ON PHOTOGRAPHY

What Camera are you carrying?
A full frame DSLR, Canon EOS 6D with three lenses: 24-70mm f4L standard zoom, 70-300mm f4-5.6L telephoto zoom and 17mm TS-E f4L tilt-shift wide angle.

How do you carry the camera?
Using a Mindshift Horizon backpack. I also use a Peak Design Capture Clip attached to the shoulder strap as I like the camera to hand at all times.

Do you use a tripod?
For interiors dusk and dawn images, I use a very small knee high table tripod Gitzo GT-531 (to reduce weight) that I use by sitting on the ground.

How many photos do you take each day?
Around 400 frames most days – which I edit down to 10-30 keepers.

How do you edit the photos?
In Adobe Lightroom, cropping to square and making tonal adjustments.

Why are the images square?
They encourage an abstract, graphical way of looking at the world that I’m interested in. I also wanted the whole project to have a visual unity.

You seem to like structures, symmetry and geometry, whats with that?
I trained and worked previously as an architect so structure and geometry really appeals to me.

What are you doing will all the images?
I sell limited edition prints. I’d love to do a book and exhibition at the end but I want to get more material under my belt and see if people are interested in the project before searching that out.

ON WALKING

How far do you walk each Day?
Depending on how photographically interesting each leg is and my energy levels I walk 20-40 Km each day which gives me time to be creative but also gives a good feeling of progress.

Where do you sleep?
In the remoter sections wild camping in a Tera Nova, Laser Photon 1 tent, and B&B’s in the built up areas such as the South East Coast.

What do you eat?
In the populated parts I buy fresh food as I go from shops. The remote sections are many days travel between shops so I’ll eat dried foods to reduce weight and rehydrate them with a Jetboil stove. I need tea and coffee to keep going so I carry a stove even when I’m not camping.

How much does your backpack weigh?
Between 12-18KG depending on wether I’m carrying camping equipment and how much food, water and fuel I need.

Are you doing it all in one go?
I’m walking in multi day sections up to two weeks in length for both practical and creative reasons. I work as Architectural Photographer, and am married with two children to amazing artist Mila Furstova so its not possible to be away from home for months at a time. Its also creatively better to break the journey and have time to think about the last section before embarking on the next. This gives me time to research the next stage, edit the previous leg and prevents creative burn out from seeing too many new things one after the other.

How long will it take?
If I can walk 2-3 months per year the whole journey will take about 5 years.

Have others walked around the Coast of Britain?
Yes, the first was John Merill in 1978 who wrote his account in “Turn Right at Land’s End”. There is a list of others here.

Have you done any other long walks before?
When I was 21 I walked 1,727Km from Lands End to John o’ Groats which lead to more recent journeys including walks down The River Thames, The Severn, The Southern Upland Way, The Cambrian Way and others. My Route Map shows some of these previous walks.

What maps do you carry?
With some sadness I stopped using paper maps in 2014 just before this project and now use a mapping app Outdoors Great Britain for iPhone that uses 1:25,000 ordnance survey topographic maps. I make the iPhone waterproof with an Otter Box Preserver case.

What do you wear on your feet?
I wear fell running shoes: New Balance Leadville, each pair lasts about 1,000km.

Don’t you get lonely?
No. There is so much of varied interest to see.

Isn’t it a bit boring?
Not so far – Its one of the most varied environments I’ve encountered in the globe. Occasionally there are monotonous sections which give me time to reflect on what I’ve just seen.

How can you afford all the time off work?
This is work for me. I’ll be selling prints to pay for the time. The journey also acts as marketing for my Architectural Photography Business.

Have your own question? Add it below in and I’ll update this page with my answer.