The Sharpham Estate on the banks of the River Dart, is a great place for a photographer. I have been reshooting some of the photographs in their archives. They are all beautiful 35mm slides taken by a previous resident of the Estate called Ruth, a talented photographer and passionate naturalist and so my first task was selecting those slides I believed would be most interesting to reshoot. Many things had changed in the 60 years since they were taken, and it was especially interesting looking at the trees balloon in girth and height, and occasionally collapse or disappear. It made me think about how our ‘archives’ of the immense amount of digital output being created all over the world, will be stored, kept safe and discovered, if at all. I was spent time scanning the negatives before making some prints to take out with me whilst shooting.

Having found the right location I then spent a while aligning the various elements of the frame as the photograph was originally composed. It was odd to be working to another persons compositions.

There were many things that made a smooth transition a little difficult, and the fact that we were often shooting in different seasons may exaggerate some of the landscape changes. If I had had more time I would have liked to have shot it on slide film, and produce an updated archive using many more of her excellent photographs.. Maybe I can return some time!

The videos were later embedded into a fantasticly detailed google map project that is available here: