New book coming, Spring

I’m fortunate that I’ve been working very hard over the past five or six years. I’ve built up a large collection of images from my travels, from which I can choose to publish books from.

Hokkaido is somewhere that I’ve had scheduled in my mind as the next book after Hálendi (my Iceland interior book) for some time. Since the pandemic has halted most of my income and work, I’ve had more time to complete the Hokkaido book than normal.

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We’ve broken the format a little with this new book. It does not say ‘Hokkaido’ in Kanji on the cover. I’ll leave it as a surprise for you all to guess what it says. More concrete details about the book in the next two months if the schedule goes according to plan.

Thanks to everyone who wrote to me about Hálendi. Many of you told me it is my best book to date. Which I must admit to being taken by surprise at. Each book has its own birth where you simply cannot control how it will turn out. The Hálendi photographs have been part of my photo life for the past five or six years and I had not looked at them since we finished designing the book.

I wasn’t sure if everyone would like the book, as I have found that my style of photography has become ‘too minimal’ for some, and I’m aware I’ve lost a percentage of my audience. But this has been replaced by new followers who are into the style of work I’m doing now.

I think this just proves that you should never try to please an audience. Your audience knows what it wants and if you are true to yourself, you’ll surround yourself with the right audience. This is true in life: be authentic in everything you do, and you’ll be surrounded by others who are like-minded.

I won’t deny that things are extremely difficult right now for me. As I am sure are for many of you. I am not running workshops, and this had been at the core of my income - almost 100% of it. So offering books, and some on-line video tutorials is keeping me afloat.

The pandemic has offered some positives for me. I often find it takes more than 1 year to get a book complete. I’m not talking about making the images: they are made over a five or six year period for the last two books! But the design, concept and sequencing. It is often slowed down by being away a lot on workshops and tours, and then having to pick up the pace on the book once I return. But with no work to do right now, I’ve been able to focus more on completing the books as I intended. For the past 3 years or so, it’s been a plan to publish Altiplano, then Hálendi and now the Hokkaido book (as yet untitled). Next one, if the Hokkaido book sells, is a retrospective. Which I am in the process of writing right now. There will be a lot of text in this one, in addition to lots of images from some of the portfolios on my website that have never been included in a book before, and going back 10 years.

Biblioscapes Interview

Euan Ross has a very nice website and podcast about photographic books called Bibioscapes. If you are passionate about photographic books as I am, you should check it out.

Recently he interviewed my book-designer Darren Ciolli-Leach and myself about our decade-long partnership. I hope you enjoy it.

Final Hálendi instalment

Here is the final instalment of the interview segments from my latest book.

It should give an insight into the realities of printing your own book. I often feel that if you know very little about what’s involved, it’s quite easy to have an opinion about it :-) But the truth is - it’s a risky business printing your own book as there is a considerable financial outlay, and no guarantee that it’s going to sell. Despite what you may feel about my work.

Penultimate Hálendi Book review

This is the 2nd last of the conversations I had with Sam Gregory of TheTogCast. Personally speaking, this is the part of the conversion that I felt was most important to me. The text on the left hand page is very dear to me. It sums up how we should abstract the landscape.

I hope you enjoy this entry.

Missing Japan / Traveling?

I go to Japan every year, and it’s not just the photography or the landscapes that are part of the experience. The people, the weather, the cities, and of course the JR train line announcements are sorely missed.

If you’ve been to Japan, then these two videos (sound only) will take you right there! I promise! And if you haven’t been there - then the music announcements for the train lines may now make you wish to go! It’s a fun place to be :-)

TIP: press play on both. It gives a more authentic experience of being on the train line :-)

Thanks to Clive Maidement for sending these on to me.

Remembering Photography

It’s been about eight months now since I picked up a camera. I must confess that I have felt very little desire or need to go out to make photos over this time. I think it is because the last eight months have given me a chance to have a hiatus that I think my subconscious had been thinking about for quite some time.

I have often thought, and written on this blog, that as much as your passion or hobby is something that we may all live and breathe every moment of the day, the truth is: we all need to take time away from it. It is in these lulls or moments of doing something else that I think we get a chance to reflect and most importantly, return to our interest with a fresh perspective. It’s really valuable to take the foot off the accelerator every once in a while. And it’s extremely healthy to go and do something else for a while.

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Over the past few months as I’ve tried to find a structure to my day, I have chosen to walk each morning from my home, across a local park to a coffee shop. I just go in, buy a take away coffee and go for a walk around the park. What I have found most enjoyable about this little routine is that each time I venture outside the door, I am filled with photographic memories triggered by the weather and atmospheric conditions.

For example, on a crisp frosty morning, I have found myself feeling as though I am right back in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. The mornings are often crisp and cold there at the time of year I like to go to Bolivia. There is a ‘cold’ smell in the air of that little town which I have detected in the cold air of a Scottish morning as I head out.

Just today, it was another frosty cold morning, with lots of sunlight and no breeze. It took me right back to the many mornings I spent photographing Tibetans and Hindu’s around the Bodha stupa of Kathmandu. As I walked across my local park, I was no longer in Edinburgh. Instead the temperature, the light and the smells of earth in the air had transported me back to my time in Nepal.

These remembrances are not something new to me. I have found for many years that each place I return to, has its own ‘signature’ - a feeling if you will, or a smell, a taste to it. Each time I arrive in Punta Arenas in Chile for my Patagonian trips, there is a sudden strong feeling of ‘knowing this place’ just from how the weather, the air, and the light feel. Japan, Iceland, wherever, all have these residual memories built into me. I am sure I am not alone.

So over the past eight months that I have been resigned to staying in one place, I have found that all my favourite places have come to visit me in my mind. Brought on by the temperature, air and light quality of my own back yard. My little walk across my local park each day allows me to remember photography and the memories and feelings are often so strong that I feel as though I am there.

In my mind, I am photographing. I am living in the landscape. All the special places I have come to know and love, I realise, are never very far away. There is great potential to reconnect, to remember your photography by recognising similarities to where you are right now, to where you have been.