Night landscapes photographs

Sublunary - Alien Invasion of Planet Earth

Fine Art Photography meets Visual Stories

Sublunary - Part 2

As a professional photographer, Father to the most beautiful little toddler in the world and Husband to an equally beautiful Mother; I find it difficult to get out and make personal work.

In 2017, I graduated from University with a High 2:1 in a BA Hons in Photography & Video degree at De Montfort University, where the idea for this project was born.  I began with a long period of time in the library, scouring art books and photographic archives, learning about who, what where, when, why and how specific bodies of work was made.

Surprisingly, I came across some painters and other Fine Art Photographers that worked in similar fields to my research.  One in particular that sticks out in my mind was Photographer Erasmus Schroeter and Painter Max Ernst.

Erasmus Schroeter (2005).

Max Ernst, (N.D.)

I was also heavily inspired by my lecturer (Kosovan) Lala Meredith-Vula who is a contemporary fine art photographer with international recognition.  Lala's ideas about my work and how to get the best out of me was first class and Lala's self confessed crazy mind was a perfect match for the project I had stuck in my head.  She knew just how to get me excited about my own work.

Lala Meredith-Vula

Lala Meredith-Vula

Lala Meredith-Vula (N.D.)

Lala Meredith-Vula (N.D.)

So the body of work for Sublunary began.  I created a series of landscape photographs that followed the narrative of an imaginary alien invasion of the planet Earth.  A tall order you might think?  I just needed the right level of inspiration and a camera.  At the end of creating the work for my degree, I put it all together in a short movie with a spooky sound track that I created myself.  You can watch that below.

I'm now about to embark on a much longer journey that will see me creating a whole new body of work for Sublunary Part 2.  I'll be using my experiences from the first part of the project and will be digging deeper in to my imagination.

Here's a sneaky peek at my first experiment for part 2...

Paul Hands (2018), The Mute.

This is called 'The Mute' and features a landscape photograph that has been manipulated in camera by myself.  I added the red light using the brake lights on my car and chose this location for the crazy tree that could be morphed in to any kind of other worldly creature.  The reverse side of the road sign represents having nothing to say, to be muted and to be stunned by the experience of an alien invasion.  You will see that I've also added a strange shaped metal frame on the right.  This represents an alien being and is the shape of a large humanoid or key hole.  It is hollow and appears invisible with the exception of the outer edges.

The scene is lit like a stage as if the play is being carried out and has undertones of humour, not to be taken seriously.  It's a project that I can literally play and have fun with.  I have a list of locations, that I've been building, so you can watch to see how this develops.

De Montfort University bought the first 5 prints of this project and hold them in their permanent art collection on campus.  You can also read more about this project here.

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Home to Home

Night Landscape Photographer England

Home To Home

This series of pictures are part of the experimental stage of what could potentially become a new project.

"I leave home and return, that's the single most repetitive thing I do".

The other night I left home to go and make a series of night landscapes around my local area between Hinckley and Coalville.  My search was for the unusual quirkiness surrounding our towns and villages.  Some man made and some natural with street signs, giant posters in the middle of nowhere and concrete bollards in-between such beauty in the landscape.


February News

New Clients:

I'm pleased to welcome new clients Hinckley BID, BJL Group, Morris Homes, ARO PR and Marketing and JJ Churchill on board.  

Also this month I'll be working on new assignments for two existing clients; Mode Transport Planning and the SFB Group.

More work will also be going in to the application to Grants for the Arts through the Arts Council for a major Environmental Portrait project I'm hoping to work on this year.


If you'd like to keep up with my news or get my blogs and pictures delivered to you via email, subscribe here.  Facebook are messing around with the algorithms for pages and a lot of Creatives are not able to share their art.  So this is one way for artists to stay in touch with the community.

Photography Adventures

Immersing in Photography

Photography is so yesterday

Surreal Photography Art

I covered a roof top party for Mode Transport Planning at their head offices in Birmingham during the Summer and towards the end of the night, my wife Lisa discovered these cool stairs.  This week I hand delivered a framed print for them and was proud to hang it on the wall in their office.

Mode Transport Planning
Mode transport Planning

I've managed to raise £1500 for a photographic project around my home town, involving 60 local business owners.  The project is to create environmental portraits of each self employed business owner. 

I'm running a niche workshop on Monday evening, creating low light urban photographs.

The documentary styled short I've been working on for Diabetes UK is finished and we're awaiting news of a release date.  I'm looking forwards to sharing this with you, it's been one of my favourite assignments this year.

I can't forget graduating from university as a mature student this year.  Studying photography has been a long old slog in the establishments.  I've loved every minute of it, even the minutes I wasn't that tickled about.

Bradgate Park Leicestershire

Bradgate Park Leicestershire

I've enjoyed getting creative with my camera, learning to create photographs out of the ordinary that make me feel good about them.  Most of the time, just for the hell of it.

Old John, Bradgate Park, Leicestershire

Old John, Bradgate Park, Leicestershire

Jigsaw Man, Steven Faulkner

Jigsaw Man, Steven Faulkner

Danger High Voltage from the series 'Sublunary 1'

Danger High Voltage from the series 'Sublunary 1'

I'm working on getting some of my best work printed and made available in my online shop.