Welcome to Rhiannon Lawler Photography!
Landscape, Wildlife, Drone & Polar Photography
I used to be a lay on a beach and relax kind of traveller, until photography got hold of me.
I'm Rhiannon, a UK based landscape, wildlife, and drone photographer, and these days, that curiosity takes me chasing weather and light, from the Chiltern Hills to Iceland, Greenland, and Antarctica.
Every image you see here is available as a limited edition print for your home. Explore the gallery, browse prints in the shop, or join me on a photography workshop in the UK, Iceland or Antarctica.
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NEW WORKSHOP LAUNCH
Bookings are now open for my Iceland winter workshop with Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove, March 2027. Ten places available.
NEW COLLECTION
The Laurisilva Collection
The Story behind the photo
Walking into the Laurisilva for the first time, you understand immediately that you are somewhere genuinely old. Not old in the way of buildings or ruins, but old in a way that has no human reference point. The moss is everywhere. The air is cool and still. The trees have had centuries to grow into whatever shapes they chose.
This one chose something extraordinary.
I found this elder on a misty morning, its trunk rising from a cathedral of moss-covered roots before arching dramatically overhead. The mist softened everything beyond it into pale light, isolating the tree against the forest like a portrait. I stood there for a long time before I raised the camera, in awe of where I was.
This image is an attempt to bring that feeling home.
Photographed in Madeira's UNESCO World Heritage Laurisilva forest.
The Story behind the photo
Look up. The laurel forest looks back.
Most people walk through Madeira's Laurisilva with their eyes ahead - following the path, watching their footing on the mossy ground. But lie on your back beneath one of these ancient trees and everything changes. The canopy becomes a labyrinth. Branches coil and twist against a ghostly, mist-filtered sky, reaching in every direction with a kind of wild, unplanned intelligence. It stops being a forest and starts being something else entirely.
That feeling is what this image is about. The twisting forms, the weight of the branches overhead, the mist softening everything beyond them into pale light. Something ancient and alive, looking back at you.
Photographed in Madeira's UNESCO World Heritage Laurisilva forest.
The Story behind the photo
I found it on a morning when the mist was sitting low in the forest, softening everything beyond the treeline into pale, diffused light. From a distance it looked like any other ancient laurel - broad trunk, heavy with moss, roots gripping the volcanic rock beneath. But as I moved closer the trunk began to reveal itself. At a certain height it simply splits - exploding outward into a tangle of branches that reach in every direction at once, each one as thick as a young tree in its own right. The moss follows every contour, every curve, every fracture point. The ferns cling on wherever they can find purchase.
Standing beneath it, the effect is overwhelming. It doesn't feel like a tree. It feels like an event, a slow-motion explosion frozen in wood and moss, caught mid-reach toward the light.
The Laurisilva has been growing like this, undisturbed, since before humans set foot on Madeira. This image is an attempt to capture not just what that looks like, but what it feels like to stand in front of something that old and that alive.
Photographed in Madeira's UNESCO World Heritage Laurisilva forest.
