The Photograph That Changed More Than I Realised

There are some photographs that become favourites because they are technically good, and there are others that stay with you because they capture a feeling you struggle to put into words. This image belongs firmly in the second category.

I made the photograph around fifteen years ago in woodland in South Oxfordshire. Even now, it remains one of my favourite images. It isn't spectacular in the traditional landscape photography sense, but it has an atmosphere that I've never quite managed to recreate. There is something quiet about it, yet at the same time something unsettling. Every time I look at it, it feels as though something is waiting just beyond the trees.

Not long after taking the photograph, I received a phone call from America. At first, I assumed it was a scam. A few days later an email arrived explaining that a publisher wanted to licence the image for the cover of a novel called After the Snow by S.D Crockett. They offered me $1,000 for the rights to use the photograph.

The US edition of After the Snow by S. D. Crockett, featuring one of my favourite woodland photographs. Although no scenes in Dreams Don't Always End were directly inspired by this image, its quiet, unsettling atmosphere would later influence the mood of my own writing.

At the time it felt surreal. Until then, I had never imagined that one of my photographs might end up on the cover of a published book, let alone become my first professional image sale.

Looking back now, though, the money almost feels like the least interesting part of the story.

What has stayed with me is the photograph itself.

Over the years I found myself returning to it again and again. There was something about its dark, ambiguous atmosphere that continued to resonate with me. It wasn't simply a woodland scene; it suggested that there was a story hidden somewhere within it.

When I eventually came to write Dreams Don't Always End, no individual scene or chapter was directly inspired by this photograph. However, I now realise that the image influenced something much deeper than that. It helped shape the mood of the novel.

The book explores uncertainty, memory, dreams and the unsettling feeling that familiar places are not quite as they seem. Those themes weren't copied from the photograph, but they live comfortably alongside it. In many ways, the atmosphere captured in that woodland became the emotional landscape I wanted readers to experience.

I think that's why this photograph remains so important to me.

It reminds me that photographs can have a life beyond the moment they are taken. Sometimes they find unexpected homes on book covers. Sometimes they quietly influence the stories we go on to tell years later.

This image managed to do both.

If you'd like to read more about my photography, creative process and writing, or see the images behind many of these stories, you'll find more articles throughout this website.