Beacon of light

Developing an instinct for when the light will be good is one of the secrets of creating dramatic images, LPOTY winner Will Davies tells Damien Demolder

- Damien Demolder

It might be considered by some to be a poor show of manners to win the top prize in the Take A View Landscape Photographer of the Year competition on the first time of entering, but perhaps Will Davies’ move to the USA has made him forget about gentlemanly sportsmanship and fine traditions. His only saving grace perhaps is that the winning image shows God’s own South Wales in glorious sunlight and describes the gently undulating countryside spread out before him from Pen y Crug with great show of patriotic adulation. Beating thousands of more seasoned landscapers to the top spot, Will’s photograph carries a number of hallmarks of his developing style and shows us both the way he works and the elements that catch his eye.

Although Will grew up in Wales in his teenage years he was more interested in golf, pubs and rugby than in the spectacular landscape that surrounded him. It was a move to East Africa with the international development organisation he worked for that opened his eyes to the natural world, and to photography.

‘I live in Washington DC at the moment,’ Will tells us, ‘where the immediate landscape and wildlife opportunities are a little limited, but when I was 27 I moved to Ethiopia.