In this podcast, I discuss the importance of revisiting and developing a personal connection with certain landscapes or locations in photography.
I emphasise that returning to places that resonate with you can result in them becoming personal motifs, themes that you keep returning to, and that help contribute towards your voice or style.
Transcript:
If you find success with a location and come away with some great images then my advice would be to keep going back. The landscape or location clearly works for you on some level, and there is probably much more to be gained from spending more time there.
I have been making photos now for around 24 years. It is only natural for one to build a history with the places they return to, time and time again, to photograph.
I am not one for going to completely new places each year, and instead I have always preferred to go back to the locations that I have some affinity with. They draw me back, and I know there is always a reason for it.
When I am compelled to go back, I have learned that there is clearly still much photography to be done, and I know that this will contribute in some way to my development as a photographer.
In a way, any landscape that we keep returning to, or that becomes a major part of our photography, is what I would like to call a personal motif. These landscapes contribute to our personal growth, but also they become a calling card to others as to what it is that we do.
In essence, landscapes that keep drawing you back define you. Similar to the saying, you are what you eat, so it is true that you are what you photograph.
Once we recognise that certain key landscapes or locations have helped define our style, or at the very least convey to us what we are drawn to, then I think there is no going back.
I for one recognise that I seem to be attracted to conical silhouettes in my work. It is a theme that I seem to be drawn to when I encounter them. I found that by looking back over my 20 or so years of photography, that they come up time and time again.
I now embrace this.
Ever since I made the conscious act of understanding that what I should defines who I am, it has given me permission to go look for and work with these personal motifs.
And this brings me on to my main subject.
If someone were to ask me if there is one place out of all the places that I return to that perhaps exemplifies this for me, it would have to be the Icelandic mountain Þóristindur. A mountain that started out being one of many conical shaped subjects that I am attracted to has been promoted in my art by being given its own special portfolio.
It clearly has more importance to me than I have understood.
It is one of my personal motifs for I could not imagine my photography without its existence in my body of work. And it seems to symbolise something more than just my attraction to prominent mountain shapes or black silhouettes.
There is something much richer in it for me than I can possibly describe. All I can say for sure is that I think we all need to seek and find our own personal motifs.
They are, whether anyone else notices or not, or even understands or not, what drive us forward.