So Iconic, when we look, we don't 'see' them any more

A few days ago, a friend of mine emailed me about Mike Stimpson's lego images of iconic photographs. I thought they were terrific, and wanted to share them with you all.

Some of these should be very familiar to you as they are interpretations of well known global images. Images so powerful that we all know them, and yet, we rarely know the photographer behind them.

Such images have a potency - they are instantly recognisable, even when made from lego. Others, are perhaps less well known, unless you have an avid interest in historic photography, such as these:

On a creative level, these have been really wonderful to discover. My friend emailed me with the title 'best photography ever', and I think in some ways, he's right. I found them very clever and immensely enjoyable to view. What Mike Stimpson has done, is demonstrate that with a bit of inventiveness, we can create something fresh.

Similarly to the post earlier this week about Vivaldi's Four Seasons, I feel, what Mike Stimpson has done for me, is reignite my interest and love for images that have become so well known to me, that I don't really 'see' them anymore.

  Through his love for lego and photography, he has create a visual dialogue - one in which we are asked to revisit the original work with a new found sense of  enquiry and inquisitiveness.

Iceland Airwaves Music Festival

I'm heading out to Reykjavik tomorrow for the Airwaves music festival. I am soooo excited, you can't possibly know just how much I am looking forward to this event.

I thought that tonight I should post something in relation to the Airwaves music festival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVgOohc6v10&width=400

For me, music and photography are so closely related.

I started off in life as a budding musician who migrated fully to photography around the age of 30. I see parallels between the creative processes involved in both, so much so, that I don't consider myself a 'photographer', but more a 'creative person'.

Badges can be limiting at times.

It's important to be around inspiring people, and what better way to do that, than by attending a music or photography festival.

I'll leave you with Samaris' song 'góða tungl'. A song of great depth, that comes from a group of teenagers - yep - they're in their late teens. I think this perhaps illustrates the tip of the iceberg (pun not intended) with regards to the quantity of musical talent in Iceland, or predominantly Reykjavik. I find this immensely surprising because the town is small - with only 110,000 people there, it's such a powerhouse of musical creativity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pKuzdMFE8k&width=400

I think of Reykjavik as one of the biggest small towns I know, and I'm extremely grateful to have a profession and lifestyle that allows me to come to Iceland so frequently.

The town and country have become a home from home for me.

I think when you do as much travel as I do, the world shrinks in a way, and places that seem exotic or rare take on a familiarity that is homely. Distance soon evaporates and I'm left with a residue that is the emotional experience of getting to know a place.

It's hard to explain, because traveling so much is not as glamorous as you may think.

It can sometimes feel as though you are living in a constant state of detachment and you may find yourself wishing for a slice of home. I think with the right attitude though, and enough time visiting places, they soon lose that foreign element and begin to feel like a familiar haunt. A local landmark if you like.

But, instead of the local landmark being a few miles away, it is a plane ride away. It is only through familiarity and frequency of visits, that distance becomes irrelevant, and through this, the true nature of what a place means to you, begins to surface.

So tomorrow I go home to Reykjavik. A home from home :-)

What should we be asking?

A few days ago, I sent out my monthly newsletter. I got several replies back asking me to provide more technical data or technical workflow to my images. It was interesting to see these emails come through, as I've never had this kind of response before to my newsletter.

So I thought about why this might be. I came up with a few conclusions. One was that I had recently released a few e-books which are more technical than my usual offerings. One is about how to interpret images using Photoshop as your image editor of choice. The other e-book is more about how to look for clues in the structure of an image, as this will often guide the way forward in how you choose to edit your work. Both e-books attracted a lot of attention and there were a lot of sign up's to my newsletter.

So I wondered if the reason why I got emails asking me for more information on what ISO i'd used, exposure time and aperture, were maybe tied to the recent interest in my technical e-books.

I've been thinking about how much use it would be to provide ISO and exposure times for the readers of my newsletter. I believe  the answer is 'not much'. This of course is partly a reaction on my part to not wanting the technical side of  photography be the emphasis. I believe photography is first and foremost an emotional response to our surroundings. I see it as an emotional pursuit.

So I've been thinking about what I could possibly offer in the way of information about the images contained in my newsletters, that might aid in helping others gain better understanding. What I think we should be asking when we want to know more about a photograph, is 'what motivated you to make this image?', 'what did you latch onto?'. Was it the subject matter? or was it the speed of the clouds racing over the landscape? Was it perhaps the quality of the light in that particular area of the scene? We should be asking about the photographer's motivation.

I do feel that when others ask for technical info, they're really trying to get underneath the construction of the image. They wish to know how it came about, and an emotional language is often at a loss to do that. For example, me telling you that I thought the light was very soft and beautiful, and that I felt there were elegant curves and shapes in the scene drew me to that particular are of the scene - doesn't translate well. On the other side of the coin, being able to talk in a language that we all understand - such as 'I used a 30 second exposure and f22' certainly provides clarity and fact to an image (if I could remember the technical details - which I don't because I use film, so meta data isn't recorded). But it's missing the mark entirely.

I think language about emotions can be too broad, too intangible at best when describing the creative process. That is why I think people ask for technical data. It is at least a common language that we all understand. It is factual, and although on the surface it may appear to give answers to our questions, the real questions are often still left unsaid and as a result, unanswered.

So much talent, for such a small country

I'm in Reykjavik this week. I've just been to a local record store - 12 Tonar, which is no ordinary record store. It is also a music label for upcoming Icelandic musicians and bands.

I've just had the most inspiring afternoon in there. Firstly, the guy who runs the store has little CD players all over the place, and you're encouraged to just pick up an album and put it on and listen. Needless to say, I've just left the store with around six CD's of music that sounded really wonderful to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJlPLOJxAbs&width=400

What I would like to know is, why has such a small country - with a population of around 330,000 people, have such an amazing array of musicians and bands? It seems I am hearing about new music from there almost every week.

What is it about Iceland that the country is producing such an array of music?

I would love to think it's due to the landscape.

[vimeo 37124408 w=400]

I feel though, that it has more to do with the remoteness and identity of icelandic people. There is something very unique about Reykjavik. The downtown section of the 'city' (more like a rustic little town), has a vibe about it - it's very bohemian. It's like a place designed by artists, for artists to live in. Perhaps Iceland is a place for artists?

I wondered today, if I could live here. Being from Scotland, I find our winters pretty long..... and Iceland is one further step on from that. So I'm not so sure if I could do it. And this led me on to think about how where we are from, and what we experience in terms of climate, can shape and mould us.

I know for sure, that Scotland has moulded who I am. So I know that growing up and living in Iceland would have certainly moulded the musicians here, and their music.

As a creative person, I'm aways wondering how much my photography would have differed, if I'd grown up somewhere else. Surely I wouldn't be the same person I am now? We are definitely a product of our environment.

Approaching Silence

In my post from a few days ago, I suggested that as part of the 'searching' we do as photographers, we tend to make many interpretations of the same subject.

I love to do this even with subjects that, on the surface,  seem to offer very little opportunity to do anything more, other than the obvious.

What may appear to need only one shot to covey a message, seems to spur me on to go looking for something more.

Take the images here of Laguna Colorada in Bolivia. One could be forgiven for thinking that there is possibly only really one image to be made here. There is no background or foreground subject matter and there are no interesting rocks to place in the foreground. So why would I shoot more than one 'interpretation' of it?

I believe the answer has to do with how we react to each image emotionally. The subject matter may be similar, but through variances in tonality and form, the emotional message is different.

I didn't need to change the composition too dramatically between both images. All I had to do, was watch and listen to the changes inside of me, as the light altered the landscape before me.

I could argue that having less material in front of my lens to shoot, made this a much simpler task to do. The less visual stimulation we have to process, the easier it is for us to notice changes, especially if they are small ones.

I was torn as to which image to choose as a candidate for the final portfolio. I decided to select both. Although to some, it may seem as though I have already told the story once, and need not do it again, the truth is that for me, both these images speak to me in different ways.

I believe that when we are making images of the landscape, our emotions tend to mirror the variances in light, shade and tone that we encounter. We are emotional beings and we are responding to our environment all the time. Light and colour are sounding boards, used to reflect back to us what we are feeling.

Some people talk about images being quiet, tranquil. Others will describe images as tense or relaxed. When we do this, we are essentially describing ourselves, how we feel as we respond to the work we are viewing. The photograph is not calm, you are. The photograph is not tense, you are. Good photographers know this deep down and they understand how colour and tone can be used to affect our moods and our feelings, just like a musician knows he can affect our moods by playing a minor or major chord.

For me, I felt I was trying to convey a sense of 'approaching silence'. Each iteration that I made whilst at the edge of this lake felt like an attempt to get closer to this notion. Ultimately, I was attempting to capture a mood, a feeling. Unwittingly, I was attempting to capture my very own thoughts.

September's here again....

Possibly my most favourite month. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because of the equinox. I can feel the nights getting shorter already as summer turns into winter. It's a special time.

I think that being aware of the seasons as they change, is really fundamental to being a landscape photographer.

Music is by David Sylvian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op4UHbillk4&width=400

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.

New e-Book - 'The Digital Darkroom'

The Digital DarkroomImage Interpretation Techniques

£9.99 

I'm very pleased to announce the release of my new e-book ' The Digital-Darkroom'. This e-book is concerned with the art of image manipulation. Please read on.

As part of my photographic workshops, I like to spend time with the participants each day, doing image reviews. My image reviews are not just about commenting on composition or exposure - as part of the afternoon critique sessions, I also show how I would approach editing the work at hand.

I'd been wanting to expand on this for some time, and had thought that running some digital-darkroom workshops later this year would be the best way forward. I was surprised to see that the demand for such a workshop was very poor. I think this is because many people hold the belief that photography is mainly about being out in the field and learning the art of capture.

A great deal of work goes into creating good images out in the field, but just a much care and attention should go into the editing stage. I find the digital-darkroom an essential component of the image making process and it's a highly creative environment to get immersed in.

Good editing is not an easy thing to do. It requires years or learning to get good results and I've been learning for over a decade, and each year I learn new things.

Anyway, as part of my preparation for my digital-darkroom workshops,  I decided to put what I know about editing images  into an e-Book format, and began working on this a year ago. Only, the way to convey what I wanted, seemed to evade me. It only became clear to me once I'd written the 'fast-track to Photoshop' e-book how best to approach this subject. I realised I need not worry about the technicalities of how to edit work, and could instead focus on the real questions - what to edit and why.

So this ebook is application neutral. In fact, I don't mention any applications at all. It's all about looking at the underlying structure of images - how they work, and how to edit them based on this knowledge. This is all done with one aim: to convey that image editing is not a case of 'twiddling the knobs until it looks good', but instead, is more a considered study of what the image has to offer.

You'll find a comprehensive list of contents to the e-book below. I do hope you enjoy this e-book, as It has been a very long labour of love for me.

£9.99 

Table of Contents _____________________________

Part 1 Image Interpretation reading the structure of an image

Photographic Interpretation the de-construction of scenery

How does your eye move around an image? your eye tends to enjoy images if it can scan diagonally

Image Flow Overview leading your eye through the image

Image Flow Interruptions reducing the effect of flow blockages - the eye is attracted to dominant bright tones

Image Flow Interruptions reducing the effect of flow blockages - the eye is attracted to dominant dark tones

Image Flow Interruptions the eye is attracted to high contrast areas of the scene

Image Flow Interruptions the eye is distracted by conflicting or overly demanding colours

Image Flow Interruptions rotating an image horizontally can often reveal compositional imbalances

Image Flow Interruptions turning an image upside down can often reveal compositional distractions

Summary feeling on edge means something is wrong

________________________________________________

Part 2 Case Studies Image Interpretations

Tonal Balance Overview balancing one part of the frame with another

Tonal Balance 1 balancing sky with ground

Tonal Balance 2 grading the foreground

Tonal Balance 3 diagonal balancing

Tonal balance 4 a tunnel of light

Tonal balance 5 tonal dominance

Tonal Balance 6 emphasising horizons

Tonal Balance 7 the inverted tonal balance

Flow & Localised Contrast creating flow through an image & somewhere for the eye to settle

Flow Introduced by Burn-In creating flow through the use of burning in

Localised Presence bringing presence to particular objects

Localised Contrast cementing tonal relationships

Localised Saturation / Desaturation desaturating areas of the frame to reduce distraction

Vignettes give them more thought than usual - they’re very creative

Creative Vignette localised presence

A Parting Thought - going full circle there should be little difference between what you do in the darkroom, and what you do out in the field

£9.99 

---

Image Selection in the digital darkroom

As I'm nearing the end of writing my 'Digital Darkroom' ebook, one or two subjects have come to light which I feel I should include. So I'm back to adding these ideas into the text at the moment. One such topic I feel is needed in the book, is a discussion on the implications of choosing certain images over others to work on. What this can mean to our work in general, and the kinds of pitfalls that can come forth from a lack of consideration for the work you decide to ignore over the work you do choose to use.

So here are my tip key points I feel that should be observed during the 'selection process' if you have such a thing. Maybe you just react to particular images, and give little thought to the ones you've discarded? Let's see.....

You are a different person each day

I guess this is my no.1 mantra, when it comes to choosing images to work on. I never consider that my 'selection' is final. What I chose one day, may leave me cold the next. I am considerate to the fact that I may have got it wrong the previous day, so I'm always open to reviewing the work again, and considering different shots. Also, I think that once I've been through all the images I've shot a few times, a particular 'story' begins to form in my mind as to how the completed set of images are going to work out. I get a feel for the overall character. This is a great way to work, but it can also be limiting because once you've set things in stone, its hard to see another story in your unedited work. So I like to go back and review, and I do this over a few days, or even a week or so down the line, I will look at the negatives again and realise there are others in the work that I overlooked for one reason or another. It's iterative, and I keep cycling back over the body of work over time to see if there's something I've missed. I know that Eliot Eriwtt for instance still scours contact sheets of work he made 40 years ago and still finds new images in there.... you are a different person each day. Use this to your advantage to see something new in older work.

Consider that this is not the only time you will visit this work

By accepting this as truth, it liberates you to do what you will with what you have chosen. It's so tempting to feel that what you have chosen is all there is, and this can force you to want to 'will' your selection of images to live up to your ideals of what you wished them to be, and not what they are. By accepting you will go over your negatives many times looking for work you missed, you open up your imagination to see what is there and work with what you've been given.

Decisions create paths. Going down one route may result in undesirable work

The birth of your work is a precarious endeavour. Each time we make a decision, we affect the final outcome of our work. Creativity requires you to be fluid because creativity flows. It does not sit and wait and it does not put the brakes on work that has a need to flourish. Sometimes I'm too hasty in going down a certain route though, and the further I go, the more uncomfortable I begin to feel. I've found myself on many occasions bin a complete editing session because I was not happy with how things were going. I now listen to myself. If the work is undesirable, I ask myself - is it the works fault, or is it my handling of the work? If it's the works fault - then I discard it. It's clearly not good enough to spend any time on. It might be a case of 'close but no cigar'. If on the other hand, I realise I'm tired, my creative vibes aren't where they should be, then I discard the editing session and leave my digital-darkroom work for another day. I go do something else more enjoyable. I've often found that returning to the original negative (with previous edits discarded) is a good way forward and approach the work with enthusiasm and a revitalised creative spark later on.

Emotional Investment shouldn't overrule

Sometimes after working on an image I'm really pleased with, I may find a better negative of the same location. Maybe the composition is better, or maybe the light is more dramatic. I give myself complete permission to work on this 2nd image. I don't let the first image (despite how good it is) dictate that there can't be another one that is perhaps better. I don't let myself become too emotionally attached to the first image. This is key to all work. A good artist needs to be able to be objective about what he does. This requires a strange mix of being very dedicated about what you do, but not letting your ego take you for a ride either.

 Be open, be fluid, be inquisitive

When I work on my own images, I like to leave them for a long time between shooting and editing. This I feel, gives me a sense of distance. This is really important to me, because this distance allows me to view my own work as if someone else had created it. If it's not my own, I can be more honest about it right? Yes. And also, because I really can't remember what it was I was trying to achieve with the work in the first place, I'm allowed to interpret it in any way I feel. An artist should be inquisitive. We should find surprise in what we do and investigate it. We should be flexible in how we approach our work, allow us to see new things in what we did. We need to be open to ourselves, because it's only when we are open, that creativity can flow.

Discreet Music

For a few weeks, while I was away in Bolivia and Patagonia, I had a little portable pair of stereo speakers for my iPod. I've had trouble sleeping of late, partly due to the change in time zones, climate, different beds each couple of days, and so on. I found Brian Eno's album 'Discreet Music' was ideal for listening to while I tried to sleep. I found it extremely soothing and it often fitted the background very well.

I read this about the album today on Wikipedia:

"The inspiration for this album began when Eno was left bed-ridden in a hospital by an automobile accident and was given an album of eighteenth-century harp music.^[2] After struggling to put the record on the turntable and returning to bed, he realized that the volume was turned down (toward the threshold of inaudibility) but he lacked the strength to get up from the bed again and turn it up. Eno said this experience taught him a new way to perceive music:

"This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music—as part of the ambience of the environment just as the color of the light and the sound of the rain were parts of that ambience."

I found this extremely interesting. Eno was forced to re-interpret the harp music in an unintended way. I often find many things are more interesting when used in an unintended way, and I think as a creative person, we should not just assume, but instead, we should enquire. This is what Eno did with his harp music, and I feel this is very much the main task of a creative person. We are enquirers. We engage with our subjects and we should question what is there, because without questioning, we may never see a new side, a new angle, or come across a discovery in our own art.

That alone is worth discussing. But let's move on to the main point for me - he decided to put an album together that was basically 'furniture music', music that was intended to fit as ambience more than anything. I often find other music like Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians is also perfect background ambience. But I think what got me in the last sentence in Wikipedia was Eno comparing the harp music as just another facet of his environment: it was no different from  the colour of the light or the sound of the rain.

In a way, shouldn't there be little or no separation between what we create and our environment? It is our environment that is our influence. We are a product of our environment, so why should be compartmentalise our creative time from the rest of our lives?

I know for instance, that many workshop participants tell me it takes them a few days to get their visual muscle working well while out making images. Perhaps I've had too much exercise in that department, but I see no reason why I can't always be thinking visually while I am not making images. Why should I compartmentalise this to something I do when I make images, and something I don't do, while I am watching TV, or driving?

I prefer not to compartmentalise. For instance, when I make images out in the field, I see no separation from the shoot, and the edit. In fact, I often feel as though I am iteratively going back and forth from editing and creating while I am on location, and I often re-compose the image through cropping once back at home. Putting a logical division in there, only gets in the way of what it is that I am doing - it is one never ending journey.

Currently, I have around 68 rolls of film from my recent trip to Patagonia and Bolivia away for development, but I don't consider the creative process stalled or stopped at the moment; they feel as if they are simply fermenting in my mind, waiting for the continuation of their birth to happen once they arrive back on my desk at home.

I certainly found listening to Discreet Music at a low volume was important. Too loud, and it dominated, but at the right volume, it integrated with my environment, and worked at a subliminal level. I was aware that something was being played, but my thought patterns weren't distracted by it.

I feel I have the same attitude whilst working on my images. And when I mean working on them, I mean the entire process - from out in the field, to back at the ranch in my digital darkroom: the process is one and the same thing for me. The process shouldn't be overly demanding. I shouldn't be overwhelmed at any stage, because this induces a form of stress. Stress is a form of blockage. Blockages have nothing to do with being creative, but more to do with writers block. To create, things must flow.

Creative people know that work has a way of surfacing. It may feel as if there was no intervention at times, because I think we tap into our subliminal states whilst we are in the creative mode.

Listening to music such as Eno's Discreet Music teaches me something. It taught me that my own mind is always working on things, even when I am not aware of it, and that when I think I haven't started on some work, that maybe the work is already underway in the back of my mind. I never really know how new work comes about, how it is created or where the source of it lies. All I know is that by being receptive to my subconscious, and by not putting boundaries or divisions up in my creative process (field work vs digital darkroom work for instance, or by thinking there are times for being creative, and times for when I shouldn't be), the work has a chance to flow.