Charlie Waite

Charlie Waite, born in 1949, firmly established as one of the world's leading landscape photographers, left school at 17 without any qualifications and joined the theatre as an assistant stage manager.  He undertook training and after two years became an actor, but the sporadic nature of acting work led him to pursue an alternative career.  

Charlie had been introduced to photography as a child by his Father, who helped him make his first print at age 11, this had left a lasting impression on him and he started photographing his fellow actors.  He undertook a 1 year intenstive course at college and soon had a successful business, he continued to shoot actors but was continually drawn to landscape photography.

His first landscape photography commission came by chance while viewing a house for sale, the vendor turned out to be a publisher looking for a landscape photographer for a National Trust publication and within a week Charlie had his first commission.

Now, more than 30 years on, he has published numerous books, held many exhibitions throughout the world, and established his own company 'Light and Land' which aims to promote better photography by offering workshops and tutorials all over the world.

With a desire to promote and encourage UK landscape photography, Charlie set up  'Take a View Landscape Photographer of the Year' competition, the first major national competition of its kind.

Charlie is particularly known for his square format images using a 6x6 Hasselblad and this is his 'weapon' of choice although he has used digital, he is not a fan of too much post-capture manipulation believing that the image should be captured 'in-camera'.

Charlie's images offer a spiritual quality, almost ethereal, with a great sense of calm.  His use of light creates a certain drama to each image (stage lighting in his early career inspired him to focus on this).

The image below is Islay, Hebrides, Scotland - a stunning example of the serenity and calm that Charlie manages to capture which each image.

This image is also from Scotland, Balchladich Bay.  I love the drama of this image brought on by the intense colours and am left wondering if a storm is on it's way or has just passed ....

Charlie Waite is one of my favourite photographers.  I love his work of the British landscape and the spiritual quality of  his images is very inspiring, I like the fact that he prefers to manipulate his images as little as possible and will spend whatever amount of time it takes (including 5 days up a tree to wait for the right light capturing The Somme) to get the perfect image, at the perfect moment.