Dusk, Lenćóis Maranhenses, Brazil

Dusk. It’s such a special time.

The light is fading, and somehow I find my feelings about life, where I am, and what is to come, surface in my thoughts.

Watching the hues change on a sand dune as the colour temperature moves from daylight to dusk is always a special time for me. These feelings about life, the past, the future, are often eclipsed by the feelings of ‘now’. Photography seems to do one of two things for me: I am either living in the present moment, or I find that I become invisible to myself. All thoughts and worries dissolve, and in a way, it’s the best form of meditation that I have in my life.

I loved the latter part of my private trip to Lençóis. I had booked to travel around the periphery of the park in a Toyota Hilux, and these moments were the best: being able to direct my driver and guide, to be able to navigate over great distances to reach a vantage point that I thought may work for the photographs I wished to compose really helped.

I am now busy working on the set of images I made last May. I am so glad I bought my own film processor and I am finding the results from the home development are better than what I have had from many labs this past decade.

Chronology

I’ve just spent some time over the past week curating the images on my website. To me, my website is like a garden of images. A space in which to let things grow over time.

I have just re-introduced a few portfolios that I couldn’t find space for. There are a few reasons why I take some of the portfolios off-line for a while, but mainly it is due to layout concerns:

1) I may have a portfolio that does not fit with the rest, maybe due to the tonal palette or subject matter.

2) I may have too many portfolios of the same region shot over many years, and in order to give the site some kind of clarity, will remove portfolios which I feel aren’t necessary to convey where my style is going.

3) I think my website is also a place where you can see the adaption or change in my style over time.

4) I am maybe unsatisfied with some of the work, so it gets shelved. Over the years, I have found it increasingly difficult to keep my older work on the site, because it feels too far removed from where I am now. Or I am now quite embarrassed by the work (which in my view is an indication of growth).

I thought it would be good to show the new sections of the site, and perhaps describe how I have chosen to lay them out.

The page above is my most recent work. As a beginner photographer I am convinced I would have considered this work to have no colour whatsoever. But just for comparison, I show you the images below converted to black and white. You can now see that there is indeed colour in the work above. But I am sure for many they may perceive it as having none.

It’s interesting to find that looking at my older work from eight years ago and beyond, the colours feel too strong, too obvious and the older work speaks of trying too hard. It is my own view that muted colour comes from an understanding that you don’t need to shout to get your point across. I’d of course love to think that it comes from a place of maturity (hee hee hee), but I do wonder in all seriousness, that once you get past the need to impress others with your work, you settle into a place where you are comfortable doing what you do, and feel that you’ve figured out just how much contrast and colour is required to make your point.

I’d like to point out that none of this has been done with any premeditated intent. It’s just been an evolution of sorts and I’m never too clear as to whether this is just a case that my tastes have changed over the years, or whether it’s more a case that I’m seeing and noticing things more. I’d of course love to think it’s the latter ;-)

In the page above, if I were to look at this in isolation, I’d maybe assume that my work hasn’t changed much since 2017. It’s only when I do a direct comparison with my more recent work that I can see that the more recent work is taking the colour reduction and subject reduction further. A fine-tuning perhaps? (I’d love to think so!)

But you can see there’s still a bit more colour in this collection of image. I think the muting down of colour has been a learned experience for me. Going to the Fjallabak region of Iceland in winter time (bottom right), where there was almost no colour - I was shooting black and white scenes with colour film, I learned so much from this.

I have often said that certain landscapes, if you meet them at the right time in your own photographic development - can move your photography along in leaps and bounds. I am convinced that had I stayed in IT, and never been able to shoot so much, and go to so many of these winter places over the past 10 years, that my style maybe wouldn’t have moved on so much, if at all. I’m convinced that working in the Interior of Iceland, reducing things down to their utmost basic elements, gave me the permission to attempt to do the same with less empty landscapes.

I’m pleased to re-introduce my Romania, Harris and some of the more minimal Fjallabak portfolios. I’d almost forgotten about them :-) But now that I’ve re-introduced them on my site, I think there’s a more completed story of my own progress (for me at least).

In the page above, you can see there’s a mix of more ‘traditional’ looking landscapes with the graphic elements that I like to play with. At the time of making these, I was thinking that I’d maybe gone as far as I could with simplification. Not that I was consciously trying to strive towards it. Everything I’ve done has been purely emotional, despite others thinking that I deconstruct landscapes. I don’t. I just shoot what appeals to me.

But looking at these, that cone shape in Argentina (top left), taught me so much about the graphic nature of composition. That sometimes shape, is all that’s needed to make a powerful image. I’d certainly say for me, there are a few epiphanies in this collection of work from 2016 to 2017. Working with the Fjallabak region of Iceland allowed me to start to subtract colour, to embrace blacks as negative space. I also find it telling that personally for me, the Altiplano shots here, are not my strongest. I feel that by this point, I had ‘mined’ as much as I could out of the Bolivian altiplano and this was at the tail-end of my work there. I knew my book about Altiplano was almost ready because I was starting to run out of ideas and to see new things in this landscape. I think this is perfectly natural and it either signals that your work in a region has come to an end, or your current level of style and ability can’t go much further in it at present. Perhaps if I return in 10 years time, I may find that I am able to see new things in a old friend?

In the page above, I’ve been able to re-introduce some early work from Iceland’s coastline from 2012, and also some earlier work from the Bolivian altiplano from 2012 (last two portfolios).

By contrasting this page to my more recent work, it’s evident that I’ve been subconsciously on a colour-reduction quest, as well as tonal-distraction-reduction quest also. As I say, none of this was consciously any decision on my part. I just think my style has evolved.

What is interesting to me, is that these images are just on the periphery of what I feel is acceptable to show you. Older work from 2011 back to when I started out - does not work for me at all any more. I find the colours too gaudy and the contrasts too hard, and I feel that in my much older work there was a need to get my point across, perhaps too much.

I do feel that all the landscapes I’ve shot over the years have been great teachers. There are many places that I went to that never amounted to anything (Yosemite valley springs to mind) where I could do nothing with the subject matter, or where I found the location too hard, too difficult to work with (I still think Scotland is like that - there is just too much chaos in the landscape, too much tonal distractions for example). I tend to go back to landscapes that allow me to grow and I think I’m good at figuring out when a landscape allows me to do that.

I have often said that many photographers try to shoot landscapes that are too difficult for their current level of ability. It is much better to focus on the landscapes where you feel you are getting somewhere with. I am convinced that they are growing places for you. It is my view therefore that returning to a key number of places over the years, as I have done, allows for more intimate study and growth of one’s own style. The subject matter to a degree informs the style, and the style to a degree informs what you choose to shoot.

As I said at the beginning of this post today, I look at my website as a garden. I am often able to see where my style has evolved over time, and also how my images in certain landscapes have changed over the years.

Gestation Period

I'm publishing a new book this September which has had a long gestation period.

If I had been less experienced in my creative efforts I may have given up on this project many times: it's often hard to know when something is paused (stopped temporarily) or has reached a point where things can't go any further.

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
Image © Bruce Percy 2012

I'm more and more of the opinion that you can't rush things. Everything has its own time and place, and everything has its own non-linear pace. Feelings of great satisfaction as well as great uncertainty tend to mix and merge as we navigate through the ebb and flow of our creativity. Being a creative person is often more about reading and understanding when flow is working and when it isn't. 

Pauses in our creativity can at first appear to be difficult times. No one, no matter how talented or creative they are suffers from periods of feeling stuck. I have often found with hindsight that these periods of inactivity are usually rests where a new direction is about to take place, or some new work is about to be created, and when I find that I can't go any further, I just let things be for a while and do something else to take my mind of it.

Altiplano was like that. This book has been in my mind since around 2012. I first mentioned the title of it to some friends long before I knew I had enough material to complete it. Had anyone asked me how the final product would look, I couldn't have guessed correctly: I just had to trust that future work would let the seed of this idea grow into something more concrete.

There were delays along the way. Many of them, in many different forms. Around 2015 I had reached a point where I felt I could add nothing new to the work. I had been to Bolivia many times and felt that my image making there was becoming cyclical : I was now settling into certain formulas with some of the locations I had been growing into over the years, and I was beginning to feel I was reaching a natural conclusion with this landscape. Then, without warning the image on the front cover of a travel magazine I noticed while waiting in my dentist's office found me looking at Argentina as a continuation of the project. The Puna de Atacama had sufficiently different landscapes that its Bolivian cousin to work on and all of a sudden the book was no longer finished, and I knew I had a few more years yet to work on it.

Then there were schedule problems. My workshops and tours are set up 1 year and sometimes 2 years in advance. Trying to find time within my working life to get out to Bolivia or Argentina to complete what I saw in my mind's eye was difficult.

Cono de Arita, Puna de Atacama, Argentina
Image © Bruce Percy 2017

And one mustn't forget that making a book is a slow process: as soon as you have other people involved in the project, things just slow down. Waiting to hear back from printers, waiting for your graphic artist friend to find time in his own schedule to work on the book meant that things started to become drawn out. The book was commenced in full last year, and then I had to shelve it for about six months. Then we re-commenced with it this January and all the text was mostly completed by March. Translations were required as the book is also in Spanish and that added further time to the project. And while all this was going on, we were finding that we were changing the format and concept of the book. I don't think Darren and I have changed our minds or reviewed a book so many times in the past six months.

The Labyrinth, Puna de Atacama, Argentina
Image © Bruce Percy 2017

Some things just take time. There has to be a way of pushing forward while at the same time not over-stressing it. Things need to be helped, but they shouldn't be rushed. Everything has its own rhythm, its own way of evolving and our task as creative people is to work 'with the natural flow' rather than against it. Force something to be finished when it's not ready to be and the work suffers. Don't put any effort into it and the project stalls. Finding the balance is a skill in intuition. Knowing when to pause and wait for an answer, and knowing when to push forward is key.

If the work is good, then you should persist (not give up), and if obstacles are in your way, just choose to look at them as pauses: they are often there for a reason. Keep thinking about where you want your work to go, and this will help you steer your creativity in the right direction. My 'Altiplano' book wasn't an effortless task, it had many delays and obstacles along the way, but it is here now, it is real, and that just gives me the confidence to understand that sometimes, when I think things are stuck or going nowhere, it is just a brief pause in the birth of my ideas.

Collating

Today I've been collating my images from Iceland and Japan, with the thoughts of putting together two future book projects. I've been struck by just how much work I've done over the past three years in each location, but also, how much is still incomplete in the sense of producing a book on each subject.

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Playing around with sequencing of my central Iceland photographs.

Visualisation is key in propelling me forward with what I do.  

By collating the work and laying it out in a visual sequence i'm able to build an emotional connection to how I see the work panning out as it continues to be supplemented with new work. This can be very inspiring for me, and I often find myself dreaming up some additional images in my minds eye.

This aspect of visualisation is usually down to 'lost opportunities' - those 'photographs that never were', as you spied them while passing by some place, or because the weather changed and you failed to make them on time. They leave an indelible mark on your imagination that trigger strong feelings of 'I must return here, as I know I am not finished with this location yet'.

As a result of all this visualisation and dreaming of expanding the work, there have been for the past few years, ongoing discussions with my Icelandic and Japanese guides as to new places I wish to research and photograph. Everything is a work in progress. This is all good stuff as it gives me purpose: I can see that there are still unfinished ties to each of the locations I've already made photographs in.

What is most exciting for me, is that I am acutely aware that I often underestimate how much new work will come out of further explorations. New work often enriches existing work by allowing it to take on a new identity. Sometimes I feel the work is one thing only to find out that once I'm done adding new work to it, that it has become something different entirely. And I find that just very inspiring.

Collating one's own work is a great way of figuring out what you've achieved, and where there are missing gaps in the work, and which direction you need to take it.

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Playing around with sequencing of my Hokkaido photographs.

You've gotta hand-craft it

Many years ago, before my current occupation as a photographer, I used to be a budding musician with lots of nice synths at home to play with. This was the 90's and an era where most synths turned up with lots of nice sexy factory presets to play with. Indeed one of the issues with 90's synths was that they only usually had one slider on the front of the panel and thus were a nightmare to edit the sounds, so most people would tend to use the factory presets with almost no changes to them at all.

This past month I have returned to music and I'm presently busy building a little home studio of some nice synths to own. I've deliberately chosen to look for machines that have lots of knobs and sliders on the front panel so that they will encourage me to shape the sound to my liking, rather than hope or rely on some preset to work in the music I'm making.

You may wonder what this has to do with photography. Well quite a lot.

I don't believe that plug-in's that offer presets to work with are a good way to start, or to continue with for the long-run. I can sympathise and appreciate that they may feel like a really great way of kick-starting your editing, or that they perhaps influence or inspire you, but the chances of them actually being exactly what your images need is pretty slim.

I've reached the conclusion that the best approach to image editing is to hand-craft it. Here's my reasons why I think it's good to go the slow manual way:

1. You are given the opportunity (through having to figure out what you want to do to an image) to learn what components of tone, colour and form your image is made up from.
2. You learn a lot about what works and what doesn't when you have to go in there and deconstruct  your image. Presets don't encourage this.
3. Presets will rarely, if ever, give you exactly what you need and they will not encourage you to look or study deeply into what is going on in your work.
4. Hand-crafting your work means that you build up skills to interpret what you've created, and also to think about what you might want to look for in future when you do return to shooting outside.
5. It should go without saying, but each image you create does not conform to a preset. It has its own character and therefore needs to be treated on an individual basis.
6. Photography is about being creative, and convenience should not be part of the creative vocabulary. Making good or great images isn't easy, and we have to put the work in to learn.
7. Perhaps the most important point - you get to tune the image exactly the way you want.

Perhaps you think that presets are a great starting point, and that you still tune and edit manually anyway. My thoughts on this are that when we apply presets to our work, we only see or understand a little of what has been changed. if you wish to iron out some of the effect it's a little bit like going 10 steps forward to have to retreat 8 steps to get to where you want to be. I'd much rather walk each step at a time and build up a good understanding of what it is i'm doing with the edit at each stage.

I used to rely on presets for synth sounds in my music and often found it hard to get certain sounds to mix in well with others. Now that I have a collection of synths at home with tweak able parameters I can shape the sounds to fit in more. It brings me confidence when I hear certain sounds just shift into focus as they are tuned to fit into the music. Rather than flipping through thousands of presets hoping for the 'right sound' I am creating it myself.

By taking the reigns of your editing and pulling the decisions and control back into your own lap, you are giving yourself the opportunity to learn about your yourself, your work and to improve your own visual awareness. As tempting as certain presets may be, I'd suggest going the manual way for a while and see how it goes.

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.

The value of anonymous places

Photographs are much more intriguing if we aren't told anything about them.

No words, and no titles.

Intriguing images have the capability to cast a spell upon us, and the beauty of that spell is that it's a highly personal one. Through a lack of explanation, each and every one of us attaches our own personal thoughts and feelings about what we are looking at.

Myself in the landscape. Image © Dorin Bofan. Image used by kind permission.

Conversely, being told exactly what the picture is, or what we should get out of it robs us of being able to attach our own emotions and thoughts.

I remember looking at some of Paul Wakefield's wonderful landscape images on his website. There were no titles, nothing to give away where the images had been made. I thought I recognised one of them as a place I frequently visit but there was something new about it, a different perspective that made me think again. So I emailed him to ask if it was where I thought it was, only to get the reply "don't you think an image is more compelling when you aren't sure where it is?".

I agree.

Not only are they more compelling, they are also free to be whatever you wish them to be.

When Paul finally published a book of his images several years later, there was a page at the back of the book that told me where the locations of each image were. By this time I had become so familiar with Paul's beautiful images that I had attached my own impressions to his images, so much so, that finding out that they weren't where I thought they were - meant that my attachment fell into question and I found myself having to revise my thoughts about them.

It was more beautiful when I hadn't known, when I was free to create my own ideas and impressions of where his images were from.

We attach so much to an image upon first viewing, and as we go back to our favourite images we keep reinforcing our own emotions into them. We make up dreams and ideas about images that we love, the same way we make up dreams and ideas about songs we love. This is why I have never enjoyed watching music videos because they often force me to discard my own personal interpretation of a song and instead force me to take up the view of the video. 

Describing, or giving emotive titles to images gives less freedom to the viewer to take up their own view. But what about images of anonymous places? Do they hold similar appeal?

I think they do.

Rather than shooting the iconic well known place that everyone knows of, we are left to wonder - 'I don't really know for sure but there are aspects about the picture which make me think it could be Scotland, but then again, there are other aspects that make me think it could be Norway'...... Anonymous places have so much power to bewitch us.

Don't you think this makes the images more compelling?

Special thanks to Dorin Bofan (a fantastic photographer in his own right) for the kind use of the image of me in the landscape photographing a rather snowy, frozen tree, and to Florin Patras for putting together the trip where this photo was made.

More later, once I get my films back from the lab!

Inspiration through animation

One of the things I really enjoy, and get a lot of inspiration from is beautiful cinematography. I think I have become a bit of a film-fanatic of recent years.

I like to seek out films that are beautiful to look at (and have a good story of course) and The Red Turtle by Studio GHIBLI is one such movie.

As a photographer, I'm attracted to the tones in the scenery I shoot, and the movements of the sky and sea. This movie has a very beautiful look to the skies in particular: they seem to have lots of moving grain, as if it was captured on film, or perhaps the look is to simulate the use of pencil?Whatever the reason for the aesthetic, I found it such an engagingly beautiful looking movie.  The story was also excellent.

I've been thinking lately, that I very seldom get inspired by looking on the web at photographs now. We are living in an age of photography-overload. I don't like to treat photography as something to be consumed, or flicked through, instead I wish to be immersed, engaged. This is so hard to do when there is so much work out there.

But watching a beautifully animated movie for a few hours forces me to slow down, to get immersed. It is a medium that can't be consumed lightly.

The Red Turtle reminds me why I take pictures. I wish to be captivated, drawn into another world and engaged. I've often thought that if I can feel that way about my own work, then hopefully I can make others feel that way about what I do also.

Thoughts on approaching a location

Sometimes you find a location that is so sweet, you know as you approach it, that it's going to work.

The above image was just exactly like that for me.

Below is a 'contextual' image showing me approaching these trees. I'd seen this location from a far distance, and felt that a telephoto would not be sufficient to work around parallax issues with the trees.

Before I'd even set foot outside of the car, I could already see the potential in my mind's-eye - I had already begun to visualise and dream how the final images might turn out!  

But sometimes as I approach a landscape, it turns into something entirely different. I am pleased to say in this circumstance it held up to what I was visualising in my mind.

Context shot, showing me on location in Hokkaido. 
Image shot by my Hokkaido guide, January 2017

Although I love to edit my work and will often depart radically from what was there by using dodging and burning techniques, the final images you see here are pretty much verbatim. The only difference between the photograph of me on location, and my final images is that the sky clouded over once I got into the location, so there was more of a marriage between land and sky. 

My only on-site decisions were more about placement - of where I should be standing to get different vantage points of the trees, and to be observant to any patterns that the trees made (see central image of the three trees at perfect placement to one another). Further, it was also paramount that I remove the background hedge from the shot at all costs, so I spent a bit of time looking for vantage points where the hedge would disappear from view.

I'd like to finish today's post by stating that often as a photographer i'm tempted to go closer towards the subjects I wish to photograph. Whether it's the edge of a lake or the edge of a cliff. This can sometimes be a real failing because of two points:

1) If you like your subject from where you are standing, then chances are it's not going to look the same once you get closer. So shoot it from where you've noticed it, before moving in. Practice using different focal lengths such as telephoto view to accomplish this.

2) As you approach a location you like, the elements start to move around and sometimes things get lost or hidden from view. See point 1.

Your journey can sometimes become an exercise in 'chasing rainbows'. You think that by getting in close, the composition will get stronger, but as you do approach, the scene falls apart and the subjects do not hold together in the way you first saw them. Often times, it's because the best vantage point was from where you started.

I'm glad to report that although I was worried that the big hike into this location,  on snowshoes might have resulted in the trees becoming obstructed by hills, or by my being too low to photograph the trees straight on, the location worked beautifully.

I knew it at the time things were going well. As I slowly made my way forward, the trees and the compositions I had in my mind's eye remained in place. But I did keep an eye on how the compositions were changing as I approached.

I'm a great believer that when something is working well, whether it be in my photography or in my life, it tends to flow and come together easily. That's exactly how these images happened. It was as if they fell into my lap.

I didn't capture the landscape, it captured me

Thoughts on impermanence

While I've been on the Norwegian island of Senja, I have been thinking a lot about the snowy weather and the wild mountain peaks that surround me.

These mountains have been here for a very long time. They have stood, facing the elements for a duration that I can only begin to imagine, let alone comprehend, and comparatively speaking, I have only been here for the shortest moment of their existence.

Coastal scene, Island of Senja, Norway

This has made me consider my own ideas about permanence, and that I have a tendency to relate to the landscape 'within my own timeline' and  think of it as being part of my story, when in fact I am a tiny part of its story.

The landscape has seen more than I will ever do, it has witnessed and been part of land reforming over many millennia. To think that my images may convey this landscape and 'capture' it is quite a ridiculous notion because the landscape is more powerful and permanent than anything I will ever do, or achieve. The mountains I have walked over and  the rivers I have crossed are a reminder of my own impermanence. It's a humbling thought.

It raises the question about the importance of my photographs and the illusion that my images have some form of permanence: my photographs are just as transient as I am. If I am lucky at best, my images will continue to exist for a little while longer once I am gone.

This has made me wonder if I place too much importance upon my work. I feel that I may have my views on my own work out of proportion to the bigger picture since it is the landscape that has more of a right to permanence than any photograph I will ever create.  

I do not 'capture' the landscape. Instead, it is the landscape that captures me.