Lucy Gold: I Live In The Mountains

Lucy Gold is the resident photographer for Brecon Cottages in the Brecon Beacons. She was diagnosed with dyslexia when she was at university and this pushed her focus on the art and photography side of her personality. First exploring painting but after being frustrated with the lack of progress she moved onto photography which she has excelled at. Lucy explains that “photography works so well for me, I don’t have to paint and I can use the rules of light and photography to make my image.”

Lucy is not originally from the Brecon Beacons but she now lives there. “It’s beautiful. I could’ve moved to London but my friends who did that are now broke and unhappy. I live in the mountains, with the forest behind our house and waterfalls only 2 minutes away.” Sounds like paradise, right?

“But my job here is perfect for me right now. I shoot interiors and advertising shots full time for Brecon Beacons Holiday Cottages but when I’m not doing that what I really love is just going for walk with the camera and looking for shots.”

“Favourite place would be on a walk up a mountain called the Bryn. You come up over a big round hill and for ages…then the view of Pen y Fan is revealed and it just gets better and better! Up to place called Bwlch y Ddwyallt. Then the next best walk is up to Fan Y Big and a rock called the diving board that sticks out of the cliff over a deep valley.”

“My partner is a national park warden and has been showing me routes and it is so good to have my own personal guide”

When I was looking through her photographs this particular shot stood out to me. “This is on my partner’s farm, this is actually his father. I took my 6 year old niece who has autism to see the lambs this spring and in-between shots she wanted to touch the lamb. I could tell that Simon was trying to help bring it back to life so was trying to be quick. We had really bad frost the night before and this little lamb hadn’t stood up when he came around. Simon had a hot water bottle under the lamb and it wasn’t taking any milk, he was just about to be this tube in to its stomach to help it feed. You have to be both vet and shepherd when you own a farm.

The lamb survived.”

I enquired about this picture thinking it was another one of Lucy’s but she exclaimed “I will come clean here, this is actually taken by my partner! I tried to get up there to take some shots but was in work all day. He was working on restoring the footpaths. There is a lot of natural fauna and forward on the top if the mountains and they bury these stoned virtually in the mountain paths to keep people to the tracks but also so that the earth doesn’t erode. Where they don’t have these stones you can notice the damage people have on the paths. Specifically where the ground is quite peaty.

“Women in the outdoors… Hmm I guess there are lot of men but I would say that I know alot of women who are far more outdoorsy than me. I have friend who is amazing, she runs every day, she just did the London marathon and does smaller marathons for fun. And another girlfriend who does the double marathons! And cycles and all of the above. So for me, I am surrounded by over achieving sporty females! Haha! I think if that there aren’t enough women in photography, especially outdoor photography. That is definitely a man’s world. I do think that as a female photographer, some people don’t often take me as seriously. Once I was turned up to shoot a property with my assistant who was a young man. The person whose house it was said to him ‘oh you must be the photographer.’ It was an embarrassing moment, but we got over it”

“This shot was taken on my way up to Fan Y Big. We went up just after it had dumped a load of snow we were wading through thigh high snow on the approach to the summit. The rock on the top sticking out is called the diving board. It was so scary! Covered in ice and so cold. I do like photography in the winter more, I think. It’s a lot more dramatic and moody. Summer time everything looks healthy and green and like something out of a chocolate box advert. Although it’s nicer to walk in. There are also more tourists in the summer so I can’t feel totally relaxed.” Well with this winter we’ll hopefully get a lot of snow so we can get more scenery like this.