Places like Bamburgh Castle and coastal landmarks like it get photographed thousands of times a year, usually from the same spot with the same treatment. If you keep shooting the obvious angle, your work blends into that pile whether you mean it to or not.
Coming to you from Andrew Banner, this thoughtful video follows Banner as he visits Bamburgh Castle and the surrounding dunes with a clear goal: avoid the standard shot. He lives near another well-known lighthouse and admits he rarely shares images from it because they look like everyone else’s. At Bamburgh, he makes a deliberate choice to search for what others ignore. Instead of planting the tripod for the postcard view, he turns his attention to a small shed in the dunes, a pair of benches, and subtle shapes in the grass. The castle is still there, but it becomes context rather than the headline. You watch him work through distractions in the scene, shifting position to hide parking lots and buildings, using a longer lens to compress the frame and simplify what stays inside it.
Banner shoots in a high-contrast black and white profile in-camera to previsualize the result, while still capturing a raw file for full control later. He walks through several edits of the same frame, processed in DxO PhotoLab and Silver Efex, showing how one base image can lead to very different outcomes. One version leans into deep blacks and crisp detail. Another softens the feel. A third shifts the balance again. None of them rely on heavy color to carry the frame. Watching the variations drives home a simple point: the capture is only the start. Your decisions after the shutter matter just as much as where you stand.
What stands out is how physical his approach is. Banner drops low into the dunes, kneeling to find lines in the grass that lead toward the subject. He experiments with a slower shutter speed to introduce motion blur in the windblown grass, changing the mood without changing the location. The scene is cold, windy, uncomfortable. He keeps working. There’s a practical edge here too. He talks about tripod stability in strong wind and the annoyance of missing foam leg covers in freezing temperatures. None of it is glamorous, but it reflects the reality of working carefully instead of casually clicking and moving on.
The deeper message centers on observation and intent. Banner challenges the habit of lifting a phone, shooting once, and calling it done. He pushes you to ask harder questions. Where does the eye enter the frame? Is there a leading line, even a subtle one? Would shifting one step left remove a distraction? Is the story clearer from a lower angle? He also questions the social media reflex to praise loud color and easy compositions while dismissing quieter, moodier frames. If you want your images to hold attention, you need to show that you paid attention while making them. That means considering narrative, emotion, and structure before pressing the shutter, not after.
You won’t see him stumble upon a radically new view of Bamburgh Castle. What you will see is a process that pushes beyond the predictable, along with side-by-side edits that reveal how much room you actually have inside a single raw file. There’s more nuance in the full set of edits and more context around how he refines the final look. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Banner.
6 Comments
I don't know why people are so obsessed with producing "something different". It is a perfectly legitimate objective to be "different", but no need to detest those who pursue different objectives. If all I want to do is slow down and enjoy the process of taking a picture, the subject is almost irrelevant. If I happen to create a nice, or even stunning image, it's simply a bonus. I think the difference is indeed in whether you enjoy photography as a hobby for yourself or if you see it as a tool to share, post and shine. Don't assume everybody is in the latter category.
Bear in mind people need something to talk about in their videos, hence content like this video. Lots of 'stop taking boring photos' and variations on similar themes all over Youtube.
You're right, Sam. I have produced content for a great many years. Back in the 80s and 90s I contributed to and ran a number of magazines, some on the computing field, others in Photography - I once interviewed Elliot Erwitt for his book launch - On the Beach.
There's a simple fact that any editor knows - there's only so many general topics that you can write on in a special interest sphere. Other than product reviews, the same subjects get discussed over and over and over. The difference is ALWAYS in the personal takes, views, opinions and perhaps soundbites that people have. Just because 10 people produce content that encourages others to do X Y or Z, does not mean that only one person's content is valid or perhaps none. Not everybody will write or say something that resonates with you but that very same content might smack the next person in between the eyes and make them say "Wow, I have never thought of it like that".
Because by looking for something different, you learn to see things. By becoming a better observer, you naturally become a better photographer.
I think you might be falling into the trap of projecting your own thoughts onto others. You're suggesting that I am assuming that "everybody is in the later category" whilst your entire comment is based on your own assumptions.
Kinda' like enjoying cooking, but not eating.
Interesting video, and a good write up of it.
I think the ‘obvious’ shot is usually just the result of a purely reactive workflow—seeing a landmark and immediately hitting the shutter. It’s essentially a failure of the orient phase of the creative cycle.
Realizing that the "how" is more important than the "what" sometimes requires a bit of a mental reset, and moving from simply capturing a moment to intentionally constructing an image is definitely a slower, more disciplined approach. It's probably the only way to stand out, though, in a world full of cliches and copycats.