Pinhole Solstice

These photographs were made in the parkland at Newby Hall in North Yorkshire on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. I walked without a fixed route, letting trees, open ground and the limits of winter light guide where I stopped. The images were taken using a homemade pinhole lens on a DSLR, a process that slows looking and removes sharp focus and certainty. Long exposures allow movement, weather and chance to shape each frame, softening boundaries between land, sky and vegetation. This way of working mirrors how the place was experienced on the day. The parkland became less a formal, historic site and more a psychological terrain, where familiar paths loosened and time felt suspended. Rather than documenting the landscape, the photographs trace how it was felt, remembered and navigated through walking, attention and pausing.