Michael Behlen: You spent time in the wilderness visiting national parks with your family growing up. Do you remember your first proper outing? What was the experience like? Did anyone in your family use photography to capture these events?

Nicholas J R White: My family would take me out before I could even walk, so I can’t really remember how it started. Some of my earliest memories however are of family holidays on Dartmoor. It was always the highlight of the year when we’d load the car up with walking gear and drive to my grandparents house on the national park. All my friends would be flying abroad and I’d be stoked to go a couple of hours down the road and walk in the rain, haha. The family camera (an old 35mm) would usually come with us wherever we went – I need to dig those negatives out, really.

MB: You graduated to spending more time in the woods and hiking as you grew older, do you think you would have done this if you weren’t exposed to it in your younger years?

NW: Probably not. I actually grew up on an estate near a large-ish town. There was this big tree a short walk from my house, and if my brother and I weren’t in the house then we would usually be found clambering through the upper branches of that tree. I guess being outdoors has always just been a normal thing for me – so when I found photography, the two formed this sort of synergy.

MB: What was your first experience with “true” photography? Was there a moment when you realized that you enjoyed shooting photography more than hiking? What about these two things compliment each other so well?

I don’t really know what true photography is. I started using photography as a way of documenting things that interested/intrigued me and that’s pretty much the same thing that motivates me now. It’s not so much the “hiking” that I like, it’s just generally being outdoors. Take my work in Romania for example, some of the locations were accessed using 4x4 vehicles or snowmobiles. There’s no need for me to make life harder for myself for the sake of it.

MB: How old were you when you entered into the Plymouth College of Art? Was there a catalyst that drove you to enroll and achieve a degree in photography, instead of pursuing it in a more casual way? How long were you shooting before you decided to enroll (and why?)

NW: I began studying at Plymouth College of Art in 2008, so I was 18. I’d already gone to college and studied Music and Music Technology, but panicked and realized I didn’t really want to spend my life doing that. I enrolled onto a Diploma in 2008 to wrap my head around the basic principles of photography and ended up falling in love with it. I figured that spending three years doing nothing but photography and surrounding myself with like minded individuals couldn’t be a bad thing.

MB: You spent 5 years achieving this degree: did you learn anything particular that you feel really enhanced your vision of photography or what you were trying to achieve as a photographer? What was your end game?

NW: Well, it was 2 years for the diploma and 3 years for the degree. As I said before, the most important thing for me was being able to surround myself with nothing but photography for 5 years straight. I didn’t have an end game really, and I suppose I still don’t. I’m just enjoying the here and now.