Nick Bull’s Fifteen Best Photographs

Low, wide photos aren’t normally Nick’s thing, but we love this gorgeously composed example of a sunset shot from the start of the 2019 season, close to the city of Winchester. This is the only photo of this circle we’ve seen that provides a real sense of the field’s gentle slopes and undulations.

Oh no! Tiny planet mode can really suck on a drone … unless it is done well, like this example from 2019. We also like this image for the behind-the-scenes drama it caused!

Go back ten years and recall how certain personalities on social media, unconnected to the creation of this circle, used to cry a river when a photographer would deploy editing software. Now, if done respectfully, it is all part of the game.

Nick Bull has done an admirable job with his painstaking recreation of the badly defaced 2020 crop circle at Ackling Dyke. Not only in fixing the damage for the photograph, but working magic with a sky, exposure and angle which, when combined, render a dismally surveyed and badly made circle more than the sum of its hashed parts. 

Click here for more on our suspicions of how this crop circle was all but destroyed after Frank Smithland captured the only intact images of it in the field.

A beautiful crop circle, rolling landscape and an oddly attractive cloud can make for a great photograph. What else is there to say?

This hazy, dreamy morning shot was a precursor to the heavy storm that was on the way and primed to give the already weathered field something of beating! We bet the view from the hot air balloon was fantastic.

This photograph is great and has, more on than off, been the desktop background on the computers used to maintain this website.

Just who is the person stood in the middle of a crop circle close to a well-to-do Hamsphire village as the sun comes up? Their presence adds a real sense of scale to this image.

There’s plenty to say about the minimal beauty of the Hatherden Lane crop circle, and we love how this image captures the early morning mist making its way over the fields outside of Andover. Dawn shots are a theme in Nick Bull’s photographs, allowing him to record images other people simply wouldn’t be dedicated enough to get out of bed for!

There is so much detail to be explored throughout this photograph of the 2022 crop circle at Chute Causeway. Isn’t that as soft a barley field as you have ever seen? There’s the lay of the downed crop and the unusual tuft of the central circle, alongside the formation’s placement. The view of the background hills tapers off towards Ashley Warren in Hampshire. Awesome!

Here’s a view you don’t see very often from the top of Hackpen Hill — and we don’t mean the incredible twilight hues on display here. Normally it’s all about the view over to Broad Hinton, but this incredible photo displays the incline towards Ogbourne St George. Beautiful! 

There was a deservedly high amount of love for this simple, elegant circle when it appeared in 2019 between Warminster and Chapmanslade alongside the A36. An awful lot of attention had been given to its appearance during construction, and this stunning image highlights the lay, standing tufts and weave inside the circle. A photograph full of long shadows and win.

The Croppie intensely dislikes this formation. It’s uninspired, unoriginal and was positioned just a stone’s throw from an odd pictogram type formation in the neighbouring field (off camera, just to the right). Farmer Josh Carson wasn’t happy to have one circle in his fields, never mind a pair. No matter, this sunrise image comes from the top drawer, with mist hugging the fields underneath the Pewsey Downs escarpment. It’s a stunning reminder of why we love this place so much.

Often, photographs really don’t show the full extent of a panorama. The area underneath the downs marking the northern boundary of the Vale of Pewsey is classic crop circle country. The surrounding landscape is vibrant with local landmarks such as the Alton Barnes White Horse, Woodborough Hill, Tawsmead Copse, the chimney at Honeystreet Mill and the Kennet and Avon Canal. But by isolating the escarpment, the (barely noticeable) White Horse and the fields underneath them to place the crop circle in the foreground, Nick has been able to capture one of his very best images. 

This particular formation didn’t attract much attention at the time, but its straight edges are a wonderful accompaniment to the lengthy tramlines and striped drill lines. Look beyond them and you’ll understand that the escarpment, as it snakes around to the right at Walkers Hill, is the real centre-piece of the photograph. All in, the composition expresses the vast emptiness of the fields that run alongside the slope. The eerie half-light is a wonderful extra, adding a cold, dawn feel to reflect the circle’s chilly minimalism.

The field behind Mixon on the edge of Etchilhampton, has contained a large number of crop circles through the years. We were indifferent to the oddly nicknamed ‘sick teddybear’ formation from 2018, but you can’t argue with this incredible photograph of the circle at sunrise. It’s an absolutely breathtaking image.

So, how do you choose between two photographs taken in the mist, shortly after sunrise. of two different crop circles? With great difficulty. 

Two things clinched it for the Roundway Down image ahead of that from Etchilhampton. One, we love how the photograph was taken at the right moment when the mist had dissipated enough for the circle to be seen. Two, we adore how the textured, thick mist shrouds the landscape, but for the hilltops (notably Morgans Hill on the left) and some treetops. It’s a wonderful capture.