New Work

I have a new page on this very website titles ‘current’. I have uploaded eight new portfolios this week. They are a backlog of work created in 2023 and all of last year.

My reason for publishing them all at the same time, is that I wanted a very clean way of presenting them all together on the same webpage. I have written many times that I see my website as a sort of garden, a place where I collate, sort and tend my imagery. It is a dream factory for me, where I can allow myself to feel, notice and see evolution in what I do.

I notice patterns, themes, relationships, stylistic attachments that I have, certain motifs that I keep coming back to, or maybe the surfacing of new ones? Sometimes it’s just that I feel I’m noticing that the work is more relaxed, perhaps enjoying a return to more colour? A shift. A sense of something happening.

Regardless of internal thoughts and feelings, the fact is, it is nice to conclude an entire year. It allows me to feel ready for this one.

Working with Atmospheres

If we are looking for more dynamics in our shooting, more possibilities, then we really need to shoot in all kinds of weather. Scotland, where I’m from, has such changeable light, that often one can be forgiven for thinking it’s a limitation, or perhaps a simple frustration. In a way, it’s actually a blessing: things never look the same twice, and if you’re willing to get the camera a little bit wet, you can open up your photography to so much more possibilities.

Transcript:

The conventional view is that we take photographs of subjects, and all we need to do is work on where to place them in the scene to get a good composition.

Light is often considered an important part of the scene, but is rarely considered to be the main reason for the photo. Coming to a place where there are no definite subjects, no iconic mountains, no iconic trees, no iconic views to photograph, can lead many to feel lost, and be lost.

But looking for a subject, in a way, is a form of security blanket. Many of us feel unanchored and uncertain if we do not have one, but a good subject does not guarantee a good photograph.

If the light is not good, or there is no atmosphere, then the picture will be lacking in emotion. It will feel static and dead. Instead, we must learn to consider the light first. If we can work in a location that is devoid of tangible, physical subjects, then we will be forced to study and make do with the light alone.

And to make things a little more challenging, to get the best light, one must learn to work in different weather systems, from dry to inclement, as we seek different qualities of light. Getting comfortable working with your camera in the rain is essential. if you wish to have access to the atmospheres that are available to you.

I have found working in bad weather to be where the most interesting light can be found. If we only ever shot in dry days, we are leaving out a whole index of atmospheric possibilities. Our pictures will be very one-dimensional.

The light in Scotland can often be very changeable as one low-weather system after another races across the Scottish landscape. It is its strength, not its weakness. I often come to the Scottish island of Harris in November. The island is in the north of the country. It's small, remote and on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean During November it is often buffeted with one advancing low front after another.

Being here is a lesson in learning to work with the light as you pursue those fleeting yet very emotive atmospheric scenes you will for sure encounter. Everything is much more dynamic in November.

I tend to shoot exposures of two to four minutes here as it allows me to blur the fast moving clouds that race across the landscape. Shooting long exposures collapse detail upon detail. Water and sky textures are often reduced or removed entirely and we are left with scenes of gradated tone only.

This landscape excels at atmospheric light. It is a minimalist playground of luminance and colour, because there is little in the way of foreground or background subjects with which to lean on. There is no security blanket. No iconic subjects that may divert your attention away from what is most important.

Instead, you are left to work with the essential elements of light and shade alone.

When it becomes a job

Just today I hit a brick wall, and I have decided that the best thing for me to do, is to stop trying to do what I’m doing, and go do something else instead.

About a week ago, I decided that it would be really nice to go through my backlog of images shot in 2024 and 2023, and edit them for inclusion on my website. I reasoned that it would be good to publish all the portfolios together in one go, because of layout issues on my website.

It all started out very well, and I’m delighted with the set of images I’ve created from Lencois in 2023 (I have a backlog going back to 2020!). I also enjoyed editing my new Hokkaido autumn images and feel very happy with those as well. And I also edited some beautiful winter shots from Harris.

It was all going rather well until today when I started to notice it is flipped from feelings of joy to feelings of it all being a slog. What turned out to be a creative burst has gone, to be replaced by feelings of work, and it’s taken me a day to realise this is what has happened to me.

I can never edit work to order. I’ve got to feel enthused about what I do, and so rather than keep to the schedule of having the work done before I go to Japan, I have now accepted that the best thing would be for me to park it. Because the creative muse has left me, and go out into the sunshine and do something else for a while.

It’s a fine line balancing business with commerce. I have been self employed now for more than 15 years, and I have always felt that the way to be the most true to what you do: is to do it when I am into it, and when I’m not into it, it’s best for me to put the tools down and go and do something else to help me recharge.

So I think my intention of having a whole new web page devoted to 8 portfolios is going to take longer than I assumed, and that is, now that I have realised that the creative muse isn’t with me any more, completely fine.

The biggest battle is often in realising that you’re not in the creative burst you thought you were, and the 2nd biggest battle is to accept that it isn’t working for you right now, and to halt all work, and go do something else instead for a while.

Happy New Year

I’m ensconced at home, sheltered from the rain and wind of the first day of the year. Busy playing ‘catch up’ on all the images I made in 2024, before I go to Hokkaido later this month.

This past November, I ran two workshops on the isle of Harris. The first week was full of rain and fog, and the second week was mostly wind and snow. It was the first time I had plenty of nice sessions shooting fog on Harris for an entire week, and then when the snow came, it too, was most unusual in hanging around for the majority of the week also.

It has been nice to experience some real winter conditions in Scotland this winter, even though it is not common to have snow in November. Wishing that there will be more snow this winter time in the Scottish Highlands, as I think the Highlands of Scotland should have snow. It can be a wild landscape and more so beautiful when the hills are covered in snow.

Valentina

I’ve been thinking for a while now, that I’ve had the honour and pleasure of meeting so many distinctive clouds on my travels, and that perhaps, I should document them? Perhaps I should collect all these clouds into a portfolio. Perhaps I should also name them.

Valentina, Brazil, 2024

I seem to be attracted to singular, lone clouds. Of a particular shape.

It is maybe too early to tell just yet, but I can’t help but wonder that maybe, just maybe, I am being followed by the same cloud…. If I keep collecting images of my lone cloud visitors, I think I will eventually know the answer to this one ;-)

Wishing you many beautiful cloud encounters in 2025, either of different varieties, or perhaps the same one ;-)

Inner Confidence to be an Artist

I think learning to listen to oneself, and to trust one’s own judgement, is greatly overlooked as a core skill to have as a creative person. So often we seek validation from external forces around us, be it friends, or competitions, or whatever. I think this is all very natural and everyone does this at the beginning of their creativity for sure. But in this video I consider that learning to trust one’s own judgement, and to learn to live with the decisions we make, is one of the core skills any experienced artist inevitably develops.

Transcript:

As a beginner, we often crave feedback and wish to know what others think of our work.

I think this is perfectly natural and to be expected.

As emerging artists, we are on a path to finding out about not only the art that we are creating, but also too, who we are as artists. We need to understand ourselves better and one way to find out is to seek the opinion of others.

We all need validation about our efforts, particularly in the early stage of our creative lives. Feedback and having an audience can be very helpful in giving us confidence in what we do. Because until we know who we are, I think we need to find our confidence in the validation given to us by others.

I have realised though, over the years of producing work and of having a small audience, that feedback varies enormously. In addition, not everyone is skilled at giving good feedback and most beginning photographers tend to lack the skills with which to deal with the feedback they are given.

In a way, learning to be an artist involves learning to deal with feedback constructively. It will be up to you to figure out what you need to become more discerning about the feedback you receive. Knowing when it is of value and when it is not will become something that you'll need to navigate your way through. This will only become apparent as you mature and gain a sense of who you are as an artist.

You see at some point you will no longer be crushed by feedback that may have done so years ago. You'll be able to take anything you're given and look at it with a more objective eye. This will only have become possible because you've developed an inner confidence in yourself as an artist.

And when I speak of confidence, I do not mean arrogance or cockiness, and I do not mean a heightened belief in one's own abilities. The confidence I speak of is of knowing oneself, of having a realistic handle on your strengths as well as your weaknesses, and in being comfortable in the knowing.

Having gained this inner confidence, you will now have one of the greatest skills anyone can possess, that of knowing who you are. If you develop this inner confidence that I speak of, you'll be better placed than most to gauge where you are going and what it is you need to do next.

And even if you're not always 100% sure, as no artist ever is, you'll be comfortable in knowing that ultimately not knowing is part of the deal of being an artist.

Great care in the Execution

Behind every good piece of work, often hides a mountain of effort.

If the work is successful, then enormous amount of care, thought, deliberation, reconsideration, delays, reworks, and great care in the execution of the work will be hidden from the viewer.

 

‘I could do that’, are often the words said by someone who has limited experience. The work they are looking at succeeds in casting an illusion over the lay person that it was effortless. Whereas, for those who have experience know only too well that for work to be successful, requires more effort than is apparent.

Rest assured, that anything that was created by someone, which we like, had a mountain of effort applied to it. It had what I would call ‘great care taken in the execution’ of the work.

Yesterday in my post about the town geometry photographs, I mentioned that I spend the least amount of time in the image capturing, and most of my time in the ‘finishing’ of the work. I may spend just a few minutes capturing the photos, but if one were to zoom out and look at the execution of the work from start to finish, the length of time applied to the work increases towards the end of its execution. I will often spend weeks deliberating about an edit adjustment, a luminosity change in the final image, whereas the initial edits were done in a few minutes.

I think this is rarely talked about. For most work to get to a mature level of completeness, the creator has often spent a lot of time and effort on it.

Being a good artist, or creating better work, does not, and should not imply that the work becomes easier to create. I am often asked ‘how many successful images do I get on a roll of film’. It is the wrong question. The question should really be ‘how much thought and effort goes on in the background, to create the work that we see?’

The question of ‘how many successful images do you get to a roll of film?’ hints at the assumption that becoming a better photographer, means you’re able to shoot more successful images. When in fact it was just a case of ‘shooting whatever interested you, to try out different ideas’. The care and effort were actually in selecting, editing and presenting of the work. That is where the greatest of care was taken, and to assume it’s all about just capturing good compositions is too over simplistic.

So today I wish to say, that if anyone wishes to be a better photographer, it will often be found in the great care that was taken in the execution of the work. To the inexperienced, this will sadly be hidden from view. Good work tends to look effortless. Good ideas tend to seem ‘obvious. But it is worth knowing, that for everyone, no matter their level of ability, always great care, and an inordinate amount of time and effort is taken, to make the work look as best as the photographer can make it.

If you are struggling with decisions about what to do with your edits, then know that you are not alone. Everyone, including even those that you admire or are world famous, are not exempt from this. The difference perhaps is that they know they must work at it, and to create anything of any value, great care must be taken in the execution of the work.

Applying sensibilities elsewhere

I am not an architecture photographer. As much as I dearly love architecture, I have seldom felt the desire to photograph it. But I do enjoy using a field camera when I get the chance to use my Ebony 23S and Ebony SW23 cameras.

I published these images on my latest newsletter a few days ago. I wasn’t sure if I would. Simply because I think they’re a little out of the ordinary for me. But as the title of this post suggests, I think who I am as a photographer is quite evident in them. At least, I can only speak for myself in what I see of ‘me’ in them.

So I was thinking very much today that no matter how much one may try to get away from themselves, you still bring along yourself to whatever it is you do. In this case, photographing colourful buildings in Italy may have allowed me to play with perspectives a lot more than I can with my usual fixed movement camera (a Hasselblad 503CX), but still, I think my sensibilities are still evident in the execution of the work.

More often these days, I think most of my time and focus isn’t on the actual image making. Instead, it is more on the ‘finishing’ or execution of the edits. That is where my sensibilities often come through. Not entirely 100% as my sensibilities also lie very much in my choice of subject and composition. But the majority of it, for me, is in the fine details, the tuning of luminance, and the attention to having the set work as a portfolio. That is where my sensibilities shine the most.

Looking for peronal motifs in your work

As the years have passed, I have felt that I am often in a ‘fine tuning’ or ‘honing’ stage of my craft. One of the things I have noticed over the past while is that I tend to take a lot of photographs of the sun when it is possible to do so due to soft light and very low contrast created by the sun being masked by even cloud density. It allows me to record a perfectly round disc, and I think this has become a motif of sorts for me as my style of imagery has evolved.

Podcast Transcript:


The winter Sun has always been a subject I keep returning to.

The As a Scot, you grow up knowing that the sun is a fleeting thing. It is often hidden behind overcast skies and is seldom seen during the winter months. Indeed, days will pass by without seeing it, and when it does make an appearance, I think we Scots tend to take a moment to appreciate it.

I will often try to incorporate the sun into my photographs when I think it's possible to do so. The best time to do that is when it's a perfectly round soft disk in an overcast sky. There is just enough cloud cover to reduce the sun's contrast, so that I can look at it safely and comfortably.

For if I can stare at the sun without causing damage to my eye, then I know that I can photograph it without blowing out the exposure.

If one is seeking to uncover a style in their work, then recognising when one is drawn to certain subjects can certainly help reveal where your aesthetics and visual sensibilities lie. I do not go seeking themes in my work consciously, but rather I tend to notice them surface gradually as I have reviewed my work over the years.

Taking a step back whilst reviewing one's own work is always beneficial in noticing repeating themes, and often I can only notice them when I look at my work, after some time has passed. Distance as always, provides great objectivity.

The winter sun is to my eye a symbol of hope. It is a reminder that summer is never that far away. And even when the winter is at its shortest day and darkness seems to prevail, I know the light will soon be coming back.

I take solace in knowing that after the 21st of December we will all be on a trajectory towards longer and warmer days.

Photographer or not, all I know is that all of us need and seek the light.

No Undo

What would you do if you had no undo? In this episode I wish to encourage photographers to consider how their creative process might change without the safety net of an undo button, potentially leading to more considered decisions or a greater willingness to take risks.

My latest video in my ‘podcast’ series is now online in YouTube. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do as it helps the algorithm promote the video to others.

Please also find below a transcript of the spoken words.

Transcript

What would you do, if you had no undo?

I have been wondering lately, what would happen to my decision process in Photoshop, or Lightroom if I didn’t have an undo option.

What if, when I altered an image in my editing application that there was no way of going back?

When we create art, we must commit to our decisions along the way: where to place the tripod, when to click the shutter and when to say when something is finished.

There are many stages along the way where we must make a choice knowing we can’t go back.

But this is not so with editing software. Lightroom and Photoshop allow us to undo a decision if we feel it was not the right one.

We think that the undo button is a savoir and for the most part it is. I would certainly not like to live without it, but philosophically speaking, it does make me wonder what might happen to my photography if there was no possibility to undo.

Would my decisions become more considered? Or would they become more hesitant?

Or would I, instead, learn to embrace a sense of spontaneity? Of seeing what happens when I accept that there is no going back?

This is what intrigues me most.

With the undo option, we can control our edits to the finest degree. We can micromanage our art if we wish.

I’m just not sure this is a good thing for our creativity.

Creativity should be fluid, and spontaneous. Learning to be creative is a lifelong lesson in learning to let go.

It is a life of experimentation, and of taking risks. For when we experiment, we open ourselves to unexpected outcomes, of visiting uncharted territory in our art. Of finding growth in our work.

Perhaps the undo button is a crutch. One that offers us security, at the cost of us experimenting less.

I have a suspicion that this may be the case.

Perhaps I back out of going down an avenue I’ve not been down before, because it is much easier to undo, and choose the path of least resistance.

Perhaps I remain in familiar territory, more so than I would, if I had no undo.

I think the best antidote to this problem, would be to view our editing as more of a performance. Anything we create would happen in the spur of the moment. Anything we create would be open to finding oneself in uncharted territory.

And I can’t think of a better way to do that, than to choose to see where my edit may go, if I had no undo.