A Gift

Some images just come to us, like a gift.

Whilst visiting the Bolivian altiplano this summer, I felt I was given such a gift.

For the very first time, I saw Laguna Colorada shrouded in fog. This is not 'usual' circumstances for this location.

I love fog, because it can hide parts of the landscape and simplify the scene down to one or two elements. Laguna Colorada is surrounded by hills and far off volcanoes and as pleasing as these may be to include in the photograph, sometimes it's a real advantage to have backgrounds either partially veiled or completely hidden. Reducing down the landscape to this extent can bring 'focus' or 'presence' to the scene by presenting the viewer with just the main attraction.

Fog is also of great use in enabling objects within the scene to become contextually lost. With little else to give a reference point to what it is that you're actually seeing, your mind's-eye is fooled into believing that the subject is hovering in space. In the case of my visit to Laguna Colorada, I had far off groups of flamingo's isolated to such a degree, that they appeared to be almost suspended in mid-air. The illusion was complete when I chose not to include any parts of the foreground shore of the lake in the shot.

I shot this image with a Hasselblad 500 series camera (of which I own two). I used a 250mm lens, which despite being rather old and crusty, worked, even though I had not tested it before leaving the UK.

I've always been fascinated by telephoto 'scenes' often seeing them in my mind's-eye, but I've never really tried to shoot them in the past. I felt for a long while, that I  had to master wide angles and standard field of view lenses before I could move on to telephotos. It's perhaps taken me about ten years to get to that point!

Those of you who follow what I've said in the past, or have spent time with me on my workshops, will know that I am great believer in using primes at the beginning of our photographic development, for a few reasons.

Firstly, by having only a hand-full of fixed focal lengths to use, we learn to visualise or 'see' compositions that we know will work well with the focal lengths that we have. For instance, if we only have two focal lengths to work with, say 24mm and 50mm, we tend to find that over time, we start to visualise scenes in either 24mm or 50mm. It's a great way to bring on composition learning/improvements because we have fewer decisions to make and we study what we're working with better as a result.

Secondly, we learn more easily about the properties of the focal lengths we're using. For example, wide angle lenses have more depth of field than higher focal lengths and wide angle lenses tend to push  backgrounds further away. Whereas a standard field of view lens has less depth of field, and tends to bring backgrounds towards us.

Lastly, zooming with our feet allows us to engage with the landscape more and change the foreground subject matter (often quite drastically within a few foot steps), while allowing us to maintain the same background to foreground ratio. In other words, if we keep the focal length the same, we can keep the the background to the same proportions, whilst changing the foreground substantially.

I also feel that wide angles tend to invite us into the frame. We are encouraged to feel as if we could step from behind the camera and walk into the scene. Whereas I feel telephoto shots do not. Telephoto images are often of detached views, or at best, take on a voyeuristic point of view of the subject. We feel we are onlookers, because scenes take on a remoteness to them. This can be of great use in the right circumstances.

With the flamingo's in the lake now suspended in mid-air (because there were no contextual clues as to where they were) the use of a telephoto not only brought them closer toward me, but it also allowed me to enhance the illusion that they were floating, because as discussed, telephotos bring a sense of detachment to any scene they are used to capture.

Like someone said to me recently - 'it's like flamingo's in heaven'.

Altiplano

Some news to come about the Altiplano (Bolivia & Chile) at the end of this month, in my monthly newsletter (due out on the 31st at 7pm GMT).

Searching Laguna Blanca

As a landscape photographer, I believe that part of my nature is that of 'restless searcher'.

I know many people who have turned to photography, as a response to the routine in their lives. I will often hear clients tell me that they feel more alive, and in touch with nature through photography.

I think this is because routine tends to dull our senses. We stop noticing things because anything that does not change in our environment does not tend to stand out after a while. Routine seems to contain a lot of  background noise - information that we do not need to process again and again, because we already know it.

Consider the commute to work, where you felt you were on auto-pilot. All you know if you got to your desk on time, but you can't specifically remember details of the journey any more, because, just like how you know which key to type on your keyboard, everything has become second nature. You have stopped looking.

I think that most people thrive on new stimulation. For example, one way to become stimulated is to go on holiday. Being in a new environment, with different sights and sounds can seem to awaken part of us that has been lying dormant while we go about the routines in our everyday lives. This awakening is something I think most of us find attractive about photography, because the very act of making a picture forces us to engage in our surroundings in a way that we normally wouldn't. I think this is why I often hear participants on my workshops tell me it takes them a day or two to get their 'vision' working - they're out of practice, because the routine of their lives does not require such intense processing of their visual surroundings anymore.

In this way, making images with a camera isn't really about making images at all. I think it's more a vehicle  that encourages us to engage with our environment. Give someone a camera and they will go looking. Or more specifically, they will go searching. A camera is a baton, a symbol that says 'now I must open I eyes and go see, look, find, enquire, engage'.

I had a client a year or so ago, who expressed his view that we should try to avoid routine in our lives - even in the smallest of ways. He would for instance, take different routes home in his car each day from work, so that he was able to think more. Or if he was walking, he would deliberately leave his office and make up his journey home. He wouldn't look at a map or plan his trip. He would simply go, and see what he would come across as he made his way from one side of Philadelphia to the other. During the workshop, he was keen to encourage the group to choose different seats each day. As much as this seems perhaps a bit eccentric, I can fully appreciate what he was doing. He was trying to reduce the level of routine in his life because it allowed him to engage more.

I've been looking at these three images the past few weeks since I worked on them. Essentially the same location, same volcano in the background - Licancabur - just on the border between Chile and Bolivia. I could have shot this scene once and decided that there was little point in making another image of it . But as you know, we don't tend to do that as photographers. We will often shoot the same subject again and again. Sometimes it's because we don't think we quite 'got it', and other times, it's because we're still noticing things about the landscape and recomposing to take into account the new information we have at hand.

In my own case, these three images came about because of two things: firstly, my awareness of the colour temperature, and secondly, my awareness of foreground subject matter.

With regards to colour temperature, I had started my shoot at this location in twilight (the blue hour) and as the morning progressed I watched the hues change the landscape dramatically from blue to golden yellow / orange towards daylight temperature. There is this inquisitiveness we have as photographers to go study the changes in the light. To take pleasure in noticing the small changes in our environment. We have the luxury to stop and watch, to notice and to enjoy.

My second point, about being aware of foreground subject matter meant that I kept searching for a better composition. I like to think of this as re-interpreting the landscape.

I believe that doing landscape photography is about having a conversation with our surroundings. When we alter composition, we are effectively asking a new question. How we feel about this new composition is our answer. Making landscape images is a dialog between ourselves and how we feel about our environment. As I said earlier on in this post, I feel that photography is really a vehicle, one that allows us to enquire, to engage and go ask questions. We are ultimately searchers.

Colour as a Unifying Theme

Over the years, as my own photographic 'style' has been changing, I've had the good fortune to be in a position where I spend a lot of time 'noticing' the changes. This is perhaps one of the benefits of being a photographic workshop leader. In order to convey a message, and illustrate things, I've had to look at my own work and get to know myself a bit better as a result.

I wrote a nice little e-book about 'self-awareness' a while back, because I think that in order to grow as an artist, we need to become more aware of how we react to our environment. we need to get to know our moods and responses, as this will allow us to understand ourselves better.

One aspect of making good photographs, that I think is seldom discussed, is that of using colour as a theme. We are often very absorbed by the idea of composition in terms of form only, that I believe we spend very little time considering how colour may affect our style. Or more importantly, how colour can be utilised as a theme to bring a body of work together - and make it stronger than the sum of its parts.

I've noticed in my own work, over the past couple of years, that the colour palette of a location figures largely in influencing what I choose to shoot. I think this all began in 2011 when I first visited the black volcanic beaches of Iceland. In venturing here, I discovered that I could shoot monochromatic scenes with colour film, but also, that the final work had more unity because the colours and tones present in the work were similar.

Certainly, being presented with the reduced monochromatic colour palette of black sand and white ice, should have spelled out for me the direction where the work might go. But I'm not so convinced that most of us observe colour in this way, during the making of images on location (back to my point about developing a sense of self-awareness).

My impressions of the trip just after getting home, was that it had been a complete failure. My head had been so full of the cold that I came home thinking I'd gotten nothing out of the trip. The epiphany happened once I got my films back from the lab. It was only upon viewing the processed transparencies that I saw unity in the reduced colour palette. I saw a way forward and I consciously decided to run with it.

I think there's an opportunity in every place we go to make photographs, to notice colour as a potential theme to the work. This is also true whilst editing the work afterwards. it should be possible to notice that perhaps a handful of the images go together more strongly than others - all because they have a similar colour 'feel' to them.

Utilising colour in this way, is now pretty much at the heart of my photography.

I tend to hone right in on those particular images that have a strong colour aesthetic. I will look through the entire shoot to see if I have others that fall in-line with this mood, or usually, it comes about naturally as I build up a body of work. Some of the images relate to each other more, because there is a strong colour relationship between them.

I will even, after collecting many completed images, distill them down to those that have a strong colour relationship, because it has become a 'signature' - a unifying theme to the whole portfolio.

I don't expect others to be as literal with colour as I am. But I do feel that being more aware of colour relationships as a unifying theme that goes right through a body of work is beneficial.

Composition of an image does not just end at where we place objects within the frame, object placement is only really one dimension. Colour adds an additional dimension.

Just like black and white photographers will often tone a collection of images so that they have a similar feel, colour photographers should consider utilising the same approach in their work. If it brings forward a direction in which one wishes to explore further, then that's a good thing.

Desert Siloli, Bolivia

The desert Siloli, is a fascinating landscape situated at an elevation of around 4,500 metres on the Bolivian altiplano. I've been to this place a few times now, but I've never seen it quite like this before. As part of my Bolivian photographic tour that I conducted here in June of this year, we were supposed to go to see the stone tree - el arbol de piedra. It is situated in the heart of the Siloli desert. A place that I had ear-marked for some more image making for (hopefully) a forth-coming book.

But the weather this summer was very unusual. June is the time of the dry season, and so there shouldn't be any snowfall at this period in the year. Only it snowed a lot, and I hear it is still snowing - right down the lower elevations of San Pedro de Atacama - apparently the first time it has snowed at this low elevation in 17 years.

I always find it very interesting to note how I build up an anticipation of what I will be shooting - a form of pre-visualisation if you like. It's not something I welcome, as I feel the sense of expectation can get in the way of taking on board what is actually presented to me. In the case of the Siloli desert, I had not anticipated snow there. Nor had I imagined that I would only be allowed 1 hour here due to the weather deteriorating. It would perhaps not surprise you to learn that we spent a cold evening in a hotel with no running water and a snow blizzard outside the door. We were concerned that we may not make it out the next day, despite having two land cruisers at our disposal (we did make it out the next day, although it took a bit longer than we'd imagined).

It was interesting to note the mood of the participants on the trip. Some took the downturn in the weather conditions well, while I could feel morale slip a bit for others. One participant in particular said 'it's part of the deal, part of the adventure'. Something I was very happy to hear. It is the right attitude one should have as a photographer.

Photography should be surprising. We're not in it for an easy ride, and part of the reason we make photographs, is to put us out there in the world so we can engage, and experience life in a way that we wouldn't if we hadn't taken up photography in the first place.

So I thought I would share this image with you. The sky by the way was really like this. We commented at the time that it had an HDR look (of the badly processed variety) about it. I thought it looked surreal.

Silver grey tones abounded the landscape as I ran from one spot to another with my Hasselblad film camera. This is perhaps one of the more memorable shots I made. Being a film shooter, I tend to remember some shots more than others - if it's got something about it - I tend to remember it. I like this fact about film photography - it taught me how to listen to my own feelings and tune in more to my responses to the landscape and use it to gauge the worthiness of what I am shooting.

My new images from the Chilean Atacama, and the Bolivian altiplano are up in my new section of this web site.

Working on some new images

  Just a short post today. I'm entrenched in my home studio, busy working on a massive backlog of images from the Bolivian altiplano and the Chilean Atacama desert.

I thought it would be fun to share with you an image of my beautiful Gepe light-table. I love working with transparencies, and laying them out in a collection like this.

I can 'see' the portfolio coming together a little more clearly when I do this. I'll sometimes pick out the best images from my sheets of Velvia 50 to scan, before I go back and have a bit more of a detailed review of what else is there. It really depends on how i'm feeling. Other times, I'll work systematically through each sheet of film one at a time, until I've garnered all the good stuff. On average, there tends to be around 2 images a sheet (10 shots) that I like, and want to scan.

I  love how transparencies have the colours already 'programmed' into them. Velvia is a highly saturated film, so I tend to work the opposite way to most Raw shooters - rather than adding in the colour, I tend to scan and then decide which colours (if any) require desaturating.

If you click on the image above, you'll see a higher resolution one.

For those of you who have never shot film, or transparencies, you're missing out on one of the most satisfying parts of creating images: that of laying out your transparencies on a light table. There's something about the tactile aspect that I think lends some kind of emotional investment to the work.

As for viewing the images on the light-table, the colours just glow - this alone can provide ample inspiration for the editing stage, and I'll often find myself feeling very excited as a result.

From left to right: Salar de Uyuni, Sol de mañana geyser basin, Pescado Island, Sol de mañana geyser basin, Flamingos at Laguna Colorada, Atacama Chile, Little Italy stone desert Bolivia.

How far have you come, in your own photographic development?

Last year, I conducted my first photographic tour of the Bolivian altiplano. We made our way from San Pedro de Atacama in Chile across the southern side of Bolivia to the capital La Paz over nine days. It was quite a tour.

I'd originally shot the altiplano in 2009, and the images from that particular shoot were at that time, an epiphany for me: I saw the start of my journey towards more simplified compositions.

Returning back in 2012, I wasn't so sure I could add anything new to what I'd shot back then, so it was a surprise to me to note that my compositional style has become more reduced and more simplified in the intervening years.

One could argue that shooting a square aspect ratio camera helped me achieve that look of simplification. I would indeed agree, that square offers the opportunity to be more abstract with compositional elements than any rectangular aspect ratio can. I also feel that rectangles are more traditional, whereas square has no deep roots in art history: rafael did not paint his images on square canvases.

One could also argue that I've had a chance to become more familiar with the altiplano. This is also true. I do believe that we often need two visits to a location: the first to understand it - to know what works and what doesn't work, the second visit to do the work with a more refined viewpoint.

I'll be heading back to Bolivia in two months from now, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what new material may transpire from the tour we will be doing there.

By looking back at my previous work, I'm often able to see that there has been a shift, a subtle change in direction. I feel all photographers should do this as a matter of course. Consider, reflect, open up an inner dialog, ask yourself some questions about your development. Other times, I feel the changes are less apparent, but usually something comes along to show us just how far we've come.

Note: I'm returning to the Bolivian altiplano in June to conduct a photographic tour with six participants. If you'd like to come along, I'm pleased to say there are two spaces left. The tour was originally full, but there's been a couple of cancellations due to health issues and other commitments. If you would like to find out more about this trip, you can read all about it here.

1 space now free for Bolivia 2013

Dear all, I'm just taking some time-out at the moment, after a rather busy schedule this year. So I do hope to be back on this very blog with more thoughts about photography soon!

In the meantime, I have had one cancellation for Bolivia next year, due to a graduation, so I thought I would let you all know about this space as the trip was extremely popular and sold out in a matter of hours this year.

--

My Bolivia photographic-safari for 2013, now has one space free on it, due to a cancellation. This trip was extremely popular this year and had sold out before I'd even gotten round to mentioning it on my monthly newsletter!

If you'd like to know more about this trip, then you can find the details here. I expect this space to go very quickly, but rather than just let you find out by going to the workshop pages on this site, felt I should really just tell you all about it.

I hope you are all out there making nice images!

regards, Bruce.

New Website Portfolio's

I've been away all week on the isle of Eigg with a terrific group, running a workshop. I've not got much time today, but felt I should let you all know that all the new images I've been producing for the past year - are now up on my site.

I decided to separate them into a 'new' section, away from my older work, as I feel there's a refinement in my style over the past few years. So if you'd like to browse the work, which includes Iceland, Norway, Patagonia and my recent trip to Bolivia, please click on the 'new' section to the navigation menu at the top of the blog.

I hope you enjoy the newer images presented in portfolios, even if you feel you know most of the work by visiting my blog.

Final Selection

I've more or less completed the scanning and image selection from my trips to Bolivia and patagonia this June. I have to say that the number of images I'm left with is very small. But there is a reason for this: I felt that there were two particularly strong shoots for me during the time away where the images feel very 'cohesive'. I really prefer to choose images that behave as if they belong to a set, and in the final selection here, I think you can see that.

The two shoots in particular that really worked for me were of Laguna Colorada on the Bolivian Altiplano, and that of the Perito Moreno glacier in Argentine Patagonia. I certainly have other images that were successful, but they don't fit this particular 'theme' or 'style'. And I think this narrowed down selection indicates perhaps where my style is strongest at the moment.

I think that's a very key thing to understand about your own photography: what it is you're currently trying to achieve and being successful at. I see these images as a reflection, an indicator of what it is I'm striving for. I think they're very simplistic and mostly are involved in conveying colour as mood. There is almost nothing inside the frames as such, but I think the mood of the places is very strong in them.

I shot a hell of a lot more images, but I've had some technical problems with those. I made them on Kodak's Portra 160 (the new stock) but I'm having trouble scanning them. I've determined it's not my scanner that is at fault, but I've got coloured streaks going through the images in very bright clear areas, and I'm not sure if this is a product of the development, or if it's an issue with the batch of films I've bought. I'm seriously not happy about this and it's a lesson to myself to never go away again on a shoot with untested equipment or materials.