Stamp

As part of my ongoing project to produce a book about Iceland, I've had to dig out my biography and look at what might be relevant for the release of the book.

It's almost a ridiculous thing to say - but I'd completely forgotten that in 2007, one of my images - an image of Selfoss waterfall in the north east of Iceland, was used on two stamps in a fetching panoramic design.

I got in touch with Grafískur hönnuður, the graphic design company who worked on this for SEPAC (Small European Postal  Administration Communities) organisation. Borgar, my contact there - sent me the original Photoshop file today, so we can include it as part of the intro wrapped inside the dust jacket of the book.

All this digging up the past, has unravelled a few things for me. First, I'd forgotten about the stamp and I hadn't made the connection between it and my forthcoming book. But also, Borgar told me that the stamp won 4th place in the Deutsche Briefmarken-Revue “most beautful stamp in Europe competition” 2007!

How great is that?

Well, I guess that's a really nice surprise for today. It makes me wonder, just where I've been, and where I'm heading. My iceland book seems to be evolving (still - considering that I thought that the design was complete). So when a piece of work is done, it's never truly done is it? Things have a way of resurfacing and coming back full circle into your artistic life. Be it revisiting a place, revisiting work you did, or working on something new. The act of creating new work based on themes from your past can uncover so much and it's always worth taking a moment to consider who you were then and who you are now. It's only with some distance that I'm often able to be objective about 'what I am'.

Book design complete

A few days ago, I was down in Nottingham, working on the final press book design for my 2nd book. If you've not been reading my blog of late, then maybe you don't know that I'm planning on releasing a 2nd book this Autumn / Winter. The book is about Iceland and it's mostly a monograph, but it does have a few stories and experiences from my time shooting there.

I'd like to say a big thank you to Darren Ciolli-Leach at 22:22 Design for his invaluable assistance and experience. Darren has been instrumental in turning my mockup's into something more professional looking. He says - in his own words that he's a 'font-aholic'. I particularly like the fonts that he suggested for the book covers.

I'm intending to release the book in a few variants:

1. Basic edition

2. Book with special limited (to 300 copies only) slipcase.

3. Book with slipcase and limited edition print (125 copies only)

4. Deluxe version with slipcase and three prints that make up a triptych (45 copies only).

There will be more details about the book and my special guest photographer who has written the preface for the book in this month's newsletter (due out on the 27th).

If you don't subscribe to my newsletter, than you can do it on my home page. Each month I always notify people of new workshops and special offers firstly through the newsletter, so it's a good idea to subscribe if you want to be one of the first to know about workshops before they sell out, for instance.

As for my current book, the limited edition print versions of Loch Lurgainn are almost sold out now, so if you were thinking of getting a copy with one, then time is running out :-)

A journal of Nocturnes

Nocturnes - a composition, or piece of music that is inspired by, or evocative of the night.

My 2nd book project has been evolving over the past two months.

Initially, I just knew I wanted to do a second book, and had slated some time in for a trip to Iceland this December / January with the hope that something might come out of it. I had no idea at the time if the 2nd book would be about Iceland, but I did hope that it might be.

I've learned, that things don't always pan out the way you intended them, and to have a fixed idea of what it is you want to do - is too rigid. Certainly, having something to focus towards is a great motivator, but I also need to leave some room for change, and be able to consider that what I'm working on might not be the right fit, and something else might be better.

My 2nd book is taking shape quite strongly now. I originally had the idea of putting a book together about the south coast of Iceland and my ventures there to photograph the black sand and ice bergs. This brought me on to think about how to merge two different shoots - one from last Summer when I created a lot of very dark, monochromatic images of the black sand and ice bergs, and the more recent shoot this December/January, where the images are much more optimistic, light in tone and as a result - have a very different feel. This created a bit of a problem for me, and I felt the book was not gelling as well as I'd liked.

I felt that I wanted to add in some stories too, and give the viewer of the images some context, an idea of what I was feeling at the time. So over the past few months stories - some almost like poetry have been creeping into the book. It started to feel like it was coming together, gelling in the way I'd hoped. So until maybe a few weeks ago, I felt the book was on the right track and that it was mostly done, just the finer points like spelling, grammar, layout to be worked on and finalised. But the peace didn't last long. I was aware over the weeks that I felt a little like something was missing from the book, and I didn't feel it was complete. I can only get to this point if I give my work some time to sit, let it be absorbed and get comfortable with what it truly is, as opposed to what I think it is. In other words - a sense of distance is required, and so I'm always happy to give things some time, to see if they are indeed ready or maybe need some work.

Someone asked me if I were going to put some of my older images from Iceland into the book. I'd be hesitating about doing it, because I feel they represent who I was in 2004, and don't really have much correlation to how my photography style has moved on. But I reconsidered, decided to have a go at putting them into the book, and found that I was wrong - they worked. So much so, that the book is a sandwich of three parts - the first section starts of with coastal shots that were shot during the night, while the middle section deals with inland areas of iceland shot during the summer months and much warmer light. The last section goes back towards the coast and deals with a more lighter ending feel to the days work. It was conceptual and I didn't even know it until I'd put the thing together and a friend commented on how it seemed to work more as a piece now.

So the book has been retitled too. I had never really been happy with the title, but since I now have a collection of images, all mostly shot during the nocturnal hours of the day (I'm a low light shooter mostly), and since all were created during pre-dawn, post-dusk, even sometimes around 3am for instance, I feel the images have an otherwordly feel to them. The stories that I've written have been put together from the journal that I sometimes write in. So all this kind of wraps up to give me the title of 'a journal of nocturnes'. Nocturnes is defined as 'a composition, or piece of music that is inspired by, or evocative of the night'. I feel my images are compositions that are evocative or inspired by the night, so I feel it's a perfect fit.

I feel the book is much stronger now. So all that needs to be done now, is get the preface written - as I type this, my special guest whom I've asked if he will write something as a way of an introduction to Iceland has responded and said yes. So I'm delighted by the news.

I'll be traveling down to Nottingham this April to put the book together with my friend Darren, and expect to have something finished and ready for release later on in the year.

I hope my posting today has given you some food for thought regarding the creative process. It is always flowing, changing. It is never static and when someone says the work is done, what they really mean is that it has reached a conclusion for the moment.

Iceland Photo Safari - Sold Out

Just  a quick post today to let you all know that the Iceland Photo Safari announced through my monthly newsletter, published last friday, is now sold out. Many thanks for everyone's enthusiasm and interest in this trip!

Iceland Photographic Safari

South Iceland - Icebergs, black sand beaches and waterfalls 9-day photographic safari, Sept 24 - 2nd Oct

£1,995 per participant

On Friday I published news about this new photographic safari via my monthly newsletter. I will be going to Iceland this September to spend 9 days photographing the south coast with a group of 8 participants.

I decided that if I were to run a trip in Iceland, it would have to allow some concentrated time in some great locations, rather than be a flat out, snatch a few hours tour round the entire country. This I feel, is impossible, because there is just far too much to cover, and not enough time.

This trip has been put together to give everyone several days in a few choice locations. My favourite place being Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon where we will have two whole days there to shoot sunrises and sunsets, and also explore the black sand coast line where you will find many icebergs of varying shapes, texture, size and colour.

For more details about the trip, and the locations we will be visiting, please go here.

Please note: this is not a workshop in the detailed sense that my workshops are in Scotland. We will be moving every couple of days, and as such, our time will be limited to on-location shooting. So it's really a 9 day trip to get as much as you can out of the locations we will be visiting, and of course, you will get guidance from myself, be able to share ideas and thoughts with a group of like minded souls and immerse yourself in photography for a concentrated time.

I always let folks know about new trips through my newsletter first. The trip is now mostly sold out - six of the spaces have been filled and I only have two spaces left. If you want to know about new trips, and get first chance at booking onto them, then it's a good idea to subscribe to my newsletter! :-)

If you'd like to come, the two remaining spaces can be booked here.

Space in the landscape

When I made this shot, I felt at the time (and still do), that I made the right composition choice.

I had the terrible temptation to try to get more magnification on the basalt columns you see sticking out of the sea - this, I feel is due to what I described a few days ago in my post about 2% vision.

If I'd had a bigger telephoto, then yes, it would have been sorely tempting to get right into the heart of the picture - to the basalt columns of Reynisdrangar, but I feel that would have been an error. The strongest lens I had with me was a 120mm, which essentially is equivalent to a 60mm in 35mm territory. Not that strong, and I feel this compromise allowed me to think more about the sweep in the coast line and the snow and ice that was covering the usually black sand beach.

So again, not going in for the massively zoomed in crop allowed for a bit more context. It also allowed for a lot more space too - as I'd wanted to keep in the sky and the colours present there.

So is this image really about the stacks, or are they just an ornamental feature within? Is this image about the coast line, or is it really a contextual shot - something to illustrate the space, the feel of the entire coast line and climatic weather conditions that were there at the time? My feeling is that it's the later.

Around 2% vision, Iceland

I'm not usually prone to making telephoto shots in my photography. It's an admission that i'm none too proud about and I've often wondered why I prefer wide angle and standard lenses for composition.

I have a theory why most landscape photographers shoot with wide angles and standard lenses. I think that pictures are more believable if we feel we can step into the scene. Most wide angle shots start a few feet away from the camera, so it's not too hard to imagine you can step right into the frame. Similarly, but perhaps less so, with a standard lens, we get what is equivalent to the focal length of the human eye. It's a comfortable view of the world, so although we may not see the immediate ground that connects us to the final image, we're still able to make that leap from viewer to being there.

Telephoto shots lack the context to make us feel we're there. They are by nature, detached. But this is no bad thing, as telephotos allow us to separate out what is important, and in the case of wildlife for instance, we get a lot of presence if we can get a real close up of an animal. For me though, in terms of landscapes, I find it hard to get too excited about most telephoto shots unless there is some way for me to get context and feel I'm there.

Most beginners are poor at composition for the reason that they're not able to isolate what's important. Often images have everything in them, not just what they were attracted to, but the whole kitchen sink as well. I've heard that the human eye has a tendency to pay attention to around 2% of its field of view, meaning for instance, that if you were to pay attention to a friend you were talking to, you'd notice that you are only looking at one small area of their face - usually the eyes (one at a time!). Amateurs tend to see particular, very isolated areas of a scene and concentrate on that alone, take the image, and once home, realise that they got a lot more in the frame than what they were looking at.

If we look at my image above, taken of Reynisdrangar from afar (I was actually at Dyrhólaey at the time - a bit further west), you can well imagine that the entire focus, or point of the shot is the sea stacks of Reynisdrangar in the distance. Certainly, our eye naturally ends up at them and if we consider just how small an area they are of the frame, then it's fair to say that it's a tiny percentage. While I was there though, that is mostly all I could see. My eye was attracted to Reynisdrangar. However, I know from experience that it would be less prominent in the final frame, even though my visual system was using it's 2% to concentrate on it.

The key: I've learned to look at the periphery.

To see what else is in the frame, and try to use that to give the main part of the image context. I try to weigh up everything that is happening inside the image and think about how each object relates to every other one.

Firstly, I was high up on a cliff, so I used the white snow cliff edge as an anchor or framing reference point to give my eye some form context to where I was as a viewer. Secondly, I figured that the jeep tracks on the black sand were attractive and could sit nicely in the middle of the frame.

In fact, subconsciously, I think that the real reason for making this shot was actually the sweeping curves of black sand against the snow areas on the beach. I've fooled myself into thinking the whole shot is about the far off sea stacks - perhaps something for another posting on the blog some day.

This image was made with a 120mm lens on a Hasselblad. So it's equivalent to a 60mm in 35mm land. Slightly more telephoto, and just enough to pull in the far off sea stacks, while not too magnified to stop me from getting context to where I was standing (the snow foreground).

I remember not being sure if this image would work at the time, but my gut was compelling me to take it all the same: I simply could not - not take it. Sometimes things are never so clear in the image making process for me, and I'm always hesitant to put on lenses that are a little more magnified than my own vision is, because I often don't see compositions that way. Using a wide angle  would not have worked -  the sea stacks would have been pushed further away, into the distance, almost to the point of not being noticeable, and the whole image would have lacked presence.

So maybe the point of this post is to recognise that we only concentrate on a tiny part of the frame at one time, try to look around the periphery and judge how each object in the scene relates to the others, and think about getting out of your comfort zone of using just wide angles and standard lenses. It does take time to master each focal length (one of the many reasons why I don't like zooms - something to be discussed at another time perhaps).

Like an animal

I love abstraction in images. When there is an underlying skeleton or framework that suggests a fine composition that your concious mind is not aware of - is just great, but sometimes it's just nice to be a little more forward and be very literal: I found an ice-animal on the beach at Jökulsárlón. It was trying to walk its way back towards the shore, and for some reason, had been left behind by the other tiny, translucent animals that were further on towards their ultimate destination of the sea.

He didn't appear to have a head as such, but I knew he was looking out towards the other little bergs, and wondering if he'd catch up.

I tend to find I can make up stories like that about the objects I'm shooting. They're not just objects, but instead, they have something about them that triggers my imagination.

My little ice animal was very beautiful all the same. He had such a vibrant coat of glass ripples that I knew I had to spend some time with him.

So there I was, lying on my tummy on the sand with my wonky Hasselblad camera, figuring out just how to tell a story about him. His siblings were the perfect back drop for him, so I shot the entire picture on a shallow depth of field (why is it that so much landscape material is always sharp from near to far? Surely shallow depth of field can also help draw the eye towards and also away from subjects within the frame). I deliberately ensured his siblings were out of focus.

Square format seems to be happy to have objects placed in the middle of the frame too.

I'm enjoying very much the freedom to break some self imposed rules to my compositions by using the square aspect ratio. But I feel it's not a replacement for my trusty 6x7 and 5x4 aspect ratios. It's simply just another string to my bow, and by using square at the time of capture (rather than cropping later), I feel I'm forced to look at my surroundings in a different way.

As I've said in the past, and particularly in my Aspect Ratios e-book, the shape of the frame you compose with, really does have a massive impact on your choice of composition. For me, the aspect ratio of the camera is an often overlooked, fundamental influence on your picture making abilities. Buy a camera with an aspect ratio that you do not understand, or have no eye for, and you're goosed.

Back to my ice-animal.

Like so many bergs at Jökulsárlón, he was simply just one of many casualties that had been thrown up onto the black sand beach. Strung out to dry and postponed from the inevitable, I knew that one day he would eventually become, just another part of the sea.

Adrift - 2 variations, 2 studies

You may have noticed the banner change to the blog, and also the banner change to the main web page. If not, then do a refresh or reset the cache of your browser. The banners have been updated with images from Iceland this December.

I'm currently in Bodø, on the mainland of Norway, getting ready to take the 5am post flight tomorrow morning to Lofoten. It is -15 outside, and that's before you add the wind chill factor. It was painfully cold outside tonight!

Anyway, I thought I'd share these three images with you, taken on my wonky Hasselblad this December/January in Iceland. I like the first out of the first two the best, but I think it just goes to show that taking the same shot twice, and considering the timing of waves, can reap dividends. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but certainly each one of them has a different character. The first image in this posting has more movement to me, and that really does justify the title of 'adrift' here.  The second image less so, because there's no wash around the ice bergs. However, in the 2nd image those sweeping curvy lines in the composition are just *wonderful* in my book.

I'm very much in love with this location. It has the most amazing, stark contrast between light and darkness.

Anyway, here's the third image, shot at the same location, which also suggests the notion of being adrift too. In fact, with this one, the ice berg almost looks as though it's floating on top of the sea, being carried away. I think this is also further compounded by the ice berg being very craft-like in shape too. It almost looks like a vessel that can indeed float on top of the water.

I think this one happens to look this way because the ice berg is actually sitting on black sand, but I caught it just as the water was flowing back towards the sea (I often prefer to wait until the tide is all the way in, as the receding movement is usually of a more ordered nature, providing simpler lines during a long exposure).

Anyway, I'll be announcing news of an Icelandic photographic safari by the end of the week through my newsletter first, so keep your ears pinned back (and if that looks too silly, then just check your inbox for a newsletter from me).

Not subscribed to my newsletter? Then do it here.

Dyrhólaey

Today, I've finished up editing my Norway images - to the first stage at least. I have made a rough selection of around 22 images that I like, and I feel it's now time to park them to one side, and let my mind forget them for a while or so. The intention being that I can come back to them in a week or a few weeks time, and I won't be so close to them....

I should be able to see any issues or problems that I didn't see at the times of the edits. The thing is, that sometimes I don't see a colour cast, or perhaps a dominant tone that needs to be corrected, to bring the entire scene back into balance..... these things take time.

So today I've begun work on scanning my Iceland images from December/January. Here's one of the first ones.

I made a terrible mistake of looking through all the images when I got them back from the lab... I had to - as I found I couldn't work on images from Iceland and Norway simultaneously.... which is something I've just discovered about myself and I'll need to reflect upon this and ask myself why that is so.

Anyway Dyrhólaey, what can I tell you about this place? It's stunning! And of course doubly so in Winter because the entire place is turned into a frozen paradise of subtle shade in the winter sky mixing with a dramatic black sand beach. I'm a big user of the Photographer's Ephemeris, but have to confess that I didn't use it to determine if the moon would be out, and whether it would be positioned so beautifully above the basalt sea columns of Reynisdrangar that you can see in the distant horizon.

I came back here a few times, and on the second occasion we had a lot of sea fog at the base of Reynisdrangar - another time, another shot, and most likely, buried somewhere in the mound of images waiting to be scanned over the next few days :-)