Bethannie Galloway

Bethannie Galloway is a photographer from Dundee, Scotland. She moved to Glenshee in 2015, this amplified her interest in photography, particularly landscape.
She graduated from HND Photography in 2020 and will be continuing her education by attending the City of Glasgow College to study BA Photography which will allow her to progress to a career in Creative Industries.
Her primary influence is Ansel Adams; his picturesque mountainous images are a significant source of inspiration throughout her work with landscapes.

Heraklion, Greece

I stayed in Malia, Crete back in 2018 for a friends’ birthday. Heraklion is the capital city of the island Crete in Greece and a short bus ride from Malia.

Visually, Greece is the polar opposite to Scotland; bright and sunny as opposed to dramatic and moody. This impacted my editing style as it has a different aesthetic to work with; the oranges of Greece directly oppose the various greens of Scotland and I had to adapt my usual workflow to suit. There is also a uniformity to my images of Greece that I do not have in my other landscape work, this helped speed up the process and kept the images consistent. I chose to shoot landscapes while there as opposed to people because I am predominantly a landscape photographer- this has always come more naturally to me than photographing people in any situation be it studio or street.

I love travelling and exploring different environments through photography. It allows for a change in my approach to a subject as there are different cultures, history, and landscapes to be inspired by.

Heraklion is home to an array of historical sites; the Venetian wall, Palace of Knossos, Koules Fortress and the Venetian dockyards are among the sites we visited on our stay and these places feature heavily within my series of images from this trip. I enjoy learning about ancient civilisations/history and the friend I travelled with is a bit of a history enthusiast, so Greece was the perfect destination.

One of the days we spent in Heraklion we ate at a restaurant called ‘Peskesi’, the food there was outstanding, reasonably priced and all ingredients are sourced from their own farm on the island and other local farms. While at the restaurant I befriended a cat that was sitting on the roof just outside the bathroom window. The next day we went back To Heraklion. We walked along the Venetian wall, high above the city where you can see the mountains and Pankritio Stadium in the distance. We then went to one of the restaurants on the waterfront beside Koules Fortress, they have a long row of big windows with a view of the water which was beautiful during golden hour.

When I got back home my memory card had corrupted, I thought I had lost all one thousand images I had taken on the trip which makes me cherish these photographs even more.

 

To view more of Bethannie Galloway’s work please visit her website.