Do we really need High Dynamic Range?

Disclaimer: This was originally posted in 2013. I've updated it. 

Before I begin this posting, I wish to stress that this topic is specifically about landscape photography. I do believe high-dynamic-range is a feature much needed in many realms of photography. I've put this article together to really play devils advocate, and to hopefully make us think more about what we know about light, and whether working with narrow dynamic range systems is actually good for our learning and development as a photographer. 

Every once in a while, I get into a conversation with someone who says we no longer need grads, and is looking forward to the release of some new camera that claims to have more dynamic range than the current models available.

I'd like to put forward the argument that having less dynamic range is a good thing and that working with limitations is a good thing, indeed, I feel it has been of great benefit for me to work within the narrow confines of a film that typically has a DR range between 3 and 5 stops.

My reasoning for this is this: In my experience, good light tends to be soft light, and soft light tends to have a low dynamic range. Also, by working in a narrower band of light, you start to really 'see' more, and notice tonal responses in the landscape that won't work for you. In essence, you become more aware and also more selective about what you shoot. This, in my opinion can only be a good thing, as photography is really the art of learning to 'see'.

I've learned a lot about light because I had to figure out how to get all the tones of a scene into a limited dynamic range. I've had to go through the pain of shooting in crap light and getting my images home and realising they looked a lot worse than images shot in soft light.

I can fully appreciate that wanting to have a wider DR available would allow us to shoot more scenes, but I'm not convinced that those other scenes will be better. There is a reason after all why we tend to shoot during the golden hours and during overcast days: the light is soft and it tends to render more pleasing tonal graduations. Being able to work with a wide dynamic range may mean you can shoot more, but I'm not convinced the resulting work will be pleasing.

Perhaps the real issue at hand is this: we want to be able to shoot anything, at any time, the way we want.

I have always come at photography from the point that it is a life-long journey in learning to 'see' and finding out where the technical boundaries are, and how best to work within them. There will always be technical boundaries.

For me, I'm happy with my limited range film. I've often found great experiences are learned from working at the boundaries of any medium and I've often found limitations make me work better too. Working with a narrow band of light has taught me a great deal about which tones I can shoot and at what times it may be possible to do so, and under which kinds of light conditions. It has given me a sense of clarity and of focus to my work.

Because of this, I now specialise, rather than try to be a master of many things. My process is simpler: less choice means less decisions, and therefore, a clearer picture of where it is that I want to go.

Improvements in photographic skill are done in small steps. We need to notice changes, and for this to happen, we need the changes to happen in manageable bites for our mind to digest.

Learning what good light is does not come from having a flexible system that can handle all kinds of light. This kind of system encourages us to be lazy. Instead, we have to do the work, and earn the knowledge.

Black and White Canvas

Following on from my previous two posts (white Canvas and then Black Canvas) where I discussed the use of snow (white canvas) or black sand (black canvas) as a blank canvas in which to place isolated objects thus creating a simplified composition / photograph, it's time to talk about incorporating the two.

Of course, the title of this post suggests I'm talking about black and white photography. I'm not. I'm just amalgamating the previous two posts together. If you've not read them, then I suggest that you do, as they are really the foundation to where I'm going with all of this.

You see, for me, photography is not about great scenery. It's about tonal compositions. If we abstract a scene down to the basic building blocks we have tone and form. That's all we have. We don't have trees, we don't have rivers, we don't have beaches. Forget all those 'meaningful' handles we have for things out there in the world. They're really irrelevant and a massive distraction to what we're really doing in photography. So what is it that I think we're trying to do in photography?

Well, a number of things actually. But perhaps the most important one is that we're trying to make sense of the world, to distill what we see in front of us, down into a digestible, accessible message. We wish to compartmentalise what we see down into something we can understand, and that hopefully everyone else will too. We do this by using maths (spacial distances between related objects within the frame), and by mood (dark tones convey a sense of mystery or low feelings, while brighter tones are more uplifting and transparent).

But ultimately, everything we see within the frame is a tone. It is somewhere between absolute black and absolute white. I honestly wonder sometimes - if we could paint onto the sensors / film of our cameras what we want, we would. We're just dealing in tones.

So am I suggesting we all start working in black and white? Sort of, but not quite, but yes. I am.

Recently, while I was in Lofoten, one of my clients - John - was working with his D800 camera and I noticed he was working with his live-view screen set to black and white only.

I loved this.

To me it was the perfect summary of what it is we're trying to do as photographers.

What John was trying to do, was consider the tones in front of him. By removing the colour element, he was able to be more focussed on the tonal relationships before him, and the form they convey throughout the scene. By working with a black and white preview screen, he was abstracting.

Photographs aren't about scenery, they're about form and tone.

I began this discussion by presenting a white landscape (snow), to illustrate how we can reduce our photography down to the absolute zero in terms of content to a frame, and if we're good at it, we can make stronger images. I feel working in blank landscapes such as snow and beach locations can help us fine tune our photography. We start to realise we don't need much, and everything that is put into the frame should have a purpose.

Like Mark Hollis fromTalk Talk said "Before you play two notes learn how to play one note - and don't play one note unless you've got a reason to play it." The same holds true for photography. We must distill our image making down to what it really is, and it's not about scenery, it's about form and tone. Start with less form and work up from there is my advice.

Black Canvas

Several months ago, I wrote a blog posting about tonal relationships in photographs, and how dark areas of a frame create mystery. This was all spurred on by something I read in Galen Rowell's excellent book 'Inner game'. In it, he had envisioned a time in the future when something like HDR would arrive and he (correctly) suggested that with the power of such a tool, it would be very easy to remove all depth and mystery from an image. He died in 2001, so this was well before the advent of HDR.

But the main point that Galen wrote about in his article, was that he felt that dark areas of an image convey a sense of mystery, because as part of our primal instinct is to associate dark with danger. For example a dark cave or a dark forest would be considered a possible threat to our ancestors.

I bring all this up, as a precursor to what I'd like to discuss in this post.

Dark areas in a photograph should be considered as a welcome dimension, if they do not disturb the harmony of the rest of the image.

A few days ago, I discussed how using Snow in a photograph can create a sense of having a blank canvas, a space where the eye can float freely away (or over). Snow can simplify or distill our compositions down, reduce the landscape to the core elements that we wish our viewer to be attracted to. Similarly, black areas of a frame can be used in exactly the same way.

Take the above shot of my 'ice seal', shot in Iceland in 2011. Part of my attraction to a scene is often the lack of clutter around any interesting objects. This little sculpture was sitting on the beach separated from other ice debris. The black beach acts as a kind of 'filler' or blank canvas, pretty much in the same way as snow does. If anything it seems that there is a rule here - large areas of black act exactly the same way as large areas of white snow do. What this comes down to is recognising that spaces we encounter in a landscape can be put to just as much good use as the main objects of interest. If a photograph could be compared to a musical score, we would say that it's not just the notes of the melody that are important, it's the spaces between them as well.

I've always been intrigued that most photographers go looking for scenes with far too many things going on in them. It seems to be a natural conclusion that when we first think about landscape photography, we think about what we want to include in a shot, and seldom do we consider what we wish to exclude. Composing is partly an act of editing on location.

But when we do find good compositions, it's often because we have isolated out a few key objects in the scene for interest. It takes us a lot longer to learn to really see all the remaining clutter that was also present in the scene. So often do we return home only to discover that the scene we recorded, contains additional distracting elements that we never saw whilst there. This happens because we are selective in what we choose to 'see' at the point that the image was made. It takes years to begin to really see beyond what we have been attracted to, and notice subtexts. So in essence, landscape photography is a difficult thing to master, mainly because we have decided to start off with too many things competing for our interest within the frame. This is at odds with how many people find empty landscapes intimidating. I've often heard participants express a feeling of being overwhelmed by too little going on in the frame, when I have often believed that the less you have to worry about - the easier it should be to make an effective photograph.

Blank empty spaces in our landscape should be considered as inviting spaces to work in. They should be easy to work with, rather than hard, because we are trying to juggle a lot less than we would be, if we had to worry about numerous objects, each with their own conflicting shapes and tones.

Lastly, let's consider what a black canvas is for us, compared to a white canvas. I find snow scenes generally uplifting. The degree of bright tones within the frame convey a sense of openness and transparency. Darker images, like my 'ice seal' photograph do not. The adage that 'white reveals, and black conceals' is true. Black presents a less optimistic mood, and I often feel the images convey a less uplifting mood to them. So tones are an important element of our compositions, but I often feel they aren't considered until we are back home, viewing our image on a screen. It seems that while we are out in the landscape, we aren't entirely able to convert what is in the frame of our camera's eye piece into an abstraction (i.e photograph). We're still holding on to the notion of scenery to a degree. We may recognise objects, shapes and patterns and may have constructed a meaningful composition around what we've found, but all too often, we don't recognise the tonal aspects of what we have. A tree line across a snowy landscape can look like a line of trees while we are there, but when we're back home looking at the image on a computer screen, we see a black caterpillar crawling across a white piece of paper. Our line of trees have turned into something all together different from what we saw, because we did not understand that trees will render muddy and dark when encompassed by a much brighter tone (in this case, snow).

Maybe that's something for a further post.

White Canvas

Last year, on my Bolivia trip, Jezz said to me 'it's not that you like snow Bruce, it's just that you like white'.

I think Jezz hit on something with his humorous comment.

I do like white.

Over the past few years, as my photographic style has simplified, it's as if that 'white' that Jezz speaks off, has become something I seek, because it has a few properties about it that I find are an aid to my compositions and inspiration.

Like a blank canvas, these white spaces allow me to reduce the content of the frame down to the most elemental building blocks. Less objects in the frame can often suggest a much simplified view.

But these white spaces also allow the objects that I do include in the frame to be more separated out; for them to have breathing space around them. This breathing space implies a sense of calm to the photograph.

Snow is the epitome of space and 'nothingness'. Which is why I think I'm often attracted to the colder regions. There is something unblemished about Snow and Ice. It rarely has the mark of man on it, and through it, we are allowed to place upon it our own visions of what is or isn't there. And that's what space in photographs does for us - it allows us to have more freedom to conjure up our own thoughts and dreams.

So although Jezz thinks I like white, I really like space. Space in a photograph allows for things to be more calm. Space also allows for the image to be more simplified. Space is good.

But it's not just Snow that gives us this. We can reach similar levels of space and simplification by using other surfaces. Large areas of sand on beaches is another example, and so too is anything that has a simple texture and area to it with almost no break to its own continuity. This continuity I speak off, allows the eye to pass over, to float by and head towards the subjects we do wish the viewer to rest their eyes upon.

By isolating out regions of the landscape where it seems as though nothing is going on, we can create images where it feels as though there is more going on than meets the eye. Less is more. And by removing distracting tones, or overly complex structures in our images, we reduce our message down to one that is concise. Our message becomes much easier to digest, and more coherent as a result. Good images have often simple, but strong messages.

Yes, space in the landscape is good.

Is it right, to take, or to make photographs?

I've often wondered why sometimes, language used for image making often has an acquisitional aspect to it. Words such as capture, or  to take an image resonate with me in a rather negative way.

I was asked once, why I always seem to say that I make photographs, not take them. I hadn't been aware of my own language, but after some time thinking about it, I know why I use the word make.

Firstly, there is the sense that I am creating something, rather than pointing my camera at something and just copying what is there. To take a photograph suggests I'm copying what is already there, and this is perhaps a terrible mindset to be in. Our mindset being an important part of the picture making process (not picture taking process).

Secondly, I don't go making images so that I have a collection. I am not a collector, and the idea that I take an image, suggests stealing a moment. It suggests ownership of something that was not mine and never can be. It suggests the habit of a collector, rather than someone who is in empathy with his surroundings and wishes to work with it, rather than at it.

Thirdly, taking implies possession; possession implies a sense of oneself being superior to the landscape. It suggests a lack of respect for what is around me, and someone who is not receptive to what the landscape is. It implies a lack of emotional connection.

I make images. They are creations based upon what I saw and appreciated in reality.

I enjoy my time outside, listening to the sounds of the wind and rain, watching atmospheric conditions come and go. I feel very much in empathy with my surroundings. Like a camper who, once done 'leaves only footprints', I have the utmost respect for the places I make images of. I like to think of my images as being an interpretation of the places i've experienced. I can't take the landscape's spirit. I can only represent it, in the form of art that I make.

Perhaps this feels to you as if I'm splitting hairs. But isn't it true that, often it's the small things that matter, and by having the mindset that I do have, I feel I'm able to abstract my creations away from the landscapes they represent. I'm able to understand that what I do, is an interpretation of what was before my eyes, not a verbatim recording of it.

It's an important point, I feel.

Tripod Height?

I'm on my fourth tripod in 12 years. Mostly due to the fact that it took me a while to realise that salt water is highly corrosive, and leaving the tripod lying around for a week or two, rendered it ready for the dust bin (even a graphite vice wouldn't release the welded together legs). But recently, I've changed tripod for one reason alone: height. Looking at many tripod websites, such as Really Right Stuff's dedicated page to recommending what sort of height you should choose for your tripod, I've come to one conclusion over a couple of decades of making images: get the tallest tripod that you think you can handle carrying around.

Tripods are only useful if you can handle carrying them around with you. So make sure the tripod has a weight that you can handle carrying for more than a few minutes. Otherwise it's temping that it might become a rather expensive door stop or piece of furniture in your home.

The tripod I currently own is the Gitzo GT3542XLS. This is my personal preference, for a few reasons:

• I'm 6ft tall and it's vitally important to me that my tripod can extend well above my own height
• I hate center columns, as they make good tripods into poor ones, as the centre of gravity is compromised
• I hate center columns, as they get in the way when I put the tripod down really low (see my next point)
• I hate using center columns turning them upside down to get my camera down so low (it's a personal preference - this is actually a great feature for some photographers and I often suggest it on my workshops)

I wasn't too keen on it having four columns. I prefer to have a tripod with three, as it makes for setting up - much quicker and a breeze. Four columns is often an added complexity, but not so with this tripod, because of its height, I often only extend it to 3 columns at most.

The reason for the height though, is that there are times when I find that I'm standing on a high rock, or the side of a steep slope. Those times require a longer leg to extend below where I'm standing. If it's a beach, then it means I'm standing on a rock, and one or more of the tripod legs needs to extend below the height of the rock I'm standing on. If it's a slope I'm on, then some of the tripod legs have to extend down the slope, if I wish to keep the tripod at the height I want. And that's the main crux of the matter: height is a vital ingredient to a composition.

If the height is not right, then the composition may suffer. I've had times when objects in the scenery touch other objects, or overlap, causing a feeling of conflict within the composition. All because the height of the tripod was not correct.

So there you have it. I have a massively high tripod these days, and I'm not going back to any recommendations to buy a tripod that reaches my own height (Really Right Stuff make great products, but their recommendations for height are not worth listening to).

If you're in the market for a tripod that can cater for all the compositions you see with your eye, you should be thinking of one that extends well above your own height. But you should do this with the consideration that it has to be portable to. A tripod can never be too high, but it can be too heavy, and if it's that way, you'll often find it left at home in preference for one where you can carry, even though you can't get it to work with all of the visualisations you see on location.

Aurora

Just a quick post tonight. My first group have left Lofoten. We had a great week, lots of settled weather, lots of snow, lots of pink sunrises and sunsets, and we even had the Aurora.

This shot was made last night on my little Lumix GX1 camera. The group were out for a few hours shooting and got much better shots than this one. Might head out tonight for another look, as it was extremely clear tonight. Not a cloud in the sky :-)

I'm on the Lofoten Islands

I arrived in Reine, Lofoten a few days ago. Tonight I will be picking up my first group for the next week. The weather has been unseasonably mild, but there is plenty of snow here. This is just a short post to send you all my little 'post card' from Reine.

I've got my trusty Mamiya 7II cameras with me on this trip, alongside a Lumix GX1 (fabulous little camera) and some fresh stock of Fuji Velvia. It's been great returning back to my Mamiya 7II. It just feels so comfortable and there really is something to be said about working with a particular system for a very long period of time: it becomes almost an extension of you. Like a duck to water, I'm finding that although I haven't really used the Mamiya 7II in a year, everything has come back to me like second nature.

I've given the Hasselblad system around a year and a half of dedicated time, to get to know, as I think it's important to stay with a system for a while to get to understand its strengths and weaknesses and most importantly, to see what kind of impact it has on my image making. I do love square aspect ratio images, but I often find that if I'm going that way, I will simply crop my Mamiya 7II images to suit. I just think I'm really a rectangle shooter, that sometimes goes for square. It's taken me a year or so to find that out. Just glad to return to a system that I feel works very well for me.

Rediscovering your past

Way back in the late 80's, I got my very first camera. It was an EOS 650. I'd wanted it because I thought it was a really cool looking camera and it had lots of amazing things on it, like auto-focus. I was not, at that time, so motivated by the art element of photography. I was around 20 years old, and I just really wanted a camera, because my friend Craig had shown me his Pentax ME Super and Ansel Adams work. I was really a budding musician, but a camera was a lot cheaper to buy than a Synthesizer was. This week, I've been given the gift of discovering something that I lost a while back: one of the first photo albums I ever made of images when I had decided that photography was 'it'. I was busy looking around the house for something else and came upon the 'lost' photo album, much to my surprise and also delight.

It's been really interesting for me to look at the images contained within the album for a few reasons.

1) I've been able to see that elements of my current style were evident in some of the images contained within the album. In essence, these early images showed me a glimpse of where I was to go with my own photographic style / development. In my album, I see symmetry in some of the images, and a penchant for balancing objects in the frame. I had to laugh at how transparent my style was / is / has always been

2) There is an innocence in what we first create. When we start out, we don't know what we're doing, and that 'not knowing' is a form of freedom. We are not contained by rules, if anything, we think we need to know rules, so we can improve on what we're doing. But I'm really not in agreement with this line of thinking. I see things in my earlier work that I look at with pleasure and think - wow - that's really something that I tried that, and in some instances, what I know now that 'should not work', did in some of my images. It has reminded me that I should always try to be flexible and as open minded as i can in my own picture making. If only we could recapture some of that innocence we first displayed when taking up photography!

3) The path behind us, often indicates or tells us a lot about where we are going. I've seen how much I've changed. I've also been allowed to consider that this little photo album was perhaps the germ of what was to become a career for me, and a life changing occupation. It blows my mind to think that one thing can have so much power in shaping my own future.

So I guess I would like to ask you all, if you have been shooting for a while, to go back, dig out that first photo album, your first shots, and look at them again. All those shots you were maybe embarrassed about might contain some form of beauty that you are now mature enough to see, and would wish to develop. Conversely, all those shots you thought were 'ace' at the time are maybe quite embarrassing, maybe cliche, who knows? One thing is for sure, looking back on our work, is immensely satisfying. But additionally and more importantly, we can learn a lot about ourselves and our photography in the process.

Film Streaks Mystery

For the past five years, I've occasionally notice vertical banding in some of my Velvia films.

Please click on the image for better detail.

Here is what I have tried to do to eliminate the issue:

a) I've tried different labs for processing, and still get the same results.

This has led me to believe that it is either x-ray damage, film manufacturing damage, or the camera is at fault (possible light leaks or unevenness of film in the back of the camera), or filters in front of the lens?

b) I get the streaking problem with my Mamiya 7II camera, and also my Hasselblad, so I feel that rules out the actual camera body. Which baffles me, because it appears to be on the same area of the frame!

c) My lab has looked at the films and states that it's not x-ray, because it would also be evident on the dark parts of the film and it is usually a wavy streak going across the film anyway. So that rules out x-rays. I've never had any issue with x-rays ever. I've had some film in my bags over multiple trips and multiple x-rays and never seen any fogging or streaks like this.

d) This has led me to think it might be manufacturing issues with the batch of Velvia I have. I have looked at all my images since I returned from Cappadocia, and around 10% of them are damaged. I looked at my film stock and determined that I have a small batch of film left from around 3 years ago - when Fujifilm kindly sent me a lot.

I've decided to use the newest batch of Velvia I bought just before Christmas, for the next while to see if this eliminates the issue. But in the meantime, I would like to hear from you if you have had similar results with your films, particularly with Fuji Velvia.