Watching creativity happen

In this two minute clip, we see Paul McCartney give birth to the song ‘Get Back’. I think it’s a great lesson in creativity. Because for me, most folks are always looking for the ‘how to’ with Photography, whereas it’s not about ‘how to’, but more about ‘trusting your gut and going with the flow’.

In this video, we see the song ‘Get Back’ surface. I choose the word ‘surface’ carefully, because it’s clear from the very beginning that McCartney is just feeling his way through this. He puts no pressure on the song by trying to work out words at this stage. He finds the melody and the chord changes and knows the words will come later. It’s that level of confidence, or inner-knowing that ‘not knowing the entire puzzle, but it’s ok’ that is vitally important in creativity. All too often, I feel most amateurs who wish to improve their work, seek immediate answers, or wrongly assume that the professional knows what they are doing all the time. They don’t.

A professional creative person gives themselves licence to change things, and to consider nothing finished, and everything up for change. They also know they have to experiment, and try things out. Amateurs make the mistake of thinking that if they get something wrong, that this is bad. Everyone get’s things wrong, and even the Beatles had to ‘feel their way’ through their songs, often revisiting them until they got them right.

A great example of this is George Harrison writing ‘Something’. He was lost for a lyric that worked with ‘something in the way she moves….. ‘ and Lennon replied ‘ like cauliflower’. He hunted the right words for months until he found ‘like no other’. In hindsight it might seem obvious to you and I. But it wasn’t. He had to work at it. He had to feel his way through it.

So to me, creatives who are good at what they do, use their intuition. They trust how they ‘feel’ and trust when something doesn’t quite ‘gel’.

I loved watching how McCartney found his way through this song. He doesn’t know where it’s going, so he listens to it, and it tells him where it needs to go. I reckon all art is like that - it often tells us where it wants to go. We just have to listen to it.

When this works, you often hear song writers say ‘the song seemed to write itself’.

This goes for all forms of creativity. So listen to your gut, and trust your feelings on your work.

When we make photos, we disappear

I’ve thought for a while now, that making photographs is like a form of meditation. Because when I am busy making images, I seem to completely forget who I am, and all my daily pressures and worries completely disappear. In fact, I think when we’re busy doing something like making photos, we completely disappear.

In this fascinating interview with comedy writer John Lloyd (famous for Hitch Hikers guide to the Galaxy, Black Adder (one of the UK’s best comedies, and QI), John explains how having a breakdown in his 40’s, allowed him to gain some insight into what the purpose of life is.

He explains that when we are being as true to ourselves as we can, we completely disappear. Ego goes away, and any concept of ‘I’ disappears. When we do what we love, we become the most true to ourselves, and in doing so, find that being present, is about forgetting who we are.

Portfolio Development Class #2

Last year I ran an online portfolio development class. I enjoyed putting it together so much, that I figured I would try to offer one each summer, during my downtime from workshops.

So last year I recorded myself editing a set of images from Bolivia. This summer I am intending to record myself editing a different set of images: either Scotland or Norway, or perhaps Brazil…..

Just thought you might like some heads up. I think it will take me a few months to get the work recorded, and edited. So stay tuned.

Below is a refresher of what I offered last year. If you enjoyed this class, then I think another refresher, with different material this summer might be of interest to you.

Last year’s Portfolio Development on-line video Class

Portfolio Development video class 2021 (Bolivia)
£175.00
One time

Effort should appear Effortless

A few days ago I was asked to write a forward for a photographers book. It is something that I am learning requires a certain skill. The most important being that I need to take note of my first impressions of the work within the book.

With the actual book in question, the first thing I realised was how effortless the compositions appeared. I have thought now for a very long time, that anyone who is able to convey something and make it look effortless, has spent many hours behind the scenes working on it. A Gymnast at the Olympics can make their work look so easy that many of us may consider that we could almost do the same thing with practice. Or perhaps you’ve watched a musician play and thought´I´ll get a bass guitar like theirs, and I should be able to play like them´.

Easy things look easy, because underneath, they aren’t easy at all. It takes practice, effort, many hours, self-learning, constant self review, to make something look easy.

When we are able to pull off this feat, there tends to be one large issue: the skill and effort and artistry is often devalued. Anything that looks easy, is by definition ‘easy’, and therefore I think it tends to lose currency.

So this brings me to our own work. When we are editing or curating our work, anything that does not quite fit, does not appear correct, or seems to draw attention in some unwanted way - these are signs that we have not reached the point of conveying our work to look effortless. Our efforts should appear effortless to the viewers, but if they are able to detect any struggle in our work, then the illusion of competence and excellence suffers.

Take heed of what you feel isn’t quite right. Take heed of what you can’t quite fix. Take heed of anything you think ‘most folks won’t notice’, because the truth is: all these signs are telling you that the work is incomplete.

On my way to Lençóis Maranhenses, Brazil

Image courtesy of my friend and tour participant this May: Jure Jalič

i just finished up a trip in the Puna de Atacama, Argentina with a really nice group. Our tour had been postponed for 2 years, and it finally happened these past 10 days. It was great, and we saw some new things whilst in there. I hope to publish some new images from this area later this summer once my films are processed.

I am now in Sao Paulo, just waiting to board a flight to Sao Luis. This is for a private trip to Lençóis Maranhenses (this is not a tour or a workshop). I have around 2/3rds of a book ready on this beautiful place, but felt I needed to come back to work on some more images.

I really love South America. Such an amazing place.

(inset photo: myself and my friend, Antofalla, Puna de Atacama, Argentina this May). I’ve found most of the dogs I’ve met in South America to be great friends. I am a dog lover, wishing to be the proud custodian with one myself, but due to too much travel, it’s not possible. But I enjoy meeting and making friends with many dogs on my travels.

Waiting until the light has gone

Puna de Atacama, Argentina. Wednesday 28th of April 2022.

My guide Pancho took this photo of me in the Colorados region of the Puna de Atacama. Each time I have been here, I never quite know when to start shooting. While the light is on the actual mountains, their contours are more clearly defined. But I feel the images lack any particular atmosphere when they are made during daytime lighting, and so I often wait until they go into shadow.

My guide is always saying to me ‘the light has gone’, and I have seen many photographers in my travels pack up at this moment and go away. But this is often when the light may start to get better.

In this case, around 10 minutes after sunset, not only were the mountains in shadow, but the sky had darkened down also, and everything now appeared to be glowing. It is as if the light is coming from all around me during these times, but what has really happened is that my eye has adjusted to the shadowed landscape and the more muted sky.

After the sun has gone, everything starts to glow

Think if you will, of an aperture being opened up. My brain is now interpreting this shadow light as ‘daylight’, and so even though the EV value is much lower, it now appears more balanced and easier to look at.

The main reason for shooting once the sun has gone, is that the shadows are greatly reduced. The tonalities are much softer. One danger about this is that by comparison to the ‘daylight’ shot, you may be tempted to believe that there is no definition in the contours of the landscape. Not so! The contours are still present, but they are softer. More easy to work with when editing / printing.

This is one of the more alluring times to make photographs. But I would suggest that you make photographs from just before the sun starts to go down, until well after into the twilight time. Review the images later on with the view to studying the tonalities, contrasts and also to note that the entire duration from pre-sundown right through to twilight can produce good images. Just don’t stop once the landscape has gone into shadow, because you may be missing out on the beautiful light you see in the above photograph.

Ambient light is still falling on your subject after sundown

One last tip from me, is to shoot 180º to the sun. I always shoot with the sun behind me, or to the side. Rarely towards it (unless I am deliberately looking for silhouettes). The contrasts are extreme. Whereas shooting who the sun either behind or to the side of me, allows for light to fall onto the subject. It may appear as though this would not matter once the sun has gone down, but the truth is that there is still a lot of ambient light falling on your subject. There is always a flow of light particles still hitting your subject.

Even well after sundown, when everything is black, if the subject is facing where the sun was, your camera will still be able to record ambient light that is still falling onto your subject. Your camera will still see it, even if you aren’t able to.

Humahuaca's gorge

I’m in the Pumamarca region of Argentina right now. I went to visit the Humahuaca gorge last night. Mostly with a tourists view rather than to do any serious photography, as I had assumed that this region of coloured hills would only work with some intense light on them. We stayed until just shortly after sunset when we were ‘ejected’ from the location by a local guide. But the light was very beautiful, and the mountains started to ‘glow’ once the sun had completely gone.

I love how I look as though I’ve staged this shot: the background is a poster somewhere, and I’m standing in front with a fake camera. No? Well, that’s how it looks to me :-) ha ha ha :-)

I often feel many photographers make the mistake of leaving far too early. As soon as the light is no longer kissing the mountain peaks, and everything is in shadow, they depart. Yet I think this is just when things get going for me. My spot meter told me I had a 1 stop difference between the sky and earth. Perfect. I also know from doing this kind of shooting so many times now, that going home with super flat images like this allows me to play with the contrasts and bring out the areas of the image that are important.

We’re heading back tonight again to try again. We made an arrangement with the local community for a longer stay. I hope the light will be as special tonight as it was last night. What will be will be.

Los Colorados

I arrived back in Salta last night. It is very nice to be back here, for a number of reasons. The one that seems to be resonating with me loudly today is ‘because I was starting to think I would never be able to come back’.

My guide Pancho sent me a few photographs from my times with him. It appears that I have been going to the Puna since 2015. That is seven years!

It still feels very much to me like a recent discovery. My relationship with the Bolivian altiplano is much older, beginning in March 2009.

All I can say is that I’m so glad to be here. I’m so excited about being here, and I feel that the slumber I’ve been in, the depressive spell of uncertainty, and the general lack of interest that I’ve been suffering for two years (you too huh? If you are finding this resonates, you are not alone), is shaking off. It’s going.

If you’re worried about travelling, I understand. I had anxiety about it this past few weeks. I couldn’t help think that something would happen. Either I’d be omitted entry for some reason, or I’d get ill. Well I just feel that life is for living, and living means having to accept that there is risk in everything we do. Nothing ventured, then nothing is gained.

So tomorrow I will be back in Los Colorados. That is the red clay landscape you see in the photo above (my guide Pancho took this of me). I’m now hatching plans for other trips. I hope you are too.

A note about the photo above: This is an unusually difficult place to photograph. The red clay hills you see here are really much smaller than you might think. Maybe around 30 to 40 feet high. But they are quite difficult to walk up as the earth is a soft clay. You begin to slide as you try to get up the slopes. We found one ‘entry point’ where we were able to get up onto this ledge. The main issue for me with this landscape is that you need contrasts to show the contours, so shooting in soft light doesn’t work. It has to be hard light. Or sunset. And you can see that I’ve made this shot just as the landscape in the foreground has gone into shadow, and the sun is ‘kissing’ the background hills for a fleeting moment before they too, are cast into shadow. It’s fleeting, which means you can’t move around much. You have to choose a spot, and hope you got it right.

Returning to Argentina

A week today, I’ll be heading back out to northern Argentina. I am going a week early before my ‘photo tour’ begins, as I wish to spend some private time making some new photographs.

The last time I was here was in 2017. That is five years ago! The photographs you see above were made on my last visit to the Puna de Atacama.

There are several beautiful areas of the Puna, and all I can say is that the region is vast. The Altiplano of Bolivia is big, but the Puna is even larger, with longer travelling distances. I’ve decided to return a week early as I feel I haven’t really been able to make the kinds of photographs I would like to of the red clay area you see in the last three images above. The locals call this region ‘los Colorados’, and there is just a hint of the colour of these clay hills in the first image on the left: when the sun begins to set, the last rays seem to kiss the background hills causing contrasts and shadows of the foreground hills. It’s rather fleeting and what irked me most was that my guide made better images than I did on his iPhone, and a lot more of them as well !

My plan is to camp out near these red clay hills for a few days, so my guide and I have access to them for sunrise and sunset. It will be cold as the elevation is 3,600m.

I’m also looking forward to returning to the Cono de Arita with my photo group. It is a special small volcano which tends to offer up some very graphical contrasts during sunset.

I’ve got a few more projects lined up for this summer: some hiking to a special place in Iceland this summer. More on these projects later. In the meantime, I hope you are managing to shake off the Covid cloud of non-travel, and that you can venture forth, into the world. There is so much still to see and most of it hasn’t been photographed well yet. I wish you all the best,

The importance of silence in colour

I’ve had a difficult relationship with colour since I started making pictures. What may seem ‘about right’ when I’ve just edited an image, may feel ‘too strong’, or ‘too weak’ when I review the images after a short break, or maybe on a subsequent day after some rest. The more I have read about colour, the more I realise that we all perceive colour to varying degrees. What one person may feel is too strong a colour, may not be strong enough for others. Conversely, what may be just about right for some, may be too strong for others.

My tastes have changed a lot in the past decade and the colour component within my imagery has become more muted. It wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I just became aware of it when I dug through my portfolios from the past decade. There has been a slow, but sure progression in reduction in all aspects of composition for me.

Often I think that most of us assume composition is about where subjects are placed within the frame, but composition is about ALL aspects of the image: subject placement, luminosity relationships around the frame, and of course - colour.

For me, I’ve found my use of colour has become extremely selective. What may have looked ‘quite nice’ six years ago, now almost fills me with embarrassment. I think some of my earlier work is clumsy, and the colour component of the compositions is all over the place.

Indeed, being embarrassed by one’s work is healthy in my view, so long as you are not always so, and so long as it is only something you feel about work retrospectively. Because in my view, this signifies growth or change. Hopefully it indicates an improved sense of awareness.

All I know is, the more I learn, the more I realise how little I knew when I started out. That to me, in a nutshell is progress when I can look back at my earlier work and see room for improvement.

Anyway, back to colour as a component of composition. I’m aware that each of us perceives colour differently. For instance, some may find my work (see above) to have almost no colour. I know there is colour in the work, but it’s subtle, and for some who perceive the work has being black-and-white, the only way I can convince you that the work does have colour is to show you black-and-white versions below. If you compare back and forth, I think this might tell you a lot as to where the colour is, and also, what you originally perceived as ‘grey’ is actually blue. Particularly in the mountain tones:

I remember Michael Kenna being asked why he specifically worked in black-and-white. I paraphrase here, but he said something like ‘because it’s quieter’.

I never really understood this when I heard the interview a decade or so ago, but I do understand it now.

You see, I think I’ve been on a quest to make my images simpler. When I started out, things were cluttered, busy, with lots of issues and problems. First I found it was really about reducing down the composition to a few subjects, maybe three or so at most in the photo. Going to places like deserts, beaches, and working in places with very little going on has taught me so much about simplifying the content of a photo in terms of ‘objects’. But the next stage was to work with luminosity and tonal separation. I think that is perhaps the 2nd stage of composition that we all work on.

The third stage is perhaps colour. For most of us, I certainly believe that colour isn’t considered part of composition. It just ‘is’. But sometimes colour can be too dominant. First we start with trying to remove one or two colours from a composition to prevent our eye getting caught by them as it traverses across the image. But I think inevitably, as our awareness of colour develops, this too is reduced, and applied sparingly.

Perhaps I’ve just been on a path to reduction. But I don’t think so. I have often received the question ‘why don’t you go black-and-white’, which I think is a natural assumption if someone is desaturating their work. But for me, the work just becomes too one-dimensional when it has zero colour. I still need colour to exist.

So if there is a message in today’s post, it is this: images can become more ‘quiet’ if colour is used sparingly.

Although I have stated this, it does not mean that you will immediately start to reduce colour, because I think we can’t control our own tastes of what we like / don’t like. It just has to happen over time. But I do think being aware of this, and perhaps reaching for that desaturation slider, rather than trying to soup up the image might take you somewhere you might really like.

I often feel as an editor of work, and of working with participants on my Digital Darkroom class, my aim is to push the participants outside of their comfort zone. If you are always working with mid-tones and never put any blacks or absolute whites in your work, how will you know if they might add something to what you do? Similarly, if you never desaturate your work, how will you ever know if desaturating may be just where you need to go?

Colour is a critical component of composition, and just like how much care we try to take on which objects to include in the frame (and similarly which to exclude), so too should we consider colour.

Colour can be deafening, or it can subdued. I much prefer the silence that muted colour brings to my work.