THE SHIPPING FORECAST BOOK

P R E O R D E R   D E A L  N O W  C L O S E D

The book will be available to order at full price very very soon.

T H E   S H I P P I N G   F O R E C A S T   -   T H E   S O L A C E   O F   W I L D   P L A C E S

A good picture can be like a stage waiting for something to happen. Silent. Something for your mind to wander into.

The Shipping Forecast on Radio 4 for me works in much the same way. The words take me to another place. Into a bigger, wilder and sometimes bleak world of gales and crashing waves. 

This book features black and white photographs I've taken in each of the thirty one sea areas of the forecast. Written by hand on each image is that day's forecast, along with the location, latitude and longitude.

D O I N G  T H E  W O R K    -    T A K I N G  T H E  P H O T O G R A P H S

Chasing storms on land and dodging gales at sea. Three thousand miles alone in a small boat. Trekking to remote headlands in Spain, Denmark and Germany. To the far ends of the Faroes. Photographing little icebergs in Iceland. Dense fog drifting over Dogger Bank and being alone at sea, felling lost and forgotten.

Saint Kilda far out in the Atlantic Ocean like a summer dream. The brutal cold of the remote Norwegian Utsire Island in January. Few places can feel as wet and windy as the West Coast of Ireland in February.

Months living in my van. Lightning storms in Biscay. The Northern Lights  in Iceland. Impossible waves pounding Portuguese cliffs.

Did I mention I bought a classic fifty five year old sailboat and did a solo circumnavigation of the UK for this book? Racing dolphins up the Welsh coast. Seals following me in the North Sea. Being surrounded by basking sharks bigger than my boat off the East Coast of Scotland.

The Exquisite anchorages in The Scilly Isles and Hebrides. The Sunsets and the sublime night sky at sea with stars forever above and bioluminescence below. The moonrises. There is a beautiful universe out there.

Taking seascapes involves getting up hours before dawn and long dark hikes to remote places. Night passages at sea. Figuring out how to photograph a sunrise a sunrise at the Eddystone Lighthouse or dawn at The Fastnet.

Early mornings and sleepless nights to catch the dawn in places that feel like the end of the world. And then the waiting. And waiting. Hoping the light will be beautiful and the ocean majestic. It usually is.