I'm really pleased to share that my work has been featured in Lancashire Life magazine — and the article is now available to read online at Great British Life.

The feature tells the story behind Wild Hearts, my fine art photography book celebrating Britain's rare native horse breeds and the landscapes they call home. It's a project that took around six years, and reading the article back I'm reminded of just how much of myself went into it.

How It Began

I wasn't a horsey girl growing up. I only learned to ride as an adult, during one of the hardest periods of my life, when my daughter was going through a time of serious illness and I desperately needed something that would give me respite from the weight of hospital appointments and worry. Horses gave me that. Quietly and completely.

It was spending time around horses that reignited my love of photography as an art rather than a job. I remembered how it felt as a teenager, photographing simply from the heart. That feeling never really left me, it had just been buried under years of commercial work. The horses brought it back.

What Wild Hearts Is

Wild Hearts celebrates the rare native horses of Britain and the wild and semi-wild landscapes they inhabit. It's the culmination of around six years of travel, observation, and photography across the UK, from the coastal headlands of Cornwall to the remote islands of Scotland.

It isn't a breed manual. There are no technical descriptions or posed examples of perfect posture. It's an attempt to capture something of the spirit of these animals, their beauty, their resilience, the sense of wildness that still lives in our landscapes. I also hope it encourages people to support vulnerable breeds, whether that's helping protect their natural environment or buying a registered pony. Small steps that genuinely help secure their future.

Alongside the photographs, the book includes quotes and insights from the custodians of these breeds, the people who know them best, who have dedicated their lives to keeping these horses in the world.

On Patience and Process

The photography itself required a particular kind of stillness. I would spend days or sometimes weeks with a herd, sitting in the field, letting the horses go about their lives until I stopped being something worth noticing. There's an acceptance that happens gradually, they get to know you, and then slowly they simply ignore you. That's when the real photographs become possible. Natural, intimate, unguarded.

Working breeds like Shire horses were photographed in a similar spirit. Rather than conventional portraits in stable yards, we would turn them out into their environment and let them dictate the shoot, sometimes the whole horse within the landscape, sometimes I would find myself drawn to a particular detail. A mane. An eye. The curve of a neck against winter light.

One horse I return to most in my mind is Ernie, a Suffolk, one of the first I photographed for the project. A huge, gentle giant with a soulful and kind energy that stopped me completely. He had to be in the book.

Holy Isle and the Places That Shaped the Work

One of my favourite places to visit for the project was Holy Isle, off the west coast of Scotland, owned by a Buddhist meditation master and run as an environmental retreat. Three distinct herds of Eriskay ponies roam the island largely without human intervention. I go back once or twice a year, working in the gardens to earn my keep and spending every spare hour with the horses. It's one of the most quietly extraordinary places I know.

The Hardest Part

Editing the book was the most difficult part of the entire process — more than the photography, more than the travel. I sifted through my collections again and again, narrowing down to the strongest images, but still found myself with around twenty photographs for each breed. Each picture needed space to have an impact, and that meant making genuinely difficult choices. I had to step away repeatedly, ask for honest eyes from friends and experts I trusted, and eventually let my instincts lead. The result is something I'm immensely proud of.

How to Get the Book

Wild Hearts is available from my website in two editions — the Artist's First Edition, and the Collector's First Edition, which includes a fine art print of your choice.

https://www.esthertowler.com/shop-/wild-hearts-book

You can read the full Lancashire Life feature here: Photographing Semi-Wild Rare Breed Horses Across the UK — Lancashire Life / Great British Life

What's Next

The article mentions that I'm now researching my next project, focused on wild habitats and threatened landscapes. That's very much where my heart is right now, out on Saddleworth Moor, working with the landscape itself, making work that bears witness to wild places and the fragile, extraordinary things that live within them.