The person behind the lens
Landscape & Travel Photography · UK
My story
A passion for quiet light
My name is Butters, and I'm a landscape, nature and travel photographer based in Portsmouth on the south coast of England. Photography has never really been about the gear for me. It's about being outside in those first fragile hours of the morning, when the air is sharp and the light is doing something you just can't predict.
I'm drawn to the moments most people sleep through. Mist sitting perfectly still in a valley. The exact second golden light crests a ridge and turns ordinary bracken into something luminous. I'll happily set an alarm for 4am for that.
My work takes me from the moorlands and coastlines of the British Isles to the alpine landscapes of Switzerland and the vivid energy of Taiwan and Thailand. Whether I'm on foot on Dartmoor or airborne over a rice field with the Mavic Air 3S, I'm looking for the same thing. A frame that captures not just what a place looks like, but what it actually felt like to stand there.
This portfolio is a collection of those moments. I hope some of them make you want to go outside.
"I'll happily set an alarm for 4am. The light is always worth it."
My Kit
The tools I work with
Canon EOS R5 II
The R5 II is built for exactly the kind of photography I love the outstanding dynamic range for high-contrast landscape scenes, superb high-ISO performance for those pre-dawn starts, and a weather-sealed body that handles everything the British countryside can throw at it. The 45 megapixel sensor means I can crop aggressively in post and still have a print-ready file.
RF 24–105mm f/4 & RF 100–500mm
The RF 24–105mm f/4 is my everyday workhorse — versatile enough to cover wide landscape compositions through to compressed mid-range travel shots without ever leaving my bag. When I need reach — wildlife at the water's edge, distant mountain ridgelines, or isolating a single element in a busy scene — the RF 100–500mm delivers beautifully, with Canon's optical image stabilisation doing the heavy lifting on those long handheld shots.
DJI Mavic Air 3S & the Rest
The DJI Mavic Air 3S has completely changed how I see familiar locations — getting airborne opens up compositions that are simply impossible from the ground. Alongside it: a sturdy travel tripod for those long exposures at dawn, a set of ND filters for controlling light in bright conditions, and enough spare batteries to make even the longest days in the field worthwhile.