Old friends - the lifespan of a photographic relationship

I’ve been coming to the Fjallabak region of the Icelandic interior for about six years . We are, in my view, old friends now.

I have thought often that everything in life is finite. There is a start, a middle and an end to most things. This particular train of thought has been with me for most of my time as a photographer since photography was not my first love. I was initially captured by music at the age of 12 and had been a serious-amateur for most of my life up until around the age of 34. Had someone told me at the time that my endeavours into music would end, and be replaced by photography, I wouldn’t have believed them. This is why I now understand that everything has its time.

I mention this because I think it’s good to understand the ebb and the flow of our creativity and that a relationship with a landscape has a start, a middle and also perhaps an end.

At the beginning of visiting a new place, it is like the beginning of any new relationship. There is so much to understand, discover and learn. And this can be an amazing draw to keep pulling us back if we find a landscape that resonates with us.

Like most relationships, as we get more acquainted with a landscape, we learn ‘how it is’. We get a feel for its moods, and what it might bring on a certain day with certain weather conditions. There is danger here in assuming that the little we know of a place, is all there is to know (Dunning Kruger Effect: the less we know, the more we think we know). Landscapes, I have found, keep surprising me upon each visit I make to them. Take for instance the opening shot to this post today. I have been to this lake many times now (it is a personal favourite place) but I had not seen snow shapes like this before, and so I found some new compositional possibilities.

As the relationship with your landscape ‘muse’ grows, I do think we hit a point where we are starting to repeat ourselves. Sure, there is value in variances of weather and lighting, but ultimately, we are starting to feel an over-familiarity with it.

I think I’m at my 75% way through my relationship with Fjallabak as it stands with my ‘current style’. Emphasis should be on ‘current style’, because I do think a relationship is never truly over. We can always pick up the reigns again at some stage if we find new value or interest in something we felt we had outgrown.

But I am certainly feeling an over-familiarity with the Fjallabak region, and this is evident in the work I am choosing to publish. Rather than publishing twenty or so images, I’m finding the results to be much more distilled. The bar has perhaps been raised, and I’m looking for something ‘more’ than I would have done say five or six years ago.

This is perhaps a study on self-awareness. Knowing where you are within the relationship you have with a landscape. I don’t really know if it has value, but I think it does. I’m just not sure in which way. But I have certainly promoted the idea that self-awareness is a key ingredient to trying to be the best artist / photographer we can be.

I’d like to finish by saying that I think it’s impossible to second guess where we are going next with our photography. Although I am feeling that most of what I’ve wanted to say with the Fjallabak region has been said, that is really only based on what I’m currently looking for. I’ve noticed over the past decade that my photography has shifted (and hopefully grown), but it has certainly changed. Ebb is just as important as flow, as I think it can often signal a need for change, or just that you have changed. What you were once looking for no longer applies. So I think it’s best to just keep that in mind.

Knowing where you are in any relationship is I suppose key, and this leads back to the idea that being self-aware is a skill we should all try to develop.

Retrospective

I’m acutely aware that if one has an audience, that audience are always one step behind you. One of the best ways to illustrate that point is with my photographic books. Books are always based on the past. They can never be an illustration of where you are right now.

In my own case, the last three books I’ve published have been planned for about five years. We knew we were going to do Altiplano, Hálendi and then Sound of Snow. In that order.

This had always been the plan except the last two books came out rather quickly because I had the free time this past year to focus on the design of them. Had it not been for the pandemic, both Hálendi and The Sound of Snow would probably still be vapourware, and so when they would have finally become physical objects, the images within them would be even older than they are now.

This is just a ‘placeholder’ image. This is not the design or intended cover of any retrospective book I end up making.

So in this way, photographic books are always historical. They are a statement of past events.

I am now up to date: the cupboard is now empty of ‘completed projects’.

Which brings me on to thinking about a retrospective. A book that will cover the last decade or so since I ‘went professional’ for want of a better term.

I don’t just want to do a book that has a collection of images only. I’m more interested in telling a story.

So I think the book will try to convey the development and progress of my imagery over the past 10 years.

I’m very aware that certain landscapes have been teachers. And that in order to photograph one kind of landscape, I had to do my homework elsewhere first. I could not have known how to approach the black deserts of Iceland if I had not photographed the Altiplano of Bolivia first. Similarly, I could not have known how to develop my photographs in winter landscapes had it not been for working on luminosity / tonality in the black deserts of Iceland. My Japan imagery was built on top of my experiences of working in the vast black deserts of Iceland. And so on…..

So this is where I think I would like to take such a book. A chronology of epiphanies perhaps. As I often think that if one is developing, there are often times when we hit a new level of awareness, where things come together and begin to make sense.

Thinking this way, and realising that the whole thing is a path of progression, I can’t help but come to the realisation that every point that has come before, has been taking me to where I am right now.

Two views of a valley

It’s my view that trusting one’s initial emotional response to a scene can have two possible outcomes;

1) a strong idea

or

2) a derivative one

And I believe that at the point of capture, we often don’t know which one it is.

To put it another way, while making photos, it is impossible to be an editor. It is impossible be able to successfully judge what we are doing, while we are doing it. The judgement and review of what we are capturing should therefore come much later.

So my view is: just because I’ve found a composition that I like, I cannot trust my judgement that it is the best one available. Although I may believe it to be the strongest composition I’ve found, I have often found that there is usually something much stronger, if I keep looking.

So these days, I tend to make variations of the same shot. Each with some kind of alteration. Whether it’s moving forward slightly, changing the proportions of sky to ground, using a different focal length, or just focussing on a different region of the same scene, as can be seen in the examples in this post today.

I therefore believe that we have one task at hand while we are shooting. We are content gatherers. We are there to collect material to work with later on.

This may sound rather heartless to you, and may suggest that we’re just there to collect raw stuff to make sense out of later on. I do not mean this at all. I simply mean we need to consider all options while we are on location because often the best shot isn’t the obvious one.

Each time I fire my shutter, I put 100% commitment behind it. I am thinking ‘this is perhaps the best frame yet’. But I am also thinking ‘there may be something better if I reconsider the scene a bit more’. I am therefore making insurance shots. I understand that I am in no position to judge what I’ve got, so I better keep on looking in case there is something better.

Judgement of what I’ve captured should come much later, when I am ready to edit the work.

And so if we go back to my initial statement:

It’s my view that trusting one’s initial emotional response to a scene can have two possible outcomes;

1) a strong idea

or

2) a derivative one

And I believe that at the point of capture, we often don’t know which one it is.

And so, it’s hard. Hard to judge whether what we are reacting to is a strong idea, or a derivative one. Once we get past this worry and decide that this is a question for much later, we open up ourselves to what is in front of us, and we become more immersed in the act of creating images.

Remembering Photography

It’s been about eight months now since I picked up a camera. I must confess that I have felt very little desire or need to go out to make photos over this time. I think it is because the last eight months have given me a chance to have a hiatus that I think my subconscious had been thinking about for quite some time.

I have often thought, and written on this blog, that as much as your passion or hobby is something that we may all live and breathe every moment of the day, the truth is: we all need to take time away from it. It is in these lulls or moments of doing something else that I think we get a chance to reflect and most importantly, return to our interest with a fresh perspective. It’s really valuable to take the foot off the accelerator every once in a while. And it’s extremely healthy to go and do something else for a while.

Over the past few months as I’ve tried to find a structure to my day, I have chosen to walk each morning from my home, across a local park to a coffee shop. I just go in, buy a take away coffee and go for a walk around the park. What I have found most enjoyable about this little routine is that each time I venture outside the door, I am filled with photographic memories triggered by the weather and atmospheric conditions.

For example, on a crisp frosty morning, I have found myself feeling as though I am right back in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. The mornings are often crisp and cold there at the time of year I like to go to Bolivia. There is a ‘cold’ smell in the air of that little town which I have detected in the cold air of a Scottish morning as I head out.

Just today, it was another frosty cold morning, with lots of sunlight and no breeze. It took me right back to the many mornings I spent photographing Tibetans and Hindu’s around the Bodha stupa of Kathmandu. As I walked across my local park, I was no longer in Edinburgh. Instead the temperature, the light and the smells of earth in the air had transported me back to my time in Nepal.

View fullsize

These remembrances are not something new to me. I have found for many years that each place I return to, has its own ‘signature’ - a feeling if you will, or a smell, a taste to it. Each time I arrive in Punta Arenas in Chile for my Patagonian trips, there is a sudden strong feeling of ‘knowing this place’ just from how the weather, the air, and the light feel. Japan, Iceland, wherever, all have these residual memories built into me. I am sure I am not alone.

So over the past eight months that I have been resigned to staying in one place, I have found that all my favourite places have come to visit me in my mind. Brought on by the temperature, air and light quality of my own back yard. My little walk across my local park each day allows me to remember photography and the memories and feelings are often so strong that I feel as though I am there.

In my mind, I am photographing. I am living in the landscape. All the special places I have come to know and love, I realise, are never very far away. There is great potential to reconnect, to remember your photography by recognising similarities to where you are right now, to where you have been.

Where is the producer?

In many creative roles, artists often have a sounding-board, another person who is able to look at the work they are creating and help them make sense of it, or perhaps help them iron out the rough edges.

If I were a novelist, then I would have a book editor to tell me where the story was weak, or needed more focus. if I were a song writer, I would have a producer to tell me where the song needed more structure, or perhaps to go straight to the chorus at the beginning of the song.

I remember listening to Nile Rodgers talking about working with David Bowie on the song ‘Let’s Dance’. He said to Bowie (I paraphrase) - “the song should start by going straight into the chorus. No verse, no intro - straight into the chorus”. He was right of course, but the thing was - Bowie needed someone else to tell him that. He was too close to his own work.

So as a photographer, who do you have as your sounding board? Who helps you make sense of what you create? or helps you iron out the difficult bits?

Or even more importantly: help you iron out the bits you didn’t know needed ironing out?

I think being a sole photographer can be a difficult role. Because you have to be the judge of your own work. That, is something that is extremely difficult to do. It’s why musicians have producers, and it’s why authors have editors.

I’ve often written on this blog that I need to distance myself from my own work in order to get some kind of objectivity to it. One way I do this is by leaving any recently made images for several weeks before I review and edit them. This is because it allows me to reduce any attachment or emotional bond that I created at the time of capture. I need to be able to look at the work honestly, and being too attached to it isn’t going to give me that view. As the saying goes ‘love is blind’.

But even this is not 100% effective. The moment I begin working on anything, an emotional bond starts to form. It’s a skilled artist who can be ‘outside of their work’ while still maintain a passion and connection to it.

So you really need to have someone else to talk to, to get reviews from. Or you need to be clever enough to listen to many views of your work and decide what is valid input and what isn’t. Amateurs tend to not have enough experience to know when any advice is any good, and are often easily swayed by other’s opinions. More experienced artists tend to know what they like and want, and so tend to be better at receiving advice and knowing which parts of it ‘resonate’ for them. To me, the key to good advice is this: if you feel you have some kind of epiphany, then that is often an indication of good advice. But it’s not so clear cut, and trying to figure out where you begin and end, and where someone else’s opinion is marring your own judgement takes experience.

But let’s step back a bit again. We all need a producer, someone who is able to mentor you, without trying to enforce their own aesthetics or values upon you.

And of course mentors vary in ability, and you may also find that an amazing mentor might not suit you at all. This is quite common in the music recording world. I have read many accounts of a famous band hiring in some mega-producer, only to find out that the relationship was counter-productive. Some artists have had albums that have been delayed for years because they went through a raft of different producers until they found the right one.

Needless to say, being a photographic artist is one of the lonelier artistic endeavours. Book writers have editors, musicians often have producers. Actors have directors. We in some way, only have ourselves.

If you can find someone who you feel helps you grow at what you’re doing, then that’s great. But it can be a difficult and long road not just to find that person, but to also have the insight and maturity to look at your work with honesty.

Re-interpretation

Before I begin my article today, I’d like to make a few points very clear:

1. There is always a trade-off. When you gain something, you lose something.

2. Sometimes we like something because we’re attached to how it is.

3. The two images below, I don’t view one as better or worse. And hopefully you should get beyond this point also. ‘Like’ is a personal preference. It has nothing to do with the validity of an image.

I have just recently chosen to go back to some of my favourite landscapes in Scotland in 2021. Partly it is because I would like a change: It has been many years since I photographed my own home country, and I feel that there has been a big change in my style of photography over the past few years. I’m curious to see how I will approach / react / and photograph, since I am aware that I am looking for different things now.

View fullsize

This is the original image, shot circa 2009, in the Assynt region of Scotland. It is not of Stac Pollaidh, as many people assume.

View fullsize

This is a re-interpretation. I did it, just to see where I may end up based on my current tastes / aesthetics, etc. I realise I’ve learned so much in the past 10 years, so I was curious to see how I may re-interpret the same image.

Well I’m sure you’ve already studied the two images above : both from the same film-scan and reached your own view of which you like more than the other. This article today is not about this. I am not going to say ‘this image is better or worse because of…..’. Instead, I just wish to discuss some other aspects.

Point 1. Familiarisation makes it hard to see it any other way

I personally love the original image, but I’m really not sure how much of this has to do with familiarisation. We become set / stuck in our ways the more we live with how things have been. And this is just as applicable to our older work. Attempting the re-interpretation image has forced me to think about whether I’m attached to the original image because it’s good, or just because I’m overly familiar with it now.

Point 2. How radically different an image can be through editing

Editing / post-processing (I abhor this term personally), is a highly creative place to live. I have never believed that the work is to ‘get it right in camera’. And I’ve always enjoyed the editing / interpretive side of my photography. It’s interesting to know that an image can be edited in many different ways. Editing is an art, it is a skill. It is a life-long endeavour in learning to see what was in the image and bring out the main motifs. Editing isn’t done by learning Lightroom in a few weeks and that’s it. It can really take you places if you don’t mind departing from what was there at the time of the capture.

Point 3. How much I have changed

I don’t know if I have it in me many more to do deeply saturated colour work. I’m wondering if I may return to it in some years to come, but I’m certainly aware that the original image from 2009 isn’t something that I would do any more. There is always a trade off in your own development. I see things in the original image that I love, but I couldn’t do that now if I tried, because it’s not where my aesthetic leanings are. I’ve lost some aspects to my image making, but I’ve gained also. As I said, there is always a trade-off.

Which leads to my last point:

Point 4. The original capture was made by a different me. Edited by a new me. Perhaps this doesn’t work?

Yep, the guy who made the original shot was the ‘Bruce-Percy-2009’ edition ;-) We shed skin, we move on. I’m not too sure it’s a good thing to return to older work that was created by a different you. Because there is in some way a disconnect. I think I would shoot this scene differently now and I think it would be done differently with an aim to edit it a particular way. These days my editing and composition skills are intertwined. Where I once just went out to make images and then see what I could do with them later on. I think that when I compose shots in the field now, I already know what I’m going to do with them when I edit them.

I think if one wishes to return to older work to re-edit it. There has to be a reason. For example, if you ‘see’ something in the work that you can bring out, or enhance then I think it’s valid to return to it. But if you are trying to ‘update the work to match where you are now’, I’m not convinced it will work.

This is what I tried to do with this image. I attempted to edit it to ‘see what I would do with it now, based on who I am now’. And I’m not sure it’s a success. My reasons are, there are too many distractions in the foliage that I probably wouldn’t have shot it this way. So I’m trying to start on an image that isn’t at the right starting point for where I am now.

Conclusion

It’s fun to go back and revisit older work. You can really learn a lot about yourself in the process:

• How far have you come?

• Would you shoot the work this way now?

• What distractions in the work do you see now that you didn’t see at the time of the original creation?

• Do I want to return to the same places now, that I feel I am looking at things differently?

For me, the last point is the salient one. I am very curious to find out how I will approach photographing in Scotland now that my style has evolved. Will I find some common ground? Will I see new things?

Landscapes can teach us so much about our photography and about ourselves. Find the right landscape in your own development and it can move you forward in ways that other landscape won’t. Returning to a well known place many years later can be very interesting because you will most likely be looking for different things and you’ll therefore see it in a fresh and new way.

I’m aware that my work is always in a state of change. Nothing is ever finished. There should be no rules. Do as you please, return to older work if it’s what you feel you need to do. Re-interpretation can teach us so much. I just don’t think it will always yield better / improved results, but you’ll certainly grow from the experience.

Too much noise in our lives

There has to be space, plenty of it, to enable us to be creative. There has to be lots of free time to allow us to get under the skin of a place. If there’s too much distraction in our lives, then we’re not able to give photography the attention it needs.

Finding space is one thing, but having a settled mind with which to be creative is an entirely different thing altogether.

I think photography can be a meditative act. A space where you lose yourself. All sense of time disappears. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that often when I’m making photographs - I disappear. I am not aware of thinking any particular thoughts, or of being aware of being here.

But you can only get to this state if you feel your mind is capable of being settled. Got too much worries in your life, or too many pressures, and it’s hard, even with a lot of space - to disengage.

Decluttering one’s life is important, because by doing so, you give yourself the space to let something else in - your creativity.

For me, I’ve always needed space around me. I’m an introverted extrovert. I like being around people and I like being social, but I also recognise when I need to recharge my batteries and need time alone, space to do …. nothing …. or more precisely …. nothing much in particular, or with no agenda … is something I need more and more. Knowing I don’t have to be somewhere, knowing that the day ahead of me is free and I don’t have to stick to a plan is something that helps me a great deal.

I’m convinced this 'settled mind’ I’m seeking allows me to absorb my experiences, to digest what it is that I’ve travelled to make photographs of. When I come home from trips, I often find I need a decompression period of around two weeks. It gives me time to adjust, to think about where I’ve been and more importantly, to understand what it all means to me.

We’re not here to make only pictures. Photography shouldn’t be only an acquisitive act. It’s about how it feeds you that matters most. For example, I often find the greatest joy and satisfaction during the review of work that was created many weeks prior. Not the actual shooting.

Reliving my experiences this way, often after some time, allows me to reflect upon it, to really understand what it meant to me, and this can only happen if I have enough space, and peace of mind with which to engage with it.

The importance of rest

I realise that for most, there is never enough free time to do what we want to do. Often our work and family commitments mean that our passion for photography gets much less attention than we would wish.

Central Highlands of Iceland in Winter
Image © Bruce Percy 2018

Right now, I'm doing the opposite. I am spending a lot of free doing things that are unrelated to photography. I haven't made a single photograph, nor picked up my cameras for over two months now, and I'm very happy that this is the case.

I like to give my love for photography a rest every year, and I deliberately step away from it, so that I can recharge my interest in it. Perhaps you find this odd - how can someone improve their interest in something by taking time away from it?

As the saying goes 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' is never more true when it comes to what we love. And likewise, 'too much of a good thing, isn't good', is also true.

If I were to keep going, every single day, making photos, it would soon begin to feel like a chore, and I doubt that I would have the needed time to absorb what I had experienced, and to grow from it. Growth comes from rest and so by giving my photography a rest, I allow myself time to recharge.

I have found that by the end of my rest periods, I come back to photography with a fresh view. What may have started to feel old and tired now feels exciting and fresh. And I often find that the distance away has allowed me to collate my thoughts and approach photography with a slightly new way of seeing and doing things.

This summer, I spent my 'vacation' learning to Kayak, and by working on music, and by just catching up with friends and doing things very unrelated to my photography. It has all been good, and as I see September approaching soon, it won't be long before I am standing in some vast black desert in the heart of Iceland, knowing and loving every minute of it. More so, because I chose to take time away from it, so I could enjoy the experience of getting re-aquainted with it.

If you are finding you aren't enjoying photography so much of late, or that you are wondering if you should stop, then I would suggest you take a break. Go do something entirely differently for a few weeks, even a few months. Rarely have I seen anyone drop a passion when they do this, but I certainly have seen people drop a passion through burn out.

All my work, is homework

Every image I create, whether I think it's good or bad, contributes to my photographic education. For this very reason I never think that any of my work is a failure: it all contributes in some way.

No matter how good someone thinks they are - the truth is that we are all in photography-school. We will always be learning. Even those we consider masters of the art of photography know this. Indeed, they welcome it. Because they understand that if they are no longer learning then they are no longer growing. And no growth means their art is dead.

The good artist knows that he is always learning, and will always have much to learn. He also knows that creating art isn't about success, it's about the creative journey. There is no room for words like failure or success, it is just a process that they have to do.

I feel a lot of contemporary photographers look for solutions in their tools when they really need to work on themselves more. I'd rather find something that works from the outset, than something that sort-of-works but needs to be worked on later. It's much easier to play with something if it's a great idea than to try to make something out of a poor idea. Looking for solutions in software or technical forums isn't going to help you improve. You need to do the work.

Weak ideas will never work, no matter how much technology or software is applied to them. If an image has a strong idea behind it, it will be carried along by that. It needs no one's help.

You have to fail in order to learn. You have to get used to accepting that the majority of what you create isn't any good. Look upon it as 'prototypes'. Until we get to where we wanted to go with a piece of work, everything we create on the road to getting it right is a prototype. Not a failure. 

You have to understand that creating bad work is part of the process. And also to understand that even very gifted artists have to create a lot of rubbish in order to find the good stuff. If it was easy to create good work, everyone would be doing it.

Put the work in.Accept that the road will be a long one, but it will be a growing time while you're on it.

I'm very aware that all of my work to date has taken me to the point where I am now. I couldn't have got here without putting all the work in that has led me here. Everything I've done, every bad photo I've made and every successful one has taught me something, and has contributed to me being who I am now. This work has shown me that it's never the tools I need to improve, or the software I need to change. It is my application of them, my skill and experience that needs to grow.

So with that in mind, I'm very aware that all of my work, is homework. Everything I do educates me, and every apparent failure is a valuable lesson, so long as I choose to listen to what it's trying to tell me.

Our work is never finished. Every image we create, whether we think it's good or bad, contributes to our photographic education and our artistic growth, and I think we should revel in the discoveries and surprises of our chosen art form.

Portfolio Development Skills

This post originally offered a space on my September portfolio skills workshop.
It has now been filled.

You may have noticed that I'm offering more 'skills development' style workshops over the coming year. Going on location is great, and shooting is fun and that is mostly why I have tours. Workshops on the other hand should be just that - a space where you learn and develop your skills.

sold out

Portfolio Skills Development with Photoshop CS Masterclass

£448.00

Image Interpretation Techniques for building cohesive portfolios

September 3 - 8, 2018

Price: £1,495
Deposit: £448

5-Day Photographic Mentoring Workshop
Wester Ross, Scottish Highlands

Add To Cart

Shooting is just one part of our workflow. There is also the question of editing, which in my view, is as much of a skill and art as shooting is.

I personally feel I've learned more about my photography and my 'style' during the editing stage than the shooting stage, and would also suggest that the things you learn about your images whilst editing, often bleed back in to your visual skills whilst out in the field. Shooting and editing become symbiotic: one informs the other.

It's one of the reasons why I detest the phrase 'post-process'. Words can influence our attitudes and I believe this phrase just encourages us to think that editing is something we do as an afterthought. As if it is unrelated.

Further, I think the word 'process' encourages us to think of editing as some kind of activity that has no art to it. It's an incredibly creative part of the birth of one's images and I find it a hugely inspiring space to work in..

Well, further to this is the skill of developing one's own style. I believe that most of us don't know if we have one, and I think this is because we aren't really given tools with which to look for it.

One of the best ways to figure out who you are as a photographer, and how best to move forward with your art - is by looking at your work from a 'project' or 'portfolio' basis. Working towards building stronger portfolio's of your work can only lead you to be a stronger photographer.

That is why I've put together the workshop you see listed here. I'm really keen to show others how to recognise themes in their work and build cohesive portfolios, with the aim of helping them become clearer about where they are with their photography and how to make it stronger.