Since early November I’ve been walking to the beach every day for sunset. Each day I’ve taken a series of photos from that afternoons sunset that you can see here on my blog.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to put together a new collection of images known collectively as Permitted Exercise. To me that means walking from my front door. In all the weeks of visiting the same place everyday I’ve eventually got a bit bored of shooting the same scenes over and over again. While the weather provides a lot of variety I found myself starting to lose interest as it all seemed to merge into one.

For a long time now I’ve felt that Landscape Photography lacks innovation. For me I like to try and capture a scene as faithfully as I can however that doesn’t always make an image popular. Timeless but not popular.

Another issue you have when you invest so much time developing compositions like I have over the last 2 months is that those images can be replicated and then they aren’t unique. Looking back on my recent work I can see the stronger images are on days when the conditions were kind. This is typical for a location such as the beach here. There will always be better weather and luckier people who can visit only once and get a shot I’ve worked for 2 months to get. That then distills my original image or yours and before we know it 200 images all look the same. The only variation being the weather and date.

When I was reviewing some recent images in my studio the other day my young son came in and said wow that’s art! Funny how he said that when he’s surrounded by thousands of photographs here. He’s never said that before.

So in search of innovation, in search of something unique and something different and that illusory title of creating what normal people would define as Art, I present to you a totally unique piece from my permitted exercise project. A truly one off image that will never ever be replicated. Made with the highest quality photography gear but trying to simulate an abstract painting that I could only aspire to have the skill to create without pixels.

This image along with a wide variety of others will be considered for a new book project I’m putting together called ‘Permitted Exercise’