Viva Brighton Issue #65 July 2018

PHOTOGRAPHY
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Finn Hopson
A life in the landscape
I grew up here, and we’d
go walking at Devil’s
Dyke or Stanmer Park,
so these landscapes have
always been in my life.
When I started taking
photography more
seriously, the Downs felt
like the most natural place
to go.
I started the project
around the time that the
South Downs National
Park was designated, so
suddenly there was the sense of a boundary, an
edge to it. I thought I knew the landscape well
from cycling, but I hadn’t stopped to look closely.
Places that I’d passed by a hundred times were
full of potential.
It’s hard to pick a favourite place. It changes at
different times of the year, but I love the stretch
of the Downs from Kingston to Alfriston. It has
a mix of open, rolling escarpments and a lovely
sense of layers. You can see the sea and the Weald,
and there are places where mist builds up at dawn,
and little patches of woodland dotted along the
bottom of the hillsides. If you go further west, the
Downs get more wooded, but up on Firle Beacon,
you can see forever.
I take as little kit as possible - a big digital
SLR, two lenses, a couple of graduated filters
and a tripod. I know the night before where I’m
going to go, but it might take me months to get
the right light. I can get a bee in my bonnet about
a particular place and keep going back there day
after day.
After university, I worked as a TV runner,
and that meant that I could talk to anyone on
set. You could go over
to the cameramen and
lighting crew and ask them
anything, and they’d be
delighted to tell you. I
learnt a lot of the technical
stuff via osmosis. Little
things about how colour
temperature and direction
of light can change the
feeling in an image. Now
I go out seeking particular
conditions that will convey
a certain mood. I go to
bed scrutinising the weather forecast, and I can
sometimes figure out conditions on the Downs
from the beach. If I can see the wind farm,
visibility is about eight miles. If the top of the
i360 is in the clouds, then so are Stanmer woods.
I don’t seem to have many people in my
photographs. That’s mostly to do with being out
at silly times of the day. No one is out at five in
the morning. It sounds a bit antisocial, but it’s a
nice antidote to being here at the gallery on the
beach, where it can be heaving with people. You
go to a hillside the next morning, and there’s no
one. It’s peaceful except for the sound of the birds.
In the past couple of years, I’ve been trying to
explore more of West Sussex and Hampshire.
The South Downs National Park is vast, and
we’re right over in the east. There’s a huge area in
the west where the character of the landscape and
the texture of the ground changes. That’s when
it feels like a lifetime’s work. This little project
I’ve started, to photograph the Downs... I’m eight
years in, and I’ve barely begun. Lizzie Lower
finnhopson.com / brightonphotography.com
52-53 Kings Road Arches, 01273 227523
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