ISBN Registration of 2nd Book

Today I just registered with Nielsen's (the ISBN people here in the UK), my second book. Here is a mock-up of the slip case cover for the book. I stress that it's a mock up, because I'm scheduled to go down to Nottingham to see my friend Darren Ciolli-Leach (who should really have a web site for his work), who is a graphic artist. Darren helped me put my first book together in Quark Express. It was a very enlightening experience for me to watch him do things very quickly, and his input was invaluable regarding layout, typeface and overall presentation. So I'm sure there will be some changes to the look and layout of the book once I've spent time with him (and his terrific two little boys), in April.

But I'm pleased to let you know that this book is similar in size to the first one, will come with a slip-case to protect the actual book. The slipcase will have a photo on it, just like the mock up you see above. The actual book will be 60 pages in total.

I'm not going to give you any more detail about the contents just yet, as it's quite different from my first book. But suffice to say that there is text in there, but it's more of a photographic journey diary than the first book.

On the subject of making books, and the finances involved in putting them together, If you knew how much it costs to put something of this quality together, you might have a mild heart attack. But the process of seeing your own work beautifully presented is such a nice thing to do. Books, in short, do not make money, but they are a very beautiful way to present what it is that you do. So if you've ever considered it, be aware that you won't get rich, but the project itself is a great way to give some closure to a particular project or perhaps make you see that you had the material for a 'theme' all along.

The first book has sold really well. We were able to recoup the costs of the book within six weeks of publication, which was a complete surprise to me, as we originally thought it might take around two to three years to do that. Sales are really steady at the moment and I think we're on target to sell out the entire edition in a year or two (my original plan was to try to sell out the edition over three years). Time will tell.

Anyway, the reason why I tell you all this, is that I felt that doing a 2nd book would only be a viable option if we'd had good success with the first one. As it turns out, that's just what's happened, so I'm really excited to tell you about the plans for this one.

Of course, things can change quite dramatically between now and the end of the year, but at the moment, everything is pointing towards a November release.

For the preface, I have someone very special in mind, but they're proving rather difficult to track down just now!

I will keep you posted.

Nature does not conform to timetables

Last night we had the biggest blizzard on the Lofoten islands (read Blizzard, not Lizzard!). It was so bad, that there was zero visibility on the roads and there were a few moments when I had to stop the car in the middle of the road, because I simply couldn't see where I was going.

Needless to say, my flight and the following three other ones got cancelled. I've been to Lofoten a few times now, always in Winter, and not had any cancellations, but even the locals were saying the weather conditions were something else last night.

So I'm stranded here in Norway until Thursday, and will be spending a lot of free time roaming around Bodo, which seems like a nice town (i've only ever seen it in the dead of night when coming in from Oslo en-route to Lofoten).

But if you're reading this and thinking 'sounds terrible', then you should also consider that the reason why the Lofoten is so amazing to photograph in winter, is precisely because of the dramatic shifts in the weather. If you want to shoot dramatic light, then you have to do it at the edge of a storm, and storms mean bad weather. They also mean unpredictable weather, and it's this unpredictability that you have to accept (and to some degree - hope for). Things won't always go according to plan and having an open mind to this, and the surprises it might give to your photography is a start, but you also have to consider you might not get home on time either.

So if you are considering going anywhere like Lofoten in winter time (maybe Alaska, or even the Scottish Highlands), it's always worth giving yourself plenty of contingency time to change flights if need be.

We've become too used to having things work on time, and in my own case, I've just been reminded that nature does not conform to timetables.

Do you want to come to Eigg this April?

UPDATE: This trip is now SOLD OUT. I've had a last minute cancellation for my Eigg workshop this April (dates are April 23rd to the 28th).

This is an extremely popular trip, so if you had wanted to come, you'll have noticed it was sold out for some time. Well, now's your chance to take up the cancelled space :-)

You can book the last space here.

End of Lofoten Photo Safari

Today was the last day of my little photo-safari trip with a group of 4 to the Lofoten Islands.

These shots were made during last March and December's trips. March's trip had a lot of dramatic snow storms, while December's trip was calm and serene. This February was a mixture of both, and I felt that I captured a lot more scenes that weren't presented to me during my last two trips.

We had a terrific time, and the weather really played ball - ranging from still reflections in the Reinevågen fjord over a couple of mornings, to blizzards where we were still out shooting in the most veiled light. It seems, that just about any kind of light here, is good light.

I'd like to say a big thank you to Lilian at the guesthouse 'det gamle hotellet' in Reine for our stay. Lilian is an excellent host. Good company which I'm sure everyone on the trip will attest to, as well as a great cook too. Each day we had a really nice breakfast and found all our packed lunches for the day ready to go before we'd even got up from the table.

So I'd like to thank Celena from Australia, Mike from England, Peter from Switzerland and Steve from Canada for coming along on this trip - some of them made some pretty big journeys to join me here. They were very good company, and I had a really nice time too running the trip and showing them some of my favourite locations in Lofoten.

Aurora in Lofoten, Norway

I'm in Lofoten, Norway right now, with a small group, and we had a really great Aurora display last night. In the image below, you can see the aurora behind our little guesthouse that we are staying in, right in the center of Reine.

Thanks to Peter Boehi for letting me use this picture.

We're having the most beautiful light each day too. So the trip is going well and I'm really enjoying showing everyone around Lofoten.

The art of not slipping!

I've been spending quite some time in the cold places of late. Well, ok, I seem to have a thing for cold places, and can't stay away from them. But when I was in Iceland this January, whilst getting out of the 4x4 I'd rented, I managed to fall straight onto my back because I'd slipped on some solid ice.

Shooting in winter has this possibility - a lot. There is the occasional bit of ice, and sometimes it can be really slippy out there. So I was looking for something that would be useful while I'm out and about, but at the same time be quick and easy to put on. I also wanted something that I could pack away very compactly into my camera bag.

I'm sometimes walking on thick snow, so the usual Petzl shoe crampons (designed for walking on pavements) are pretty useless. So too, it seems are Yak Tracks, as my photo friend found after losing them at Jokulsarlon beach in Iceland.

I settled on a pair of kahtoola microspikes. Fell runners use them - they're quick to slip onto your shoe / boot, and they are flexible enough to be scrunched up into a small ball and stored in your camera bag somewhere. I've used them in Norway this week and found them terrific for those bits where there was ice or compacted snow - on hill sides, beaches, roads, etc.

They do have a down side - unlike a proper crampon, they do not have an anti-ball plate. An anti ball plate is a rubber sole that pops any snow off the boot's surface, so that the spikes remain clear to make contact with the ground. The Kahtoola's aren't crampons, but a rubber mould that hugs the boot and has small spikes in the base - they're very effective for a terrain that is not hard-core. So I don't consider the lack of an anti-balling plate a bad thing - just something you need to be aware of.

I have a pair of Grivel G10 crampons at home. They're designed for the hills, and tough gradients - something I don't need for the bit of walking around on relatively flat ground whilst making photos. Crampons require a lot more time to put on your foot and strap on securely. They can also do a lot of damage to your leg if you're not familiar with using them. The spikes on crampons are intended for heavy duty mountain climbing and steep gradients. Unlike the kahtoola's, they're a much more serious proposition and not a good idea for just the occasional bit of stability when encountering a bit of compacted snow. So if you're on the lookout for something to stop you slipping in thick snow and ice, also to help you get into icy streams or rivers and keep your footing, then the kahtoola microspikes are my recommendation.

Regarding boot wear, I should let you know that I prefer tradtional leather walking boots. I've used Scarpa M3's for years. I  have two sets of them because I like them so much. So long as I prime them with Sno-Seal every now and then (stick them in the oven first to heat up the leather as it helps the sno-seal sink in), they are a robust, comfortable, waterproof boot for walking around in boggy terrain (something I tend to do a lot of these days).

I'm not a fan of gore-tex, and if I'm expecting to have my boots submerged into a foot of brackish water, then it would have to be a solid, leather boot like the Scarpa's. The sole is also very solid, so I feel very secure when walking around on rocks and other unstable terrain.

ps. yes, those are my fine ankles you see in the shot above!

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).

Pareidolia during the act of image creation

Pareidolia:

"a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant"

- Wikipedia.

Following on my post a few days ago, where I described how I like to abstract a scene into some meaningful story (in this case, I let my imagination interpret a piece of ice on the shore as an animal that was attempting to reach the water), I'd like to discuss another image I shot whilst in Iceland this January.

I'm always seeing faces in clouds, in stones or in abstract patterns. It actually has a name - pareidolia. Pareidolia is slightly different from anthropomorphism (my friend Mike Green wrote a really nice article about it on his blog, which you might care to read).  Pareidolia is described in wikipedia as 'a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant'.

I think most of my image making I would identify with as a reaction to  'perceiving something as significant'.

I'm sure on a subconscious level, I see shapes and patterns that work to make good compositions, and I also see the shapes of animals in static objects such as stones, clouds on in the case of the image above - ice. When I made the image above, I wasn't really aware of the ice-walrus playing with the ice-beach-ball. I was just attracted to the scene as 'something significant', and it's that essence I feel, that is at the heart of most image making. We have to feel that what we are shooting has resonance .

Again, I'm wondering how much psychology is involved as a deep undercurrent to my image making decisions. Am I directing the camera, or is there something deep within my mind, directing me?

As I said a few days ago, I like to make up little stories about objects I find in a landscape. by doing so, I'm able to work with them more closely and understand how they live within the landscape. I don't simply choose any old rock, because 'it will do', I choose one, because it has a character - because it has directed me to do so.

I think that this is all very obvious, but through my workshops, I'm aware that others simply don't feel these things or see them.

By being able to feel something significant in the landscape, and let it take on a persona that we can relate to, I think we are practicing a form of pareidolia. We must be able to lose ourselves in a dream world and let things be conveyed in a less than literal way. It is part of the creative path.

Le Voyage Dans la Lune

This week, the french music band AIR released a new album - a soundtrack to accompany the recently reconstructed hand coloured version of the 1902 film 'Le voyage dans la lune'. The hand coloured version was found in a decomposing state in the early 90's, and it's taken some time to fully restore it - frame by frame.

I think this must have been a terrific project for AIR to work on. As creative people, having a defined goal in mind when they set out to create the new sound track - something new to fit something old, must have been a really interesting experience for them. I understand that they preferred to do the entire recording live, so that the music had a more fluid feel to it.

I'm of the opinion that writers block is what comes from setting the bar too high for your own abilities, but it can also be a symptom of not having anything in mind which is inspiring to work on. I've not seen an album from AIR for a few years now, and I might be talking out of turn here to suggest that they've been taking a break, wondering where to go next with their creative force. I think making a new soundtrack for 'Le Voyage Dans La Lune' has probably been an extremely cathartic experience for them, and a break from working on the usual album/tour/album/tour routine.

If you don't know about AIR, and like to hear something quite atmospheric and mellow, then the last video here is a clip of one of their first hit-albums. It's got quite a retro feel to it - as if it might belong to the 70's.

I like the idea of mixing the past with the present. It can bring some very interesting results. I think that's why I love to shoot film, and use old film cameras such as my Hasselblads, Mamiya 7 and Contax 645. From the past we get things that work, that are classic, and tried and tested. We know they will stand the test of time. While from the present we get what we're thinking and feeling now.

I don't like fads, because they become dated too quickly, and so, if I were to work on some material, I would use methods that I know are tried and tested, classic even, and by simply using them, they still speak very much of 'me', only I'd like to think they will also have a classic feel to whatever it is that i'm creating.