Landscape photography is probably one of the most popular, if not the most popular, photographic genre. Photos of hills, valleys, sunrises, beaches and woodlands evoke ‘nature’ and a world that is beautiful and continuously renewable. But what do we see when we photograph landscapes? Landscapes are not just scenery but are dynamic, socially constructed, and politically charged spaces shaped by human-environment interactions. So when we photpgraph nature perhaps we are really admiring our own reflection. This blog on Blean Woods, near Canterbury, illustrates these issues. Blean Woods are 781-hectares of ancient woodlands, with areas that can be traced back over 1,000 years, dominated by oak, hazel, and hornbeam. They were important to medieval Kentish life – featuring ancient woodbanks (boundaries) and timber production, along with ancient droveways used for moving livestock between pastures. Later the woods were used for producing charcoal and fencing for hop polls. There are also fifty species of breeding birds, many of which are ground nesting, therefore vulnerable to invasions into the woods. There are now contemporary forms of intervention that will be highlighted here. There is extensive commercial tree felling causing some areas of formerly dense woodland to become scrubland. Another intervention is paradoxically promoted by the Kent Wildlife Trust as ‘rewilding’ – the introduction of European bison to west Blean (also known as Thornden wood). More below ….
View across Blean Woods, December morning.
Blean Woods are a delightful place in which to walk. This is a photo taken on an early December morning.
Autumn is particularly spectacular in the woods. The pillars in the middle ground are evidence of prior uses of the woods – they are remains of an old turnpike – there is are slots in both across which a barrier sat. The path leads to the right where a man with a dog approaches from the distance. I try to get people into landscape scenes to add scale and narrative.
This is another autumnal scene taken in November on a farm on the edge of the wood, with the aubern colours highlghted by the low sublight that is also penetrating the smoke from the bonfire.
Spring in parts of Blean Wood is also colourfull with the bluebells, here also featuring our beagle, Oscar.
The beauty of small things. Dew drops on a spider’s webb on a grass stalk.
Again, beauty in macro photography. Sunlght illumanates this dandilion flower. Striking in monochrome.
Patterns of rain in the pond. I like the reflections of the trees in the multiple circles
Woods have beauty but they also evoke darkness and potential danger. In folk tales for example forests are rarely just a collection of trees; they are profound, symbolic, and often dangerous spaces representing the unknown. The path defining a leading line into mist and the monochrome tries to convey a sense of unease.
Again here a sense of the uncanny is created by the ice path illuminated by weak sunlight and lined by dark trees leading to an uncertain place.
Logging tractor entering Blean Woods
Coming to the theme flagged above – human intervention in the forests. Freshly felled and stacked woodpiles line many of the main paths through the woods. I understand that felling can be part of woodland conservation (this is nonetheless human intervention) but this is also done for commercial purposes. PS spot the beagle!
Logging machinery with huge catapillar treads smash through the vegitation (and see bellow)
The wood heating stove market is projected to reach up to $14.77 billion by 2032 and rising demand has consequences for wooldand landscape. Photo taken Autumn 2025
This and the following photos depict the effects of logging on the landscape, dramatised by monochrome tonality and the mist.
The figure here provides a sense of scale. A few months earlier this area was densely forested. It’s true that the woodland will undergoe succession as the ecosystem attempts to repair itself. Grases, weeds, brambles, birch and aspen will grow if the area is left alone, but if invasive species come to dominate the forest will not return. It would anyway take decades to re-establish.
A very dfferent form of hunan intervention in the woods is the ‘re-wilding’ programme. Kent Wildlife Trust and Wildwood Trust have partnered the ‘return’ European bison to the woods (after 6000 years) along with Exmoor ponies and Iron-Age pigs. The bison are ‘ecosystem engineers’, that can restore the natural biodiversity of a landscape through grazing, dust bathing, eating bark and felling trees. The intention is that this will create a lush, thriving, biodiverse environment. This is in a different area of the woods from the tree-felling described above. These are impressive creatures.
Iron-age pig – a hybrid breed developed by crossing a wild boar with a pedigree Tamworth sow
Exmoor poney
One impact the ‘re-wilding’ project for the landscape is enclosure. There is a designated area of 50 hectares cordoned of and closed to the public by steel fences shown above. These are also topped with barbed wire which entails safety risks, such as lacerations, infections, and entanglement hazards for wildlife. These also cut across ancient rights of way that have now become inaccessable.
When we photograph landscape we are not viewing an ‘unspoilt’ environment that is just an aesthetic object of admiration although it might be beautiful and the photo might have an emoitonal resonance. It also though needs to engage with the manifold ways in which humans have shaped the landscape and sometimes the contradictory consequences of this for what we are viewing.