For Everyone

I come here every year and the conditions vary enormously.  But the tree is more or less the same each time.

Painted Maple Tree © 2018.

I placed my camera on the ground, I managed to compress the horizon line to as thin a wedge as I could. I think the image worked because I had set up the camera for a ‘regular shot’, and just before I made the image, the snow subdued the background and simplified what is normally a view towards the mountains of the Mokoto pass. Instead, we have the small island / peninsula of Lake Kussharo, and slight pinkness of the sky because the snow was preventing the sunrise from bursting through.

It is now a well known landmark (nothing to do with me I assure you). It is right next to the road and lake side, easy access. I had no idea that for Japanese and Korean photographers, this lake is a mecca, as it is for anyone who is a keen Michael Kenna fan. So it has been well documented over many years. Anyway, painted maple tree is a beautiful tree, and we should all enjoy photographing her.

Scars on Land (Podcast Episode 2)

Difficult landscapes offer great potential. If we can only embrace their complexity.

The second episode of my podcast is now available to watch on YouTube in 4K, Apple’s podcast platform and Spotify as an audio only variant.

Terra Silva - 'the land of the forest'

‘We all experience the tranquil feeling of being present in a forest”

Writes my good friend Dorin Bofan his second book.

‘It’s an environment familiar to us, which we evolved in.
’The sounds of birds, insects and the wind gently moving the branches,
’the air filled with the scent of plants,
’all indicate the possibility of food and shelter

I first met Dorin in his home country of Romania back in 2018. He struck me as someone who’s passion for the outdoors is just as strong as his passion for photography is.

His new book ‘Terra Silva’, is a book about forests. He says that ‘Terra Silva’ is latin for ‘the land of the forest’. The book has a beautiful collection of naturalist images of forests from arctic Norway, Romania, Patagonia, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Scotland and also dare I say it - Iceland! Yes, Iceland has forests!

A keen hiker, and much fitter and younger than I am, Dorin is someone who makes images whilst camping inside the forests he shoots. It’s something I would like to do more of myself. Dorin’s photographic style is closer to realist nature photographer Elliot Porter. More verbatim, closer to an accurate account of what one would feel and see if spending time in and around the forests he has photographed in all seasons. I really enjoyed stepping into his realm, even if it was just for a short time. That’s the beauty of books: you can lose yourself in them, in a way that you don’t whilst browsing websites.

Occasionally we see images with hints of graphic qualities to them which help the collection in general feel more varied. Some images are close ups, others vistas. Regardless of this, the level of intimacy he has with his subject is always present in each image, no matter if the image is of a close up branch or a vista. I always sensed Dorin behind every exposure in the book.

I think it is quite difficult to photograph forests. They are certainly a subject matter that I have personally avoided because it takes a special eye to be able to make sense of their busy and often complex nature. While looking through Dorin’s images I slowly became aware that I was not struggling to enjoy the compositions. There are no awkward views, no untidy, ill-conceived shots where I could feel my belief that shooting forests is always a compromise if not impossible. It’s something most would find difficult to do well - to hide the complexity, and to present such complex subjects in a pleasing way. He does it so well, that I almost didn’t notice that he was doing it.

Being a self employed photographer, Dorin and I share the same aspirations: the need to show others what we saw, but also to be able to keep the economic plates spinning in order to keep on doing it. One of the ways we are able to continue with our imagery is by running workshops and selling books, and this is something I must commend him on: he did all the design work on his book, and also oversaw the project without any help from anyone else. It takes a lot of time and effort to make your own book, and also to work with a printer, to iron out all the issues and to hopefully end up with something that is close to what you envisioned. His book is a modest one. Aproximately A4 in size, ,but conceived to work on so many levels. I wish Dorin all the success with it.

The book has reminded me that I still have unfinished interest in Romania and I would love nothing more when my time permits, to go back out there and spend some more time with Dorin. Until then, I will happily be looking through his book and imagery. I will be dreaming of camping in some far off distant forest, in all kinds of weather, and in all seasons, with my camera just like Dorin has.

You can view, find out more, and buy the book here.

Podcast

This week I announced the start of a new podcast / visual essay series. The first episode you can watch on YouTube below.

if you also prefer to listen to audio-only podcasts, then it is also available on Spotify and Apple’s Podcast platform.

A bit of back story: those that have been following me since before 2010 may know that I used to publish a visual essay on Apple’s iTune service. The videos were very popular. Short in length - approximately five minutes long, I enjoyed using a slideshow of images I’d made on a recent trip somewhere, and collecting thoughts to put to some ambient background I would also compose (I’ve been writing music since I was 12).

I abandoned the podcast around 2012. It was simply because it took me a while to find new material. I had only really been working professionally since 2009, and I had only recently (by 2010) started to incorporate foreign locations into my photographic yearly schedule. In short: I did not have enough material to keep up a regular podcast series.

It had never been put together in the first place to be published on a weekly basis. For the uninitiated, it takes a whopping amount of time to go away, make images, work on them, write a script, record your voice, edit the presentation. Some seemed to expect this would be a weekly occurrence and I even got marked down (?!?!?!?) for not publishing regularly :-) It was free! And yet I still got marked down because it was not a regular occurrence.

I mention this, because I wish to point out that the new podcast series at present has a lot of material shot over the past decade to utilise for the source of the episodes. I’ve recorded quite a few episodes so far, which will keep the podcast busy for six months if I publish two episodes a month. But I am anticipating that due to work commitments else where (running a workshop and tour business) that it may become sporadic.

Besides, I’d prefer to publish only when I feel I have something to say :-)

Right now, I do not wish to put pressure on this. I think many YouTube content providers abandon their channel because it has turned into a chore. Things become a chore when you have set yourself a target to publish every few weeks. It becomes a race for new material and I think the content suffers, and also, whomever is creating the content gets disenchanted after a while.

At the moment, I have a lot of material to use. A decade’s worth of images. Over a decade’s worth of writing on this blog to expand upon. I’ve enjoyed writing the blog, but I do feel that sometimes the nuance is missing in my writing that can be conveyed better in audio and visual formats.

So, I see this as a two year project at the moment. I intend to produce regular content for the first year, and we will see after that. Perhaps it’s just a project in it’s own right, and as with all projects, it will have a start, a middle and an end.

I hope you enjoy the ride with me. Let’s see where this will go.

L-bracket for Contax 645 camera

The Contax 645 system is now a very desirable medium format film camera. Specifically for the beautiful bokeh from its lenses, but also, because it is possible to get some digital backs to work with it also.

But it’s an old system, built in the 90’s, and it’s been pretty difficult to find an L-bracket to fit it since RRS stopped making their one for it a long time ago.

Just this week I noticed that Arca-Swiss have an L-bracket that is compatible with Mamiya 645 and also Phase One. I know that the base plate of the Mamiya 645 is the same as the Contax, so I took a gamble and bought the L-bracket from Arca-Swiss. It has the same two pin holes to make sure the base plate does not swivel, and this is the same dimensions for all 3 manufacturers.

The braket fits the body and does not swivel. There are two small issues: the screw for fixing it onto the body is a larger thread than the Contax. I found that using an RSS allen key screw as an alternative, bolts the clamp to the body without any side effects. Perfectly.

The 2nd issue is not so easy, and that is that the film dark slide is difficult to get out of the film back because the L-bracket overhangs it by about 1 mm.

I took the bracket down to Timpson’s key cutters today, and they shaved 1mm off the bracket to allow me to access the dark slide. Sorted.

So… if you’re one of those very lucky people who have a Contax 645, and always wanted an L-bracket for it, then the Arca-Swiss bracket for the Mamiay 645/Phase One 645 is your best bet. Be prepared to get someone to file off a bit of the plate, as you can see below (the silver part of the bracket was filed down).

Note the silver around the Arca plate : that is where the machinist took a few mm off. He got it wrong the first time and shaved a bit off the top of the plate, but it’s the right hand side bit where the dark slide slots in that needed to be removed a little.

When incidental becomes something more

When all the images from a shoot are unedited, they can appear as if there’s not much of anything there at all. That is how I felt about a set of images I made whilst in the northern region of Japan in January 2024.  

At the time of shooting, and also reviewing the work on my light table, I had felt there was no apparent theme. They felt as though they were half-ideas, things that had not worked.  

I had decided to shelve them and perhaps I would never return to them.

The skill required in turning what may appear to be nothing more than random visual thoughts into something that has continuity and hopefully a consistent stylistic message cannot be overstated.

I find the hardest part of working on a new set of images is the getting started phase. I’m aware that I could start on the wrong foot, take the wrong approach. It’s much easier when there is something in the collection of raw images that I am drawn to. That can offer a way in.

What grabbed me about the images I shot in Aomori, were the murals. Three images shot very quickly inside a monastery, turned out to be my way in. They were what I found appealing to work on  and were a joy to play with and notice where they went.

I had also visited a snowy lake. I found that by adding in these more regular winter lake shots provided an extra dimension to the collection that I had not expected to work. I often feel that portfolios tend to grow in terms of personality as we add more images to the set.

About six images in, I was now looking for a further three to make the set up to nine. I prefer small portfolios of uneven number. They lay out well in columns of three while also being more concise by their small number. They suit my minimalistic approach and I think they help make the message much cleaner.

The six edited were now instructing me as to which sort of images to choose to add to the set. It makes it a lot easier to find complimentary images if the set is already feeling cohesive.

I have often thought that when an idea is good, things tend to flow. When things are ‘right’, things come together quickly. Songwriters of very famous songs have often said ‘the song seemed to write itself’, and I think that when we are working with good ideas and good material, then things tend to come together more easily.

But if it were as simple as that, then we’d all be creating great work. The magic is in the mystery of the creative process, and I think part of the ingredient for my set of nine images was timing.

The images had been sitting on my table for more than six months. I had no intention of working on them any time soon. But somehow, today seemed to be their day.

They were waiting for me, and somehow, I was ready.

Available Light

This past May I spent a few days making some portraits of gauchos in Chilean Patagonia.

I prefer to work in available light, and indoors if possible. The light in Southern Patagonia has a cool colour temperature, so skin tones etc don’t tend to be as warm outside as I’d like.

While visiting José’s cabin at the estancia he works at, we had a lot of soft warm light stray into his kitchen area. It really helps if you can get light that allows the subject to glow if possible.

I must confess that I am no expert at lighting. I have often thought of bringing reflectors with me (I invested in a set when I got home from this trip).

Most of the time, whilst shooting the gauchos, I found the light levels too low to hand-hold the camera. This is the downside of shooting film - although the technology has improved a lot - Kodak’s Portra 800 ISO film is no more grainy than the 160 and 400 equivalents (they look identical to my eye last time I did a test), I still struggled to keep the images sharp. I am so rusty that it had not occurred for me to bring my monopod along.

I love shooting the Contax 645 with the 80mm lens. It can go as wide as f2, which results in quite dramatic bokeh, but it can often be too much - sometimes the plane of focus is so thin that I end up with one eye of a subject in focus and the other soft. So I am forced to use f4, which guarantees the eyes will be in focus, but it does mean I lose a stop.

So next year (as I plan to return), I am bringing my monopod, and reflectors. My friends Sabine and Alberto will be put to good use as assistants to hold the reflectors.

Daniel

It’s been a long while, since I made any serious effort at portraiture. Almost a decade in fact as the last time was in Bhutan in 2016. Quite a shock really, but that is partly due to two lost years during covid stretching out the gap. The rest of the time is entirely my own doing - I sometimes have no space in my yearly calendar from running workshops and tours to do anything else, except come home for a much needed break.

This past May, I spent three days with my friends Sabine and Alberto driving from one estancia to another with an appointment to photograph a gaucho at each location. Sabine had organised that we would visit two gauchos per day, and this worked out very well for me.

I normally prefer to roam and pick the people I find photogenic, but this was not possible on this occasion because Sabine didn’t know what sort of subjects I was looking for, and also, she contacted all the gauchos she knows from her time as a guide in Torres del Paine national park.

The setup was very nice. Each gaucho invited us in, we would sit for a few hours chatting about life and things, and it always felt very relaxed and comfortable. Alberto is a driver for the national parks but also worked as a gaucho for a spell, so he knew most of the gauchos that we visited or at least had some common ground / colleagues with them. Alberto is very good at talking, and that made up for me not being able to speak Spanish.

Sabine and Alberto would tell the gauchos what I was looking for, or explain that I would just make some photos, and to kind of ignore me.

I must say that I have had the belief that most of my portraiture work is non-verbal. You can convey so much with your own expressions and how you approach someone, but I was rusty and very much feeling a bit of out my depth on this occasion. Lots of pauses where the subjects didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t know either. I tend to know what I like when I see it, but I’m often waiting for folks to do something that I like, rather than me orchestrate them.

Daniel was the last gaucho we visited. He was expecting his first son to be born the day after our visit, and seemed pretty relaxed about it all.

Anyway, I really love making pictures of people. I wish I could do it more often. It is a welcome reprieve from doing landscape work all the time.

You’d think that doing what you love couldn’t become tiring, but the truth is that everyone needs a break away from what they love. It allows you to recharge, get perspective, and to return to it (landscape photography in my case) with a renewed sense of wonder.

I can’t encourage anyone more to ‘take a break, and do something else’ away from their passion. It really does help.

Gaucho, May 2024

I enjoy making people photos just as much as I do making landscapes. It’s a different thing, and requires a different approach.

Shot with a Contax 645 film camera and 45mm lens, this was made inside the small hut this gaucho worked from. Every gaucho I met had a similar stove and all of them were crazy about mate (south American tea). They drink it from a gourd that you can see in his hand.

The shot isn’t posed. My friend Sabine and our driver spent easily two to three hours with each of the guides just chatting and shooting the breeze. It was a good way of me being able to make photos as at some point, they would just ignore me and get on with what they were doing.

I do love to make people photos and I really haven’t done anything in a very, very long time. Taking a break away from landscape work can be very beneficial in terms of recharging one’s own batteries.

It was just a lot of fun.

Scars on Land III

How we view the landscape, can be shaped by the choice of words we use to describe it.

The word scar for instance has negative connotations. It is often used to convey damage, fault, or something that is permanent which cannot be repaired. We use it to describe emotional damage as well as physical.

I’m often conscious that my choice of words can influence how I feel about a place. Often the feelings come first, and I hunt for a word to describe them. Other times, the words come first, and an emotional reaction is derived from them.

Much like long exposures record the passage of time, scars are a recording of the landscape’s formation. There is something in this for me. I am drawn to knowing that there is history. I am intrigued even, because I realise, I will never know the full story of what happened here.

But I’ve come to see scars in the landscapes as something more than just a mark, a trace of the landscape’s formation. They can be wonderful composition motifs, pleasing or perhaps providing tension to the scene I am recording.

I have re-imagined what I think the word scar means.

They are natures drawings, often loaded with aesthetic beauty as well as many other things.

Some scars are more photogenic than others. Some more meaningful than others. I find myself drawn to them, and I can’t really get to the bottom of why. All I know is they satisfy my visual curiosity for building compositions that are meaningful to me in some way.

I think this is why I am drawn to the interior of Iceland. It is a young landscape. The traces of its formation are apparent, if not in understanding, for I am no geologist, but certainly in terms of graphic artistry. I often feel as though I am looking at the underlying structure of our world. Stripped back to the essentials. It suits my aesthetic for the minimal and graphic. But it also suits my need for connection. For understanding the landscape.

Landscape photography is not just about looking for the graphic aesthetic. We are looking for connection. Often, I think I am hunting for a visual home. A place of familiarity. I am a Scot, and the weather, quality of light and muted colour palate present in the Icelandic interior makes me feel as though I am home in the Scottish Highlands. There is a lot of similarity, even though there is a vast difference in age by several hundred million years between the two landscapes. Iceland’s landscape is young. The oldest parts being roughly 20 million years old. Scotland’s landscape is approximately 480 million years old.

And yet I feel at home. So much so, that when I return to my homeland of Scotland, I find it much easier now to imagine where the glaciers one stood. How each glen was formed by vast tonnes of ice scraping and sculpting the land. I see traces of all this in the scars left behind. Which brings me back full circle to realising that scars on land are somehow more important to me than I had once realised.