Dave Coates  ARPS  EFIAP/p  MPAGB  HonEFIAP  HonPAGB HonNCPF

My love of photography started over 60 years ago at the same time as I came to appreciate the beauty of my home county, Yorkshire and especially its Dales and Moors.  My early years were spent cycling, fell walking, youth hostelling and caving all over them.  Even in those early years my Braun Super Paxette and then Exacta were never far from my side.   The years have rolled by, and I have become involved as a lecturer, judge and organiser in club photography at local, regional, national and then international level, eventually serving for over a decade on our national executive council as the FIAP Liaison Officer for the UK.

We still regularly visit and roam across our beloved Dales and Moors.   There is so much variety to be found there; from the limestone fells and outcrops to the open fells, valleys and dales of varying sizes and intimacy, surrounded by those fells or heather covered moors.   It is a landscape, where over the centuries and millennia the effect of man’s hand is to be found almost everywhere.  In truth though, almost all of those changes have been benign and have added beauty, character and interest to the natural surroundings.  The seasons themselves bring about such great changes that it is often difficult to reconcile the variety of the geology and flora that is to be found.

In this small portfolio of landscapes I seek to take you on a tour through the seasons, starting and finishing with winter and hopefully giving you a minute taste of the topography of the area, as well as the variety, colours and moods to be found there.  It is not without reason that Yorkshire is locally known as “God’s Country”.