I was recently looking through all the photos I took during my 4 years living in Nottingham to see if I could come up with some kind of series out of them. After cutting it down to all the black & white images that turned out reasonably I had just over 200 photos so I needed to come up with some more specific ideas. One theme I tend to shoot a lot is where nature meets the built environment, which lead me to put together this series. I got the title, and some inspiration, from Robin Friend’s Bastard Countryside (watch this video for a good introduction).

It’s 5 months since I posted my project Campus Lights. Sadly I didn’t manage to make any progress with getting anything changed on campus, the person I’d emailed didn’t get back to me and my exams & dissertation took precedence so I didn’t pursue it any further.

As an astronomy student and hobbyist, light pollution has sort of become my environmental issue of choice. Not only is it an annoyance to astronomers, but also damaging to wildlife as well as our health and is a large energy sink. I have taken particular notice of the amount of light pollution on my university’s campus lately as I am back living on campus after 2 years of living elsewhere, and my dissertation involves using the telescope on the roof of the physics building. This is a university that seems to boast about being green but seems to ignore this aspect of the environment.