesthetic not possible by any other means. I continue to work with these cameras in conjunction with digital capture.

Whilst my approach to landscape photography remains largely unchanged with digital equipment there are some aspects, which must be ‘unlearned’ to achieve optimum results. I have now reached a point in my life where when I look back I can see a path, which leads right back to my early sorties underwater with a camera. Much has changed during that time - not just in the evolution of photography but also in degradation of the environment and as someone who is deeply passionate about the natural world, I find this distressing.

Over the years I have become a kind of naturalist which has come about by years of first hand encounters with wildlife and the land. My mission is to communicate my passion for nature using the visual language of photography and to inspire people sufficiently for them to rediscover in nature their own biology.