An Introduction to Dave Fennell Wells - Garden Photographer - in 2026

Hi, I’m Dave Fennell Wells, a professional garden photographer. Thanks for dropping by and checking out my first ever blog entry. I’ve really only just started on my journey as a garden photographer, having worked in Business Banking - a career I never anticipated for myself - for 20 odd years up until April 2025. I wanted to use my first blog to share with you how found myself here, beginning a new career as a garden photographer.

Well, the major turning point in my career came during 2024 when I suffered from Burnout. This manifested in panic attacks, anxiety, low mood and a general sense of having lost my sense of self; Who am I? What do I stand for? What do I want to be? (Certainly not a banker). For a long time I had felt ashamed to tell people who I worked for, mainly because the company I used to work for had a plethora of public controversies surrounding its former leadership, its continued investment in fossil fuel companies and the international arms industry. I got little personal satisfaction from the work I was doing for them (despite the fact a lot of the work I was doing was intended to support customers in financial difficulty). All in all, I felt there was a disconnect with my personal values and beliefs, and I’d lost a sense of who I was and what I enjoyed doing in my own free time. When I did indulge in hobbies, I didn’t feel the joy I used to experience.

I took a period of sick leave to recover from burnout during which I sought therapy and took the opportunity to reassess what I wanted from life. Having read the book Design You Life by Burnett & Evans, I figured I could combine my enjoyment of photography (I hobby I had enjoyed since childhood) and gardening, something I’d found joy in later in life, to see if it is possible to forge a new path.

Upon reflection, I’ve realised gardens had always played a part in my life. From childhood, my brothers and I used to play outside, I’d help my mum plant annuals in our family garden and it was fun spotting the fish and frogs that inhabited our hazardously deep pond. Outside of our own garden, my Mum worked as a conservation cleaner for the National Trust at Kingston Lacey, so we often visited old stately homes and gardens on family holidays. Through this I was exposed to the likes of Stowe, landscaped by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and as a teenager I visited Heligan in Cornwall on a family holiday, not long after it had been restored and opened to the public. Throughout my adult life I’ve also enjoyed visiting gardens when travelling.

For example, here’s an old iPhone snap of the Jardins de Marqueyssac⁩ in France

Back to where we are today, I put in place a plan to depart from my former employer and go it alone as a professional photographer. Transitioning from working in Credit Risk where you have little freedom to be creative and set your own goals, to being freelance and in charge of your own destiny is somewhat daunting. There’s no one telling you what to do, no regular meetings to attend, no annual performance review cycle, and sadly, no monthly salary magically landing in your bank account.

Much as I found most of those regular meetings a real slog, I have discovered that I do benefit from some structure and need to be held accountable which, is why I’ve decided to start this blog. I intend to use it to document what I am getting up to in a work context, in part as a means to ensuring I am working towards my professional and creative goals (yes, I have reinstated a performance review structure). With that in mind, I aim to use this blog to share with you my progress as a garden photographer, the gardens I get to visit and shoot and the people I meet along the way.

That’s not to say this blog is purely for my own use. Along the way I hope to share some professional and creative tips to inspire you, my readers, to get out there with your camera’s to capture whatever interests you, be it flowers, gardens, or anything else you may wish to point your lens at.

“So what have you been up to, Dave”, I imagine you’re asking?

Well, aside from learning about blogging and setting up this site, I recently set my goals for 2026, amongst the usual SMART business objectives like getting published and increasing my social media reach, one of my goals is a personal project to shoot and self-develop 24 rolls of black and white film in 2026. Part of my recovery from burnout in 2024 was to attempt to be more mindful, and I used photography to achieve that. Being out with my camera are some of the only times I achieve a real Flow state of mind. That being said, sometimes having a screen on the back of your camera and all the bells and whistles of modern DSLR or mirrorless cameras can distract from the act of slowing down and noticing. The temptation to look down and check each shot on the rear screen, aka ‘chimping’ can take you out of your creative flow. This prompted me to consider getting back into analogue 35mm film photography. In a few short months I’ve learned a lot, in particular I have been putting into practice the ‘Sunny 16’ rule to guess-timate what exposure settings to use. I’ve even started using this on my digital cameras to be far more mindful in analysing the light falling on a scene and setting exposure before raising the viewfinder to my eye.

Some quick phone calculator maths reveals that I’ll have to shoot 2.5 frames every day of the year to hit the target of 24 rolls in a year. That seems very few, but I sadly discovered over the last few months that even though I say I am a photographer, I could go long stretches of time without picking up my camera. I anticipate setting myself this goal will result in more regular shooting and a consequential improvement in my skills as a photographer. Not least because each frame of 35mm film costs money, with the consequence that shooting film encourages you to slow down and be more intentional in your subject selection and composition. So far, I am on day 5 of the project and I am running ahead of schedule, I’ll keep you updated throughout the course of the year on remaining progress.

In terms of regularity of shooting, I made a concerted effort to leave the warmth and comfort of the sofa this morning and venture out in the snow to take some photos in my neighbourhood. The weather here in Birmingham has felt like -3ºC but the skies were beautifully clear this morning. As you will see below, this resulted in the most wonderful golden sunrise. I took the opportunity to to get out and practice shooting at this time of day as it’s something us garden photographers regularly do, the soft morning light delivering beautiful contrast and colours. I hope you enjoy this small sample of the images I shot in St. Barnabas’ church yard in Birmingham. I kept my ISO low for these shots and used a reasonably wide aperture in the range f/4 to 5.6 to allow enough light into so as to maintain a hand holdable shutter speed c1/100. (All images shot on Lumix GX9 & 20mm f1.7 lens, JPEGs straight out of camera with some cropping).

Keep your eyes peeled or subscribe to my blog for regular updates on what I have been doing in my professional and personal practice as a garden photographer.