Still life brings acclaim for movie veteran

From Cuba to Pakistan and Africa to Russia, he was behind the camera on blockbusters as diverse as Bridget Jones's Diary and even parts of Star Wars.

But he decided to turn his back both on his life in London and working on film sets around the globe and head back to his native Yorkshire – with no other idea than to find a place with some land where he could raise chickens.

Home became the tiny hamlet of Lofthouse in Nidderdale. And then one day he decided to pick up a camera, this time a device that produced still pictures, to follow a shooting party as it set out nearby.

The more people who saw his photographs over the following months, which used his expert eye to frame the magnificence of the local landscape, the more demand for them grew.

Commissions followed and just 15 months later, he has opened a gallery in Pateley Bridge and a website – jonathansykes.co.uk – to showcase his work.

His new world may be miles away from the hustle and bustle of London or the glamour of the film industry but he says Nidderdale's ever-changing beauty offers him constant challenges to capture its full glory.

"I just sort of fell into it really," said the 50-year-old.

"It wasn't part of a master plan; once I started taking photographs, it just developed. Suddenly I found myself sitting in my own gallery wondering how I'd got there."

Thanks to his career in film, his eye is keenly attuned to light and his work shows Nidderdale in a way many will not have seen before.

Commissions have included the shoots which run the pheasant and grouse moors above Lofthouse and Middlesmoor, cricket tournaments and model portfolios.

"The light changes so quickly here. One minute, you're looking at the Dales shrouded in mist, the next minute the sun has broken through and you're seeing it in a completely different light. Then it starts to rain, and there's another picture altogether – it's just a wonderful place to work as a photographer," he said.

"The scene changes dramatically on a daily or even an hourly basis. It's a constantly changing environment and I don't think you get that in cities – taking photographs of that would not attract me."

Working on a film set involved a great deal of variety, both in places and people, and it is a similar experience on the moors around his home where every day is different – although he often remains very much alone in the peace and quiet as he goes about his work.

"It got to the point where I wanted to change and had the freedom to do it. It wasn't thought through," he said.

"It was time to leave London after 28 years. Sometimes you have these moments in life and you just go with it.

"When I was working on a film it would be six weeks here or five months there depending on the film. It's a great thing about the industry in that you're never stuck anywhere or bored as the job changes daily and the places and people you work with change. There's no way I would work in an office or go to the same place every day.

"But becoming a photographer is not something I set out to do for a living. I honestly believe I enjoy photography because of where I live and of where I am.

"In fact, I've had to explain to quite a few people who have come into the gallery that I don't do weddings or babies. I suppose I've become an artist – it's just I use a camera rather than a paintbrush.

"But, to be honest, it's already so much more than I'd anticipated when I came to Yorkshire. Back then, all I was thinking about was perhaps running a few chickens."

The blessings of new technology

Jonathan Sykes studied photography 30 years ago but had no idea he would ever take it up again.

He did not take any serious pictures until after he had moved to Nidderdale where he lives with his partner Amy and their chickens.

But his knowledge from his film career of framing a picture and of technical elements of modern digital technology helped him when he returned to still images.

"When I was a kid using film, you had to set up a dark room in your bathroom or under the stairs and go through lots of chemicals to produce photographs.

"I can go on a shoot now and take one-and-a-half thousand photos, come home and put them on my computer. That would be lot of rolls of film, then you'd have the processing."