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 :-)

A Gift

Some images just come to us, like a gift.

Whilst visiting the Bolivian altiplano this summer, I felt I was given such a gift.

For the very first time, I saw Laguna Colorada shrouded in fog. This is not 'usual' circumstances for this location.

I love fog, because it can hide parts of the landscape and simplify the scene down to one or two elements. Laguna Colorada is surrounded by hills and far off volcanoes and as pleasing as these may be to include in the photograph, sometimes it's a real advantage to have backgrounds either partially veiled or completely hidden. Reducing down the landscape to this extent can bring 'focus' or 'presence' to the scene by presenting the viewer with just the main attraction.

Fog is also of great use in enabling objects within the scene to become contextually lost. With little else to give a reference point to what it is that you're actually seeing, your mind's-eye is fooled into believing that the subject is hovering in space. In the case of my visit to Laguna Colorada, I had far off groups of flamingo's isolated to such a degree, that they appeared to be almost suspended in mid-air. The illusion was complete when I chose not to include any parts of the foreground shore of the lake in the shot.

I shot this image with a Hasselblad 500 series camera (of which I own two). I used a 250mm lens, which despite being rather old and crusty, worked, even though I had not tested it before leaving the UK.

I've always been fascinated by telephoto 'scenes' often seeing them in my mind's-eye, but I've never really tried to shoot them in the past. I felt for a long while, that I  had to master wide angles and standard field of view lenses before I could move on to telephotos. It's perhaps taken me about ten years to get to that point!

Those of you who follow what I've said in the past, or have spent time with me on my workshops, will know that I am great believer in using primes at the beginning of our photographic development, for a few reasons.

Firstly, by having only a hand-full of fixed focal lengths to use, we learn to visualise or 'see' compositions that we know will work well with the focal lengths that we have. For instance, if we only have two focal lengths to work with, say 24mm and 50mm, we tend to find that over time, we start to visualise scenes in either 24mm or 50mm. It's a great way to bring on composition learning/improvements because we have fewer decisions to make and we study what we're working with better as a result.

Secondly, we learn more easily about the properties of the focal lengths we're using. For example, wide angle lenses have more depth of field than higher focal lengths and wide angle lenses tend to push  backgrounds further away. Whereas a standard field of view lens has less depth of field, and tends to bring backgrounds towards us.

Lastly, zooming with our feet allows us to engage with the landscape more and change the foreground subject matter (often quite drastically within a few foot steps), while allowing us to maintain the same background to foreground ratio. In other words, if we keep the focal length the same, we can keep the the background to the same proportions, whilst changing the foreground substantially.

I also feel that wide angles tend to invite us into the frame. We are encouraged to feel as if we could step from behind the camera and walk into the scene. Whereas I feel telephoto shots do not. Telephoto images are often of detached views, or at best, take on a voyeuristic point of view of the subject. We feel we are onlookers, because scenes take on a remoteness to them. This can be of great use in the right circumstances.

With the flamingo's in the lake now suspended in mid-air (because there were no contextual clues as to where they were) the use of a telephoto not only brought them closer toward me, but it also allowed me to enhance the illusion that they were floating, because as discussed, telephotos bring a sense of detachment to any scene they are used to capture.

Like someone said to me recently - 'it's like flamingo's in heaven'.

Photographic Club Talk - Inverclyde 18th October

I will be at Inverclyde photographic club on the 18th of October, to give a talk about my photography. I'm sure if you want to come along, they will be very happy to see you. Last week I had a really excellent night at Perthshire's photographic club. Not only did I feel I got a well researched introduction, but the closing speech was also well informed, and the speaker even had a copy of my first book, which he had read thoroughly. It's so nice when I feel the club in question has put a lot of effort into finding out about me before I come to give a talk. It was a very pleasant evening.

Altiplano

Some news to come about the Altiplano (Bolivia & Chile) at the end of this month, in my monthly newsletter (due out on the 31st at 7pm GMT).

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.

Perth Photographic Society Talk

I will be presenting a talk and presentation on my photographs at Perth (Scotland) photographic society on the 9th of October.

Today we are in Vik, Iceland

  I'm just about half-way through my September photo tour of the south Iceland coast with my group.

Thought it would be nice to pop-in and say hi. So ..... hi !

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.

Half concealed, half revealed

I love it when inclement weather hides part of the landscape. Rain clouds came in today and hid most of the isle of Rum (the land mass you can see on the horizon) from view. For most of the morning it wasn't visible to us, and just as we were getting ready to depart for lunch, it decided to start showing itself to us.

This is a digital file from the little Lumix GX1 camera with the 12-35 panasonic zoom lens. As I explained a while ago, I got this system for my workshops, so I could help explain compositional ideas to participants. As you may also know, I am really a film shooter and everything on this site has been captured with film.

It's nice to have such a little camera with me to illustrate and work on sketches. The thing is though, this kind of image is not one to go back to repeat (ideally, I would go back with my film camera to get this shot). The inclement weather provided a unique opportunity. As too, did the tides. My group spent a bit of time last night discussing how a landscape changes over a week. At the start of the week we had high tides, so many of the features of the landscape were hidden from us. I personally feel this is a good thing, as most beaches can be too busy with too many rocks competing for your attention. Towards the end of the week, the tide is lower and we are now finding other areas of the beach that we did not see on day one.

With this particular image, we ventured here at high tide. There is a lot of redundant rocks and kelp hidden under the water, which allowed this 'curve' to stand out. Normally, it wouldn't present itself as a possible composition option because of the 'noise' around it. But also, I feel this image wouldn't have presented itself because of the rain shower that managed to completely hide Rum on the horizon, and for a brief moment, revealed it to me.

Isle of Eigg, Lummix GX1 Style

This week i'm on the isle of Eigg with a group. We were out this morning shooting on Laig bay.

I've got my little Lummix GX1 system with 12-35 Panasonic lens and Lee Seven5 filter system with me, mainly for illustrative purposes. I made this little shot just before we headed back to the guesthouse for breakfast. I deliberately used a 3 stop hard grad on the top 1/4 area of the frame (to intentionally get a lot of burn-in into the image, and I composed it square at the time too (the Lummix is one of very few cameras that allows you to change aspect ratio - something I feel ALL cameras should offer as a matter of course). Aspect ratios are vitally important to how we see, compose and how we find images in the landscape, in the first place.

Anyway, I really wish I knew how to make the colours in digital 'sing' like my Velvia images do, but I've never been able to achieve it. I personally feel it's just not possible right now with the capture mediums as they are right now. But that's my own personal feeling and I know many will not agree with me. So I decided to opt for a black and white interpretation of the isle of Rum here, with a beach littered with evenly distributed kelp.