Perhaps the nicest Iceland photographic book?

I'm just home from Iceland. It was a great trip, with lots of snow, ice, and hardly any rain. On my way home, whilst sitting in Reykjavik airport, I came across Daniel Bergman's new book 'Iceland Landscapes'. It's a beauty.

I've known about Daniel for some time. He is perhaps Iceland's most prominent landscape and nature photographer, but I've never met him in person. I do however, know a lot of workshop participants who have been on his trips (and mine), and have said very good things about him. I must add, that this is quite rare: I seldom hear good things about most photographic tutors, which is a shame, but it does mean that the good ones stand out. Daniel by all accounts, gives a good expedition throughout Iceland, and since it's his homeland, I've always thought he must know it very well.

So it was with little surprise that I found this book sitting on a shelf in the duty free tax shop in Reykjavik airport. I knew of Daniel as primarily a nature photographer, so I wasn't prepared to see a really beautiful collection of images, covering the entirety of Iceland, so well presented and laid out. Daniel it seems, has been working very hard the past five years gathering this fantastic collection of images together.

For me, it did several things;

1. It made me realise, that being a non-native of Iceland, it would be very hard for me to collect such a great collection of images of Iceland that cover everything from the south to the west fjords, and also the interior, displayed through all the seasons.

2. But because of this acknowledgement, his book gave me a lot of inspiration to realise that I've only just touched the surface of Iceland, and I really must return as much as I can in future.

3. Iceland is an *amazing* landscape. No two ways about it.

Daniel's book is beautifully presented. It is a lovely showcase for Iceland, and if I were in the position to be thinking about venturing off to Iceland to find out more about it, I would consider this a great introduction, with coffee table substance for repeat viewings. It's a beautiful, book.

The foreword is by David Ward, who is, in his own right, a very talented Large Format UK based Photographer. Daniel has chosen his introduction writer well for his book.

If you'd like to order a copy, Daniels' book is self published, and can only be obtained from his web site here.

I recommend it very, very highly indeed.

Temperature Problems in Iceland

This week I'm in Iceland, and it's gorgeous here right now. Plenty of snow, and today we have a clear sky.

I'm writing this post about my equipment, and just how terrible things are working out for me right now. I brought two camera systems with me - my trusty Mamiya 7II camera, and also a rather mint Hasselblad 503CX which is an addition to my existing Hasselblad 500CM (that I bought from my good friend Lynda over a year ago). I've fallen in love with the Hasselblad system and it's been a real joy working in square format - I think the change from thinking in 5:4 is as good as a rest for me.

But I have to say, that if you're considering taking any camera equipment into some extremely cold landscape for extended periods of time, you might want to get it serviced or checked out first. I've had both cameras completely freeze up in -2ºc conditions, which I don't think is too much to ask of the equipment. The biggest hassle, has been the entire Hasselblad outfit.

It seems that the film backs are not working properly. They don't wind the film on evenly in the cold, and my 50mm wide angle lens seems to cause the body to jam, and I have to push the lens onto the body to make the mirror go up. A second film back advances properly, but in the cold, it does not stop at frame 1, instead, it doesn't indicate anything as to the current position, and before I knew it, I had wound on a fresh roll right to the end!

From reading forums on the Hass system, it seems a regular maintenance plan is what's required. I have to admit though, that using camera equipment in cold conditions can exacerbate a condition that wasn't so obvious when working under normal temperatures.

I managed to slip on some solid ice (hidden by a dusting of snow), and so my Hasselblad Lee adaptor ring (which got my vote for most rubbish piece of equipment I've ever bought) bit the dust and shattered into several pieces. I really love the Lee filter system, but their standard 'plastic' adaptor rings are really awful and they should be ashamed selling something that does not let the holder system go on (without the use of a pen knife to reshape the adaptor ring).... it doesn't work, and they charge you £40 for the privilege too. I would love to buy a wide angle adaptor ring for the Hasselblad, but they don't make them (all wide angle adaptor rings are precision made, and made of metal - so they do the job they're intended for).

And then there's my new Gitzo tripod. Two legs are jammed solid, and trying to unscrew them just makes the rubber grip slide around the leg. I'm sure what's happened is that the grease inside the collar has leaked onto the legs, and the temperature has made the grease thick and unmoving. So I have the tripod lying right next to a radiator at present.

All this is making me feel rather frustrated and defeated in a way, that is similar to how I felt when I came to Iceland in Summer. I remember feeling that things weren't going well, and that I'd have nothing to show for my efforts. So I'm just wondering if my films will prove me wrong when I get them processed.

One thing is for certain. Both cameras as going to the Hospital for a check up, servicing. As for my tripod, well.... we will see. I think yet another tripod purchase is on the cards.

New Years Aurora

Happy new year! On new years eve, I visited Jokulsarlon glacial lagoon with friends that I'm traveling with. We had been told there was a very good chance we'd see the Aurora - our host at the place we're staying at seemed very certain we would see the Aurora. We checked the Aurora sites and they said there was a moderate chance of seeing it.

We went just before new year came, and spent about one hour out in the dark, not entirely sure if what we were seeing was cloud lit up by the half-moon, or if it was Aurora we were seeing.

My good friend Lilian who lives in the town of Reine, in the Lofoten islands, explained to me a few weeks back on a visit to Norway, that the Aurora is always seen coming from the north, so last night, we positioned ourselves to the south of Jokulsarlon, to face north.

Almost immediately upon stopping the car, we saw a band of bright cloud in the north, but we weren't sure it was Aurora. It is only recently that I've been told the following points about Auroras:

1. Most of the time, they are faint. The full blown ones you see in many photos are exceptional circumstances.

2. Because of the cones/rods in our eyes, we can't detect the green colour in the faint Aurora too well (if at all - they just looked like faintly illuminated clouds to my eye).

Of course, the other most important aspect about Aurora is this; you need a lot of solar activity for them to happen. They are not caused by the cold weather, and they are not often on display. In a nutshell - there is no guarantee that you will see them.

But last night, we had a clear sky, and once we'd set up some cameras to shoot what we thought might be moon lit cloud / Aurora, we saw on the back of my friend Lynne's 5DMK2 a very distinct Aurora band reaching across the north of the sky.

I've had camera malfunctions all day. Through poor judgement, I took away a recently bought Hasselblad 503 camera which is constantly jamming - winder problems, lens mount problems, film back problems. Nightmare. So I've gone back to using my Mamiya 7II. Which the battery died as soon as we got to the lagoon last night. So I had to chance the battery in the darkness, and using a head torch, which wasn't ideal, as it's unwanted light pollution for those shooting around me.

Based on the exposures we worked out on my friend Lynne's camera, I was shooting Portra 800 at f4, with 1, 2, 4, 8, 12 minute exposures, since I did not have Portra's reciprocity graph at hand.

Anyway, we did indeed see the Aurora, and it has made me realise that I've most probably seen it many times in Scotland on a clear night. Only, I wasn't aware that what I was seeing was Aurora, rather than lit up clouds. Perhaps if the moon hadn't been out last night, I would have been able to detect the colour of it and be more certain of it when we noticed it. I'm not sure.

But it was a nice way to end 2011, which has been quite a year for me.

Torres del Paine Park ravaged by Fire

I'm in Iceland this week, currently in a nice chalet near Jokulsarlon glacial lagoon. It was a complete white out on the way here, with a lot of snow. The entire south part of Iceland looks amazing. Anyway, today I'm writing about some very tragic news about Torres del Paine national park in Chilean Patagonia. It is one of my most favourite places in the world. But as of a few days ago, 85 sq kilometres of the park has been ravaged by a fire, which the authorities are speculating may have been caused by human intervention.

Because of the nature of the park's weather systems, it is often extremely windy there, and if the place has been dry for an extended period of time, then any camp fire (fires are not permitted in the park) can wreak havoc in the area.

It's just such a real shame about Torres del Paine. It's such an amazingly beautiful park.

Now, of course, the fire could have been a completely natural event. The problem is though, that if we have beautiful parks, they should be shared and visited by people. But mistakes happen, people feel they're in control and know what they're doing, and then a mistake happens and a fire like this rages out of control. I don't know what the answer is for park conservation, but I certainly hope that it does not mean that some day, I can only enjoy some place like Torres from behind the glass of a tour vehicle, because legislation has gotten so tough, or we're being so 'nannied', that we can't possibly be responsible for our own actions.

I'll be visiting Torres del Paine this June, as part of a Winter photographic trip. It will be interesting to see the amount of damage in the park when I get there, but until then, I hope that the fires in Torres del Paine will be extinguished soon.

Back to Iceland

I'm heading back to Iceland today, for a week's long journey around the south side of the island. I last came to Iceland in June of this year, and spent three weeks wandering around the island with a terrible head cold, and a bad outlook on how I was doing in photographic terms because of how ill I felt. I'm feeling really good right now. Things have gone very well this year for me, the photography has been growing in a nice direction with the images I've created in Norway earlier this year, and also on my recent trip a few weeks back are making me feel very inspired. I'll be traveling with a nice heavy backpack / roll on trolley bag made by ThinkTank - I initially thought it was too heavy a bag for traveling with, but I'm growing to really appreciate it now, as it's great for getting a full Mamiya 7II and Hasselblad 500CM outfit around, and it converts to a reasonable backpack once on location (I do tend to leave some of the equipment back at the base though).

The Norway trip was something else, and I'm afraid I can't really write about it, until I have the films processed and I work on them in my little studio. And I've not had much free time to do that. So before I get round to working on them, I'm back off to Iceland to work on some new images of the south of the country. I believe there's a bit of snow there, but nothing too bad, or anything to make the trip hard to get around.

I'll write more once i have some more news, but until then, I hope you're all enjoying the festive break, or looking forward to the one at new year.

Visualisation & Xmas

Well Merry Xmas everyone, and if you don't celebrate Christmas, then I hope you are having a nice day all the same! So... the reason for my posting tonight (Christmas Eve) is to do with Visualisation. The 'art of seeing'. What comes to some people naturally, is also, something that some people grapple with and fail to grasp in their minds-eye. It's amazing for me to see how each participant on my workshops 'see's' very differently from each other, even to the point that I sometimes get challenged about how I make my images, because some folks don't see the compositions work the way I intended them to.

So I often find it very hard to explain visualisation to participants. To me, when I look at scenery, I see compositions all over the place. I'm able to abstract key components of the landscape, distill them down (well, I hope I do), to their simplest form. I don't say this to blow my own trumpet, but merely to illustrate that as a photographer, we should be able to cut a rectangle out of what is before us, and make an image out of it.

Not all beautiful scenery works well as a photographic image.

So tonight, I came across the little graphic you see above. Yes, it's from Google, wishing us all a merry xmas.

But I'd like to ask you - did you know it was Google before I told you?

My reason for asking is simple. I believe that if you're able to see that this is a google logo, before I even mentioned it, or maybe just after I set the context, then that means you're able to 'visualise'. Some photography-folks simply don't see things in a 'graphic' sort of way. I do, and I believe that most good landscape photographers are able to see the underlying skeleton in a logo, or a piece of scenery for that matter.

So 'seeing' a photograph requires us to abstract. To stop thinking of scenery as 'scenery', but as a painting, or a drawing, or a photograph. Being able to disengage our mind from what is really in front of us, and be able to extrapolate a different interpretation - one that will stand up as a 2D photograph, is a skill that most of us possess, but rarely acknowledge.

I leave this with you all for the Christmas season.

Take care, and enjoy the festive season!

ps. I'd like to ask you: what presents did you visualise for your Christmas? For me, that kind if 'visualisation' is no different from the way I 'see' images before me. It's all about exercising our imagination, I'm sure.

Thank You!

My first book has been selling well. As of a few days ago, we 'broke even'. We've so far sold quite a lot of the limited edition 'Loch Lurgainn' prints, and quite a number of the Deluxe editions too! For those of you that don't know just how much of a big deal that is, I'd just like to say that it costs an extremely large amount of money to get a book printed, and that's just the printing costs. Shipping cartons, printer proofs all add another dimension of costs to the project, and then there is the amount of time spent on writing, designing the book, and all the additional fine tuning that has to be done. But ultimately, it costs a small fortune to get a book of this quality printed. So breaking even, in just over one month of putting it on sale on my web site (the book is not for sale anywhere else), is a pretty huge deal to me.

so I just want to say a big thank you, to those of you  who bought the book so far.

The entire project has been a huge learning curve for me, and I took a lot of time looking into paper types, quality of cloth, and the layout of the book. I've had a lot of very nice comments from buyers about the book being a piece of art in it's own right. I'm very pleased with that.

The biggest worry for me, was the reproduction of my images. I did a lot of research into this area, and made sure I have a very tightly calibrated system to work on. This year I feel I achieved that, and I now also, as a result, have a very nice printing process at home too. But I went with a printer that I knew does excellent reproductions for other artists, and I think that was the biggest bonus. The print quality did not disappoint me one little bit, and I'm very picky.

So I just want to say thanks once again for supporting my 'art', and buying the book. I'm very pleased to now have a very nice book to offer people on my workshops, and future talks, and also, those that can't manage either of those, but would like to see my work in better reproduction than is possible on the web.

Now off to think about the 2nd book, which I'm already hatching a plan for. Keep your ears pinned back for news of a 2nd book, sometime later in the new year.

Moods and Light... Cont

I'm just back home from Norway, and I found it colder here in Edinburgh than I did in Lofoten. We had no storms while I was there, but that doesn't mean that Lofoten escaped some of the mad weather we've experienced lately. There is a lot of damage to the coast line, and some of the beautiful little red huts (Rorbu), have been damaged.

I'm glad I went to Lofoten this December. Each day was completely different in light levels, and this made a big impact on my mood each day. I know we respond to light in lots of ways, and we often express how we receive light by our own moods.

Some days were filled with gorgeous pink hues, that lit up the newly arrived snow. The locals told me that if it weren't for the recent snow, the days would be very dark indeed. The snow provides reflection of light and coupled with a cloudy sky, the light bounces around the landscape. I certainly noticed this, because the first few days there were so dark, miserable even, and I really felt as if was going to be a very long week in Lofoten. When the snow arrived, along with clearer skies, I found the day was so much brighter. But when I say brighter, it was still at the brightness level of dusk or dawn... yes, my eyes had become accustomed to experiencing low light, so any conditions where I saw colour or something that suggested 'white', gave me a heightened sense of contrast, but I knew that the new contrast levels I was experiencing each day were considerably lower than those I'd see normally.

By Wednesday, the sun was no long rising above the horizon, and therefore, it never set too. I had wondered how the light levels would be affected, and thought I would experience a constant twilight of extreme low light levels, but this too, did not happen.

In short, I felt this week was extremely productive and a great way to shoot the most beautiful parts of the day: Imagine a day where sunrise and sunset are separated by an hour or so, or in some cases, it seems that the entire day from 11am to 2pm is on constant long sunrise-set !

So I'm home for a week, but will be off to Iceland later this month, to catch up on some more shooting there.

Moods and Non-light

This was written at the beginning of this week. I'm currently back in the Lofoten islands, Norway. It is now a week later, and I've experienced so much different light than the kind I describe in the draft posting I wrote earlier this week, which I hope to share with you in a few days time. Until then, read on.....

This week, I’m back in Lofoten, Norway. Sunrise is at 10:50am and it set again at 12:57.

When my friend Lilian suggested I come here to experience Morkid (the dark time) I was intrigued. I thought it might bring some new dimension to how I look at things around me and how I perceive light in general.

Today is the first day that I’ve been outside with my camera. Because the sky is heavy with dark clouds, the entire landscape feels much more low in mood.

There were a few things that happened today, which I feel I’ve learnt about the light in Norway. It seems that everything here is the inverse of how I normally work with light. I favour cloudy skies because of the reduced contrast. Clouds also help light bounce around the landscape, making everything appear to be lit from the ground up. Clouds also make for interesting skies.

Here in Lofoten, there was so much cloud cover today that I felt really hemmed in. I had a feeling of claustrophobia and tiredness because the light levels were so low. However, the light levels at sunset appeared to be brighter, and I felt more alert and happier than I did during the middle of the day. I think this was because having such low light levels in the middle of the day felt very strange to me. It was as if my body clock didn’t quite know where to place itself, and once sunset began, it was as if I found my timing and things were back on track. It also however, felt brighter at sunset today, simply because the cloud cover dispersed and I was able to see colours in the sky. There were reds and blues that I had not detected during the low mood of the rest of the day, and as subtle as they were, I found my eye reaching for them.

My mood was also affected by what I experienced today. I had no idea that we could yearn for the sun so badly. I’ve only been here a few days, and I’m not aware of missing the sun just yet, so it was interesting to find that instead of wishing to photograph away from the sun, as is my normal practice, I wanted to chase where the sun was, keep heading for it, and also point my camera in its direction also.

I had never considered that we are like plants that need to be fed by the suns rays. Nor had I considered that the sun would be so central to my sense of wellbeing and belonging. Because there was so little colour today, when I did detect some very subtle shades of blue and red in the sky (almost non detectable), they had me routed to my spot, attempting to drink them in with my eyes. I felt that light and colour was out of reach, something just off shore, a little bit out of distance from me, and I looked upon them with a sense of wonder. I found my spirits were extremely uplifted by the spectacle of noticing some subtle colour in the sky.

I feel I’ve learned a little bit more about my attraction to light. When there is very little of it, what is there, behaves as a beackon, a source of inspiration and happiness to me. I seem to find my mood is immensely affected by light or the lack of it. I'm not surprised that there are many stories in the world where good and evil are signified by light and darkness.

Postscript: It's been a few days since I wrote this, and I've shot quite a lot of film, in very different light. Each day seems to be entirely different and I've seen dark days that were so dark I didn't really feel happy about things, to beautiful days with magenta skies and pink snow for 4 hours of daylight a day and it's been really stunning to shoot in it.

I took my Mamiya 7II system along with my Hasselblad 500CM with me to Norway, and I've not used the Mamiya at all. I'm really pleased to have found time to focus on getting into the Hasselblad. I find that the square aspect ratio is 'shaking up' my photography style a little and making me look differently at the landscape. I also like the entirely mechanical aspect of the camera. I've been making exposures into the minutes and even beyond 10 minutes at times here, and it's nice to know there is no battery drain happening while I do it. I'm feeling very enthused by the change of camera. I guess we all need to try new things once in a while, and certainly by using a camera with different features, or a different aspect ratio, it really does exercise the brain into working on compositions in a different way.

I still love my Mamiya 7II camera, and I won't be parting with it, but just like the Contax 645 system I have for making portraits, I feel that the Hasselblad this week has allowed me to expand what I do, and reach a little further into longer exposures and to think differently about composition.

pps. The sun is now rising at 11:30am and setting at 12:23pm!

Back to Lofoten

Tomorrow, I head to the airport, for a long overdue break. I know... you probably think that I simply spend all my time making images and having a great time. But the truth is that I spend all my time making images, and having a great time. Ok, only joking, the truth is, that I've hardly had any time this year to make my own images.

I have a photography workshop business to run, and that requires me to be there for my clients, and work with them while we're on location. Doing workshops is extremely satisfying, but also very demanding of my time, and once i'm done with a workshop, I'm often looking forward to heading home for some down time. So recently, I've been thinking that I don't often get the chance I'd like to make images.

So I'm heading back to Lofoten tomorrow for a break. I'm looking forward to catching up with my Lofoten friends whom I met through my friend Vlad earlier this year when I made the collection of images you see above. I love to mix my photographic trips with social occasions if I can, as I feel that since I became a full time pro, that I seem to spend my time away from friends and family a lot.

So I thought I'd leave you all with this little postcard of images that I shot last March. I don't think there will be any snow there, but certainly, a lot of very changeable light, not to mention late rises (yes!) as sunrise is around 11am and it sets around 3pm in the evening. Ideal really, as the best light is around sunrise and sunset, so with a schedule like this, there's not much waiting around.

I will be back in touch once I'm home. But I won't be back for long, as I'll be heading back to Iceland (very) late December to take advantage of the low light and shoot in the south east of the country. I feel I have two possible future projects for new books on the horizon, but I'll wait until the current book, which is more or less a retrospective of my work, has had a good chance to be viewed and enjoyed by you all.

Speak soon.