Acknowledgment of reaching your own summit

When we are being retrospective, we tend to focus on the things that have changed: what we do now that we didn’t, and also what we did do, but don’t do any more :-) Rarely however, do we notice the elements of our photography that remain the same.

I’ve just been reviewing my latest work over the past year or so, and I’ve come to the conclusion that although there has been a shifting in what I do over the past decade, I really haven’t changed much at all.

This reminds me of the saying ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’.

Image used by kind permission. Image © Michael Scandling.

I don’t think this is particularly a bad thing. Nor is my post today lamenting the lack of change in my work. Because I know in some ways it has changed. It’s just that well, there’s an integral part of what I do that I can’t escape. And that part is me.

It is, in my view, such a rare opportunity to see yourself in your own photography. Like the blind spot that is not being able to see ourselves the way our friends and family see us, we are blind most of the time to that part of our ‘art’ that is us.

I think the only way to be able to get a glimpse of ourselves in our own work, is to have been taking photos for a very long time. You need a lot of distance, and a lot of water under the bridge, with which to compare your most recent work with that of what you did perhaps when you first started out. See anything ‘familiar’ ? If you do - then that is most probably you.

I wish I still had the email I got from Michael Kenna. When he published a reprint of his Rouge book, I noticed that although the new edition was expanded with images that were shot at the time of the original publication, the inclusion of them showed signs of his future work to be at that time. When I wrote to him and said ‘I see Hokkaido in these images, before you went to Hokkaido’, he replied with a bit of poetry which I wish I could remember. It more or less said something along the lines of ‘the more we change, the more we stay the same’. Included in his email was also an early Kenna image - taken around the early 70’s. Although it was 35mm format, it had all the earmarkings of a Kenna shot - foggy, with a simplistic minimalist composition of a park somewhere in England. I could see him in this early shot so well, and yet at the time of capture, he still had to form his style.

I think now that I’ve been making images for over twenty years, I have the benefit, or opportunity to be able to see ‘me’ in my imagery - the part that has stayed the same all this time.

It is in doing so, that I think I can assume that I’ve reached the summit of where I am meant to be. With this acknowledgment, I realise that the future is perhaps mostly going to be about honing what I already have, rather than making massive changes. I think this is something one has to reach an understanding, and also an acceptance with oneself.

It is what it is, I am what I am, and this is what I do.

2-stop ND filter increments, and 1-stop exposure granularity

It’s taken me 20+ years to figure out that for long-exposure work, having a set of ND filters that are 2 stops apart is the best way forward.

I have always used 1, 2, 3, 6 and 10 stop ND filters. But over the past while I have found that the jump between 3 stops to 6 stops is far too much. Same for the leap between 6 stops and 10.

So now I use 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 stop ND filters.

Further to this, what I should let you know is that for the past decade, I work my exposures out in 1 stop increments. I do not meter in 1/2 stops or 1/3rd stops. They are in my view - simply too fine and 1 stop differences is as fine a granularity that I need for my films.

I would like to also add that it becomes a lot easier to meter, and to add exposure compensation when adding ND filters, if you work with your camera set to meter at 1-stop increments only.

Consider if your camera is set to expose at 1/3rd stop increments. It is very hard to work out for 2 stops more would be if your exposure is at 1/9th of a second. It becomes a lot easier if your camera rounds it down to 1/8th of a second. Adding two stops onto this means you just divide it by 2, twice:

1 stop increment = 1/4 of a second

2nd stop increment = 1/2 of a second.

I like working in 1 stop differences. It’s as fine as I need it, and it also simplifies my working out the exposure compensation difference when applying ND filters.

Inner symphonies & the role of feeling deeply

I got a new album of music to listen to this week called ‘Inner symphonies’. I liked the title but it was only when I opened up the gatefold sleeve of the album that I understood the title. Inside were the words ‘for those who feel deeply’.

And it got me to thinking about the role of our emotions on our photography. As a good friend of mine has often said to me ‘the camera points both ways’. I have always understood that my own ‘art’ whether it was music making, drawing and painting as a kid, or photography now, has been, and still is, routed in something within me.

Each time we make a photo, perhaps we are making a mini inner-symphony? Each image we make can often symbolise something more about us, than the actual subject. Well, I think that is the way it should be.

Logic in a way, shouldn’t even come into the equation when making images:

‘Think less, and feel more’

is perhaps the way we should approach what we do. Or perhaps ‘respond’ rather than ‘think’.

I know I am someone who overthinks things, but when it comes to producing art, it is one of the rare moments in my life where overthinking, or even thinking diminish (those who know me may dispute this, and say that I never think at all ;-) . I seem to disappear and enter a form of meditation when I am making pictures.

I prefer to be drawn to something for reasons I do not know, than for reasons I do. As I believe that unearthed motivations have more truth in them than anything that is apparent. I like to think about what Mark Hollis once said about improvisation when writing songs. He said that when you are improvising, the first notes you play tend to be the more honest ones. Each subsequent replay becomes less and less honest, and more contrived as you struggle to now control the magic you just found.

And so, I think this is the way it is with fieldwork.

Respond rather than think,

do before analysis,

and try to be fresh each time you make a picture.

Perhaps I should invert this, and say:

feel first, respond second, and think later

There is magic in improvisation. For it is the act of escape from rules and self imposed aspirations. Working fluidly, and without any analysis or overthinking, is , in my view, the right path to creating surprising imagery and art.

Why I photograph the Highlands of Scotland

I have often thought that what we show others in our photographs, is really an insight into how we feel within. One may assume that when we look at photos of a landscape, they are just that - photos. But if we ask ourselves ‘why did the photographer choose to visit this place in the first instance?’, then the pictures take on a deeper meaning. And if we ask ‘why these particular compositions?, then we may find our curiosity is piqued.

Isle of Rum, Scotland 2022.
Photographed on Fuji Velvia 50 film, pushed quite hard in the edit. Hence the film grain, which I find particularly pleasing.

 I have been attracted to the more wilder landscapes of Scotland for many years, and I’ve had to give it some thought as to why these places attract me. I think each landscape we fall in love with is personally relatable in some way. We either see something of our childhood in it, as I do with the Scottish Highlands, or we see a longing for something. I have a hunch that my family holidays as a young boy left an impression upon me. Both my parents are highlanders, and each summer we would leave the confines of our new town home for the highlands. The contrasts between new town dwelling and vast highland plains with shifting light was, and still is, stark. When I am in the highlands, I feel I am a Highlander, and my city-lifestyle is all but a faint memory. I feel a timelessness here and perhaps a deeper connection to my family’s history.

 But coming here to visit, is a different endeavour to that of coming to photograph. A beautiful landscape does not guarantee a beautiful photo. Good photographs have to be earned. With the shifting light, constant threat of being rained upon, and of being blown away by fierce winds, the highlands are challenging, but when the elements conspire to produce a good, if not great photo, then favourable results can be extremely rewarding.

 A photographer’s work is never done. Each visit just confirms that there is still more to uncover. More mystery to be solved. In a way, I find this inspiring, and also surprisingly comforting as well. Each time I have visited a landscape and produced a few images I really like, they are often far different from anything that I had hoped for, or envisioned. This illustrates that there are many more surprises up ahead for us all as photographers. So much potential is still waiting for us to explore and uncover. And many mysteries waiting to be peeked at, if not entirely solved.

And it is with this final comprehension, that I believe we should all revel in the anticipation of what images lie in store for us.

 

Make the landscape your own 3

One of the ways we can make the landscape our own, is to photograph locations that are lesser known. Of course there is always the skill in photographing well known places in an original way to consider. But I think the best way forward, to find your own voice, is to go to places that are less obvious, or perhaps personal to ourselves.

Over the past six or seven years I have shied away from spending time on social media platforms because of the glut of images that are being uploaded each day. I do not say this with judgement of others: do as you please of course. But for me, I would much rather find out about a landscape or a location in a more organic way.

Finding out about places this way, alleviates me from being overwhelmed by photos of it. Because I am aware that the more photos I see of a place, the more difficult it is to see it ‘my’ way.

About eight years ago I sat in a hotel in San Pedro de Atacama, chatting to a couple from Brazil. It was new years eve, and they had turned up on a Harley Davidson tricycle. Tassels included :-)

During our chats, they told me about Lençóis Maranhenses national park in Brazil and about how beautiful it is. When I returned home, I decided to look it up, and like most places I try to research, I rarely see well executed landscape photos: the default seems to be standard tourist shots. This goes to confirm my view that most of the world has not been photographed well, if at all.

It took me a few years to get round to going to Lençóis Maranhenses. I never seemed to have a gap in my schedule and I felt I was taking a chance on it, because the photos I had seen of it were not that inspiring. I had to ‘see beyond’ what was being shown to me and imagine what it might be like if I tried to shoot there at sunrise and sunset.

Visiting the national park, I found it to be more photogenic than I had imagined. In fact, I thought it was amazing and captivating in a way I could have only hoped for.

This to me, is an organic approach to finding your own landscape: going with your own hunch. Taking action from a conversation, or a cue from something you saw somewhere.

But perhaps the best way to make the landscape your own, is to work on places that are personal to you. Over the years that I have been photographing Iceland, it has become a very deep and personal relationship for me. I first visited the country in 2004. It is now almost 20 years since I first went, and I am confident that my relationship with the country has only deepened as I have kept returning.

And when I have returned, I always seem to find new places that resonated with me. Such as the interior. I had a hunch for a while that it might be my kind of thing, and so I started to go into the interior about 2015.

I feel some of my best work has been made in this landscape, and in terms of ‘making it my own’, I think the landscape here has defined me as a photographer in many ways.

I feel there’s far too much following others in the landscape photography world. We are social by nature, and we tend to follow the herd. In making the landscape our own, we have to be more independent in our seeking out places. Because that is how our photography will ultimately be defined.

Eigg Workshop

Just home from a week away on the isle of Eigg here in Scotland. I would like to thank everyone who attended - they came from far and wide - Seattle and near Sydney Australia.

It is always a real honour to think that folks would like to come this far to spend time working with me on photography. Such a lucky person I am.

Many thanks to David Estape Izquierdo for sending me this image of myself and Ron MacDonald on the beach at Laig bay.

I am finding the workshops at the equinoxes quite physically demanding for myself - long hours from 5:30am till around 8:30pm each day, and as much as I love coming to Eigg, I am aware that this year, and 2024 will be my last with groups here. I wish I could run the Eigg workshop during the winter when sunrise and sunset are more easy to handle, but due to the unpredictability of the weather, and therefore cancellations of ferry crossings, it’s too much of a risk. Hence why 2024 will be my last year on Eigg.

Thanks to everyone who came this week. There were a lot of jokes, and everyone was very good fun. I don’t think I’ve been with such a die-hard ‘hard-core’ group of people in terms of using all the available time to make images.

Make the landscape your own 2

One of the ways we can ‘make the landscape our own’, is to edit the images with our own ‘aesthetic sensibilities’. I believe that each of us has our own sense of artistic-taste as to how pictures should be edited. We also have our own visual-taste as well.

For many, although these attributes exist, they are still relatively unknown to themselves. I think it has taken me a very long time to find out what my aesthetic style is, and it has only surfaced as I’ve worked over many years on my portfolios. And explored pushing the edit in terms of luminosity adjustments.

As part of my yearly programme, I have often run a digital-darkroom class - the focus being the edit. What others call ‘processing’, which in my view makes a very creative part of finding out about your own style and aesthetic sound as though it’s just something you throw at the software to pump something out that is a bit more polished. When in fact, editing is just as huge a part of the photographic life-cycle as fieldwork is. Get good at interpreting your images, you get good at being a better photographer.

The image above, is a massive departure from what I originally captured. The edit was not done to ‘save’ the image, but instead to bring out key elements of the scene and quieten others. Editing in my view is not only highly interpretive, it is a highly creative endeavour, and one that is a life-long, never ending effort to master.

Which seems to go against the grain of what I have experienced with most workshop participants whom have chosen to come on my editing class. Until my class, most have been rather careful with their edits, with only the most subtle of soft adjustments, often to make the image as a whole more punchy.

In my view, editing is where the score becomes the performance as Ansel Adams coined. Image capture is one thing, but how you bring out elements in the frame, while quietening other aspects of the scene is your passport to your own style, and what might set you apart from everyone else.

I think the other aspect of trying to make the landscape your own, is also to try to capture scenes that are rare. In the instance of my picture of the isle of Rum above, I have rarely seen temperature inversions of clouds painting along the horizon like this. Having been coming to Eigg for over 14 years now, I feel I am often looking for something more than what is usually on display here.

Indeed, I am in general often ‘looking for more than what is there’. To dig below the surface of the usual. I do not say this to imply that I succeed at it. Far from it, but I am just always hunting and seeking to find something in the landscape. I think you know what I mean.

If you’re able to achieve this, then I am sure it contributes to making your images more unique.

In a world where everyone is publishing beautiful pictures these days, we should all be looking for something that allows our images to be set apart from everyone else’s. I do not mean this in terms of being competitive. I do not think I am so. I am just keen to produce the best work I can, as I get great personal satisfaction from feeling I have found my own coal seam to mine.

Editing, and image interpretation will give you so much to learn about why your images work, and where areas of them do not, should also give you a passport to making your work more cohesive as in working towards portfolios or sets of images. But to make your portfolios stronger, and therefore your visual style stronger, you have to be more discerning about what you choose to publish.

One way of setting your images apart from the crowd is your editing aesthetic, but so too, is what you choose to publish, and if you can find unusual conditions where an image was made, this will only contribute to your own voice.

make the landscape your own

I’ve just update the website with some new portfolios, and to also round up the presentation of the main page, I’ve added in two portfolios that have been absent from the site for a few years as well.

I’ve been thinking and dreaming of making some new images of Eigg for a long while. I have not had time until the past year to revisit, and to make some new compositions.

I find it very interesting to consider the question :

“would I have made these shots 10 years ago?”

to which I know that I wouldn’t have.

All the experiences that I’ve had shooting in the black deserts of Iceland, the minimalist snow areas of the Fjallabak nature reserve of the Icelandic interior, and also Hokkaido, I see in these new images of Eigg. These places that have taught me, and where I have grown, have fed right into the way I chose to approach editing this work.

You can never go back to where you once were. Well, you can, but you don’t go back the same old person you were back then. When you go back to old places, old friendships or relationships, you always bring with you the experiences you’ve gathered in the time you were absent.

Looking at my new images from Eigg, I’m reminded of something my dear friend Stephen Feinstein once said to me, whilst standing on the very beach that features in these photos:

“Bruce, you seem to make the same image, no matter where you go in the world”.

I know :-)

It put a smile on my face too :-)

I told him “I’m going to take that as a compliment”, as I’m sure that is how it was intended. I believe what Steve was telling me was:

“you manage to make the landscape your own”.

Which is the highest compliment I think I have ever received, for it is what I think we all aspire to do with our photography.

The Edge of Things part 3

Edges don’t have to be visual. Working at the edge of something could be a personal limit of some kind. For instance, I’ve been coming to Eigg, a special island in Scotland for over 15 years now, and I think I am looking for something more than what is presented to the typical visitor.

Isle of Rum, shot from Eigg, April 2022. Fuji Velvia 50, 120 roll film.

We have a relationship with the landscape. We talk to it through our camera. When we are trying out different compositions and thinking about how the landscape looks, there is really an inner dialog going on.

We also have sub-relationships with particular landscapes we’ve gotten to know.

Like all relationships, how we interact with a landscape has an ebb and a flow. I think that the more we go back and visit a friend we know, we either settle into a usual groove or pattern of discussing the same subjects, or thought patterns. This can be very similar to how we interact with a landscape we’ve gotten to know well over many visits.

As much as I feel we should never ‘strive’ or ‘push’ to improve on what we do, as any kind of force is just…. well it’s just force (an effort to go against what the universe is presenting us with), there is sometimes this need or feeling to look beyond the obvious.

To see if there is something new that you can find in an old relationship.

I would perhaps qualify what I’ve just said by saying that rather than ‘looking’, I think we should ‘feel’ or be ‘aware’ of a change within us as we find we now need different things from a familiar relationship.

Eigg is an old friend. It has taught me so much. I’ve seen it twice a year for 14 years now, and it has had so many different faces, yet because I was running a workshop, I never really had the time to make my own pictures (as this should be the case). So I have started to venture there myself this past year and plan to go back next year on my own as well. Because I ‘feel’ there is something more beyond the obvious, and because I feel there is a change within me in terms of what I think it has to offer.

So I do think working at the edge of something can be non-visual. Sometimes it’s as simple as realising there is room to find something beyond the edge of what we currently know of a place.

The Edge of Things Part 2

Sometimes it’s advantageous to not have any context. To allow the viewer at first glance to wonder what it is that they are looking at.

This is another visual-exercise of ‘brain looking for something beyond the edge’. In this case, hunting beyond the edge of context. It could be that the photo was taken high above the ground, looking down towards clouds and sea. Or it could simply be a frozen body of water with water slowly forming ice underneath its surface. Without any contextual clues we leave this element to be decided by the viewer.

Besides, why does everything need to be explained and spelled out for the viewer? Surely lack of context is a form of ‘hunting beyond the edges of what is there’, because these kinds of pictures are more about what we left out, rather than what we left in.

My frozen body of Japanese water has no land in sight. I am not aware of land in front of the camera, or to the sides. As far as my mind’s eye is concerned, this scene stretches out to infinity at either side of the frame.

I am left with no alternative but to seek for more than what is shown. To go beyond the edge of the picture frame and imagine what lies beyond.

Photographers are always drawn to the edge. Sometimes it is the edge of a coastal region, or the edge of a cliff, but often times, we are drawn to what is beyond the edge of the picture frame.