Phil Proctor Photography
  • Home
  • Collections
  • Stories
  • Instagram
  • About Me
  2. Home
  3. Instagram
Landscape photography is often portrayed as a calm and dignified pursuit. A photographer quietly arrives at a beautiful location, carefully composes the scene, presses the shutter and returns home with a masterpiece. This is complete nonsense. The reality usually involves scrambling over slippery rocks, negotiating with gravity and making increasingly questionable decisions in the name of
A short walk after work saw me heading up to a small lake behind where I was staying. Expectations, photographically speaking, were fairly low. In fact, if I’m honest, I was mostly there to stretch my legs and keep Eddie, my dog, and part-time expedition manager, happy for half an hour. So off we went. After passing through a few gates, I stopped and looked around. That’s when I noticed this scene. Now, some of you may look at the image and think, “It’s just a photograph of a gate.” And you’d be absolutely right, it is a photograph of a gate. I haven’t completely lost the plot… at least not yet. But what caught my attention was the way the light fell beyond it. It looked almost as though the gate was leading somewhere brighter, somewhere you had to pass through to reach the sunlight. It was one of those fleeting little moments that appear without warning and disappear just as quickly. Ten minutes later, the light would have changed, the feeling would have gone, and the scene would have become just another field with a gate in it. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy photography so much. It’s less about taking pictures of “things” and more about documenting moments, tiny slices of time that nobody else may ever notice in quite the same way again. Of course, it’s probably taken this entire explanation for you to understand why I pressed the shutter in the first place. You may have originally thought the subject was simply the gate. The funny thing about photography is that everyone sees something different. One person sees a gateway to the light; another sees livestock security. Both are technically correct. And if, after all of this, all you can still see is a gate… then yes, it’s a photograph of a gate. And yes, I may well be going slightly mad. I’m blaming the heat.
This weekend wanders around the woods uncovered some subjects for my #revealtheinvisable project. These miniature subjects need a slow pace and some patience to find.
This weekend wanders around the woods uncovered some subjects for my #revealtheinvisable project. These miniature subjects need a slow pace and some patience to find.
I stayed local at the weekend looking for subjects for my Sacred Spaces and Silent Stories project. I decided to take a photo of the The Trawsfynydd War Memorial, a granite wheel cross overlooking the lake and mountains at Cefn Gwyn, commemorates 33 First World War and 4 Second World War casualties, including Welsh poet Ellis Evans (Hedd Wyn). Originally unveiled in 1921 and relocated in 1933, it bears the dedications: “You brave and comely young men were drawn into that fiery breach to restore freedom” and “For the second time hostilities insisted that our young men should be sacrificed for a cause.” In between the rain the light just made an appearance.
Llech Idris. According to local legend, the stone was thrown from the summit of Cader Idris by the mythical figure Idris Gawr.
It's been a while.
Waiting for the overflow
The challenge behind the photos.
philmproctor image 9
The little details in nature make me smile.
I've said before, one of the most rewarding things is to get a photo home and find some little critter who has 'photo bombed' my scene.
© 2026 Phil Proctor Photography - By Grey Matter
  • Home
  • Collections
  • Stories
  • Instagram
  • About Me