About

Biographical

Mike Shepherd was born in 1964 and educated in London. He studied music and photography at college after leaving school in 1982. In 1989, he attended Lancaster University as a mature student and studied Eastern Religion, Philosophy, and Art graduating with first class honours in 1992. After graduating he taught photography and digital imaging at Kendal College of Art and Design, and then at Lancaster University before embarking on a full-time career as a landscape photographer.

Mike has published work globally and in the UK. He has worked as a professional landscape photographer since 2003, and now works to supply The John Lewis Partnership and various other retail outlets in the UK. In 2006 Mike established his small business in Lancaster producing fine art prints for painters and photographers.

Personal

My love of landscape photography was ignited by Ansel Adams, and then by the figures relating to him culturally and historically: Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand particularly. I am especially interested in the historical period of art history these figures occupied. As Paul Strand put it: “there was a fight going on for the integrity of a new medium and its right to exist; the right of the photographer to be an artist, as well as the right of Picasso and other artists to do the kind of work they were doing”.

I am a visual person who loves nature, I am constantly inspired by looking at and being out in the Landscape. Photography is my way of being present, like a meditation, spending time and opening up to the forces of nature; letting go of the clatter of daily life.