I have often wondered what people think when they see me out with a camera.
Not fellow photographers. They already understand the strange rituals involved. I mean ordinary members of the public who happen to be out walking the dog or enjoying a peaceful afternoon in the countryside.
From their perspective, I must look absolutely ridiculous.
Imagine, if you will, that you are sitting on a bench overlooking a beautiful valley. Along comes a middle aged man wearing walking boots, carrying an unnecessarily large rucksack and a tripod that looks capable of supporting a small satellite dish.
He walks with purpose.
He stops.
He stares into the distance.
He takes three more steps.
He stops again.
He tilts his head slightly to one side as though listening for instructions from an invisible producer.
Then he walks backwards.
This is perfectly normal behaviour for a landscape photographer.
After several minutes of careful observation, he finally plants the tripod. You assume this is the moment the photograph will be taken.
Oh no.
This is merely the beginning.
The tripod legs are adjusted.
Then adjusted again.
One leg is moved about an inch.
The entire tripod is picked up and relocated approximately the length of a digestive biscuit.
The camera is mounted.
It is removed.
The tripod is moved back to where it started because, as it turns out, it was better there after all.
By this point anyone watching is probably wondering whether to call for medical assistance.
Then comes the crouching.
Landscape photographers spend an astonishing amount of time crouching to inspect tiny flowers, interesting rocks or patches of moss that nobody else noticed. We also have an irresistible urge to photograph puddles, dead trees and old walls that appear to be held together largely by optimism.
Normal people admire the view.
We become fascinated by a damp log.
Then there is the waiting.
To everyone else, it is a lovely sunny day.
To a photographer, the light is completely wrong.
We will happily stand motionless for twenty minutes waiting for a cloud to drift into exactly the right position.
When it finally arrives, it immediately covers the entire sun.
The cloud has misunderstood the assignment.
Of course, we are never entirely happy anyway.
The composition is nearly right.
The light is almost perfect.
If only that sheep would move six feet to the left.
The sheep, unsurprisingly, has other priorities.
One of my favourite habits is walking away from a scene convinced there is no photograph, only to turn around thirty seconds later because the light has changed slightly.
Now there is definitely a photograph.
Probably.
The real giveaway, though, is when you see someone standing perfectly still, staring intently at what appears to be absolutely nothing.
To everyone else it is an ordinary woodland path.
To the photographer, it is a masterpiece waiting for the sun to illuminate one particular fern for approximately four and a half seconds.
I suspect we all look slightly eccentric.
We spend thousands of pounds on equipment so we can wake up at four in the morning, climb a hill in the rain, get bitten by insects, fill our boots with water, wait for clouds to behave themselves and occasionally come home without taking a single photograph.
And yet...
The moment everything comes together, the light, the landscape and that brief second when the scene becomes something special, all the strange behaviour suddenly makes perfect sense.
Well, to us at least.
Everyone else probably still thinks we're odd.
