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.

Reclaiming the landscape as my own

Whilst attending the Airwaves music festival in Iceland this October, I got to see Max Richter perform his recomposition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Although Richter calls his work a ‘recomposition’, to you and I, he has reconstructed a piece of music that many of us know so well, into a new work. What I loved about his piece was that the work has elements of the original surfacing sometimes rather obliquely, and other times very transparently.

I love it when someone turns something that I know so well upside down on its head, because it forces me to look at it again as if for the very first time.

As he says himself in an interview with the Guardian newspaper a while ago:

"It's just everywhere. In a way, we stop being able to hear it. So this project is about reclaiming this music for me personally, by getting inside it and rediscovering it for myself – and taking a new path through a well-known landscape."

I think his choice of words is illuminating. Particularly 'taking a new path through a well-known landscape'.

Additionally, this ‘reclaiming’ he speaks of, is something that I identify with very much. In the case of our own memories and experiences of a landscape, they should be based upon our own encounters, but often, before we have even visited a place, we have been overwhelmed with images that others have made. Our own thoughts and impressions of a place have been coloured and influenced (read hi-jacked), before we've even had a chance to go there. Often times, we're just not aware that we don't own the original memory of a place. Our own experiences have been built on top of someone else's imagery.

This is hardly unforgivable. Some images of a place are so powerful that once we’ve seen them, it’s hard for us to look at the place in a new way. I’ve often heard photographers say ‘did you get the shot?’. Sometimes it seems that a particular angle or composition of a famous location can’t be bettered. My own feelings are that this simply isn’t true, and it’s wonderful when I do see a successful shot of a well trodden place that is a beautiful image in its own right, because it offers us a fresh way of experiencing something we know so well.

I think this only happens when we are able to break away from any pre-conceptions we have of a place. In order to do this, we have to be aware of how our own perception of a place has been coloured and shaped by the act of looking at other people's work of the same location.

We have to make a conscious effort to leave the well-trodden path and engage in a process of enquiry whilst on location. We have to be independent enough to see what we see, not what others saw.

I'm glad I came across Max Richter's interpretation of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, because it has ignited in me a sense of wonder for a piece of work that had become mostly invisible through over-familiarity. For me, he has brought the Four Seasons sharply back into focus.

He has reminded me of my need to enquire and investigate the landscapes that I visit, because it is through this sense of enquiry that my own thoughts and emotions are translated into my own personal vision of a location. It is only then, that I'm able to do what Max Richter has done - to reclaim the landscape as my own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEgOEZm9CNw&width=400

We are masters of self-deception

For a long while now, I've been saying that I feel there is little difference in approach between post-editing (I dislike this term), and the initial image creation. Well, there is a difference - the difference is that we treat them differently. The difference is in our attitudes to how we consider and reflect during these two states of being.

When I'm working behind my computer monitor in my studio, I am looking at a photograph. When I am out in the field making images and looking through my viewfinder, I am also aware that I am looking at a photograph - only, I have to go through some kind of abstraction to do this. I've been doing this for a while now, that I see no difference between the making of an image, and the editing of one. They both require the same skills: ultimately it boils down to noticing shapes and tones and elements within the frame. Whether they are 3D real objects in the real world, or a collection of shapes and tones on a screen is irrelevant. Or so it should be.

But consider the image in this post. I've got two versions of it. The original, and an edited version. The difference between the two is that in the edited version, I've removed the break in the cloud in the top left-hand corner of the frame as well as its corresponding reflection in the salt flat.

It's all very easy to see how this image could be improved by removing this 'blot' in the image, and so often I find that books or articles on websites show us this technique, but none discuss how we should train ourselves to notice these distractions or 'flaws' at the point of making the exposure. Which is to say, most articles discuss how to 'fix' an image, but few discuss how to avoid this error in the first place. Because by avoiding it, it means we have a better awareness of what is going on, and thus, have a keener eye for making better images.

Back to my original point: I see no distinction between editing back in my studio, and the creation of the image whilst out in the field. I've discovered that all the time I've invested in working on images and editing them at home has improved my eye to notice distractions like the break in the cloud at the point of exposure. In general, when I am out in the field, I am thinking not about clouds and sun breaking through, but more about tonal relationships and relationships between shapes in the landscape. If my eye is well practiced in this pursuit, I would notice the break in the clouds and figure that it is distracting. I would not make the exposure, either waiting for the break to dispel, or re-composing as best to remove it all together.

But as much as I hate to admit it: I'm not infallible. I still have a long way to go with my own photography, because photography is all about awareness, and I sometimes let a little issue like this break in the clouds slip through the net. I would say that I often notice issues like this whilst in the field.

I think this is definitely one of those cases where living with a new image for a few weeks, or in this case, several months, has allowed me to grow irritated by this anomaly. What appeared to be ok to me at the time I first edited this image, now rubs me up the wrong way. This has only happened because I've had time to live with the work, and eventually begin to see it for what it is, rather than what I tricked myself into believing it was.

So there are perhaps three things to consider in this post:

1) Always leave some time between the shoot and the edit before you work on the images, as this will give you greater objectivity

2) Once edited, live with the work for some time, so you can learn to see all its facets, it's perfections and imperfections. This too, will give you greater objectivity, and you will learn a few things about yourself in the process. For me, I learned that I still don't often see all the issues in an image until much, much later on. I still have a long way to go in closing this gap between image creation and the editing stage.

3) Noticing the break in the cloud while looking at the image a few months down the line, has taught me to be more observant to these issues while out creating the images in the field. My time behind my computer has taught me what to look out for and observe more while making the original capture. As I said at the beginning of this post: there should be little difference between our time behind our comptuter screens and our time out in the field. We need to be able to interpret scenes as scenes, whether it is real and in front of us in all it's 3D glory, or whether it is a 2D representation on our computer screens. We are dealing with shapes and tones always. There is no difference. What we do and learn behind our computer screens should feed back into our time out in the field. That's why I abhor the term 'post-processing', because it encourages the attitude that there is a distinction between the two. There is no distinction. There is only shapes and tones.

The only difference between the two states of 'being' is that we think there's a difference. We are masters at deceiving ourselves.

Conservation vs Acquisition

As photographers, our overriding priority should be to look after and respect the landscape.

So when we choose to seek out rare and special places to make images of, we should always tread lightly, and with great respect for the environment we make photographs of.

Recently, a friend told me about a special little waterfall in the centre of Iceland. I was intrigued, because the pictures I saw of it showed how beautiful it is, yet it is not on any tourist map. Looking into it a bit more, I discovered that it's not very easy to find (it's pretty hard in fact) and although there are several websites specialising in articles in how to find it, it's still not easy to figure out where it is.

I decided to go look for it, and sure enough, it took me a few hours to find it. The waterfall is very hidden. It's not obvious where it is, and there are no signposts, nothing to indicate that there may be anything of particular interest or beauty nearby.

I was delighted when I found it. It is such a beautiful waterfall with lovely glacial meltwater flowing through it. So beautiful I took pictures of it, and so delighted was I about being able to find it, I couldn't wait to tell my friends about it too.

I discussed the finding of this waterfall with a friend, who knows the people who own the land there. My friend told me the locals prefer to keep the waterfall private. I can fully appreciate this on several levels. Firstly, it is not very far away from one of the biggest tourists attractions in Iceland, so if it got better known, it could easily be overrun with tourists and never be a peaceful place to visit ever again. Secondly, I've found Icelandic people to be immensely respectful to their landscape. I have had dealings with a professional tour operator out here for instance, who do not wish to take photographers to one particular spot because of how delicate the landscape is there. I think this is extremely admirable and I respect this attitude very much.

But I often feel that the pursuit of landscape photography can be at odds with respect for the landscape and I think as landscape photographers, we have a responsibility to act with great respect for the places we visit and record.

At the time of writing, I think photography has reached an all time high in terms of popularity. It is not simply the pursuit of photographers any more, but an additional interest for tourists to such a degree now, that I feel there is a large hybrid group of people out there who are photography-tourists. Those of us who wish to travel to many destinations, experience them, but also record them as best as we can. I started out this way myself - being into travel firstly, and wanting a camera to record the places I visited. Fast forward a few years and I was soon traveling for the pursuit of photography first and foremost. And this is perhaps the issue.

When we transform from being a tourist to being a tourist-photographer, we are dealing with an additional set of requirements, that have to be contained within the same set of rules that all other tourists have to abide by. In other words, we have to work within the same boundaries of respect and manners for the places we visit, even though our requirements have shifted from just enjoying and observing a place, to that of more detailed exploration.

Specifically, as photographers, we tend to be more inquisitive than most tourists. We tend to want to get access to places that are off-limits. For example, we may wish to get closer to the edge of a waterfall than most tourists would get, so we can attain the shot we have in our minds-eye. We tend to be very driven in our aspirations, and although I think having this kind of drive is great, I just wonder at what cost this come to the places we visit?

The late Galen Rowell once wrote that by photographing special places, we set them on a path towards conservation. By raising their profile, they become a place that many people care about, rather than a place for the few. That awareness and love for a place can be a great thing. It can stop a place from being abused or damaged. However, there is another side to this coin. With all things, we gain something in the process of raising the profile of a place, but we also lose something of its innocence in the process also. If we choose to keep it secret and hidden, then we believe and hope that it is safe from being damaged. But to have a place left hidden to protect it, is like having a beautiful painting that no one gets to see. Surely beauty should be there for everyone to enjoy? I certainly think so.

Photography can be an all-consuming passion, one where getting the shot becomes so overwhelming that we put everything else to one side. But at what cost do our own actions come at, if we only have a secondary respect for the places we wish to record?

As I said at the start - and I feel I must reiterate my point: I just feel, as photographers, if we do choose to seek these rare and special places out, we should tread lightly. Our overriding priority should be to look after and respect the landscape. Everything else should come as a secondary priority. We have to safe-guard the landscape for our own enjoyment. But we also have to safe-guard the reputation of ourselves and other like-minded photographers for the future also.

*Addendum. Since writing this post, I've been talking to others about the wear-and-tear that happens to a place as volumes of visitors increase. I didn't really cover this in my posting, and would like to do so now. With regards to the waterfall mentioned in this article, I had an interesting email from a very well known Icelandic photographer who explained to me that he knows of this waterfall (and other less well known places), but does not take tours here because of the delicacy of the environment.

So being sensitive to an environment is not just to do with how careful we are, but more about managing the volume of traffic a place attracts. As a friend pointed out to me, the steps in an ancient monument are worn down, but it’s not due to misuse that this happens, but more to do with wear and tear.

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.