Or: Why My Blog Reads Like a Photo Album with Footnotes
Every photographer brings more than a camera to the scene. We carry with us the books we read as boys, the writers whose voices etched themselves onto our own, and the quiet ghosts of mentors we never met. This blog is no exception.
Here are some of the minds and souls that have shaped mine:
Gerald Durrell
“I had entered a world from which I did not want to return.”
Durrell taught me that the ordinary is often extraordinary—if you look close enough. His blend of humour, curiosity, and affection for life’s oddities lives on in the way I write about travel, family, and those lovely moments when everything goes wrong but the light is perfect.
Laurie Lee
Few wrote of landscape like Lee—with the grace of a poet and the dirt of the road still on his boots. His slow, wondering pace helped shape the rhythm of my storytelling: measured, observant, and full of space to breathe.
W. Eugene Smith
Smith’s photo essays weren’t just images—they were stories etched in silver and shadow. He taught me the importance of narrative with teeth—to show what’s beneath the surface, not just what’s easy on the eye.
Roger Deakin
A man who swam through rivers and memory alike. Deakin reminds me to walk lightly but pay attention. His writing taught me that nature doesn’t need embellishment—just honesty, a bit of silence, and the right angle of light.
Alan Bennett
Bennett gives voice to the everyday British absurdity I’ve always loved—travel delays, family bickering, and lukewarm tea in plastic cups. He’s the master of observational humour and quiet poignancy, both of which I try to stitch into my writing.
Bill Brandt & the British Humanist Photographers
While they may not have penned words, they spoke volumes in monochrome. Their work reminds me that photography is poetry without grammar—and that the best images often come not from grand gestures but quiet honesty.
My Own Past
Add to that a lumberyard’s worth of working days, the odd orchestral tour, a Pentax ME Super, a few decades of family life, and a bookshelf that smells faintly of dust, fixer, and an old Pentax manual—and you’ve got the rest of the voice you’re hearing.
🔍 The Quiet Company I Keep
Unconscious Influences That Shape My Voice and Eye
Every so often, in the middle of writing a paragraph or framing a photograph, I catch a flicker of someone else’s silhouette—not copied, but echoed. These are the influences I never set out to follow but found myself in step with just the same.
John Berger
Berger didn’t just write about images; he thought through them. I don’t quote him often, but he’s there in spirit whenever I ask not just what something looks like, but why it matters. He saw that photography isn’t a technical act—it’s an emotional one.
James Rebanks
In writing about the land and life lived close to it, Rebanks is brutally honest, deeply rooted, and unapologetically ordinary. That’s a virtue. I try to do the same—whether in a lumberyard or a field in Vendée.
Nigel Slater
Odd comparison, I know—but Slater writes about food the way I try to write about photography: as memory, texture, season. He doesn’t write recipes—he writes weather, smell, mood. That approach has crept into my own voice.
Tove Jansson
Her work walks the fine line between solitude and connection, especially in nature. There’s a hush in her writing I admire—and try to echo—especially in pieces that lean into black and white photography, stillness, or passing seasons.
Raymond Moore & Fay Godwin
British stillness in landscape photography. Fences, fog, ruins, long grass, and long pauses. They weren’t just documenting—they were listening. I’ve tried to take that cue.
Pentti Sammallahti
I admire the patience in his frames. And the atmosphere—so much left unsaid, but deeply felt. My black-and-white work owes more to him than to any digital preset or film simulation.
Daidō Moriyama (very gently…)
When I play with grit, blur, or the odd off-kilter moment, there’s a trace of Moriyama. I don’t shoot the Tokyo underground—but I like to break form once in a while. Sometimes the best stories are told sideways.
And Then, There’s Just Me
Of course, not everything comes from someone else. Sometimes, what shapes you most is the sheer persistence to keep looking—even when the weather’s wrong, the light is flat, or the subject is missing. My writing and photography are stitched together with those persistent moments.
IJM Photography 