‘People are often in tears during my talks, telling me these images have changed their lives. But all I’ve done is connect them with the landscape – and those who inhabited it before us’
Interview by Amy Fleming
I took this picture of Badbury Rings in Dorset before the pandemic, when I was still figuring out how to use a drone to photograph ancient sites from above. Hillforts look amazing from the air: the ripple effect and autumn colours are extraordinary and it’s a view that the human eye usually never sees. During the iron age there would have been a lot of woodland around, but none inside this enclosure. Now, where 25 round houses once stood, the enclosure is full of trees, with very little surrounding it.
I went there at night and slept there – that’s what I always do – and when I woke at dawn, I got about 15 minutes of low-angle sunlight. I was able to capture the images I needed. The altitude restrictions of drones mean you can’t encompass the entire monument in one shot, so I have to make a composite – a patchwork of 75 shots or so that I stitch together to create a final image. This also means the composites can be printed at a really large scale. Some of the images in my current show are about one metre across – but this one could be printed the size of a billboard….
After the truth-shower 