It isn't just one photo - but a set of photos that took around ten years to make.
I'd always wanted to get the shot, but the clouds had their part to play in stopping me from getting the ultimate photograph. These images are my most published. They appear in books and magazines and posters, prints and postcards.
If anything, these images display the variety of ways a photographer can influence the viewer's emotional response. A photograph isn't merely a point in time - it holds within its two dimensionality and composition the ideas and thoughts of the originator, the subject and ultimately that of the observer.
The image below shows the minster in context - an image that uses the landscape to scale down the huge behemoth of a building - it asks questions of our place in this world, the universe.
This image shows the grandeur and scale of the minster, but in a softened way - the cuticle sun offers up hope of new beginnings. There's a spiritual feel to the photo.
By simply moving my position around 10 minutes after the above image was taken, I was able to capture the photo below. It is a photo that is celebratory in tone. The scene was completely orchestrated by my position and is a powerful reminder of the photographers input into an image.
I've moved again (not too far) and captured a photo that converts the imposing silhouette of the minster into a permeability that raises questions about man versus nature. Here the sun is seemingly engulfing the north tower with its presence.
I wrote about my experience photographing the Minster in Amateur Photographer magazine. Shortly after it was published I tried to capture the sun rising again at Beverley, and came across a group of amateur photographers with the magazine in hand trying to capture the same image.
Some of these images also appear in the book by Jonathan Foyle: Beverley Minster, History, Architecture and Meaning. I was commissioned to take most of the photos for this book including the cover.
Readers of the Genius Loci Digest
What stays with readers
That aura, those echoes - the muted light is transporting. What a space to feel rooted in history. I'd love to make that journey myself; you've stirred the opera lover and architectural dreamer in me.
From the heritage portfolio
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