Is the work moving forward?

A rhetorical question, but one that I rarely ask myself, but tend to ‘know’, when I am looking at a set of completed new images.

I find it much easier to gauge how much I’ve changed if I am photographing places I know well, and have had a long term relationship with. I have felt for some time that the only way to get deeper into a place, is to keep returning. But this should only be done if you feel compelled to go back. There is little point in returning to a place where you feel no interest, or didn’t feel you felt there was ‘something else left unexplored’.

For me, there is usually a hunch or a feeling that there is still much to do. Often times I think for most of us we have a sense of only scratching the surface with a location. So that in itself is an indication that your creative mind has found something worth returning to.

I think for me, my position is a little unusual, in that my job is tied to returning to places, sometimes on a yearly basis. With Bolivia’s Altiplano, I can see that the work has become more and more reduced over time. I seem to be much less interested in compositional subjects as such, and instead looking for images that work on a tonal and colour response mostly. I think with Bolivia, I am attracted to the colours that are present there, and how the light changes as we head towards dusk, or surface out of it in the mornings.

I have to keep my interest levels up, and coming home from photographing the same places each year and working on them in a similar way can quickly become tiring. So I have always just trusted my feelings when I find myself feeling interested in something in a way that I haven’t looked at it before. What interests me the most, is when I find myself doing something different with a well known location.

For instance, I had not considered editing some of the work with a view towards conveying dusk, and so this time round it has been a surprise to me to find myself experimenting with these edited ‘illusions’, of what I felt as the light fades in Bolivia. It is often a very beautiful time to watch the light fade, and yet I have never really known how to convey it.

Technically speaking, I do not shoot in the dark as the reciprocity times of my films are simply far too long, and they tend to be monochrome studies in the blue channel only.

But my aesthetic seems to be more happy these days to let some colour back in, and darker tones as well. I’m aware that I seem to be more comfortable now working with darker hues than I have been for some time. When I first started out 23 years ago, my work was all over the place, but mainly dark and contrasty with not much attention to tonalities.

Going back to places that resonate with you is really worth doing if you are keen to notice changes in movement in what you do. I will confess that around 6 years ago or so, I felt I couldn’t really go anywhere more with Bolivia. I did wonder at the time if I should stop going and move on to new pastures.

But I think that when something isn’t working any more, it’s not always forever. It is definitely a sign that you need to do something new with where you are shooting, and sometimes it’s a sign that you’re changing.

It may also be the mark that you simply need a pause, or to return later in several years time. You may have moved on a little in what your eye is looking for and it’s going to take some time for your abilities to catch up with what your mind’s eye is now seeking.

I am enjoying the new work I’ve created. I know for sure that I wouldn’t have made these images 14 years ago when I first ventured to Bolivia. I have had several periods where I felt my work had moved on in some way, and other periods where I felt it stagnate. All I know for sure, is that everything I do is always a stepping stone forward, even if I cannot see it at the time.

Kodak Portra Reciprocity Times

I’ve had trouble buying Fuji Velvia 50 for a year now. I am told that due to material shortages, Fuji cannot make enough of the stuff. An order I placed with Wex Photographic a year ago, is being honoured by a few packs of film every six months. It’s clear to me that Wex (and others) are simply dividing what they are being given and sending out the stock to all their customers, rather than honouring who ordered first.

When I was in Japan in January I managed to buy some Velvia. My guide in Japan has been on the hunt for me as well and has been lucky enough to find me some film that will keep me going for another year I suspect.

So I figured it’s time to look at different film stocks and try them out. I have a mass of Kodak Portra 160 sitting at home which I have used for portrait work in the past, and I’d like to see how I get on with the C41 process as well. So I think this is what I’m going to do.

So today I worked out what the reciprocity corrected times are for my most used shutter speeds when going long-exposure. I am hoping I got this right based on the graph below.

I think I will head out with the camera later this summer, to try this out. I will have to print this out and laminate it, as I do prefer to memorise these things, and work them out myself whilst in the field. Which is often something that participants on my workshops find funny, as they can often hear me counting and using my fingers to work out the adjustment based on the ND grad strength I’m using. I do not wish to use an App, because I would prefer to be in complete control, and the only way to do that, is to fully learn and become accustomed to the tools I use.

So here are the adjusted exposure times for Kodak’s Portra. Note that I always work on a 1-stop granularity basis. I never use half-stops or third-stops. In my view, I rarely need to work with anything finer than 1-stop differences. Besides, it makes for much easier computation if everything is either halved or doubled, and that goes for buying ND filters too.

 
 

Dream Processing

I just completed processing my latest films from Brazil, Bolivia and also some other trips I did this year. There is now a pile of films sitting waiting to be edited.

But I have this photo below - of my light table a few days ago etched in my mind.

I have too much to do right now, that doesn’t allow me time to edit the work, so while I am busy doing daily life chores, I am finding that I can’t help but visualise the final portfolio from my Bolivia tour. As much as I keep returning to the same places, I feel I’ve moved on as a photographer and I’m less and less interested in the literal view.

So I’m kind of enjoying the dreaming process I’m going through right now. I have been convinced for many years that one should collate and sort out their most recent images (RAW files), and just get a ‘feel’ for the work, before approaching doing anything with them. For me, that’s all about processing the films, collecting them into piles of transparencies, and glancing at what I’ve shot. The main thing is not to launch straight into editing the work.

I think I see a very different set of images from Bolivia for this time round, and if anything, just realising that I have so many potential images to work on, and that some of them are surfacing quite often in my thoughts is a good thing. Whether the final portfolio will be anything like I am imagining isn’t of any importance. It’s more about just finding that you are feeling inspired, and that your mind is dreaming, wondering, conjuring up different feelings and emotions about what you shot, that is what drives me forward.

I’ve got to go away for a few days, but I am now finding myself quite keen to look at this work next week when I have some time. This is another aspect for me; I do not like to edit images piecemeal, with only a few minutes free here and there. I like to have a good chunk of free time to do it, as I find I tend to become immersed in it. So for me, allocating two or three full days is ideal. I realise that this isn’t feasible for most folks, but for me, I’ve always enjoyed the solitude and I like to give myself plenty of space and time to work on images.

Light Table View

Been a bit quiet this past few weeks. I’m in the middle of processing films from my recent tours to Brazil and Bolivia.

Below is a photograph taken on my phone of my light table with Velvia transparencies just dried, and in the process of being cut, and put into a sleeve to protect from dust.

9 images from one roll of film, on my light table.

One of the things I loved about this year’s tour to Bolivia was that we had a lot of overcast light during the day time. My fantastic guide Silveria wanted to show me two of the islands on the Salar because she loved the shapes of them: pyramid and some kind of flying saucer shape. I have worked with Silveria before and she seems to understand and know what I’m looking for : graphic shapes and simplified composition.

Anyway, if there is a point to this post today, it is that even though I have been coming to Bolivia now for over a decade, there is often a chance to see something new. Partly it’s a case of being taken to new views, other times it’s that the light is different. But on this occasion, I know within my heart that what I am attracted to make images of these days, is quite different from what I was looking for back in 2009 when I first ventured here.

Bolivia has been a learning landscape for me. It is often easy to see our progress when we look back, and when I review and study my first efforts, and how the compositions seemed to become more simple as time went on, I gained so much in noticing that there were elements and traces of where my style was going to progress to, in the initial images from all those years ago.

I’m almost finished processing the films from the past year. I hope to start working on editing and publishing images from Bolivia and Brazil over the coming weeks. We will see.

What you start with, doesn't have to be what you end up with

I’m a big music fan. I write music and I’m a serious amateur musician. For me, it is always very interesting to hear one of the musicians I admire talk about their creative process.

Often times though, I see so many parallels, so many similar issues regarding the creative process. Whether it’s music writing, making photos, writing a book. Whatever. The creative process is always the same: it is a mirror of dealing with inner questions and looking for answers.

One such musician I love is Jon Hopkins. He is a classically trained musician that also works in the electronic fields. He has produced artists like Coldplay, and seems to be very comfortable working in classical music as well as very hard electronic genres.

In many interviews, he has explained that often times, the musical theme, or song that he starts off with, rarely survives to the end. By the time he has finished, the music is unrecognisable from the idea he started out with. Any trace of the initial idea has gone.

I have always assumed that any idea I start with, would remain if it is a good idea. and anything that is weak, should be ejected after some time living with it. So it’s interesting to hear this from Hopkins. as I didn’t interpret his statement as saying ‘whatever I start off with is fairly average and I need to work on things to make it better’. Instead, what I felt he was saying was: ‘even though the initial idea is good, I know it’s only a starting point, and I give myself permission to move beyond it’.

And this is the rub for me. Whatever we start with: we often give too much weight or importance to. If we don’t think it’s strong enough, then we may abandon it too soon, not recognising that it is merely a stepping stone - a catalyst, and go looking for something much stronger.

In Hopkins case, I think what he is doing is starting off with a strong idea. But he’s aware that a good or great idea may still just be a jumping off point, and there may be more to explore.

He wants to be surprised. He wants to be engaged in a way that he hasn’t been before.

In my view, the only way we can get to a level where we surprise ourselves, is if we are willing to let go of anything we have managed to create so far. Even if we have created something we like or think is good, we must be willing to take a chance by changing it, because there may, or may not be, something better beyond it.

I suppose this all comes down to learning to let things go. It is so damn hard to let go of an idea we think is good in the pursuit of something better. I have been there so many times.

But I have found that when I do let go, one of two things happens: I either find something much stronger (and realise that what I thought was good, was only ok), or I lose it all.

We have to be willing to lose it all, in the pursuit of finding something better. Otherwise we will always be working within the confines of a landscape that we already know.

Lençóis Maranhenses Tour 2024

Just a little notice today that I have published dates for a Lençóis Maranhenses tour for next May. The tour isn’t available to book as yet, because I am finding it very difficult for the agencies I work with to give me prices so far in advance.

So I’ve published the tour and dates, in case you may wish to make a note of it in your diary. I do hope to publish the actual price and allow booking of the tour sometime in the next couple of weeks.

This year’s tour went extremely well. I think we all got so many beautiful images, and I can’t wait to show them to you. I have just returned home and I’m needing a rest, so I hope to get round to processing the films in July, for inclusion in a newsletter.

Until then, here are some images from my 2019 trip there. The new tour is not a trekking trip. It is a 4WD trip and we are able to cover quite a bit of ground. This is also extremely helpful in reaching the most photogenic lagoons in time to shoot the soft morning and evening light.

On originality

“Good artists borrow. Great artists Steal”
- Pablo Picasso

I recently had a participant tell me that during a review of his work with a well known landscape photographer, he was informed his images looked a lot like mine. It reminded me of a story of a famous landscape photographer who, whilst reviewing a participant’s images, noticed that some of the images looked like several well known landscape photographer’s work. He said ‘these are all very nice. But where is your work?’

This has stayed with me over the years. Perhaps for it being rather brutally honest, and probably a very hard pill to swallow for the participant. But mostly because I think that aiming for some kind of originality in one’s work, too soon in our own development - can be extremely damaging. Let me explain.

“You begin by walking in the footsteps of your heroes,
but hopefully at some point your paths should diverge”
- Michael Kenna

I include the quote above (paraphrased), by Michael Kenna for a reason. Michael has occasionally gone to places where his ‘heroes’ have been, to make his own version of one of their classics. I include two images below:

Left: original Bill Brandt photograph.
Right: Michael Kenna’s homage to Brandt’s Snicket.

Michael Kenna has often name checked the inspiration for his own images and in this case, his photograph is called ‘Bill Brandt’s Snicket’.

That aside, the main reason for showing you this, is that I think it is perfectly natural for everyone to follow in the footsteps of the work that inspires them the most. In fact, I think it’s a rite of passage for all of us, and no one escapes this period in their photography.

Put it this way: if you’re learning to play guitar, it’s often best to start of by learning some classic riffs. By going along to photograph either an iconic composition, or to simply go to landscapes that are stylistically similar to the imagery you admire - can be a great learning tool.

As I say: this is a rite of passage for all of us.

So I think that when we start making images, being drawn to similar places, or looking for things that are stylistically similar to images we like is only natural. We have to learn to walk before we can run, and one of the best ways to learn to walk, is to at the very least emulate, or at best, be drawn to similar landscapes that we have enjoyed in the work that inspires us.

In my view, being told that your work looks like [insert photography of photographer you like], is no bad thing. Just being able to attain compositions that utilise stylistic aspects of the work you enjoy means you’ve learned quite a lot. It is almost impossible to avoid influences, but if you can pull of imagery that comes over as well executed, and to a similar level of the imagery you have been influenced by - then you’ve attained quite a bit of skill. And you are following your natural path by connecting with the stylistic signatures that you enjoy.

So in my view, rather than trying to avoid your imagery looking like someone else’s, we should embrace our influences. Sure, be aware of them - know where they are in your work. But don’t chastise your influences or ban them from your imagery. Influences are not only a contributing factor to where you’ve gotten to so far, but they will continue to teach, and help you flourish in your work going forward.

—

At the beginning of this post I mentioned two photographers who in essence had hoped that their participants would be more original. Or at least show work that was ‘their own’. I would like to say that although I think it is an admirable thing to encourage individuality, and to help promote that participants should look for their own voice in their work, It is in my view often extremely hard for anyone to execute. For the most part, if someone is to develop a sense of individual style or voice, it will tend to come in its own time. And it tends to come whether someone is looking for it or not. Because finding a unique style or voice is an incredibly elusive thing to find. If it wasn’t so elusive, we’d all have achieved it.

So, in my view, until you find your ‘style’ or ‘voice, you are best to just follow what inspires you. Irrespective of where it’s sourced from. This is all I have ever done, and I can only suggest you do the same.

Bolivia

I’m just on my way home from Bolivia. I have not been here for four years, and it was nice to return to some of the most special light I get to work in at sunrise and sunset !

I am looking forward to developing my films from this trip as soon as I get home.

In the photo above, I am with my guide - Selveria. I have worked with her back in 2012 and also around 2015. A real professional, she tells me that she is more comfortable at her home town of Uyuni’s elevation of 3,500m. High plateau people tend to have genetic differences that allow them to work better at higher elevations.

On this tour, we had 3 x land cruisers with drivers. I’m always amazed at the terrain we’re able to navigate over, as the roads are often nothing more than tracks in a vast desert.

I hope to post some new images soon of Bolivia. We ventured to some new locations on this tour.

Below I show a collection of images from Bolivia. I have come here countless times now, perhaps just as many times privately as I have the tours I’ve offered because I find the light here like nowhere else.

Getting good at a few things - the gift of limitations

When I first entered into photography back in the year 2000, digital capture was still very much in its infancy. I did not choose film, it was the only real serious option at the time, and so that decision was made for me.

It is now 2023, and I am still using film. I have found over the years of using the slide film I prefer (Velvia 50), that I have had to work in a narrow range of light. The film I use has a latitude of maybe 3 to 5 stops. I have always assumed that it is around 3 stops, and because of this, I also use grads to reduce down my scenes from 3 stops to zero stops between ground and sky.

Because the film is so limited in dynamic range, right from the beginning, I had to learn to ‘read’ the light available to me and figure out if I could shoot in it. It turns out that most light I couldn’t. I had to go looking for light where the dynamics were within that 3-stop range, and that meant looking for very soft light.

As it turns out: very soft light is perhaps the most beautiful light we can work in. And I’ve learned over the years I’ve been working with my limited film range, that my film has pushed me into learning to work in this particular light more than any other kind of light out there. I suppose I kind of like to believe that I have become an expert in soft light.

This has happened, only because of the limitations of the medium I use. If I had maybe started a decade later when digital was more established, I might not have walked that tightrope in being forced to work within the narrow range of soft light situations.

I think the tendency to think that we need more dynamic range in our cameras is a leaning on technology to provide for us, where in fact we should be learning to work with the limitations of what we have.

Consider if all your lenses broke except for your 50mm. If you were unable to get to a camera store, or mailorder, and you’re currently in the middle of the Atacama desert, what do you do? You work with what you have.

Will this catastrophe ruin your visit to the Atacama? Probably not. In some ways, having the choice of which lens to use removed from you is a blessing. You have one less thing to worry about.

It will also probably mean you will start to look at the landscape from a 50mm viewpoint. All the compositions you will begin to notice will tend towards 50mm. I would go so far as to suggest that you’ll start to get very good at it, the more you’re forced to work with your 50mm lens and nothing else.

There is one other aspect of having this limitation forced upon you: I am 100% convinced that you will produce work that you wouldn’t have, if you’d had any choice of focal length available to you.

It is only when we are pushed up against a wall, that we start to become inventive. After all, how do you know if you’ve gone too far, if you’ve never reached the boundaries of your own comfort zone? Having a limitation like catastrophic lens failure thrust upon you will give you a chance to find out.

In my view: i’d much rather get good at one thing, than feel as though I have a limited understanding of many. Limitations are good, and working around the edges of what’s possible can lead you to a place in your creativity that you may not have visited before.

Tools to damage

I remember getting a phone call from the very nice old man who services and repairs my old Hasselblad film cameras. He started with asking me ‘have you been anywhere wet recently? Because your camera is rusting inside’.

The photo here is of my Hasselblad body (one of two I’ve taken with me on this trip) where the leather exterior has started to peel away due to the humidity, and the body / mirror shows sand inside.

In my view, as much as I love equipment and try to look after it. It will get subjected to wet conditions (Iceland and Japan), and desert / sandy conditions in Iceland and the Atacama. I have worn out several bodies, sometimes in just a couple of years from these machines being subjected to all kinds of conditions.

The image always comes first, and if I have to subject my cameras to unkind conditions, then that is ok.

For me, this is no hardship. My cameras are relatively inexpensive to replace. They are all old 1980’s film cameras and lenses. Despite prices for second hand film cameras increasing over the years, they are still very inexpensive compared to some of the new digital cameras out there.

I am always curious as to how much we hold ourselves back in the pursuit of our image making when we are concerned that our camera equipment may get damaged. This is really the issue I am focussing on today in this post. Do you for instance only shoot when it’s dry? And do you pack your camera away the moment the first drops of rain appear? If so, then you are definitely holing yourself back from making use of the changes in the weather. Always only working in dry conditions, on fair days is going to limit your photography. Not just in the diversity of images you come home with, but also in your learning of working in different kinds of light.

Perhaps there is a balance that needs to be reached. A compromise between 'accessibility to all kinds of weather’ against ‘cost of repair’. If you wish to explore places which may be more demanding on your equipment, then perhaps budget for spare lenses, and at the very least a spare body. Perhaps even decide to buy two of a consumer camera rather than go all out for the super high end twice-the-price equivalent. It will make your priorities clear, and you more willing to take risks with your equipment.

I certainly think being on the lookout for spare lenses, or a spare body should be part of your photography plan. And if you can’t justify owning two bodies, then perhaps think about buying a used backup body for that big trip of a lifetime, and sell it once you get home.

Like learning how to manage our money (which we don’t get taught at school), we should learn to manage our expenditure on equipment to build in a portion of ‘in the event of a failure’.

For myself, I always travel now with 2 x camera bodies, 2 x standard lenses, 2 x standard wide angles, plus a superwide. And with my tele lenses, I have some overlap in the selection I bring with me, so that if one link in the chain is missing, I don’t feel the gap.