I was recently looking through all the photos I took during my 4 years living in Nottingham to see if I could come up with some kind of series out of them. After cutting it down to all the black & white images that turned out reasonably I had just over 200 photos so I needed to come up with some more specific ideas. One theme I tend to shoot a lot is where nature meets the built environment, which lead me to put together this series. I got the title, and some inspiration, from Robin Friend’s Bastard Countryside (watch this video for a good introduction).

This series was shot with my Hasselblad 500C/M, CF 60mm and 150mm lenses, and Ilford HP5+ at EI 800 and developed in HC-110 1+49 for 11 minutes, except for image 13, which was shot on Ilford FP4+ at EI 400 and developed in HC-110 1+49 for 16 minutes.

In Feburary 2019 I started shooting a series with a similar theme in a small nature reserve in Nottingham on Fuji Pro 400H, but I’ve never been able to get acceptable scans from the 2 rolls I shot. If I do manage to get something useful from them I might put together a part 2 to this project.