Jon Russell Photography

21/04/2026

Classic architecture meets modern geometry. For this shot of St. Paul's, I wanted to anchor the historic dome using the sleek, sweeping lines of the reflection pool in the foreground. Getting low and utilising the edge of the pool creates natural leading lines that draw the eye straight into the frame. The overcast lighting was ideal here, it acted like a giant softbox, eliminating harsh shadows on the cathedral's facade and allowing for an incredibly clean, balanced exposure between the bright sky and the darker, mirror-like reflection.

12/04/2026

Tring sits quietly in the Hertfordshire countryside, tucked where the Chiltern Hills meet the Vale of Aylesbury. It’s the kind of English market town that doesn’t shout about itself — and that’s precisely the point.
Come spring, the fields around Station Road ignite in vivid yellow as the rapeseed comes into bloom, framed by ancient woodland, rolling chalk hills, and skies that can’t quite decide what season they’re playing at. It’s a landscape that rewards the slow journey — the backroad, the detour, the moment you pull over because the light just did something remarkable.
Somewhere between London and the countryside proper. Somewhere worth stopping.

12/04/2026

Folkestone Harbour Arm is one of the South East’s most unexpected creative escapes. Perched on the Kent coast — just an hour from London — the Victorian harbour has been transformed into a thriving destination of independent bars, food vendors, and public art, all set against the backdrop of the English Channel.
The centrepiece is the Grade II listed Harbour Station, where steam still drifts across the platforms and the atmosphere feels lifted straight from another era. Wander further and you’ll find converted double-decker buses serving craft beer under dramatic skies, sculpted artworks embedded into the shingle, and a community that’s quietly made Folkestone one of the most interesting towns on the coast.
It’s the kind of place that rewards the curious. Come for the views. Stay for everything else.

25/12/2025

21/09/2025

British School Musuem.

The British Schools Museum is an educational museum based in original Edwardian and Victorian school buildings in Hitchin in Hertfordshire, England. The museum complex is made up of listed school buildings housing infants, girls and boys schools with houses for Master and Mistress. It includes a monitorial schoolroom based on the educational theories of Joseph Lancaster for 300 boys, which opened in 1837, and a rare galleried classroom, dating from 1853.

05/08/2025

A near-perfect circle carved by time 🌊
This is Lulworth Cove, one of the most iconic and beautiful geological formations on the Jurassic Coast and it’s not just a pretty face.

🪨 Formed around 10,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, Lulworth Cove was created by wave erosion breaking through weaker limestone and slowly widening into the softer clays behind. The harder outer rock acted like a gateway, controlling the shape of the cove.

🌍 It’s part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site that stretches along Dorset and East Devon — showcasing 185 million years of Earth’s history in one dramatic landscape.

This view? A masterclass in natural architecture.

04/08/2025

This unusual 1.5-foot ridged structure is not a body fossil at all, but a trace fossil – a U-shaped burrow (ichnogenus Rhizocorallium) left by a shrimp-like creature on a Jurassic sea floor . It’s preserved in the Kimmeridge Clay Formation of Dorset (Late Jurassic, ~157–152 million years ago) and records the animal’s feeding activity in the muddy seabed . Trace fossils like this capture ancient behavior, letting us see how creatures lived – not just how they looked – making the Jurassic Coast a true window into the past.

04/08/2025

📍 Clavell Tower, Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset
Perched dramatically on Hen Cliff, Clavell Tower is a striking 19th-century folly built in 1830 by Reverend John Richards Clavell. Originally designed as an observatory and summer retreat, the four-storey circular tower offers panoramic views over the Jurassic Coast, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

🪨 The geology below is just as fascinating: the cliffs here expose Late Jurassic oil shales of the Kimmeridge Clay Formation, one of the UK’s most important source rocks for hydrocarbons.

🏚️ By the early 2000s, the tower faced collapse due to coastal erosion. In a remarkable feat of preservation, the Landmark Trust dismantled and rebuilt it 25 metres inland, stone by stone, in 2006.

📖 Clavell Tower has inspired writers like Thomas Hardy and was the setting for P.D. James’ novel The Black Tower. Today, it’s available as a unique holiday let, history, geology, and seascape all in one place.

04/08/2025

🔍 WWII Coastal Defences – Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset

This concrete pillbox on Kimmeridge Beach is one of thousands constructed across the UK coastline during the early 1940s. Built as part of Britain’s defensive strategy against a feared German invasion, these fortifications formed a crucial part of the anti-invasion network known as Operation Sea Lion countermeasures.

Made with reinforced concrete and often shaped using corrugated iron shuttering (as seen here), pillboxes were manned by the Home Guard and regular forces, offering cover and firing positions for defending key landing points.

Today, they stand as weathered but powerful reminders of wartime vigilance and the resilience of coastal communities.

04/08/2025

📍 Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset
This cliff exposure reveals a continuous sequence of sedimentary rock layers, representing millions of years of geological history. The visible strata are part of the Kimmeridge Clay Formation, primarily Late Jurassic in age (around 155–150 million years ago), though nearby sections of the coast expose formations ranging from the Triassic to Cretaceous.

The alternating bands of shale, mudstone, and bituminous layers are a textbook example of deep marine depositional environments, where low oxygen conditions allowed organic-rich sediments to accumulate — now a key UK source rock for hydrocarbons.

A reminder that the geology of the Jurassic Coast isn’t just scenic — it’s scientifically and economically significant.