Jack Lodge

Sometimes the most productive thing Canon Ambassador Jack Lodge can do with his camera is leave it in the bag. The Dorset-based landscape and nature photographer likes to scout locations without the pressure of making an image, walking, observing and building up an understanding of how a place responds to different seasons and weather and light.

"Nature first and then photography second," is how Jack describes an approach shaped by being born and raised in Dorset, England, where much of his childhood was spent outdoors. "I just chase the light, really. Whether it's landscapes, night sky or wildlife, I'm making the most of the local areas that I know really well."

Joining the Canon Ambassador Programme represents what Jack calls a "massive peak moment" in a journey that began while studying architecture. In 2014, ahead of a university trip to Venice, a tutor suggested he take a camera so he could photograph the city's buildings to sketch upon his return. Jack bought a Canon EOS 100D and a Canon EF 40mm pancake lens to take on the trip, and one early-morning expedition with the camera completely changed things. Experimenting with manual exposures beside the Grand Canal, he photographed a Venetian sunrise that remains one of his favourite images to this day. "I got the feeling of capturing a moment and I was addicted," he says.

Jack credits that time in the field with giving him an intimate understanding of his subjects. He plans his year around the seasons, anticipating bluebells, autumn colour and the best conditions for seascapes or the Milky Way, while studying weather and meteorology to decide where the light might work. Misty woodland is a recurring subject, but Jack rarely reaches for a wide-angle lens. He often prefers the compression of longer focal lengths, with the Canon RF 24-105mm F4L IS USM his most-used landscape lens.

Wildlife has increasingly become part of that same philosophy. After an encounter photographing a barn owl ignited his interest, Jack began applying the patience and observation he had learnt through landscapes to animal behaviour. For one project, he spent three months studying short-eared owls near his home, sometimes watching them for hours before taking a photograph.

Jack's Canon EOS R5 Mark II has really helped him push that work further. Its animal detection and autofocus allow him to follow well-camouflaged owls through long grass and distracting vegetation, while pre-continuous shooting can capture moments that happen before he even has time to react.

Rather than treating wildlife and landscape as separate disciplines, Jack now wants to combine them more closely, applying his obsession with season, weather, atmosphere and light to wildlife and even night-sky imagery.

Yet for Jack, capture is only one part of making a photograph. His creative process ends with a physical print, which he produces using his Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-2100. Every image he makes is conceived with a print in mind, and he will even consider the paper it might eventually be printed on while still in the field.

He calls his approach the 'Six Ps': planning, photographing, processing, printing, patience and persistence. All six, ultimately, are in service of one finished photograph. One long-term ambition is to bring that philosophy together in a continually evolving collection of seasonal photographs, with the eventual goal of turning them into a book or series of books.

Becoming a Canon Ambassador was another goal Jack had jokingly written in his calendar year after year. "This was always the dream," he says. "Now it's like: how do I continue?"

What do you want people to experience when they look at one of your photographs?

"I want somebody to feel the same way I felt when I took it. If it was really cold and misty, I might want the photograph to feel cool and ethereal, like it was a magical morning. Being able to freeze that feeling into a single frame is a real sense of achievement for me. I'm not particularly motivated by awards. What means more is when somebody tells me an image has reminded them of somewhere they visited or brought something to their day. When I'm out photographing these places on my own, I almost feel selfish because I'm the only one seeing them. Photography lets me bring other people along with me."


How does knowing that an image will eventually become a print change the way you photograph it?

"That's the reason I take a photograph in a certain way. How it's exposed, what aperture I'm using, it's all for the print. Before I even think about settings, I press the INFO button on the back of my camera and turn everything off so I just have the image. I'm only focused on composition because that's what it's going to look like on the wall. Then I bring the settings back and think about things such as depth of field. I even think about what paper the photograph might eventually go on. In a way, I'm thinking through that whole process before I press the shutter."


Where do you want to take your photography next?

"I'm really looking forward to combining my passion for wildlife and landscape. I want to bring what I've learnt from landscape photography into wildlife, and that doesn't simply mean photographing an animal with a wider lens. I want to think more about the weather, the time of day, the season and the light. With wildlife you sometimes take the picture when you can, whereas landscapes can be more controlled. I'm interested in bringing those approaches together, and even combining them with the night sky, to create images that tell my story."


What piece of Canon kit can you not live without, and why?

"The Canon RF 24-105mm F4L IS USM is probably the lens I couldn't live without. It's the bread and butter of landscape photography for me because it's lightweight and incredibly versatile. I can shoot reasonably wide landscapes with it, but I can also use the longer end to create lovely compression in woodland and more intimate scenes. It covers so much of what I photograph that it's the lens I find myself reaching for again and again."


What else could we discover in your kitbag that helps you elevate your work?

"Filters and a geared head are really important for what I do. ND filters let me slow down shutter speeds for water, mist and more ethereal-looking images, while I use a polariser a lot for woodland photography to remove glare. A geared head helps me slow down too. I can move the camera millimetre by millimetre and really think about the photograph before I press the button."

"Patience and persistence will always lead to a special story to tell. If you go out and don't get a photograph, go home happy because you've spent time in nature. You've learnt something, whether it was about the weather or the location, and next time you can try again. You've got nothing to prove to anyone. Be patient, be persistent and think about the story you're trying to tell. And print your work. In such a digital age, I think it's incredibly important to leave something physical behind."

Website: jacklodge.co.uk

Facebook: @jacklodgephotography

Instagram: @jacklodgephotography

YouTube: @jacklodge

Threads: @jacklodgephotography