'A wave is a creation event, chaos, sheer energy.'
A conversation with Orkney-based photographer Nicki Gwynn-Jones
We have a visitor aboard The Life Boat this week. The Orkney-based photographer, thalassophile, bird-lover and daily sea swimmer, Nicki Gwynn-Jones dropped by my studio in Birsay for a chat. Her exquisite images of Orkney’s thunderous seas and delicate bird life are luminous and distinctive, and I am delighted to share our studio chat and some of her beautiful photography this week.
You can listen to our recording whilst browsing Nicki’s Instagram or website, or read the (lightly edited) transcript below and enjoy some of Nicki’s ethereally beautiful images along the way…
Scroll right to the end of this week’s post for the Zoom link to this week’s Life Raft Co-Working at 3 pm Wednesday GMT.
Samantha Clark
Hello! I'm really delighted to welcome Nicki Gwynn-Jones to visit my studio here in Birsay!
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
I'm delighted to be here!
Samantha Clark
Nicki, I really wanted to invite you to have a conversation about your work, because I've been following your photography on Instagram and followed that through to your website. I've seen your beautiful book that you had out a couple of years ago.
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Yes. 2017 or 18.
Samantha Clark
I just felt that there are a lot of common threads of interest and that we're both relative newcomers to Orkney, both here since 2016. And also your fascination with water. So welcome, Nicki! So how did you come to move to Orkney?
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Well, it was kind of the time of our lives where my husband was getting ready to retire. And we'd had a wonderful adventure in South Florida with our two children. We went over there in 2001, when they were 12 and 15. We arrived just in time for the Twin Towers disaster, so it was a very interesting time to be there. We absolutely loved being there for lots of reasons. I got into photography there. But then the time was right to come back, you know, elderly parents, that kind of thing, and I didn't really feel the American College system was quite right for our younger boy.
So we arrived back in Cheltenham, from whence we had come. And we were there a very happy nine years. And when my husband thought it was time to retire, I thought, 'Oh, time for another adventure!' I had just been to Harris, and we thought, this could be interesting. But in the end, after, months of trying to work things out was clear that it wasn't going to be right for us. And then I remembered that Orkney has festivals and Cheltenham, where we came from, also has wonderful festivals. So we came up for a weekend and bought the first house we looked at, literally shook hands with the builder in his kitchen, over a cup of tea!
Samantha Clark
...and here you are, and well-integrated with people here. You're a real sea swimmer here, yes?
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Yes. I love my sea swimming. I've always been a swimmer all my life, but a pool swimmer. I was a competitive swimmer, albeit not a very good one! But I've kept at it. And then when my mum died I'd always sort of had this dream that I'd swim the channel but, you know, children and work, you know...time! But when my mum died in 2011, I realized that you've got to start realizing some of these dreams. So I started doing open water swimming when we were in Cheltenham, because there are places that you can go, lakes, you know, filled gravel pits. And then I signed up for a Channel relay swim.
Samantha Clark
To swim the English Channel?
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Yes, I've done it twice! The first time was with Diabetes UK, which was brilliant because they organised everything, the boats and the pilots and everything. And they put you in teams and off you go. But it's by no means a dead cert you'll finish. I think about 60% don't succeed because of weather and seasickness and cold temperatures, all sorts of things.Then I organised a second one a couple of years later, a team of four, just friends, and it was brilliant.
I learned so much about myself, particularly during the first one, you know. I've always been aware of gratitude. I had a friend in America who was an alcoholic. When she went into residential recovery, one time I went to see her and she showed me this gratitude diary. And the penny kind of dropped then, if it hadn't already. It became a big thing in my life.
Swimming that first channel relay, the weather was absolutely dreadful. And it was a kind of last chance - ‘if we don't go now you've missed your chance, so we will just go’. But it was it was pretty horrific. There was a lot of seasickness and the seas were huge and rough. And you know, you have to swim in the dark. You have to jump off a boat into the English Channel in the dark.
It's quite scary and I didn't particularly enjoy it, which was a huge shock to me. Because I thought, 'Oh, this is going to be easy. We're all good swimmers,' you know. And it just brought it home to me, what it must be like to be a refugee on a boat.
So when I got home to my loving husband and my warm house with plenty of food and my nice life, Gosh, I've never been the same since. That sense of relief and gratitude, the empathy and the sheer chance that we're born in the right place at the right time to have a nice life, on the whole. Not everybody does.
But you know, we've got the chance of that. And here in Orkney, of course, you know, it's a dream because we've got so many places that we can, we can enjoy [getting in the sea], you know, whether you're a dipper or swimmer, or anything in between.
Samantha Clark
And you swim all year round without a wetsuit?
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
I do. And I've just finished something called the Immerse Hebrides challenge, organized by a lady in the Western Isles who I believe has had cancer and wanted to raise funds. You pay an entry fee, and it all goes to the cancer charity, and then you have to nominate a distance that you would do between the first of November and the 29th of February. And muggins here nominated myself for 75k!
Samantha Clark
kilometers?! Wow!
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Yeah. Over a period of time between November, December, January, February, so I had four months. But you know, it's so difficult here in January and February; we were snowed in twice, and you might have a cold or COVID or twisted shoulder. So you never know how it's gonna go.
Samantha Clark
This immersion in the water absolutely comes through in your photography. I've been watching the amazing photographs you've been generating this winter, which has been really stormy. And you seem to be out in all weathers with your camera, taking these incredible photographs. Tell us a little bit about your process and what you're aiming for and what does it feel like? What's the experience of taking images of such tremendous seas when you're out there on your own, just you and the camera?
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
It depends where I go. Northside here would be a favourite spot when I'm looking for a slightly broader view. You have those incredible rollers coming in. Yesnaby is another favourite spot. And there, I want to be inside the wave. Because you know, there's magic here. There are all sorts of creatures out there in the sea. You can see them in the waves. And I just want to immerse myself in their energy.
And sometimes, perhaps I shouldn't be saying this, I have this urge to throw myself into the sea. Not for any Deathwish or anything, but just because I want to know what it feels like, you know, to be inside what's almost like a creation event. Don't you think? That creation, chaos, the sheer energy!
You can see that so clearly at Inganess, which is one of my swimming beaches. If you walk to the right, towards the airport, there were gabions and gravel, and now all the wire has been ripped off over the winter. It's all sitting in a big pile by the bin and all the boulders are coming down the beach. The beach looks completely different to what it did a few months ago, unrecognizable. It just shows the power of the sea, because no human could move those boulders. It's quite extraordinary. It really is.
And the sound, the sound, is just so extraordinary, you know? When you're down at Yesnaby and the waves are thumping into the cliff there, and the whole thing just shakes! You think, how is it that even after millions of years these cliffs are still standing? When it's had this tremendous force of water coming all the way from North America, with nothing in between. The sheer amount of energy is quite extraordinary. But there's definitely some sort of mythical element to what I'm trying to capture, I think. But it's very difficult to do.
Samantha Clark
You mean, technically?
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Not so much technically. I mean, now I've done it so much, I know what camera settings I need to use and I just have to sit there. You take a lot of pictures, because you don't really know what the waves are going to do. I take, for example, 2000 images and maybe I'll end up liking four. Because those are the ones that speak to how I felt at the time, you know, to my experience, or the creatures that I felt were around at the time, you know.
Samantha Clark
And when you spend time looking, you see the wildlife that makes its home in all kinds of weather, tough as nails, like the fulmars, seals getting thrown around.
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
It's just incredible. At Yesnaby there's enormous waves that come in, and there's often a little seal that will pop his head up and look for me. It is absolutely extraordinary. You know, and the shags and the little ducks, the Eider ducks, and these great waves are coming over and you see the bird going up and up and up on the wave, and at the last minute they'll dive through. And you think if I did that I'd just be dashed on the rocks!
Samantha Clark
When you say that you have an inkling that there's something mythological, that there's something beyond the actual thing, that you're intuiting or sensing somehow, can you articulate what that might be? Have you some sense?
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
I've often seen something that looked like some sort of mythical horse. And I know the story of Nuckelavee. He's often there, I think, at that spot.
Samantha Clark
There's a lot of mythology around these coasts, like Tir-nan-Og. A lot of folklore.
Nicki Gwynn-Jone
There is there is a lot of folklore, but the horses...I'm not particularly a horsey person, I'm a bird person. But I've also seen what looks suspiciously like ghosts, you know, little faces, you can make out with a sort of ghostly train coming out of the back.
Go to somewhere like The Gloup, I've got a spot down on the cliffs there. I don't go all that often, but possibly should go more. The definition is much sharper there, the colors are more varied. It's a different kind of kind of energy. But I love that everywhere you go there's going to be some sort of different energy to pick up
Samantha Clark
Because we’re an island, an archipelago of islands, so there's always a different direction to look out from.
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Absolutely, and currents coming in from from different directions. Sometimes go to I can never remember the name of that long, long geo (cove) at Northside.
Samantha Clark
I think that might be Longaglebe Geo?
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
The longest on the island, I think it might be. I love it there too. You get some tremendous fulmar shots there, as they fly down the geo. But I've often had a strong urge to just jump in and experience what it might be like!
Samantha Clark
Please don’t!
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Even here at the car park in Birsay, you know, if it's suitable to get out of the car, I've got a little spot you can get down the cliff in one place, because they're not very big cliffs. But you think you're safe, and suddenly these rogue waves will come in. You do have to be careful, you really do.
Samantha Clark
And when we were chatting before, I was saying there is something very distinctive, somehow about about your photography. Just because it's a technological or mechanical process, doesn't mean that it's replicable by someone else. But it seems to me there's something quite luminous and translucent about a lot of your imagery. And is that to do with how you take the photograph or how you manipulate it afterwards? Do you do much to them afterwards?
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
I try not to. I learnt photography primarily to be a bird photographer. And there was, well he's still very active, a chap called Arthur Morris in the United States who was a very renowned bird photographer and teacher. He's quite an old man now, but he would always teach to expose to the right, to expose so what you're going to look at in the raw file is going to look washed out, basically.
Samantha Clark
So, overexposed?
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Well, that was what he taught. I don't necessarily always agree with that, but it has stayed with me, because the more you do that, the more detail you can bring back into the darks. Whereas if you underexposed, and then you have to bring things up, you're going to have noise in the shadows, which these days isn't quite such a big deal, because there are noise reduction programs, and sometimes if I mess up, I will use them. You know, particularly for the 'high key' bird photography that I love so much, the light here can be so poor, that I'm shooting on a very, very high ISO and I'm going to need the noise reduction.
Samantha Clark
When you say 'high key', you mean that very kind of bleached out look?
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Yes. Because I don't I don't ever take the backgrounds out. So for that you really have to overexpose it. Unless you want blurs you have to shoot at a very high ISO to keep your shutter speed reasonably high, and if the light’s low it can be problematic with the waves. I will still tend to overexpose to some extent, not so that I'm blowing out the highlights.
But what I really love is if the sun comes out, if you're shooting with the light above and slightly in front of you, and you then bring the exposure back down, you are getting these wonderful sort of Rembrandt-esque chiaroscuro. You've just got little bits of wave that's high-lit, or highlighted. You can have quite a lot of the rest of the shot in shadow. I love that sort of 'old master' look, I'm often trying to achieve that, you know, if I think the light looks right and the wind is in the right direction I'm very happy bunny!
Samantha Clark
And you see yourself as a fine art photographer rather than a wildlife photographer?
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
I don't see myself as a wildlife photographer at all! I never do well in wildlife competitions! Because it’s just a little bit too artistic for them. I'm always looking for a different way to try and portray whatever it is.
For example, last summer, I found a pair of razorbills on the Brough [of Birsay]. So this must have been June or July, soo the pinks were out. And so I just lay down in front of a clump of pinks, and you could just see the bird's bill through the flowers and I'm thinking, 'this is going to win me wildlife photographer of the year!' But nobody has been interested in that shot! It's just a bit funky, I think for for wildlife photographers.
But that's fine. I'm gonna keep showing them how I want to, you know, I think it's important. As you probably gathered, I just adore the Arctic terns. I'm coming back as one! It's their unknowableness. These birds come here for three months of the year, and then they disappear.
Samantha Clark
And they're flighty as well.
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
And you think of the puffins and guillemots and the razorbills, they're just bobbing around in the North Sea. I mean, some of the puffins go to the Med, but you look at some of the seas we have, and you think, how do they do that? It just blows my mind. I want to see what the Arctic terns see, when they circumnavigate the globe.
Samantha Clark
A life of eternal summer!
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
It's just amazing. Those incredibly long wings. It's quite extraordinary. I always try to capture them the wings up, you know, like sort of ballerinas, because then you see this tiny body and these immense wings.
Samantha Clark
When you see them you think they can't be real, they're so beautiful, so stylized, like Art Deco, but it's actually that's the shape they are!
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Yes, quite extraordinary. Very beautiful. One of my favourite books is 'The Seabird's Cry' by Adam Nicolson. Do you know it? The most marvelous book, isn't it? It's just the perfect blend of lyricism and scientific fact. He writes really beautifully, I think.
Samantha Clark
And they're discovering so much about these creatures now that they can tag them and track where they go.
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
It was the the fulmars they tagged in on Eynhallow 2012, you know, that travelled 1000s of miles, two thirds of the way to Canada to, is it the Charlie Gibbs fracture zone?
Samantha Clark
Is that some of the fishing grounds that they go to?
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Yes. And they know there's this, sort of, upwelling where there's all this nutrition. So this bird, he's tagged, he gets off the nest, and off he goes. And he comes back, however many weeks later, around the bottom of a weather front, and he reaches the west coast of Ireland, and he knows he's got to go Northwest. And so up the coast he goes, gets back to the nest and Eynhallow, sits down on the nest goes to sleep.
Samantha Clark
And his missus goes 'I'm off! My turn! See you in a couple of weeks!' I do think fulmars, when those big gales come in, they are like albatrosses. They love that weather!
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
They do! they go, of course they're cousins of the albatross. We were in on the south coast of Australia, about 18 months ago, got a son who lives over there. And I was very much hoping for an albatross sighting. But we didn't get one.
Samantha Clark
Well, just to make you jealous when I was in Tasmania I got to go on a trip to Albatross Island with researchers from the museum. It's a breeding colony. It's basically a rock in the middle of the sea and took two days to get there. And then when you see the fulmars here, you can see they are absolutely cousins.
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
I think possibly the closest I'll get is in one of the museums. We were in Glasgow last weekend and in the museum there you can see an albatross with its wings spread. It's colossal. And you think how can this be?
Samantha Clark
Amazing. And yet they're so vulnerable, in a lot of trouble with longline fishing.
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
And unfortunately the bird flu has now reached Antarctica and started claiming the skuas, which of course were very badly hit here.
Samantha Clark
Not good. But the way you use your camera allows you to spend time with these creatures in their element, and to celebrate them and to bring them to people's attention, that they are incredibly vulnerable.
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
The whole love of birds thing really came from my family. My father and my mother were very keen naturalists, and my father's sister, my auntie Katherine was a very brilliant woman. But I'm sure she was autistic. Today she would have been labeled autistic, and she couldn't get any of this knowledge out into the world. But she could paint brilliantly. She was a wonderful oboist. She knew everything about birds.
When she died in 2003, we were living in America, I came back for the funeral. And I felt her on my shoulder, you know, basically saying 'you need to show the world what I could not. You need to find the spirit and get it out there.' So that's what I try and do. It's all about putting their spirit out into the world, their beauty and their essence. I'm not interested in the 'nature shot.'
Samantha Clark
It's something more universal than that.
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Yes. Yes!
Samantha Clark
Well, thank you so much. Nicki it's been really lovely to talk to you.
Nicki Gwynn-Jones
Yes. Thank you for having me, Sam. It's been really lovely to be here!
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I loved these images and the conversation--makes me hungry to spend time in Orkney. 💜 And my favorite time of the year is when the terns arrive for the summer here--what magnificent creatures.
"That creation, chaos, the sheer energy! " "Those Incredibly long wings. It's quite extraordinary!"
Windows to a wonderful person. She certainly seems in the right place at the right time for her. She and you seem to be not so much on that island but of it..sharing the quiet and wild spirit of it. As Neil Barker does his place in Canada. As does Chris, his place in the desert... Neil has his "seed tax"in his forest. If she ever wants to make a chum of dark Nuckelavee she need only build a small cairn of rocks on a headland and place some of those small flowers near and one of her small laminated photos under (she'll know which and how). It's a simple thing actually but quite powerful!