Yes, it truly is! Photography can’t work without it, natural, artificial, barely visible… light is crucial whether using a pinhole camera, phone or state of the art camera. For me, I love to work with what I’m given, I find working the light one of the most satisfying parts of photography, it’s something I can’t entirely control, in fact very rarely can I do much about it but see if I can get the best from the situation I’m faced with. Much like when working with wild animals.

I first fell in love with back light when trying to photograph big cats in Africa. Inevitably, you’d be in the ‘wrong’ place when it came to the light, something would be in the way (a messy background say) or simply the lion, leopard or cheetah would get up and walk off in exactly the ‘wrong’ direction for the image I’d been conjuring in my head. That’s when it helps to think on your feet, to work the situation and to work fast, as anyone will know, when the sun decides to go to bed you don’t have much time. At least though you have a defined cut off, unlike sunrise when the temptation is often to keep shooting even though the light may have become harsh, not so bad with the moving image but stills really accentuate the details of an image and there is no hiding behind interesting behaviour and movement.

The pleasure of working sunset images in the winter in the UK is that low level light, given the right climatic conditions, can literally rake across the landscape or scene in front of you giving spectacular depth and texture to the image and then when that flattens, we have moments where silhouettes are at their best. Winter conditions, like these here in the New Forest, which were around freezing can make for great opportunities.

I had a hunch that I’d get great light that afternoon (these are straight out of camera, nothing done). Like every outdoor photographer, you are glued to the weather forecast as much as a farmer. The blessing of numerous apps on my phone now means that cumulatively I normally get a pretty accurate reading. Cold, clear and crisp, literally pure light giving the satisfying orange, ochre and yellow hues some intensity. I chose a spot where I knew the lay of the land and that I might get some last minute subjects like ponies, dogs and people, birds had already gone to roost.

Without the light, the scene was completely different, flat, dreary almost and yucky grey-brown in every aspect. The cold made all the difference and despite having scouted several locations, nothing jumped out at me, so instead I chose my spot and hoped for something interesting to turn up and yep, it did. So photographing on the hoof and with spaniel carefully tied to my rucksack, this is some of what we came home with. Yup, I’ll take that.