Neil Burnell is a fine art landscape and seascape photographer based in Devon, South West England. He has a background in graphic design, alongside early training in art and photography from college in the 1990s. His photography favors long exposures that render mist, water and fog into smooth, atmospheric, mood-rich scenes.
As a child, a visit to the ancient woodland of Wistman's Wood on Dartmoor left a lasting impression on him.He has described the wood as reminding him of “the film set of Empire Strikes back in the forest of Dagobah”. He spent much of his career in graphic design before turning to photography more seriously and returning to the wood to capture its mysticism in a cinematic style.
His project Mystical, developed over several years, documents the fog, gnarled oaks and moss-covered stones of Wistman's Wood on Dartmoor.,He exhibited the series with the gallery Taylor Jones & Son.As his style moved from stark, minimalist long exposures toward denser atmospheric scenes, he shifted from full-frame digital cameras to medium format, returning to an analogue Hasselblad 500C/M alongside a digital Hasselblad X2D II.
His work has won the Amateur Photographer of the Year competition in 2018 and the black-and-white category of Landscape Photographer of the Year in 2020, among other awards.,His image Moonshine, an intentional-camera-movement study of Brixham Breakwater, was commended in Landscape Photographer of the Year 2018 and shown at an exhibition at Waterloo station.He also sells digital works, including A Dartmoor Dream, through the platform SuperRare.
