When I first started out in this career some 25 or so years ago, I would often shoot for the Somerset Tourism department, and met some wonderful, colourful characters — including a guy called Gordon Rich. Gordon was a Somerset cider maker and owner of Rich’s Cider Farm, and was Somerset as they come.

Maybe it was because I was young and just starting out, but he was always very accommodating whenever I turned up to photograph him, and always had fantastic stories to tell.

Unfortunately, he’s no longer with us, but the cider farm still continues to thrive under his family’s management. This project just had to feature cider making at some point, since it’s what Somerset is best known for. After a chat with Gordon’s family, and showing them the images captured so far, they were happy for me to go ahead with the idea.

I did a recce of one of their oldest cider orchards, brimming with apples ready for harvest — how things have moved on since my days shooting Gordon on my old 6×6 film camera.