Terra Silva are two Latin words. They loosely mean "the land of the forest". Since this project is about forests and trees and since my native language is a direct descendant of Latin, I thought it would be a fitting title. More so, the idea came about in 2015 while I was freezing in a bothy writing in a journal about my experience in Cairngorms National Park, photographing the Caledonian forest, a Latin name given by the Roman Empire to the north side of Great Britain.
On that particular trip to Scotland, I probably had the biggest strike of luck of all the trips dedicated to the project. On the second day, the temperatures dropped, and it started to snow. The landscape was shaped by the cold spell. The Scots pine trunks stood out against the blank canvas created by the transient snow. Sometimes, everything was silent but immediate and gripping. Being alone could only enhance this feeling. Other times, the wind blew with great power, rushing the clouds and leaving brief moments for the sun to shine. The swiftly changing weather of Scotland graced with some good memories. It reminded me that I finally needed to change my seven-year-old boots - walking hours on end through dense vegetation covered in melting snow will get your feet wet.
Diversify my approach
After Scotland, I imagined myself going on trips all over the planet to photograph various forest ecosystems, a thing that usually requires a generous budget and plenty of time, none of which I had. So, instead, I did a few scouting trips for future photo tours where I focused almost solely on photographing trees. This way, I could justify spending the money.
After Scotland, I imagined myself going on trips all over the planet to photograph various forest ecosystems, a thing that usually requires a generous budget and plenty of time, none of which I had.
Then, I invested a lot of time in photographing the forests of my home country, which are some of the oldest and richest land ecosystems in Europe.
I did a lot of backpacking in my local mountains, taking my time without being worried about breaking the budget. Between 2015 and 2020, I managed to make some of my favourite images since I started photography while being responsible with the finances, but also have a better understanding of the place through multiple visits. Though I admit there were several occasions where I got lucky with the right conditions on my first visit. I'm the kind of photographer who doesn't plan too much (although there was always some planning involved) and I do think that every type of landscape and any kind of light can produce unique images. So I worked with what I had, trying to diversify my approaches of the same subject instead of exploring new places with each visit.
Reviewing my existing catalogue
Another thing I did was to look at my portfolio before 2015. I felt there were a few older images that would fit the project quite well, images that I always liked, that stood the test of time. However, I was afraid that this might turn the project into a collection of images from my portfolio instead of images that I set out to make specifically for Terra Silva. I came to the conclusion that this was an acceptable compromise if wanted to present the best images of trees that I could possibly make. The first image in the book, as every project should end with a book or at least some printed form, is a good example of that. Made in 2013, this little pine tree photographed in Norway was discovered by my wife while we made a quick stop on our way to the next camping spot.
The problem with a project about trees is that it can go on forever. So I had to make a decision at one point. I had around 120 images that I felt were worthy to make up a book. A first edition of Terra Silva, to be more exact.
It also inspired the illustration on the cover and was a good link between a past stage in my photography and a newer one, where I worked with more intention on creating images with a common theme.
Book design
The problem with a project about trees is that it can go on forever. So I had to make a decision at one point. I had around 120 images that I felt were worthy to make up a book. A first edition of Terra Silva, to be more exact. Because I know I'm never going to stop working on it. There are still places to see, forests to explore, and images to be made. I started the image selection in 2022 while continuing to produce new work. At the beginning of 2023, I entered the last phase, the book. Since I published another book a few years before, I had some previous experience in book design, which I did myself. I'm always keen on learning new things, and design, in general, has always appealed to me. I knew I wanted the same dimensions, 28x22 cm, as the first book. This is because I would like to be able to present my whole portfolio as a collection of books that look and feel the same (just an idea; it might change with time).
There are, however, a few advantages with smaller books. They are more affordable without sacrificing quality in production. As people are less and less interested in physical books, a high price might make them even less interested. More so, I want my books to appeal to a wider audience, not only photography book connoisseurs but people who like nature and the outdoors and people who like arts in general. As for the paper, I wanted something that would feel organic, closer to what one would experience upon touching a tree or a leaf. Matt paper was the ideal candidate, although I knew it could be tricky to print on. The printing house I worked with, Editoriale Bortolazzi Stei in Italy, sent me a few samples and in the end I went for a matt paper with a velvet surface and a high thickness - GardaPat Bianka (pure white shade). The details and colour reproduction came out great while keeping that organic feel I was after. Of course, these choices are subjective, and I think it's important that you, as the author, are satisfied with the final product. My expectations were surpassed.
My biggest challenge
The biggest challenge in making the book was the text. Writing is something I enjoy, even though it doesn't come as easily as photography to me. I set out from the beginning to take the scientific route, reading books and studies about forests, ranging from the history of trees on our planet to why they are critical to the land environment and our relationship as a species to them.
Terra Silva was a joy to make, and I'm grateful for all the time I spent among the trees with my camera. However, there were moments, especially during those many days spent in front of the computer, when I felt desperate or frustrated like this wasn't going to end any time soon.
This approach helped me figure out another important aspect: the structure of the book. It has 4 chapters - Time, Resilience, Community and Stillness, each with an introductory text and 4 shorter texts on lesser known facts about trees. To make the challenge even greater, I emailed several scientists and book authors in the field of dendrology to see if they would be interested in writing the foreword. All politely refused because they didn't have the time. Then I wrote a few photographers only get the same answer or to be postponed until I couldn't wait any longer. So I ended up with no foreword. A bit sad at first, but at least I could use that spread to put two more images in the book.
Terra Silva was a joy to make, and I'm grateful for all the time I spent among the trees with my camera. However, there were moments, especially during those many days spent in front of the computer, when I felt desperate or frustrated like this wasn't going to end any time soon. After a while, I took it as part of the process. There has to be some struggle for art to make its way and become relevant.
Forests have always been a part of my identity, so I knew I had to bring this book to life. In spite of not having a generous budget that would allow me to explore more - a trip to California to see the oldest and the tallest trees on earth is probably my biggest regret. In spite of having spent a lot of time at home taking care of my son (he was born in 2017) when I should have been in the field. In spite of having long periods of stressful work (as a freelance photographer and guide, you spend most of your time doing anything but photography) or simply feeling overwhelmed by daily life. Sometimes I just sat with the disconfort and frustration, accepting that there were other priorities.
Looking back at all these years, Terra Silva was a constant thing in my life, almost like a string which connected big and small events, like asking my wife to marry me on a camping trip far away, the birth of our son, the travels we did together, the shared mountain hikes with old and new friends or the time spent by myself in the wild.
So I made a point of taking advantage of every small occasion to work on the book. I would go for a run to clear my head in the nearby forest, taking the camera with me (I call it trail running photography). Instead of reading before bed, I would sit in front of the computer for 20 minutes selecting images or working on a spread. Bit by bit, the book was completed in November 2023, just in time for Christmas.
Looking back at all these years, Terra Silva was a constant thing in my life, almost like a string which connected big and small events, like asking my wife to marry me on a camping trip far away, the birth of our son, the travels we did together, the shared mountain hikes with old and new friends or the time spent by myself in the wild. I remember all these moments when flipping through the book as each image connects to a beautiful memory. Who knows, without realising it’s probably why I started the project in the first place.
When I recovered from the shock when Charlotte asked me to provide an End Frame article, I was then a bit flummoxed as to what picture I should choose.
Should it be one of the late great Adams, Weston, Bullock etc. or one of the modern masters, Cornish, Waite, Kenna?
I thought that all these great photographers are well known, and that it might be interesting to choose someone who is not a public figure. Looking through my photographic books, I decided to choose Barry Thornton.
Barry, now sadly passed away, was a British photographer who straddled the analogue and digital worlds. He held a senior role in corporate training but eventually gave this up to earn his living as a photographer.
As well as image making, he designed black and white film developers and other chemistry, ran training courses in all aspects of processing and printing and wrote several books. He was an early adopter of digital printing, and he helped me considerably with my start in digital printing.
The image I have chosen is titled “Wiltshire, October”. It depicts the wide-open spaces of the Wiltshire Downs.
Welcome to our 4x4 feature, which is a set of four mini landscape photography portfolios which has been submitted for publishing. Each portfolio consists of four images related in some way. Whether that's location, a project, a theme or a story. Added:
California’s Pacific Coast is replete with photographic opportunities ranging from dramatic bluffs to sea stacks, craggy rocks, piers and tafoni. The tafoni formations resemble a honeycomb and is formed by the forces of erosion on rock surfaces. While making this collection of photographs, I wanted to accentuate the textures and patterns of tafoni. Soft directional light provided the perfect conditions to translate my vision into reality.
All the photographs in this collection were made at Bean Hollow State Beach situated roughly 50 miles south of San Francisco.
There are many secrets to be found on the rock platforms on the beaches close to Sydney (Australia). There are special places where the rocks are glorious colours – blue, green, yellow, orange and red. Sea snails make art as they weave their way through the sand at the bottom of a rock pool. Delicate jewel chains of seaweed hide in narrow cracks in the rocks. The high tide sweeps over the pools, causing mini streams and waterfalls. Sunlight catches the ripples and every moment is different. I look for colour, textures, movement, and abstract patterns which reveal themselves momentarily. The day has to be just right for photography – a gentle trickle of water over the rocks, a slight breeze, and a clear sky to avoid the reflections of the clouds.
I do like watching the waves. It is relaxing and always exciting and unpredictable. Usually, I can spend hours trying to figure out or predict the next move and the next splash. More than watching waves, I like taking photos of waves. Long exposure, mid-telephote lens, and tripod are my choices of techniques and equipment. Opportunities to get creative are almost limitless. Slight changes in photographic parameters can capture different views and structures of water motion. I'll use three parts of a 4x4 profile photo to present my theme. I decided to use a 1:1 aspect ratio to emphasize the abstract nature of the subject.
I started making more abstract landscape images in 2021. National lockdown rules confined me to my local park. The few vistas it has were always (and understandably) well populated. That, combined with a period of deep introspection, prompted me to start looking more closely at the trees.
The more I looked, the more I could see things that I had not seen before. Forms in the trees dug up memories, stories and significances. It was such fun. Abstraction is now a concept I play with on a regular basis. I found these four on a recent trip to that same park where it all began (with profound thanks to Joe Cornish for inspiring “Wisdom”, in particular, with his recent collection, Inner World).
In this issue, we have a conversation with Eric Erlenbusch, who has realised a long-standing desire to both see and share where he lives, which began at an early age with time spent outdoors. Only later did a camera begin to help him realise his ambition and ultimately prompt him to flip the needle between interest and career. He has long had an ambition to do more than simply record what nature looks like: visual storytelling and passion are essential. We talk about the role of the camera in noticing and engaging with viewers and the different ways of sharing photography that he is exploring.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, what your early interests were, and what you went on to do?
Firstly, I’d like to thank On Landscape for the opportunity to share my journey with photography. I grew up in Missoula, MT, which is between Glacier National Park and Yellowstone. My family wasn’t particularly outdoorsy, but I was always athletic through sports. In my teens, I joined my family during hunting season for outings into the woods and a few random camping trips. Around the age of 15, I vividly remember a day I believe my love of Nature began; I felt bored one Saturday morning, so I randomly took my parents’ mountain bike and rode a local trail which ended at the Wilderness boundary. Since that day in Nature, I haven’t felt boredom in my life again.
Around the age of 15, I vividly remember a day I believe my love of Nature began; I felt bored one Saturday morning, so I randomly took my parents’ mountain bike and rode a local trail which ended at the Wilderness boundary.
During high school, I had a friend who shared some interest in being outdoors, and while only both being 16 years old, we headed into the nearby mountains for an overnight winter camping trip. Looking back it sounds bizarre that our parents allowed us to do this; I have fond memories from that trip and our subsequent adventures, as he unfortunately passed away a few years later in an avalanche accident. I continued to explore the Bitterroot Mountains and the surrounding mountains of Montana, as much as possible on weekends and during the summer. I purchased a USFS map for $5.00 and began exploring, wondering where each trail went and what it looked like, often solo with my dog or with a friend. This same friend and I bought a snowmobile in high school and used that to further explore and ski in Winter. Looking back, I really just wanted to see where I lived and share it.
I met a friend shortly after who also enjoyed climbing and we began to climb mountains, from Granite Peak in MT (highest point) to failed attempts in Glacier NP to summiting Mt. Rainier out of Seattle. Through all these adventures, I often took a 35mm point and shoot, and stuffed it with Kodak Gold as a way to share snaps of these adventures. This was the extent of photography for me at the age of 20; my interest was solely in Nature and adventure. I moved to Utah to attend the U of U and continue my studies in Meteorology; I’m a self-proclaimed weather nerd and thought this was my career path. I worked and skied at Alta/Snowbird through school and quickly met even more adventurous, like-minded friends. Through adventures in nature, I began noticing there were more and more moments which stood out for me to want to share.
How did photography come into your life, and what were your early images of or about?
In 2005, I broke my leg skiing and later that year I moved to Seattle, WA, with my partner at the time. She had an older SLR with a “real” lens and I recall feeling as if I could see for the first time upon using it. I decided I wanted to teach myself photography and began using Velvia 50 and spot metering through the camera to learn light. Weekend adventures to the Olympic Peninsula and the Cascade Mountains gave ample opportunity to shoot and learn. I also spent countless days at my favourite place in Seattle, the Ballard Locks. I was hungry to learn, shoot, evaluate and repeat. Photography was very much a slow learning process and was always in the background for me at this time.
It was in Seattle that I began a career in Hospitality Management for a global company, which then allowed me to move to Park City, UT. I liked my job, connecting with people and living where nature was literally at my doorstep.
The colourful aspens and atmosphere created what felt like a Monet all around me. This was my “ah-ha moment” in Nature. I looked at the time, realising I had to leave to go to work (I was late), but I was leaving something I loved for something I didn’t love.
In the fall of 2012, I was out hiking and shooting one morning before work, as a clearing storm created lifting fog and magical light. The colourful aspens and atmosphere created what felt like a Monet all around me. This was my “ah-ha moment” in Nature. I looked at the time, realising I had to leave to go to work (I was late), but I was leaving something I loved for something I didn’t love. I decided at that moment that my life was going to follow a different path toward what I love. The following April I set off on a 4 month road trip around the Western USA and haven’t looked back yet.
Here in the forested mountains and limestone farming valleys of eastern West Virginia(US), wooded river and stream bottoms bristle with terrain features, vegetation communities, habitats, ecological dynamics, and natural architectures that I can’t resist. From high terraces bordering uplands, to near shore islands and bars flanking main channels, they are inexhaustible subjects.
Kenneth Grahame (who wrote The Wind in the Willows) put it right. Sometimes, there’s nothing else half as worth doing as bumping my canoe along river banks - I mean right up against them. And I slip into guts and creeks and explore on foot, too.
One day, a tiny flicker of movement materialised into a mole (Scalopus aquaticus*) clambering down a recently collapsed bank like that shown in the right mid-ground of “Mole Hall”. The little creature launched, and to my amazement, with stubby legs churning it slalomed through fallen branches and reached open water. Across the main channel’s 250 m, it laboured and then climbed up the bank. It disappeared in floodplain litter.
Mole Hall
One day, a tiny flicker of movement materialised into a mole (Scalopus aquaticus*) clambering down a recently collapsed bank like that shown in the right mid-ground of “Mole Hall”.
The incident stayed with me. Reflexively, I thought about the ever-higher and more frequent flooding that has been changing the bottoms thereabouts for years. At night, The Wind in the Willows (1908 Kenneth Grahame) also came to mind. This is an Edwardian children’s story about a community of anthropomorphised small animals living in picturesque rural England. It stars a mole and a stream.
Over the following days, the feat kept coming back to me. I was charmed by the little and humble places in nature that Grahame sang, and I was reminded that a lot of eyes actually do gaze at the world from down low. But I grumbled to myself about the pressures caused by climate change.
Among other things, I reconsidered my taste in river banks.
*The species name “aquaticus” derives from the animals’ slightly webbed digits but not from any exceptional aquatic habits.
Eddie is a woodsman. He’s also a professional wood craftsman, and among the items he makes for himself are hunting bows. Every year, he goes out after white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) for the table.
On a snowy morning, Eddie ambushed a deer in a big creek bottom near home. Deer sometimes wait out a heavy storm in the protection of low-lying bottoms like the one shown in “Snow in the Woods on Flynn Creek.”
Snow In The Woods On Flynn Creek
Just as Eddie released the arrow, however, the still unsuspecting animal moved a little and consequently suffered a serious but not quickly incapacitating wound. Eddie knew that he might be in for a long and possibly unsuccessful chase if he tried to close right away and the deer saw or smelled him for the first time. He also knew that if he remained hidden and waited 20 minutes, the deer probably would soon tire, bed, and then get stiff and slow. He waited.
The north-south running headwater fork of a big creek near home is steep and fast over its last mile. There, it plunges through a narrow ravine stuffed with dense evergreen rhododendron (Rhododendron sp.) thickets.
As he picked up the trail, heavier snowfall threatened to erase it. Then, a complication: A bear’s tracks started crossing the deer’s. The bear was looking for the wounded deer, too.
Eddie often stopped to look around through the falling, swirling snow.
To his surprise, during a scan in patchy undergrowth, Eddie saw just yards off and facing away, a big old grey muzzled black bear(Ursus americanus), a boar, or male. It was sitting, nose up in the air, searching the rising wind.
Eddie stood and watched for a minute. Then, on impulse, he noiselessly crept up behind the preoccupied bear and tapped it on the shoulder with the tip of his bow.
He said the animal turned casually, did a double take, spun, and was gone. Soon after, Eddie located the deer and puts it down.
The north-south running headwater fork of a big creek near home is steep and fast over its last mile. There, it plunges through a narrow ravine stuffed with dense evergreen rhododendron (Rhododendron sp.) thickets. But by pushing through, one eventually makes out bright gaps ahead. Then, the bottom levels widen, and the woods open up here and there, as shown in “Flood Debris Jam on the North Fork.”
Flood Debris Jam on the North Fork
The next mile, which is still as far up the fork as I’ve been, is a complexly structured, mostly wooded wetland. The fork meanders across the floor. Beavers (Castor canadensis) have built dams, ponds, and dwellings, as shown in the image “Bank Lodge.” There is also some meadow.
Bank Lodge
Although the forest here is generally more open than that lower down, the going is still circuitous, in good part because of a large number of fallen ash(Fraxinus sp.) and hemlocks(Tsuga canadensis). The invasive woolly adelgid (Agrilus planipennis) killed the hemlocks, and the invasive emerald ash borer (Adelges tsugae) killed the ash. Decades have passed, and the snags have come down, adding another dimension to a bottom floor already supporting life forms and microhabitats enough to entertain any naturalist.
Many watercourse bottoms, often densely forested, dark, wet, and little travelled, have been the setting of Western folklore. It doesn’t take being a romantic, however, to look down into one and wonder what goes on in these places.
One late fall morning dozens of fox tracks got me searching after discovering them on a small sandy patch of abandoned woods road. The den turned up 50 meters away, set at the edge of a swampy stream bottom. It was dug into a low earthen mound likely raised decades before by the root disc of a long since rotted away wind throw. A thicket surrounded everything.
Many watercourse bottoms, often densely forested, dark, wet, and little travelled, have been the setting of Western folklore. It doesn’t take being a romantic, however, to look down into one and wonder what goes on in these places.
Three afternoons later I made myself comfortable in the fork of a leaning tree overlooking the site. A sharp two note bark announced a red fox(Vulpes vulpes) pair’s separate entrances from the swamp at the start of the evening. Then, for an hour, they played, poked around, and lounged in the den area. But abruptly and without ceremony, they followed their respective steps back into the dusk filled swamp. The male stopped to look directly up at me for long moments as it passed below.
Outdoor activity in my rural state traditionally and typically tends toward the communal. ”We” go fishing. “We” go hunting. “We” go pick ramps**. “We” go pick cranberries***. “We” rake and bale the hay. The cooperative approach can offer social opportunity as well as enhanced productivity or recreational enjoyment. Among individuals and communities that have remained at least to some degree close to the land, I’ve never detected much idealisation of the individual’s experience in nature as more authentic or more deeply felt.
To be sure, some people do spend a lot of time alone in the woods, but nothing much is thought of it. It just goes with the task at hand. The admiration earned by people here who do spend a lot of time alone in the wild - trappers and gatherers of marketable medicinal plants notably – is a reward for their skills and success and not for personal development through solitary experience in wild nature.
The communality appears to contrast with the importance attached to the individual experience in nature that is common in the swath of society that reads and subscribes to Thoreau.
During Thoreau’s third and last trip to the still being logged Maine woods, in 1857, he refused to halt the party at the occasional isolated cabins along the route. This despite his guide’s explanations that such visits were an always observed courtesy to people welcoming news about the outside world, and what’s more, were a vital exchange of information about conditions ahead and behind.
But for Thoreau, part of the contemporary intelligentsia, a true wilderness experience in good part was the absence of people, or at least the absence of people who were not Native Americans living strictly by tradition, a type he did not encounter. In a way his definition of wilderness considered what it was not, rather than what it was.
Now and then I duck into the creek shown in the photograph “Creek Mouth”. It’s located on one of the area’s bigger rivers. I tie up to an over hanging branch, slip down into the bottom of the canoe, lean back against the seat, and I have lunch.
Creek Mouth
My creek figured in the actual border conflict. During the early and mid 1700s, Native American military units from the more westerly Ohio River watershed often routed down this creek’s hollow on their way to raiding English colonial settlements to the east.
The view out of the mouth reminds me of a famous passage in James Fenimore Cooper’s 18th-century colonial border warfare novel The Deerslayer. In that piece, an old trapper lives in a houseboat on a remote lake, and when danger threatens, he drops the craft into the head of the lake’s outlet stream. The stream is hidden from view by a curtain of low-hanging boughs.
My creek figured in the actual border conflict. During the early and mid 1700s, Native American military units from the more westerly Ohio River watershed often routed down this creek’s hollow on their way to raiding English colonial settlements to the east.
Today, the spot lies within a big tract managed by the National Park Service. It is popular with anglers from across the region.
I sit in the bottom of the canoe and lounge back against the seat. I enjoy my lunch. Fishing boats drift by now and then, their anglers casting, casting, casting. From the left and a little downstream occasionally come the happy conversation and the laughter of small parties fishing from the bank at a popular spot. There the outflow from the creek and the currents in the river’s main channel combine to form a range of depths, temperatures, and bottom features that attract a variety of riverine life.
For a time at least, all seems right with the world.
Just landed on a near shore island at the top of a braided reach, I noticed a white-tailed deer fawn at my feet in the wing-stem(Verbesina alternifolia). Crouching, I worked fast to frame “Oops!” and then backed off. Readers might know that for the first week or so of life fawns generally will not budge no matter how close the danger. Their best defense is going undetected. I have seen older doe chase dogs and coyotes(Canis latrans) ranging too close to hidden fawns. Not far off and always watching, mother attends the very young fawns sparingly and by that often avoids alerting predators.
References
** Ramps(Allium tricoccum) are a wild woodland onion traditionally collected in the spring and featured at community social dinners.
*** Cranberries(Vaccinium sp.) are found in high elevation bogs and traditionally attracted gatherings in the fall for picking and socialising.
Far too often, I hear photographers complain about things that supposedly hold them back as artists or businesspeople. “The algorithm is broken!” “Social media is a waste of time!” “I have no reach on Instagram!” “Their photos are worse than mine; why are they finding success!?” “I can’t find inspiration to get out and make new images.” “My gear is too old!” “I don’t have time to make new photographs.” I’m sure we have all heard our colleagues say some of these things as if the world has some form of control over their destiny that they can’t shake.
Brittany was born blind in one eye, which makes seeing the wide-angle perspective an impossibility; however, what I’ve learned about Brittany’s journey in photography is that she’s been able to turn that disability into an advantage.
I believe that we are the masters of our destiny and have all the tools we need to overcome any obstacle in our path toward artistic success (however you choose to measure that). The subject of this week’s article, Brittany Colt, is a testament to this idea. Brittany was born blind in one eye, which makes seeing the wide-angle perspective an impossibility; however, what I’ve learned about Brittany’s journey in photography is that she’s been able to turn that disability into an advantage.
Brittany did not let her blindness set her back as an artist and lover of nature; she relished the challenges outlined before her. She grew up in the picturesque State of Washington, where her love for art and creativity was nurtured and cultivated. She was given a Kodak 110 camera to help her see the world in a new way, which immediately sparked her interest in photography. Following her childhood, Brittany established her first photography company in 2012, working in the portraiture and wedding industry at first and later branching out into the film industry, where she assisted with set design, costumes, wardrobes, cameras, lighting, and more, which eventually culminated in her producing a film.
Disrupted Landscapes examines three representations of landscape in which personal histories, family trauma, and political narratives combine with the geology, geography, and the topographical uniqueness of England’s thin places. The idea for the exhibition developed from Mandy Williams and her ongoing series, also called Disrupted Landscapes.
In this work, she distorts and displaces images of the white cliffs of Dover and its politicised coastal landscape. This suggests the fracturing of the idealisation of the English landscape and the increasingly hostile environment of a country divided by class, geography, and wealth in the post-Brexit age.
Mandy Williams
Different strata of land are revealed in her photographs of the coastal chalk. We are looking at geological time, trace elements of a world where the earth buckles and bends to the beat of shifting plates and layers of lava, rock, and sediment.
Taking this chalk landscape, prone to fragmentation and disruption, Williams applies graphic elements, cutting up the landscape into shards and splinters of space, shattered and disconnected from where they came from.
Dawn Rodgers
The stratas of landscape revealed in Dawn Rodgers’ Sorrow are those connected to memory and grief, to this world and what lies beyond. Sorrow is a book and exhibition that is an ongoing exploration of the complexity of grief and bereavement. Focussing on the death of her brother 30 years ago, it is an expression of the absolute sorrow of unreconciled grief and the desolation of absence.
The story of Sorrow is told through images from Rodgers’ family album combined with documentation of her brother’s death. The hard facts of his death certificate, the reduction of a life to dates, times, and places bleeds into the ink stains that Rodgers integrates into her work.
Mixing these multiple layers of memory with images of the hillsides and beach environments of Dorset, Sorrow invites the viewer to connect the link between the traces left behind by her brother and how that loss has become scoured by Rodgers into Dorset landscapes that resonate with the past. Sorrow is an expression of loss, of life, possibility, and of Rodgers’ own ability to find words to describe the brutality and finality of bereavement.
Colin Pantall
Colin Pantall’s 3 Valleys looks at how memory and time transform the landscape around his home in Bath. The repeated walks he takes in 3 valleys traverse places where echoes of the past resonate through the contours of the land. Through these walkings, repeated over 20 years, different histories emerge: geological, economic, botanical, physical, and family histories. And with each revealed history, the images become ever more distant, anemoic memories of a place and a time that is just a figment of photographic imagination, that never really existed, and is preserved only in the photograph.
Images that were once a portent of impending mortality become memento mori, a neglected patch of grass is transformed into a restorative sanctuary, and an image of a valley where Jane Austen once walked becomes a nostalgic visit to a fenced-in and degraded landscape.
In Disrupted Landscapes, the earth holds knowledge, holds histories, and provides pathways between different strata of being and selfhood.
Exhibition Details
Disrupted Landscapes
Wednesday 13 – Sunday 16 March 2024 Four Corners, 121 Roman Road London E2 0QN
Private View: Thursday 14 March
In this series of three articles, my intention is to examine some ideas about the practise of landscape photography in the light of the teachings of Zen Buddhism. The words ‘Zen’ and ‘photography’ used in conjunction inevitably lead to a consideration of the work of Minor White and his ideas about photographic ‘equivalence’, which originated with Alfred Stieglitz. Ansel Adams (who also embraced the concept of equivalence) and Edward Weston (who had different ideas) were also important figures in the development of Minor White’s thinking. All four photographers had met each other at some point in their lives.
Zen teachings can be notoriously difficult to comprehend, often appearing to be self-contradictory (because differing points of view may be expressed) and/or paradoxical (because their intent is to discourage conceptual thinking), so I don’t intend to dive in too deeply. Instead, I’m going to focus on what Stieglitz, Adams and White (and various photography critics) had to say about equivalents and what Weston said about his alternative viewpoint and see where that leads. Stieglitz is the main subject of this first article, but to provide some background, I will begin with a quick diversion to outline how Zen was transplanted from the Orient to America.
Significant migration from China to California occurred during the gold rush from about 1850 onwards.1 Although numerous Chinese temples were subsequently built along the west coast, these were a reflection of popular Chinese religious culture, which was a mixture of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism that differed substantially from Zen. Some limited migration from Japan to Hawaii was allowed in the 1860s, but large-scale migration from Japan to mainland USA did not take place until around 1900.1
Significant migration from China to California occurred during the gold rush from about 1850 onwards.1 Although numerous Chinese temples were subsequently built along the west coast, these were a reflection of popular Chinese religious culture, which was a mixture of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism that differed substantially from Zen
A pivotal moment in the transmission of Zen to America occurred in 1893 when Soyen Shaku attended the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, becoming the first Japanese Zen priest to visit the USA.1,2 Soyen did not speak English, and his speech to the Parliament had been translated by a young student of his, D.T. Suzuki, who would become a prolific and widely read writer on Zen. Suzuki himself arrived in the USA in 1897 to work on the translation of Buddhist texts. Soyen revisited the USA in 1905, residing in San Francisco for several months, initially giving public talks to audiences of Japanese immigrants, then, with Suzuki in attendance, travelling to Los Angeles and later by train across America to locations including Washington and New York, speaking to a more American audience. Soyen then returned to Japan, with Suzuki remaining in the USA to translate and edit Soyen’s manuscripts for publication in book form.3
Another of Soyen’s students, Nyogen Senzaki, had travelled with him to San Francisco in 1905. Senzaki remained in California after Soyen’s departure but, under strict instructions not to teach for twenty years, he did not start to give public addresses until 1925.1,2 A second group of Zen Buddhists arrived in San Francisco in 1907; all but one eventually left, but Sokei-an, who remained, walked across the Shasta Mountains to Oregon in 1911, before moving on to Seattle and reached New York in 1916. Sokei-an went back to Japan to complete his studies in 1919, then returned to New York in 1928 to teach and founded the Buddhist Society of America in 1930.1
There is no evidence to suggest that Stieglitz (based in New York) or Weston and Adams (both based in California) had any direct involvement with Zen, but given the circles that they moved in, it is likely that they would have had some awareness of it by the time of the 1920s/30s. (For example, Stieglitz’s circle included Ananda Coomaraswamy, curator of Indian art at Boston Museum of Fine Arts, who published a book on Buddhism, including a chapter on Zen in 1916.4) My intent here is not to argue that they were influenced by Zen but rather to examine to what extent their ideas about photography and the nature of reality were consistent with it.
Alfred Stieglitz began to photograph clouds in 1922, by which time he was in his late 50s. The following year, he published an article on How I Came to Photograph Clouds, setting out his motives for doing this. “Clouds and their relationship to the rest of the world, and clouds for themselves, interested me,” he wrote and “I wanted to photograph clouds to find out what I had learned in 40 years about photography. Through clouds to put down my philosophy of life.”5 Stieglitz initially likened his series of cloud images to pieces of music (‘Songs of the Sky’) before settling on the term ‘equivalents’.
What precisely Stieglitz’s equivalents were intended to express remains a matter of conjecture among photography critics and scholars. The prevailing view is that the equivalents are meant to be understood metaphorically — as symbols for something not directly seen, i.e. a divine or spiritual presence or the photographer’s personal thoughts and feelings. In her influential book On Photography, Susan Sontag simply wrote that Stieglitz’s equivalents were “statements of his inner feelings.”6 Kristina Wilson, however, drawing on Stieglitz’s experiences running an art gallery (The Intimate Gallery in New York) during much of the period when the equivalents were made, gave precedence to the spiritual rather than the psychological aspects of his inner life. Although much of Wilson’s argument was based around the work of the artists that Stieglitz represented, she considered that both the gallery and the equivalents were intended to induce a spiritual experience of “oneness with humanity and the universe.”7
Rosalind Krauss stressed the importance of the crop in photography, arguing that the cloud equivalents signified “the absence ... of the world and its objects, supplanted by the presence of the sign.”8 Kate Stanley though argued to the contrary that “as symbolic fragments of the sky, Stieglitz’s equivalents conjure the ‘whole’ from which they are cut ... emphasising the air that enjoins cloud to cloud, cloud to photograph ... photograph to viewer, and viewer to cloud, palpably and infinitely.”9
What precisely Stieglitz’s equivalents were intended to express remains a matter of conjecture among photography critics and scholars. The prevailing view is that the equivalents are meant to be understood metaphorically — as symbols for something not directly seen, i.e. a divine or spiritual presence or the photographer’s personal thoughts and feelings.
John Szarkowski found the notion that the equivalents represented Stieglitz's philosophy of life deeply unsatisfactory because such a claim was unverifiable and also implied that “we are interested in Stieglitz not because he gave us the pictures, but the converse: we are interested in the pictures because they give us Stieglitz.”10 Szarkowski then referred to an observation that John Ruskin had made in 1856 about poets, paraphrasing Ruskin’s words thus: “there are three types of sensibility: to the first a primrose is simply and unambiguously a primrose; to the second it is not a primrose but something else, perhaps a forsaken maiden; to the third it can contain many other meanings without ceasing to be entirely a primrose.” Szarkowski stated that in Ruskin’s view the greatest poets were of the third kind. Ruskin’s meaning though was a little more nuanced. He did state that “in general, these three classes may be rated in comparative order, as the men who are not poets at all, and the poets of the second order, and the poets of the first.” But he added that the two orders of poet that he recognised “must [both] be first-rate in their range, though their range is different; and with poetry second-rate in quality no-one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind.” The second order of poets he called the ‘Reflective or Perceptive’ (which included Wordsworth and Keats, for example) and the first order he termed the ‘Creative’ (including Shakespeare and Dante).11
Remarkably similar sentiments to Ruskin’s three types of sensibility were expressed by Edward Weston in a letter sent to Minor White commenting on a draft of a paper that the latter had written about Weston’s photography.12 (I suspect that this was the unpublished paper, written around the time of Weston’s exhibition in New York in 1946, that White referred to when interviewed by Paul Hill and Thomas Cooper in 1975.13) Weston expressed his feelings on White’s draft by quoting a version of an old Zen saying:
To a man who knows nothing, mountains are mountains, waters are waters, and trees are trees. But when he has studied and knows a little, mountains are no longer mountains, waters are no longer waters, and trees are no longer trees. But when he has thoroughly understood, mountains are once again mountains, waters are waters, and trees are trees.
Detailed explications of the ‘mountains are mountains’ discourse have been given by the Zen scholar Masao Abe14 and the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.15 In essence, at the first level of understanding, mountains, waters, and trees are all differentiated, and it is oneself that makes these distinctions; the self too is differentiated, giving rise to the question “Who am I?” and then to query “Who is asking ‘Who am I’?” and so on.
In essence, at the first level of understanding, mountains, waters, and trees are all differentiated, and it is oneself that makes these distinctions; the self too is differentiated, giving rise to the question “Who am I?” and then to query “Who is asking ‘Who am I’?” and so on.
The realisation that the self cannot be grasped — in Buddhist terminology, that the self is ‘empty’ — gives rise to the second stage, where nothing is differentiated. The second stage provides some insight into reality, yet it is not everyday reality as we perceive it. The third view, that ‘mountains really are mountains’, completely subsumes the previous two standpoints — everything in the world exists in itself but is experienced only in relation to everything else. Thich Nhat Hahn used the example of drinking tea: at the moment of drinking, you and the taste of the tea are one experience — this is the “world of Zen ... the world of pure experience without concepts.”
Regarding clouds, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, “If you are a poet, you will see clearly there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud there will be no rain; without rain the trees cannot grow; and without trees we cannot make paper ... Everything [time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud ...] co-exists with this sheet of paper.”16
Clearly, from a Zen perspective, we can equate Stieglitz’s clouds for themselves with mountains as mountains, clouds representing his philosophy of life to mountains are no longer mountains, and clouds and their relationship to the rest of the world with mountains are again mountains. Although it seems unlikely that Stieglitz would have been aware of it, it is worth noting that the Buddhist term that is rendered in English as ‘emptiness’ is a translation of the Chinese characters for ‘sky-like’2 so cloud images would be a very apt metaphor for expressing the empty nature of all things.
Stieglitz’s own words are perhaps more revealing about his approach to photography than is generally acknowledged in some critical appraisals of his work. In 1925, during the period the cloud equivalents were made, Stieglitz wrote to the artist Arthur Dove, saying, “So far the summer has been unproductive ... I have a print or two ... and I haven’t the slightest idea what they express!” [cited by Szarkowski10].
In Ansel Adams’ autobiography, he recalled that when he first met Stieglitz in 1933, he asked him what he meant by ‘creative photography’18. Stieglitz replied, “I have the desire to photograph. I go out with my camera. I come across something that excites me emotionally, spiritually, aesthetically. I see the photograph in my mind’s eye and I compose and expose the negative. I give you the print as the equivalent of what I saw and felt.”
In a similar vein, Dorothy Norman, a close associate and biographer of Stieglitz, quoted him as saying, “I am interested in putting down an image only of what I have seen, not what it means to me. It is only after I have put down an equivalent of what has moved me that I can even begin to think about its meaning,” and “The moment dictates for me what I must do. I have no theory about what the moment should bring ... I simply react to the moment.”17 As for the meaning when he had thought about it, in response to someone looking at one of his images who asked, “Is this a photograph of water?” Stieglitz replied,“It happens to be a picture of the sky ... Are the sky and water not one, if one truly sees them? ... In fact, I feel that all experiences in life are one, if truly seen.”17
Stieglitz later admitted to an emotional aspect of his photography. In Ansel Adams’ autobiography, he recalled that when he first met Stieglitz in 1933, he asked him what he meant by ‘creative photography’18. Stieglitz replied, “I have the desire to photograph. I go out with my camera. I come across something that excites me emotionally, spiritually, aesthetically. I see the photograph in my mind’s eye and I compose and expose the negative. I give you the print as the equivalent of what I saw and felt.”
Dorothy Norman wrote that Stieglitz “might easily be thought of in terms of existentialism, or Zen Buddhism since what preoccupied him most was the reality of experience itself”, though Stieglitz himself said, “I seem to be claimed by every ist. Yet, no ism in itself has any final meaning for me. All isms contain some measure of truth ... I suppose that if I can be said to subscribe to any ism whatever, it may be that I am simply a fatalist.”17
It is not entirely clear to me whether, in Ruskin’s terminology, Stieglitz would be considered a ‘creative’ or a ‘reflective/perceptive’ photographer (though Szarkowski’s implication was the latter).
It is not entirely clear to me whether, in Ruskin’s terminology, Stieglitz would be considered a ‘creative’ or a ‘reflective/perceptive’ photographer (though Szarkowski’s implication was the latter).
Ruskin did admit that the different classes of poet are “united to each other by imperceptible transitions, and the same mind, according to the influences to which it is subjected, passes at different times into the various states.”11 I would draw a distinction, though, between Ruskin’s primrose that “can contain many other meanings without ceasing to be entirely a primrose” and the Zen realisation that “mountains are once again mountains”. I would argue that the ‘poetic’ primrose is meant to be understood as a symbol for specific things and/or feelings, whereas the Zen mountain is a facet of the undivided, interdependent whole.
I would also add that the insight that ‘mountains are mountains’ is not the sole preserve of Zen. Similar sentiments were expressed, for example, by Nan Shepherd in The Living Mountain: “... the mountain is one and indivisible, and rock, soil, water and air are no more integral to it than what grows from the soil and breathes the air. All are aspects of one entity, the living mountain. The disintegrating rock, the nurturing rain, the quickening sun, the seed, the root, the bird – all are one.”19
Mountains are mountains, primroses are primroses, clouds are clouds, and, as will be discussed in the follow-up article, The Thing Itself, Edward Weston’s rocks are rocks, and his peppers are peppers.
Acknowledgement
I am deeply grateful to Roy Money for providing details of Reference 12 and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.
References
Rick Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake, (Shambala Publications, Boulder, Colorado, 1981).
Helen Tworkov, Zen in America, (Kodansha America Inc., New York, 1984), Introduction, pp.3-20.
Soyen Shaku, Zen for Americans, translated by D.T. Suzuki, (The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago, 1906).
Ananda Coomaraswamy, Buddha and The Gospel of Buddhism, (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1916), pp.252-258.
Alfred Stieglitz, How I Came to Photograph Clouds, The Amateur Photographer & Photography, vol.56, no.1819 (1923), p.255.
Susan Sontag, On Photography, (Penguin Modern Classics, 1977), p.123.
Kristina Wilson, The Intimate Gallery and the Equivalents: Spirituality in the 1920s Work of Stieglitz, Art Bulletin vol.85, no.4 (Dec. 2003), pp.746-768.
Rosalind Krauss, Stieglitz/Equivalents, October, vol. 11 (Winter 1979), pp. 129-140.
Kate Stanley, Unrarified Air: Stieglitz and the Modernism of Equivalence, Modernism/modernity, vol.26, no.1 (Jan 2019), pp.185-212.
John Szarkowski, The Sky Pictures of Alfred Stieglitz, MoMA no.20 (Autumn 1995), pp.15-17.
John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Vol.III (Containing Part IV: Of Many Things), Chapter 12: Of The Pathetic Fallacy.
Edward Weston, carbon copy of letter to Minor White, (Weston Archive, Center for Creative Photography), cited by Amy Conger in Edward Weston: The Spirit of Zen from Lao-tse to Louis Armstrong, unpublished lecture at Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, (Sept. 2002). (Lecture cited by Roy Money, https://theawakenedeye.com/pages/minor-white-and-the-quest-for-spirit/ )
Paul Hill and Thomas Cooper, Dialogue with Photography, (Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2005), pp.267-268.
Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought, (MacMillan Press, 1985), pp.4-18.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Mountains are Mountains and Rivers are Rivers, in Zen Keys (Anchor Books, 1974), pp.71-88.
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding, (Parallax Press, 1988), pp.3-5.
Dorothy Norman, The Equivalents, Aperture (Spring 1960).
Ansel Adams and Mary Street Alinder, An Autobiography, (Little, Brown and Company,1985), p.78.
Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain, (Canongate Books, 2014; first published 1977), Chapter 7: Life: The Plants, p.48.
My ‘End Frame’ would always have to be a picture by Thomas Joshua Cooper. The difficulty is in choosing just one !
My first meeting with Thomas was before the internet, before the digital revolution, and certainly before the arrival of social media and the Metaverse! It came after a 390 mile drive from my home in Cork, in Southern Ireland, to Culzean Castle overlooking the Firth of Clyde on the west coast of Scotland. It was late summer 1982, (over forty years ago !) my mode of transport a ‘tired’ but trusty Renault 4, and after a long drive and ferry crossing I was set to join my new classmates at Culzean for a photographic field trip. I didn’t own a camera or have any idea what lay ahead, and especially how the future and my moving to Scotland to study at the revered Glasgow School of Art would pan out - but it was most certainly exciting and the introduction to a whole new world for me. All quite overwhelming for a 19 year old, young man from Cork.
Since I first met Thomas all those years ago, I have cited him as being my biggest inspiration. It was he who ‘planted the seed’ in my becoming totally absorbed in the world of photography as an art form.
To those of you unfamiliar with Thomas Joshua Cooper and his work - he is today seen as one of the most celebrated and distinctive landscape photographers working anywhere in the world. He was born in California in 1946 but has lived in Scotland since 1982. He was the founding head of photography at Glasgow School of Art but spent much of his life seeking out the edges of the world. Like artists such as Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, Thomas is a traveller and nomadic artist whose extraordinary photographs are made in series at significant points around the globe, most often at its extremities.
Using an 1898 Agfa field camera and specially made photographic plates, Thomas creates extraordinary, meditative landscape photographs printed with selenium-toned silver gelatin. The capturing of any one image can involve days, weeks and months of preparation and arduous travel. The locations are found on a map, tracked down and then photographed, each place the subject of a single negative made with a weighty antique field camera. They are meditative, almost philosophical images, exquisitely printed by the artist in the 19th century manner with layers of silver and gold chloride.
In our Featured Photographer interview with Jaume, we described Jaume’s images as a celebration of nature and of place, with many derived from the area around his home close to the Lake of Banyoles in northeastern Catalonia, Spain. This remains true, but you will find a rather different portfolio these days: strikingly monochromatic, employing inventive pairings of images. It builds on an early love of black and white, using darkness to simplify, and continues to exploit abstraction to give freedom of interpretation.
It illustrates the case that working in one place is not a limitation but a portal to possibility. As you will see, that doorway has led to some unforeseen but exciting opportunities.
What has changed for you, photographically speaking, since we spoke back in 2018, or has given you the most enjoyment during the intervening period?
Very happy to reconnect with you, Michela. I appreciate the invitation!
Indeed, many things have happened during these years. The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly been the most significant event since we last spoke and has partly been responsible for some changes in my photographs during this period.
Right after the lockdown, a friend sold me a compact camera with a 35 mm lens, small and portable. I wasn't sure if I would use it because it took me out of my comfort zone, accustomed to longer focal lengths that worked well for simplifying. This influenced my perspective in the following months; I got used to seeing the world through this new lens.
After the confinement, I almost always carried it with me when I went out. I started exclusively shooting in black and white. It wasn't intentional; it just happened that way; I couldn't bring myself to photograph in colour. The images I captured were dark and highly contrasted, practically devoid of greys, only black and white; all or nothing. Never before had we collectively experienced life and death so closely, and I suppose that was the reason driving me to seek these kinds of photos.
The Scream, the Netherlands, 2006. I must confess that I only noticed the face in the water when seeing the image on my computer screen and not when taking the image.
Introduction
During the fall of last year, I had the privilege of being one of the judges at the Natural Landscape Photography Awards. One of the things that struck me there was, on the one hand, the large number of entries in the Intimate landscapes category and, on the other, the very high quality of many of these images. Of course, this is just a snapshot, but there are numerous other trends and figures that indicate that intimate landscapes have become very popular among landscape photographers. On Google, you already get 60 million (!) hits if you search on the term Intimate landscapes, and there are now countless articles and blogs on how best to create these kinds of images.
We can therefore conclude - 44 years after the publication of Eliot Porter's book that gave the genre its name - that intimate landscapes have become one of the main movements in landscape photography.
When listening to podcasts about landscape photography, such as Matt Payne's famous series F-stop, collaborate and listen, you will regularly hear photographers who have discovered intimate landscapes in recent years and now have a preference for this type of images. If you are still in doubt, take a look at the cover photos of the last 30 editions of OnLandscape magazine, and you will see that many of the chosen images can be categorised as intimate landscapes. It, therefore, seems that intimate landscapes have now become as popular with photographers as grand landscapes, although this observation may still involve a bit of wishful thinking and tunnel vision. In any case, the rise of this type of landscape photography is undeniable, and we can therefore conclude - 44 years after the publication of Eliot Porter's book that gave the genre its name - that intimate landscapes have become one of the main movements in landscape photography. For me, as an early adept and also as one of the advocates of this movement, this is very gratifying to note. At the same time, it also raises some questions, which I will discuss at the end of this article. Before I go any further, it is worth noting that much of what I note here about intimate landscapes can also be said of abstract landscapes, including the abstract aerials that are now widely made with the drone. How exactly the categories should be distinguished from each other, by the way, is a tricky question, as many abstract landscapes could also be referred to as intimate landscapes.
The Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and National Parks might be our destinations, and these are managed, georgic places, where much hard work and effort maintains an ecological balance. However, true pastoral is more likely to be found in the edgelands, where our slipstream has created a zone of inattention. Here, even plants and animals meant to live oceans apart are finding their point of balance in the overlooked landscape we flash by in the blink of an eye~'Edgelands, Journeys into England's True Wilderness'. Paul Farley & Michael Symmons Roberts. Jonathan Cape, 2011
Born in Nottingham, Matthew Conduit arrived in Sheffield in 1978 to study fine art at Sheffield City Polytechnic, and this city has remained his creative base and home.
Conduit has had a lifelong fascination with overlooked, marginal places. These are all once thriving industrial sites that have become an overlooked domain of self-seeding invasive plant species and the feral. They are also places of mystery and beauty that are, like his images, in continuous flux, shaped not only by time but by the social and economic environments that have determined their changing function and purpose.
For more than three decades, Conduit has revisited the same sites around Sheffield and continuously worked and reworked his images. In his beautiful large-scale prints, the high resolution and detail are fundamental to the expression of his ideas about aesthetics, place, context, and history, resulting in arresting images that slowly reveal their content.
The Land exhibition features a careful selection of photographs made from the last ten years, all never exhibited previously, and includes later work that explores the former Alum mining sites and cliff faces along Yorkshire’s east coast, the first time in many years he has left the city to make work. ‘Treasure’, still-life images that document found objects he has collected over the years whilst exploring the landscape is also featured for the first time.
Each of Conduit’s images serves as a visual narrative, weaving together the threads of his ongoing dialogue with forgotten places, inviting viewers to witness the transformation and rediscovery of these overlooked corners of the world.
Each of Conduit’s images serves as a visual narrative, weaving together the threads of his ongoing dialogue with forgotten places, inviting viewers to witness the transformation and rediscovery of these overlooked corners of the world.
Background
Matthew Conduit was born in Nottingham, and studied Fine Art at Mansfield College of Art and then Sheffield Polytechnic from 1978-1981. Staying in the city, he exhibited widely thereafter, including solo exhibitions at Impressions Gallery, York and at the Axiom Centre for The Arts, Cheltenham. He also featured in various group exhibitions, including the Collins Gallery, Glasgow, with Paul Hill, Keith Arnatt and John Davies, and The Photographers Gallery, London. He took a break from making work in the late 1980’s to concentrate on cultural building projects but resumed his photography in the early 2000’s, which culminated in an exhibition and book publication, ‘Chora’, at the Sheffield Institute of Arts in 2011, his first for 20 years.
Conduit was Director at the Untitled Gallery in Sheffield from the mid-1980s and relocated the gallery to its current location in the city in 1988 (now Site Gallery). He then worked for over 20 years developing the Cultural Industries Quarter and the Workstation/Showroom complex in Sheffield and as a freelance creative industries consultant working across the UK. Conduit has also worked with Heeley Trust since 2009 to develop Sum Studios in Sheffield, where his studio is based and where he continues to develop new work and operate the Untitled Print Studio.
Recently, Conduit curated ‘Regeneration - The Sheffield Project’, a major group exhibition at Weston Park Museum and accompanying publication reviewing the work commissioned and exhibited in the 1980s by the Untitled Gallery when he was Director, concerning the city and its regeneration up to the World Student Games. Artists featured included John Davies, Anna Fox, John Kippin, John Darwell and Bill Stephenson.
Working Process
Matthew Conduit’s images rely on a very high resolution to produce fine detail in his large-scale prints. Earlier work was produced on scanned 5x4 colour sheet film, but in recent years he has worked digitally. He scans a scene and takes many different images - in some cases, up to 80 images, which are then stitched together on a computer in the studio to complete the whole image. He then spends many hours retouching numerous twigs, branches and grasses that are often misaligned between frames. It is a long and difficult process, which can be interrupted by the light changing or a breeze moving the subject matter at any time. As a result, he only makes pictures in even, overcast light and on the stillest of days. The process also means that he never gets to see the completed picture until he is back in the studio.
Earlier work was produced on scanned 5x4 colour sheet film, but in recent years he has worked digitally. He scans a scene and takes many different images - in some cases, up to 80 images, which are then stitched together on a computer in the studio to complete the whole image.
Notes On Locations
Brightside
Brightside Recreation Ground and the site of Limpsfield School was formerly the site of Unwin and Shaw's coal pit, generally known as the Brightside Colliery, where nine miners lost their lives in separate accidents from 1865 to 1873. The coal seam was worked out, and the mine was completely closed by 1886.
Blackburn Meadows
Blackburn Meadows Nature Reserve is on the site of Sheffield’s main sewage treatment works, which opened in 1884. The nature reserve was developed in 1993 out of the redundant sludge beds that remained following the modernisation of the sewage works between 1956 and 1969 and was expanded further in 2005.
In 1942, Olympia Oil and Cake Company, based in Blackburn Meadows, was outsourced to produce 5,273,400 cakes by the Porton Down biology department. These were used in Operation Vegetarian, a British biowarfare military plan to disseminate linseed cakes infected with anthrax spores onto the fields of Germany.
Shire Brook Valley
Shire Brook Valley Nature Reserve was formerly the site of Coisley Hill Sewage Treatment Works, Rainbow and Carr Mills, Birley East and Birley West Coal Mines, and the Beighton Road Landfill site, under which the Shire Brook is now culverted. The area was also heavily farmed from the late 1700’s.
The Shire Brook was the historical boundary between Northumbria and Mercia and was the border of Yorkshire and Derbyshire up until boundary changes in 1967, when Sheffield expanded its boundary to include Hackenthorpe and Beighton.
Catcliffe Flash
A ‘flash’ is a body of water that forms where the land below it has subsided. Whilst these are mostly found in areas where mining has taken place, some can occur naturally. Collectively, they are known as Flashes. Catcliffe Flash was likely formed as the elevation of the land beside the River Rother dropped due to coal mining subsidence from neighbouring Orgreave Colliery, which was actively extracting coal for 170 years up to 2005.
Alum
Dating back centuries, alum was essential in the textile industry as a fixative for dyes. In the 15th century, Europe’s Alum production was controlled by the Catholic Church and ultimately by the Pope, and the vast sums of money from Alum exports in Europe went to the Vatican. Alum was discovered on the Yorkshire coast by landowner Thomas Chaloner and has been mined for up to 300 years.
Alum was extracted from quarried shale stone and then burnt in huge piles for nine months before being transferred to leaching pits to extract the aluminium sulphate liquor. Human urine was then added to turn the sulphate into ammonia aluminium sulphate. At its peak, alum production required 200 tonnes of urine every year and was imported from London, Sunderland and Newcastle.
The last Alum works on the Yorkshire Coast closed in Sandsend in 1871. Conduit is fascinated by this alien landscape, still scarred centuries later by the toxic process.
The last Alum works on the Yorkshire Coast closed in Sandsend in 1871. Conduit is fascinated by this alien landscape, still scarred centuries later by the toxic process.
The Edge
Conduit became fascinated by the varying cliff faces along the East Coast many years ago but only started to photograph them around 2012. This was initially a largely aesthetic exercise, but he grew to consider them in terms of representing the very ‘edge’ of the landscape, where millennia of history unfolded. More recently, the signs of the impact of coastal erosion have taken on an additional significance. This work also led to the Alum series, which Conduit discovered while photographing The Edge.
Treasure
Treasure is an ongoing series of images made of objects collected while traipsing the landscape. The earliest object in the series dates from 1980. The images shown in the exhibition include two from the ‘Bark’ series, where Matthew collected large pieces of fallen bark from a dead English Oak tree, and ‘Leaf Stack’, where collected leaves have been threaded together and then hung in the studio, where they have dried out and coalesced. Matthew started photographing these objects from 2015 onwards.
Graves Gallery, Sheffield, January 2024
Exhibition Details
Sheffield Museum, Graves Gallery, (Above the Central Library), Surrey Street, Sheffield, S1 1XZ
The premise of our podcast is based loosely around Radio Four's "Any Questions", Joe Cornish and I (Tim Parkin) invite a special guest onto each show and solicit questions from our subscribers.
Our first podcast featured Alex Nail where we discussed his mountain photography, colour management and much more. You can see the first podcast here but we're also making the podcasts publicly available on most streaming platforms. You can find out more at this public link.
Our next guest will be Mark Littlejohn so if you want to get any questions to us in advance by 12th March. Please send them to submissions@onlandscape.co.uk.
An old Haynes’ picture postcard of Golden Gate Canyon found at a paper antiques show first caught Janet's eye. It transported her back to a place from her childhood. The significant regional and socioeconomic differences in the US, compared to that experienced as a child, had a direct impact on her work as a photographer. Janet uses a methodology called "historical empathy, which relies on archival materials to guide depictions of the complex landscapes found at the intersection of nature and culture." Eager to delve deeper into her latest project, I reached out to Janet for an in-depth conversation about her latest project.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, what your early interests were, and what you went on to do?
My origin story as a photographer begins with adolescent summers in NW Wyoming, an introduction to a 35mm rangefinder and the darkroom in junior high, and later working as an outdoor education instructor. These experiences influenced much of what followed. Wyoming expanded my sense of place; a manual camera and the darkroom shaped my earliest perception of self as a photographer, and outdoor education confirmed my fondness for teaching. I discuss this story further in my essay “Education of a Photographer” in More than Scenery.
At what point did photography become more than a hobby? Did anything in particular prompt this? You worked as an outdoor education instructor. How did you transition to a photographer?
Once in the darkroom, photography was never a hobby; it was a passion. Early on, I sensed it would shape my life. On a most fundamental level, photography is my way of being in the world. Working in outdoor education was also a good fit for many parts of me.
If I hadn’t already dipped into photography, I might have remained in outdoor education rather than settling in academia. I have a range of interests, and I’ll never know what might have been….
I love to be outdoors. Making my way through a wilder world using my body, knowledge, and skills satisfies my soul, and I love to teach. If I hadn’t already dipped into photography, I might have remained in outdoor education rather than settling in academia. I have a range of interests, and I’ll never know what might have been…
Tell me about the photographers or artists that inspire you most. What books stimulated your interest in photography, and who drove you forward, directly or indirectly, as you developed?
I read widely and variously. I look deeply at work in many modes, but photography and painting hold my attention the longest. Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Emmet Gowin, and Andre Kertesz are a few photographers I studied in my youth and still enjoy. A little later, Linda Connor’s work held my gaze. Looking at and thinking about work by other women became a strong focus as I wrestled with where I fit in the medium's traditions and feminist theory. Critical theory encouraged my inclination to lean on other intellectual disciplines. There is a lot of great photography being made these days, and it’s a joy to follow the work of many younger artists.
On your website, you write about being “geographically bilingual and having early experiences leading to an awareness of significant regional differences within the United States.” Tell us more about how this experience informed your view of the different landscapes in the regions and how that impacted your creativity.
People often talk about the importance of travel and being a global citizen. While I believe that to be true, I also worry that too few people in the U.S. have experienced the sharp regional differences at home. If we were more aware, we might also be more empathetic. Spending summers in a very different part of the country at a young age opened my eyes to significant regional and socioeconomic differences in a way that drives my work. My photographs frequently tap into an awareness that even when a place looks familiar, a life there may differ significantly from my experiences. I work to remember this and use research to understand such differences.
As Barry Lopez suggests, I understand landscapes as the intersection of nature and culture. Historical empathy as a method grew out of this belief, but historian Robert Gross coined the phrase to describe my methodology some years ago when writing a letter to support my work; it stuck
You mention a methodology you call ‘historical empathy, which relies on archival materials to guide depictions of the complex landscapes found at the intersection of nature and culture.” Can you tell us more about this methodology, how you devised it and how you use this process in your creativity?
As Barry Lopez suggests, I understand landscapes as the intersection of nature and culture. Historical empathy as a method grew out of this belief, but historian Robert Gross coined the phrase to describe my methodology some years ago when writing a letter to support my work; it stuck. I had the benefit of a vital “classical” education growing up. Still, I railed against the holdover beliefs from New Critical Theory that a work must be interpreted solely using intrinsic information and excluding historical, social, economic, and biographical influences from “reading” a work. This view of art felt limiting, so I began digging in other places to expand my understanding. Now, I lean heavily on different ways of knowing to understand the landscapes I photograph more deeply.
Your current position is a Professor of Art, Area Coordinator, and Graduate Advisor at the University of Connecticut. Has teaching influenced your style and approach to photography?
How can teaching photography not influence my photographic work? I had a student who opened my eyes to the obvious. He was a golfer who competed in college. Afterwards, he taught as a golf pro, and his game improved.
The view of Golden Gate Canyon caught my attention after looking through the Wyoming cards at a paper antiques show. It’s a classic 19th-century proscenium picture space borrowed from painting by Western exploration survey photographers of the 1870s and ’80s.
He believed that focusing on the fundamentals made the difference. I, too, have found truth in his belief. I work hard not to stifle my intuitions but recognise some choices are more carefully considered when I hear my teacher’s voice saying don’t be lazy, don’t forget, do it now before it becomes a problem, are you sure there isn’t a better vantage point, if you look a little longer? I hope my students also will hear my voice in their heads in years to come. It’s sometimes hard to separate teaching and photography; I’ve been doing both for so long.
More than Scenery - Yellowstone, An American Love Story was inspired by a vintage picture postcard of Golden Gate Canyon by Frank Jay Haynes. Can you tell us more about how this sparked the idea of the project and how it evolved?
The view of Golden Gate Canyon caught my attention after looking through the Wyoming cards at a paper antiques show. It’s a classic 19th-century proscenium picture space borrowed from painting by Western exploration survey photographers of the 1870s and ’80s. I noticed multiple copies of this view and thought it strange since it is not known today as one of Yellowstone’s “greatest hits.” When I turned it over, the message took me back to that childhood place of wonder tempered by a lifetime of work in landscape photography and raising a family: “I can not describe the Yellowstone, as the dictionary is only a book. It is more than scenery, and in some places, it is so beautiful that the men take off their hats & the women are Silent!”
Lucy Lipard wrote the introduction to your book. What’s your connection to Lucy, and how did this collaboration come about?
When I returned to finish my undergraduate degree at the University of Colorado, an influential professor suggested I read a recent book by Lucy Lippard, From the Center, a 1976 collection of feminist essays. This book validated much of my resistance to New Critical Theory. I was surprised later to learn the extent of her interest in landscape. Later, books, Overlay, 1983, Mixed Blessings, 1990,. Lure of the Local, 1998, and On the Beaten Track, 1999 all informed my work. Over the years, our paths crossed in various informal ways, and we had mutual colleagues and acquaintances. She had previously worked with George Thompson, my publisher, and I was honoured and pleased when she accepted our offer to write.
In the introduction, Romancing the West, Lucy writes, “The subject of this book is not another fruitless attempt to describe or simulate the effect of Yellowstone’s magnificent “scenery” so much as it explores human responses and human presence, including the artist/author’s.” (page 13) How did you approach capturing these human elements?
This project was grounded in the visitor’s experience of the park from my first reading of the vintage postcard quote. Trying to imagine visiting Yellowstone as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity shaped my perspective. From there, my curiosity led the way. However, it took time for the book’s unique structure of the three portfolios, “Views from Wonderland,” “Collecting Yellowstone,” and “Stories from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem,” to unfold. As I worked, my appreciation for the complexity of the park increased; what I paid attention to changed, and where I pointed my lens reflected those changes. I came to think of the portfolios as triangulating the park’s heart from distinct vantage points.
This project was grounded in the visitor’s experience of the park from my first reading of the vintage postcard quote. Trying to imagine visiting Yellowstone as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity shaped my perspective. From there, my curiosity led the way. However, it took time for the book’s unique structure of the three portfolios, “Views from Wonderland,” “Collecting Yellowstone,” and “Stories from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem,” to unfold.
“We are accustomed to calendar photographs of our stunning national parks, and, more recently, we are also exposed to the critical landscape photographers who inform us about the downsides of human impacts on the scenery. Pritchard’s rejection of grandiosity is suggested by a deceptively casual approach to photography (bolstered by extensive thought and historical research) that contradicts the expected coffee-table/calendar mode and testifies to the artist’s vision, acumen and commitment.” (page 14) Was this an intended style of photography, or did it evolve from your trips into Yellowstone? Do you think that ‘grandiosity’ can get in the way of communication?
The “style” of this work, described as a “rejection of grandiosity” by Lippard, is intentional. It is the outgrowth of questions I have asked since my undergraduate years in Boulder, photographing the foothills along the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies. There, poised with my view camera along the dividing line of the eastern plains and western mountains, I first questioned my place in the photography. Pushing against the male-dominated genre of landscape, I depicted the “grand view” through a scrim of cottonwood leaves, forcing the viewer to focus on the ordinary rather than the extraordinary. My strategy in More than Scenery is “a deceptively casual approach,” which rejects the “coffee-table/calendar mode.” My “style” in More than Scenery lies at the intersection of the calendar and the critical photograph. While my “style” is neither, I’ve learned lessons from both.
“The heavy hand of humankind is depicted innocently: a hand holding a chunk of obsidian taken from the cliff in the background" (page 108), "a fleeced arm holding a picture of a waterfall in front of the real place" (page 10)—nature at home and decontextualised.” (page 14). When you were making the images, did you think about the messages that you wanted to communicate to the viewer? How did you go about achieving this? Did you think about the messages that you wanted to convey and then made the images or vice versa? Or was there a different process, perhaps through curation?
A photographer/artist makes many choices along the course of a project. One’s sense of a project shifts and changes in response to work, research, reviewing results, moving this image next to that one, and learning back from one’s work, always working to understand what one has done rather than what one thinks they have done. New choices are made, hypotheses are tested, adaptations are adjusted often on the fly, and so on. In the beginning, I had curiosity. That identified a place to start.
I refined the concept as I worked, and the process became more directed, but I always left room for chance. This project, spanning thousands of photographs, required frequent reassessment, checking in with what was and wasn’t working, and always keeping the strong outliers in my mind because as an emphasis shifted here or there, gaps might open up, making room for pictures that hadn’t fit before. Final edits left some stunning photographs out of the book for the good of the whole.
“Hiding behind the scenes of Pritchard’s photographs are the invaluable and still unknown ecosystems ignored by most visitors, cherished by scientists worried about climate change and the disappearance of species. They are finally becoming a focus of beleaguered park management, whose budgets were constantly being raided by an unsympathetic federal administration.” Was climate change something that you were actively thinking about when you were working on the project? Was there a clear message that you wanted to leave with the viewer? (page 15)
An awareness of the impacts of climate change is unavoidable for anyone paying attention.
More than Scenery weaves a picture of a complicated landscape that appears one thing to visitors, another to those steeped in its histories, and yet again another when seen through the lens of recourse and management issues.
Weather patterns shift, water resources are diminished, food sources follow these changes, and animals follow the food. Yellowstone is all about the menu.I worked on this project long enough to see change. Wildfire patterns are shifting, and flood markers such as a hundred-years or five-hundred-years have lost meaning. This work shows the human hand everywhere on the land, even when we don’t see people.
The clear message of this book is simple if complex: Yellowstone is not one thing. As Lippard says, this is not a coffee table book. More than Scenery weaves a picture of a complicated landscape that appears one thing to visitors, another to those steeped in its histories, and yet again another when seen through the lens of recourse and management issues.
“The photographs I have made of Yellowstone National Park and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem surrounding it are not a tale of paradise lost but are sparked by the memories of my life in Wyoming when a dream turned real. That landscape of childhood and adolescent wonder set the stage for my life as a photographer, allowing me to connect nature with family, love, belonging, and separation. A lifetime of longing for the place where I was not living.“ Do you think completing this project has helped you heal the sense of separation and the longing you had?
You ask if this project healed my sense of separation and longing. The longing is a comforting presence, an understanding that my life plays out over a more extensive terrain than any one place. I’ve often thought my work was about paths not taken in my life. There are any number of other doors I could have walked through when I was younger. I chose photography, which has allowed me to explore a number of those paths, albeit differently than if I had made a career of X, Y, or Z. With a camera as my guide, I can dip into history, literature, writing, environmental studies, and science, etc. Although it’s true, I must sometimes remind myself I am not a historian or any of those other things and prioritise the needs of my chosen path.
“Research for the book began beneath the generous dome of the American Antiquarian Society’s reading room in Worcester, Massachusetts, where I was a Jay and Deborah Last Fellow in June 2008. Sitting in the library for forty hours a week for four weeks was not my natural habitat. And yet, the strength of my belief in the value of learning more about Yellowstone’s history and origin story compelled me.” Tell us more about the research that you did into Yellowstone. Why was it so important to you to understand more about the history and origin?
When I was younger, I visited Yellowstone for less than a day on my great American road trip the summer before University. My friend and I drove in the west entrance, watched Old Faithful erupt, and left through the south gate because it was crowded, and we were impatient. Later in life, I appreciated the once-in-a-lifetime experience for a visitor in a way I could not when I was young.
The research helped me see beyond myself. I learned to read details in the land through history; an unnatural flat along the west side of the Yellowstone River in Yankee Jim Canyon is an old railroad grade that brought early visitors to the park, a spit of land that seems a natural causeway in Yellowstone Lake is an old carriage road, and so on.
The research helped me see beyond myself. I learned to read details in the land through history; an unnatural flat along the west side of the Yellowstone River in Yankee Jim Canyon is an old railroad grade that brought early visitors to the park, a spit of land that seems a natural causeway in Yellowstone Lake is an old carriage road, and so on. I saw first-hand how changes in technology mediate one’s experience of place. The picture postcard that sparked this project was purchased from a Haynes Picture Shop and mailed in 1916.
In contrast, today, visitors use personal devices to capture their memories, changing from film to digital point-and-shoot cameras to cell phones and even illegal drones throughout this project. Selfie sticks are now everywhere, and photo frenzies happen. Through the eyes of science, the large boulders scattered in the Lamar Valley were named glacial erratic, telling a story of ice sheets long ago. The trees sheltered in their lee speak of dominant weather patterns, yielding the expressive term nurse rocks. These few examples highlight how enlarging my knowledge changes my understanding, which guides my camera.
“Six weeks of fieldwork in Yellowstone began to shape the project. I saw common threads of shared experiences in the Yellowstone landscape by photographing people visiting the park. Through numerous visits over the years and countless hours in libraries, museums, and any place else where I could find a reference to the park, More than Scenery evolved.” Could you expand on how the project evolved and comment on how it changed from your initial ideas? (page 25)
Initially, the quote called to me. I had faith in my process to follow that call, but More than Scenery evolved as I worked in the field and various archives. The portfolio structure traces that process. When I first went to Yellowstone in the fall of 2008, I could not escape the visitors, and “Views from Wonderland” was conceived. Although I spent time in the American Antiquarian Society reading room before my first visit to the park, those photographs of books were intended to be notes. It was not until the end of my fellowship that I realised these images had the potential for more, and “Collecting Yellowstone” took flight. “Stories from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem” about the natural history wonders and resource and management issues took longer. Not because I wasn’t making these images early on but because I wanted this project to be more than pretty pictures or another condemnation of Manifest Destiny and our wrecking ball approach to settlement. Finding my place in that took time.
“Three thematic portfolios comprise the heart of this book. Inspired by the Haynes postcard, which served as my benchmark, I photographed early twenty-first-century visitors to the park. Visiting Yellowstone is a heavily mediated experience for most. Visitors drive through “Wonderland” (page 26). Tell us about the three thematic portfolios and how you built the narrative around them.
Although I touched on this above, I will add a bit. The three-part structure of More than Scenery is unusual and only emerged slowly. At first, I believed I needed to weave the pictures together to present a more cohesive narrative. However, I found myself resisting and so delayed.
I couldn’t figure out how to justify the three portfolios for a long time until I realised it is a form of triangulation bounding my primary intellectual and visual concerns, a way to point to the more considerable complexities of Yellowstone as a place, as an idea, and as bureaucratic reality without being didactic.
I couldn’t figure out how to justify the three portfolios for a long time until I realised it is a form of triangulation bounding my primary intellectual and visual concerns, a way to point to the more considerable complexities of Yellowstone as a place, as an idea, and as bureaucratic reality without being didactic.
“Stories from the Greater Ecosystem (Portfolio III) took shape when I more carefully considered our role as stewards coming to appreciate the wonders of the Yellowstone landscape fully.” (page 26) The challenges of popularity and protection, ownership and wilderness are difficult to distil. What conclusions did you draw from your work on this topic?
What did I conclude? My appreciation for the messiness that is Yellowstone evolved. I grew more empathetic to the sincerity of a one-time visitor’s wonder but cautious of their ignorance, which can lead to danger. I began with a sense that the origin story of the park was complex, pitting centuries of indigenous habitation against the brutality of Manifest Destiny. My increased knowledge about the economic incentives for establishing the park fuelled this fire. I also learned more about the management issues driven by the diversity of stakeholders across the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The short answer is yes; my most concrete conclusion is that there is nothing simple about the park. Yellowstone is one of our most iconic landscapes and a microcosm for the enormous challenges we face in the twenty-first century as we struggle to know how to steward the land, right the wrongs of the past, and leverage science to develop plans for a changing future.
Tell me what your favourite two or three photographs from the book are and a little bit about them (please include these images in the ones you send over)
Haynes’ picture postcards of Golden Gate Canyon
Wow, I can only choose three favourites: that’s tough, but I can tell you about the five that summarise the project. Haynes’ picture postcards of Golden Gate Canyon first caught my eye, but one held the provocative quotation that started me on this path [p. 2–3].
Bison (Bison, Bison) Along the Lamar River
Next, “Bison (Bison, Bison) Along the Lamar River” [p. 33] shows a woman viewing Bison through the window of a Yellowstone Association tour bus. The woman is safely seated behind glass, ironically protecting the animals and herself.
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone by Thomas Moran
“The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone by Thomas Moran,” which hangs in Lobby 2N at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., is Moran’s most famous painting. Marketed in the 19th century as a wonder, viewers paid a sum to see the big reveal when curtains were drawn aside [p. 32]. Museums like parks preserve heritage, and what could be more symbolic of our idea, the good and the bad of it, than a famous painting of an even more renowned view hanging in a preeminent museum?
Rose Creek Acclimation Pens
“Rose Creek Acclimation Pens” were used in 1995 and 1996 to house Gray wolves brought down from Canada for reintroduction [p. 154]. Extirpated in 1926, by the mid-1940s, the perception of National Park Service rangers was that a mistake had been made; the ecosystem needed its apex predator to thrive.
Emerald Pool
“Emerald Pool” is an example of the natural history wonders that draw over four million visitors from around the world to visit Yellowstone each season [p. 179].
My first glimpse of this was in a woodblock print of a Hayden Survey photograph by William Henry Jackson published in the Twelfth Annual Report of the Hayden Survey, a U.S. government document published in 1878. The reproduction captured my attention, and I have visited the pool numerous times (see plate 3, p. 78).
Were there many key photographs that you knew would succeed when you took them? Conversely, did some of your pre-planned images fail in execution?
Some photographs stood apart early on, and I felt some were gifts while pushing the shutter release—others required multiple visits to a site. Some days, I arrived at sites and knew the stars were aligned, the weather was what I hoped for, the time of year would yield this information versus that, etc. If the photograph involves people, luck plays a more significant role. But no matter what kind of photograph I hoped to make, perseverance played a role in achieving my desired results.
Sequencing is obviously important - how do you manage the flow of the images and visual narrative when you're working on a book?
Funny you should ask this. I have understood the role of sequencing in a book of photographs ever since encountering the work of Duane Michal’s and Robert Frank’s The Americans when young, but I found with this book, I wasn’t particularly good at it. I knew which photographs belonged in which portfolio and recognized critical pictures to include. It was also clear to me which sequences did not work and when images needed to be sacrificed for the greater good, or empty pages functioned well as breathers. However, the subtleties of movement from this page to that eluded me at times, and for this, I leaned heavily on advice from George Thompson. I am grateful for his support.
The subtleties of movement from this page to that eluded me at times, and for this, I leaned heavily on advice from George Thompson. I am grateful for his support.
What have been the biggest lessons you’ve learned about the process of printing (and preparing to print) a book?
The biggest lesson I learned is that I will go on press next time. Trying to communicate about colour through the designer David Skolkin to the printer in another country was challenging. David went to great lengths, but it took extra effort and patience on the part of the team; everyone was great to work with, but being there would have made things more accessible. Could the results have been better? We’ll never know.
Although the equipment choice is secondary to your own processes, it inevitably affects the way we work to some extent. What equipment do you currently use, and why did you choose it?
All equipment, cameras and tripods, computers and hard drives, and all the endless bits and pieces serve a purpose; I let function drive my choices. I used many cameras during this project. Most of the pictures in the book were made with DSLR cameras, which changed with availability. A few were made with mirrorless cameras, and a few scans are also included. I used digital point-and-shoot cameras for notes and, later, my iPhone. A medium-format digital camera accompanied me on a few early trips but never fit my needs. I finished the project with a Nikon D850 and would love to have had that camera for the entire project. However, now that I have returned to Hasselblad, I can’t imagine a camera more suited to my working methods. I have used Macs since 1986 and Epson printers since 1995. I see no reason to change. But cameras don’t make pictures; people do, so I included the essay “Education of a Photographer” to address the larger question of how I became the photographer I am.
What is next for you? Where do you see your photography going in terms of subject and style?
I am currently in the midst of another long project. Photographs in Abiding River: Connecticut River Views & Stories expressively document the land and riverscape of the Connecticut River and its watershed.
am currently in the midst of another long project. Photographs in Abiding River: Connecticut River Views & Stories expressively document the land and riverscape of the Connecticut River and its watershed.
Much like my Yellowstone work, these photographs provide depictions of place, expressing a subjective vantage point through conversation with the language and history of photography. Much like More than Scenery, the river book will coax a more extensive story from context, sequence, and stories, this time pointing to that which is not named, human lives lived alongside the dynamic, shifting force of a steady presence played out across time in a landscape that stretches back long before humans that most see only in its current iteration. This book will follow the course of the river’s main stem, north to south, weaving multiple threads into a larger whole rather than searching for the heart of its story through triangulation.
Lastly, I’d like to offer you a soapbox for something related to the natural world, the benefits of photography, or just living a good life... What would you like to say to readers or encourage them to do?
Photography is my way of being in the world. It allows me to travel paths not otherwise taken, to spend time outdoors, which nourishes my soul, and to add something to the world. In short, it helps keep me sane in a world where I might otherwise feel powerless. My family keeps me tethered to and enriches my day-to-day life, while photography provides a place to dream; the balance feeds me emotionally and intellectually. I am fortunate and wish life could be so rewarding for everyone. The opening sentence of my Acknowledgments section says it all: “I have the good fortune of a guiding passion and the security of a supportive family without whom none of this would have happened.”
With over 6000 chapel/capel sites dotted across the country, it is clear that the religious landscape of Wales was once deeply dependent on a place to worship. The early places of worship were meeting houses on farms or held in upper rooms of a public house; you would even find them being held in cow sheds. As the congregation grew, local builders were then commissioned to build a chapel, which would then be able to house the growing fellowship; at times, these would be knocked down and rebuilt again or enlarged to seat up to 1500 people as congregations grew so fast.
With over 6000 chapel/capel sites dotted across the country, it is clear that the religious landscape of Wales was once deeply dependent on a place to worship
During the period of 1860 Welsh chapels/capels had enough pews to seat three quarters of the population, this number then grew again substantially following the 1904 revival which was lead by Evan Roberts who is now berried at his family grave in Moria Capel, Gorenizion.
Until the 1689 Toleration Act, it was not legal for dissenters to meet for worship, so the buildings did not have a real identity. This changed by the 1700s, and there was a more distinctive trend to buildings with long wall facades, normally with a large central window allowing the light to flood in onto the pulpit so the speaker could be seen clearly. From 1840 onwards, the long-walled model was looked at as outdated, and the far more common square-planned gable chapels/capels would become the norm. These modern day chapels had more of a worship characteristic, unlike those of the earlier days, which looked far more domestic.
Firstly, it’s an honour to be asked to write the End frame article for On Landscape magazine, so thank you very much Tim and Charlotte for that. When I initially read the email from On Landscape, I had no hesitation whatsoever in my first choice of photograph. I was quite busy at the time with workshops, however, so I didn’t get a chance to look at the image again, with this article in mind for maybe another week or so. In that time, I began to think more about my choice. I think Some favourite photographs can be compared to favourite tracks or albums of the past. You might very well have played the CD to destruction back in the day, but listen to it now (and especially with your kids present). Well, lets just say time moves on! Thankfully, once I had the chance to grapple my copy of Joe Cornish’s First Light out of our cramped and creaking bookshelf, a wave of comfortable reassurance swept over me as I looked at this image once again. Even though I’ve probably not looked through the book in over ten years, I was highly relieved to think that this image, in my opinion anyway, can be compared to one of those timeless classics that you can come back and listen to again and again, and still get the same thoughts and feelings you did the very first time you heard it.
While looking through First Light, it also dawned on me that many of the images in the book, especially Shell Pocket Twilight, are much more than just a photograph. They are a point in time when all those natural forces and processes that shape and change the landscape around us suddenly stand still. Having visited Mewslade Bay and other locations along the Gower Peninsula more than once myself (after seeing First Light), I was inspired to have a go at creating my own set of images from here. What is immediately apparent is that this location is ridiculously difficult, not to mention downright dangerous to reach. If there’s a polar opposite to those famous round Dolerite boulders at Dunstanburgh in Northumberland, then I think this must be it! The Limestone cliffs here are made up of a series of sharp edges and jagged, dagger like protrusions, and any slip while attempting to climb over the cliff, and into the cove, would almost certainly result in serious injury. As far as I know, unless there’s a spring tide, the sea hardly clears the entrance to the cove, even at low tide, making it treacherous to get in and out that way before your exit is cut off. Needless to say, I never got to actually see this part of the bay!
It’s important to remember that landscape is a construct. ‘Landscape photography’ tends to major on the ‘natural’ though our interpretation of this is effectively a construct too. We may carefully ignore the parts that we find less aesthetic or overlook the fact that nearly all of what we see has been shaped by man’s activities, some visible, some over time and in ignorance of what ‘went before’ less so. We continue to change our planet: land, sea and atmosphere, not just directly but by our reliance on trade from afar and the way that consumerism has shifted our understanding of resources and seasonality. And even in our attempts to archive the Earth’s resources, we may be tripped up by what has already been set in motion.
I was drawn to Janet’s images by their fluid beauty but they may challenge you to think about your own definition of photographic genre, for all that we do is interconnected and our path into revelation may be our own life experiences.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, what your early interests were, and what you went on to do?
I grew up as the middle child of a working-class family living in Marrickville, a suburb of Sydney; we moved to Maroubra in the 1970s. Marrickville was, back in the 1960s, a working-class suburb with a high immigrant population. It was known as ‘Little Athens’.
I don’t remember when I started my interest in art, and I’m not sure where it came from. I grew up in a household where sport was the centre of the universe and creativity was far from encouraged. After I finished school, I enrolled in the local TAFE college to study art.
I can remember being jealous of the Greek kids at school because their jacks were actual bones, and I only had the coloured plastic ones.
I don’t remember when I started my interest in art, and I’m not sure where it came from. I grew up in a household where sport was the centre of the universe and creativity was far from encouraged. After I finished school, I enrolled in the local TAFE college to study art. This started a lifelong love of making, teaching and studying art.
How did photography come into your life, and what were your early images of or about?
Photography was one of the subjects in my Fine Art course at the TAFE college. I really enjoyed the medium but gave it up after seeing a Diane Arbus publication. I thought that it was the most amazing photography that I had ever seen. I felt that if I couldn’t take photographs like Diane Arbus I should not even try. It was a couple of years later, whilst doing my BA in Visual Arts, that I returned to photography. I found myself drawn in by the medium and settled into documentary style portraiture.
The major shift in my photographic practice happened after I had my three daughters. I called this period my ‘Pink Pause’, where teaching and motherhood dominated my life. During this time, two of my three children were diagnosed with Coeliac Disease and food allergies. This may not seem significant, but it started my obsession to understand our food chain, sustainability and the environment.
Lately, I have become acutely aware of the work of some excellent Japanese landscape photographers, including the focus of this week’s article, Yuki Kamishima. I’ve been trying to articulate what has drawn me to their work, forcing me to spend a great deal of time studying the work and engaging in thoughtful conversations with folks noticing the same work. Having not spent much time studying Japanese landscape photography, I feel that the “newness” of these Japanese landscape scenes is undoubtedly one factor in my newfound appreciation of these photographers; however, I think there’s much more going on here.
I believe that significant cultural strengths may serve as a foundation for Japanese landscape photographers, and that is why I have found a deep appreciation for their images.
A proper analysis helps reveal fundamental differences between some Japanese photographers and their photographs compared to their Western counterparts. I believe that significant cultural strengths may serve as a foundation for Japanese landscape photographers, and that is why I have found a deep appreciation for their images.
As a nature photographer, my primary goal is to help those who view my work to appreciate the value of pure, unspoiled wilderness. To that end, creating captivating images that seize and sustain the viewer’s attention is key. The longer you can get someone to look at a photograph, the greater the odds are that they will connect with its subject matter. Still, in this fast-paced world where people can consume hundreds of images and videos in a matter of minutes, the big question is, “Why should they stop scrolling just for your image?” While the answer is multi-faceted, practising the art of mystery can be very effective for creating more captivating and engaging images.
I photographed this scene almost an hour after sunset. There was only a faint, ambient light softly illuminating the landscape, and the lack of direct light washed out its colour, making it appear more white. Since I excluded the light source, I was able to overexpose it and raise the luminosity extensively in post-processing in order to bring out the soft highlights and shadows and give it this serene, ethereal, pure feeling.
In September 2012, when I was in a photographic stage, which I called “practice & portfolio”, I made a two-week trip to the Greek island of Santorini. During my “practice & portfolio” period, as the name suggests, I made regular trips to various locations offering different kinds of landscapes and cityscapes in order to build up a travel and landscape portfolio. These trips were part of a series of trips that I financed with the money I saved during my previous career, which lasted a decade, in another visual art.
One evening, I decided to photograph a viewpoint from a series of steps I walked by earlier that morning and reckon that it would yield a higher potential if photographed sometime before sunset, when the sun would light the landscape sideways, enveloping the scene with much softer and warmer hues. This long series of steps followed a broad curved shape at first, which then turned into a gentle "s" shaped path, a perfect line leading the eyes towards Oia's windmills in the background.
This path of steps was built right on the edge of an elevated and steep ridge. When looking towards the village of Oia, the descending steps overlooked the sea on the left, while on the right, the scene was characterised by a seemingly endless perspective of typical white Greek houses. It was an idyllic location, infused with a classic summer flavour and illuminated by uninterrupted side lighting, which filled the atmosphere with a gentle warmth coming from the seaside.
One evening, I decided to photograph a viewpoint from a series of steps I walked by earlier that morning and reckon that it would yield a higher potential if photographed sometime before sunset, when the sun would light the landscape sideways, enveloping the scene with much softer and warmer hues.
Away from the tourist noise, I carefully choose the exact step to unfold my tripod before waiting for sunset. Suddenly, a man came up and set up his tripod and camera right next to me, on the same narrow step where I, too, was standing. Despite there being many other steps before and after me, that precise step must have appeared to be the best one for him, too. Without moving my tripod, I took a step back and let him place his gear.
Since I had a few more days to spend in Santorini, I said to him that I could leave the spot to him and come back the following day to photograph that view. He declined, saying that we could both be there, share the small space, and shoot the sunset together. After a while, we started talking and he humbly explained he was a well-known American photographer, he hosted a TV series about photography and authored many books. Impressed, I asked for his name and business card.
After the shoot, I checked his website and saw his work. It impressed me, but I couldn’t yet grasp how famous he was. As I was eager to meet him again, I searched for him the following day. I found him eventually and I explained I was dedicated to becoming a professional photographer. He mentioned it was already great for me to be out there, doing what he was doing: making images. He explained that he had been a travel and wildlife photographer for 40 years, and it was a great lifestyle, but loving such a lifestyle is as important as having a strong passion for photography itself.
These words were spoken to me by Art Wolfe. I didn’t know who he really was back then, and only once I got back home, I did do further research on him and buy some of his books. After that conversation, he and his colleague, Gavriel Jecan, allowed me to tag along as they kept exploring Oia until dusk when we split our ways.
These words were spoken to me by Art Wolfe. I didn’t know who he really was back then, and only once I got back home, I did do further research on him and buy some of his books. After that conversation, he and his colleague, Gavriel Jecan, allowed me to tag along as they kept exploring Oia until dusk when we split our ways. They left for Thailand to lead a workshop, and I stayed there, still unable to fully comprehend what had happened in the past two days: Art Wolfe placing his tripod 3 inches next to mine, letting me photograph alongside him as if we were colleagues, and discussing his photography and lifestyle with me. At that time, I was 27 years old, and only 13 months before that day, I held my first camera in my hands. It was all very abstract to me.
While on the first evening, we were photographing a classic vista across a Greek island from late evening to dusk. On the second day, I saw him moving around much more and photographing all sorts of things, especially architectural details and cats near beautiful doorsteps. The part that intrigued me the most was when I saw him curl up on the ground to photograph the ruined planks of an old wooden door. I admit my naivete made me wonder what he saw in that and why was he photographing with such eagerness and passion, what, to me, appeared to be just an old door.
Abstract workshops
A few years later, he started to offer specific workshops on abstract photography either along a coastline or in rural settings in old villages with abandoned vehicles or trains.
Attracted by the idea of training my eyes and creativity on finding and framing small patterns and pleasing arrangements of details on rusted surfaces, I began searching for abandoned trains near my home.
Recalling him photographing those details in Santorini and the curiosity to learn more from him while spending a proper amount of time photographing with him made me think of joining him.
Attracted by the idea of training my eyes and creativity on finding and framing small patterns and pleasing arrangements of details on rusted surfaces, I began searching for abandoned trains near my home. But as I gave priority to my trips to improve my travel portfolio, I couldn't justify to myself the need to do a workshop on abstract photography and moved on.
Since then, throughout the years, whenever I would find appealing details to photograph, I would do so, but I never met a single piece of surface to inspire me to make a series of photographs from it.
Every time I went to my wife's grandmother's home, 200km south of our home, in a small village in Bourgogne called Tannerre-en-Puisaye, I would see in the garden this old door and felt a certain attraction to it. As we rarely went there, at times I never took the time to study and eventually photograph it, while other times I didn't have my photographic gear with me.
Eleven years apart
Only on my last visit there for a family reunion, as everyone was about to go to an event nearby, I decided to stay in the garden to photograph that door. As we joined the family reunion on our way towards the south of France for a long photographic trip, I had my gear with me and was finally able to photograph it.
At first gaze, I could only see a couple of interesting motifs on the old wood, but as I kept looking, I began to recognise a series of unexpected designs. Some of them had shapes resembling human figures bearing a torch or holding something upwards.
This made me open my backpack, unfold the tripod and start photographing.
The necessary calm to perform an attentive observation of the old wood’s surface led to contemplative moments of interpretation upon new appealing findings. This tranquil exploration, mostly done through gazing while standing still, was contrasted by an eagerness to photograph various compositions born of immediate intuitions.
The making of nine photographs of this small wooden door, which illustrates these words, took about one hour. While framing some of the compositions, I had a feeling as if I had already begun to work on those images way before that moment. The connection I had always felt for those wooden planks materialised that afternoon.
When the family returned, they were surprised to find me curled up on the ground to photograph the intricate design of the old door and even more so to learn I have been doing that since they left. For them, it was just an old door, but for me was the perfect “location” for my own personal abstract workshop.
The making of nine photographs of this small wooden door, which illustrates these words, took about one hour. While framing some of the compositions, I had a feeling as if I had already begun to work on those images way before that moment.
I asked some questions about the door and learned that it was placed there by my wife’s grandfather over 40 years ago. It used to be brand new, with the wooden planks perfectly aligned and smooth, but now it had a run-down look, full of bumps and holes, and nothing was straight anymore.
Some people asked me what I saw in that door and why it took my interest so intensely to invest much time and focus. As I said above, that was also what I wondered about Art Wolfe in Santorini and so after explaining my reasons for photographing the old door, I shared with them my Santorini story, even if they didn’t know who Art Wolfe is, just like I didn’t.
I felt like Art Wolfe involuntarily taught me something that day in Santorini, which stayed with me ever since and took eleven years to fully resurface in my consciousness to come full circle. Eleven years apart, Art Wolfe’s passion still inspired me. He was able to stimulate in me the desire to be immersed in the same creative process I saw him disappearing into in Santorini as he photographed an old door.
Unconsciously, that lucky meeting with Art Wolfe stimulated in me my interest in that door from the first moment I saw it. The appreciation of such an old object and the realisation that all those faults on its surface were holding photographic opportunities came from him and that encounter.
Unless Art Wolfe reads this text, he will never know about his impact on my photographic journey. Like him, we too, by simply practising our passions and sharing our stories, may never know who we may inspire and how we may flare up someone else’s creativity. This has the power to set in motion a chain of events that would lead a person to follow his passions, discover new horizons, produce personal work and potentially inspire someone else. Just like Art Wolfe did while being curled up on the ground to photograph an old door.
When I first started landscape photography, much of my work was inspired by subjects and locations. In more recent years, my approach to photographing landscapes has evolved to become more expressional and emotional. The lure of iconic destinations no longer has the appeal it once did. And in the same vein, the lure of new locations has also diminished.
My attitude changed when I came to the realisation that to understand a landscape, it’s crucial to spend time immersed in it before I can begin to convey aspects of it through my photography and create more personal bodies of work.
During the last ten years, I have done very little photography-related travel. Most of my photography has taken place where I live, in New Zealand. I have a set of locations that I love and keep returning to again and again. I’ve got to know these places well and also use them for my workshops. You’d think perhaps that familiarity would lead me to plan the types of images that I hope to create—or that my approach to photographing there might become quite fixed—but the opposite has been true. By really getting to know a place, I’ve heightened my sense of exploration.
I revisit these revered landscapes with a completely open mind, which enables each visit to present new opportunities for experimentation - to play around with the story I want my photographs to tell.
I revisit these revered landscapes with a completely open mind, which enables each visit to present new opportunities for experimentation - to play around with the story I want my photographs to tell. The constraints of having to find new paths that lead to expression have enhanced my creativity, and I’ve done some of my best work within these familiar places. Not since 2012, when I travelled across Africa for a couple of months on a photography trip, have I travelled overseas specifically to take photographs. This insight might seem surprising for a full-time landscape photographer. My travels abroad since then have mostly been without my camera. I’ve chosen to treat these trips as holidays or travel experiences, not as a time to work on my photography. I don’t feel the need to photograph every landscape I visit. I prefer to be more engaged with the landscapes I photograph, taking the time to explore and form a connection, a relationship with the place.
So, when contemplating working on an expedition in Antarctica, the location appealed to me greatly. I had always wanted to visit and photograph this unique landscape. But, at the same time, I also felt a sense of hesitation and uncertainty as I didn’t quite know the direction I wanted to take with my photography whilst there. I also could not imagine how the images I would create could fit within existing bodies of work. However, I was excited by the potential to explore an expressive approach in a fresh landscape.
Whilst considering the interesting challenge that lay before me, I thought about my New Zealand-based work and what unites it. It is not the New Zealand landscape—the location as a subject—that is the defining factor for my work. For me, it’s much more about exploring my relationship with the landscape which leads to my style. There is freedom that comes with the fact that my work is not about the landscape itself. It was an interesting challenge, considering how to shoot images of a very different landscape in a way that expressed their individual stories and meaning while offering continuity of style.
It felt impossible to envisage until I’d spent time in the vast, icy expanse and been able to process the vistas, their energy, and the associated thoughts and feelings that would ignite ideas that would form an approach to creative expression.
While considering the expedition to Antarctica, I decided I’d also like to create a fresh body of work that conveyed context about Antarctica and included my personal experience of being there—but the exact nature was difficult to define before visiting. It felt impossible to envisage until I’d spent time in the vast, icy expanse and been able to process the vistas, their energy, and the associated thoughts and feelings that would ignite ideas that would form an approach to creative expression.
The 28-day voyage would depart from New Zealand and sail south to the Ross Sea via the Sub-Antarctic Islands. Going to the Antarctic for the first time, I knew that during the first 12 days we’d have in the Antarctic Circle it would be extremely challenging to be able to see, experience and process all the elements of this completely new environment. I knew that creating and refining a narrative that could inform the basis for a new collection of work—expressing meaning, context and depth—would be a challenge within the limited timeframe. It was unlikely I would be able to return to build a stronger relationship and connection with the place and allow my thoughts to percolate and evolve.
I find it isn’t possible to tell a story from a first impression. A story needs to unfold in layers, requiring a continuous cycle of reflection. An additional element to the challenge would be having no constraints or boundaries initially. These would need to be defined once I had a level of familiarity with the place. With previous collections, the creative process has been refined via multiple visits and opportunities to reflect and recalibrate the messages I want to express and how I think I can achieve that. The question continually resonated in my mind, ‘How much could I achieve on just one trip to the ice?’
As we traversed the wild Southern Ocean, I could feel the anticipation building, and as we crossed the Antarctic Circle, I felt quite overwhelmed. There were photographs to be made everywhere! Grand, icy vistas, icebergs, ice patterns and, of course, wildlife. I found myself creating lots of images - it’s something we all often find ourselves doing when experiencing exciting new places. I was conscious they weren’t all going to be photographs that would represent me as a photographer; I was simply enjoying recording the landscape and my memories.
I photographed with two different purposes, one capturing the journey, the other a considered approach to create images that encapsulated personal meaning that incorporated elements of my unique style.
I photographed with two different purposes, one capturing the journey, the other a considered approach to create images that encapsulated personal meaning that incorporated elements of my unique style.
After returning to New Zealand, I reflected on the trip. Photographically, had it been a success? Did I come away with images that I’m happy with? I feel that ‘success’ in photography is very difficult to define. I can easily create an image of a magnificent landscape that would receive attention on social media - but I know this type of image is unlikely to hold any deep personal meaning for me, and that I would use it to convey my style. So the answer to my question is, sure, I did come away from Antarctica with several images that were successful, including some of the wildlife—something I have chosen not to focus my photography on in recent years.
Some of the images I took illustrate elements of my personal style, but, at the same time, similar images were created by other photographers on the expedition, and I did not feel these offered a unique perspective. But there were also photographs I made that could sit within and complement existing bodies of work created throughout different environments here in New Zealand. Thinking about this, it was simple to envisage how these photographs would work within existing collections as I have a deep understanding of the messages I intend to convey. I didn’t have a preconceived approach, but I did have defined constraints around the subject, compositional elements and lighting within individual portfolios. So, when opportunities arose, I saw images that would add depth to my previous collections, rather than offering an alternative expression in a different environment.
This may be a landscape I never return to, and if I did may not offer the same lure of visiting an unknown destination—seeing things for the first time—and maybe a little bit of that magic will be lost.
After being back home for about a month. I hadn’t looked through the images I’d made in Antarctica in any detail as I knew I needed some distance from these. Having shot so many images, I’d felt quite overwhelmed going through them, but I was incredibly excited about the prospect of developing a new and very different collection. One of my first photographs of Antarctica provided the inspiration to form the basis of a new collection that I had wanted to evolve. During the rest of the trip, I made subsequent photographs in this style to be able to collate and refine the beginnings of a new series.
This may be a landscape I never return to, and if I did may not offer the same lure of visiting an unknown destination—seeing things for the first time—and maybe a little bit of that magic will be lost. But, I feel that I now understand this environment and how I wish to photograph it—and hopefully, I can make more images to build a portfolio of work from Antarctica. If I do ever return, perhaps I’ll see the landscape in a very different way or just start working on a completely new set of images, and the idea I have of extending this body of work will go out the window as I start again from scratch. But this is the thing I love about returning again and again to the same location: it’s the chance to be able to explore it more expressively, to see things you wouldn't and couldn’t have seen the first time, and move away from just representing it to understanding it and being able to express your relationship with the landscape.
When I saw this photograph by Marianthi, my first thought was that I was not sure if I was looking at the sea, but I definitely felt it. I really felt that the photograph titled “Tidal Pool #5” shows the sea, but I have decided not to ask Marianthi but to leave it to my imagination.
I was neither sure about what exactly was in front of her camera nor if she used multiple exposure. What one can be sure of is her photograph is very sea-like. Oceans and seas (probably most great lakes, too) are strongly connected with blue colour in human brains. It is not just one blue but the full spectrum from pale blue to deep navy blue.
Even if sometimes some shallows are green or brown, they are still a part of something bigger which remains blue. It is not only this range of blue but a sense of wind added that makes the white stripes on a blue background. All this playing with blue I can find as a key element of the Marianthi’s photograph. Moreover, the way the layers of blue shades compose with each other reminds me of traces which waves leave on a beach.
While most people know the sea well, the view is left asking - where was it taken – is it a view from a beach? Is there any better place to take a walk and dream a bit than a narrow strip of sand with safe land on one hand, endless water on the other and a fresh breeze on the face? When I think about seascape, I usually mean beachscape. A psychiatrist could say that one of the reasons I enjoy this photograph so much is because I find my comfortable environment in it. However, “Tidal Pool #5“ gives something more, and it is also very sea-like.
When Covid caused many countries to restrict social contact, we thought it would be great to start a podcast series called the "Lockdown Podcast". It was mostly myself, Joe Cornish and David Ward discussing photography in general. It was not only great fun; I think it was reasonably popular considering the number of people that have asked: "Are we doing anything like that again?". The answer is now "Yes!" and here it is. Modelled loosely on Radio Four's "Any Questions", Joe Cornish and I (Tim Parkin) will be inviting a guest onto the show and soliciting questions from our subscribers.
Our first podcast features Alex Nail, and we've had questions about his new book, mountain photography, colour management and much more. I hope you enjoy the series, and please let us know if you have any suggestions or questions about the podcast (technical, audio, etc)
Our next guest will be Lizzie Shepherd so if you want to get any questions to us in advance by 12th February. Please send them to submissions@onlandscape.co.uk.
Once a couple of months has passed, we plan on making the podcast available on all the major hosting platforms for free but if you want to access the podcasts as they come out, they'll be listed as articles like this or you can subscribe to this rss feed.
Welcome to our 4x4 feature, which is a set of four mini landscape photography portfolios which has been submitted for publishing. Each portfolio consists of four images related in some way. Whether that's location, a project, a theme or a story. Added:
I travelled to Norway in January 2023, where I visited Senja, Sommaroy, and Lofoten. The winter weather in Norway in January can be quite extreme, but the scenery is absolutely outstanding, and once you go well-prepared with the proper clothing and footwear and, of course, extra batteries, you can be guaranteed that you will come back home with some stunning images. The days at this time of the year are very short, with sunrise around 9 am and sunset around 4 pm, but the dawn and dusk light can often last for up to two hours each. The low diffused light remains pretty constant for the rest of the day, and at night, of course, there are plenty of opportunities to capture the Aurora Borealis.
My wife and I had our first visit to the Orkney Islands in July 2023, basing ourselves on the Mainland and the islands linked to it by causeways. The first impression was how green the island was, with lush pastures for cattle, fields cut for silage, and growing crops of barley and oats. This gently undulating landscape is almost treeless, and the fields are bounded by stock-proof fencing and a few stone walls. There are many lochs and the low-lying marshes are dominated by yellow flag and meadowsweet, while the upland areas are heather moorland with evidence of long-abandoned peat cuttings.
Orkney is rich in archaeology, and the stunning sites of Maes Howe, Skara Brae, the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar have been recognised as The Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site. But at the other end of man’s long occupation of the islands, I was struck by the many defensive infrastructures associated with the use of Scapa Flow as the base for the country’s naval fleet during both World Wars.
Photographically I had no pre-conceived ideas of what to expect and I did not treat the holiday like a full photographic visit. Rather I looked for images that reflected my interpretation of what makes Orkney such a unique and special place.
A farming landscape
The Ring of Brodgar, one of the key sites in Orkney’s Neolithic ceremonial landscape
Abandoned gun emplacements, part of the Hoxa Head defences, overlooking the approaches to Scapa Flow.
One of the Churchill barriers was constructed in the 1940s as a blockade to prevent enemy ships from entering Scapa Flow.
In my project, 'The British Coast', I aim to embrace the notion that beauty can be discovered even in seemingly ordinary seascapes. The project's objective is to unveil the captivating charm of the United Kingdom's coastal regions (Essex, mainly), exposing the hidden magic that lies within them.
By employing the long exposure technique, I purposefully reduce any distractions within each scene, allowing the viewer to focus on the picture's subject and fully engage with its essence. This technique seamlessly merges the passage of time, smoothing the waves, blurring the movement of clouds, and capturing the essence of the coastal environment in a captivating and mesmersing way.
These seascapes showcase the dynamic interplay between land, sea, and sky, portraying the constant dance of waves, tides, and atmospheric elements. By immersing viewers in these captivating scenes, I invite them to witness the timeless beauty and profound serenity that the British coast has to offer.
The outer Dovercourt lighthouse in Dovercourt news Harwich, Essex.
The beach is close to the Languand Fort in the port of Felixstowe.
Near my home is a protected wetland, the Laguna de Santa Rosa. It's a lovely place, accessible year-round by a network of trails but in winter the water rises into flood and becomes very wide, the trees are now leafless, and the feeling there changes from something verdant green to something else, just blacks, whites, and greys.
Around sunrise on a foggy winter morning the place is moody, quiet, magical even, and nothing moves except the waterfowl. It is easy to forget that civiliasation is not far away. These photographs were taken within a quarter mile of each other on such mornings.
Jay Tayag’s black and white image ‘Empty’ caught my eye after browsing the 2023 NLPA competition results. It shows mud cracks – always a popular subject – on the Eastern Sierra, but these diminish and disappear into still water and are highlighted at the water’s edge by the morning sun. It’s an image made on film – if you browse Jay’s Instagram, you’ll see that alongside the final photograph, he shows negative or transparency alongside set-up and location shots. Jay works with computers, and I can’t but help but wonder if this is another factor in his love of the slow meticulousness of large-format film photography. He talks about how he came to use an antiquated process – even if his camera is now very 21st century – and what he gains from it, irrespective of the outcome.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, what your early interests were, and what you went on to do?
My name is Jay Tayag, I was born in the Philippines but moved to the United States when I was about 7 years old. Our family moved around a lot until we settled in Port Hueneme, California (Southern California). In high school, I went fishing, played tennis and rode mountain bikes. It wasn't until college that I started camping and snowboarding. After college, I became a computer programmer. Little did I know that these outdoor activities and even computer skills would help me in my ultimate pursuit of large format landscape photography.
Zion leaf litter
How did you become interested in photography and what were your early images of, or about?
Photography has been on the back of my mind since I was in college. My brother had taken it up, and it piqued my interest. I was just too busy and too poor to take it up at the time. It was only after college that I was able to take a beginner film photography class around 2002. I had a blast. It exposed (pun intended) me to a different way of seeing and introduced me to the darkroom. If I wasn't taking photos, I was in the darkroom working on my prints and smelling the fixer. Unfortunately, a little after the class ended and when my monthly membership to the local darkroom expired, I slowly lost the momentum.
The photos that I took then were guided by the assignments that we had. Some examples of these were to take a picture of the same subject in different ways on one roll of 35mm film. It was around the time when 9/11 happened, so I decided to take pictures of the American flag. It wasn't exactly what the instructor had in mind as I was taking pictures of different American flags, but he let me roll with it.
The assignment and my camera gave me direction and a purpose. It was like a scavenger hunt. The camera took me to places where I would have never imagined going without it. I really enjoyed that feeling.
The assignment and my camera gave me direction and a purpose. It was like a scavenger hunt. The camera took me to places where I would have never imagined going without it. I really enjoyed that feeling. We emulated past masters' works to learn how and why they took the photos that they did. I had Paul Strand. His photos of Wall Street and the blind person were my first introduction to "street" photography… and I was terrible at it.
It wasn't until a little later in 2008, when I took photography up for the second time, that it basically stuck. It was when my wife was expecting, and I wanted to take meaningful photos of my baby when she arrived. This time, we purchased a digital camera, and I dived head first into this new world of photography. I shot everything. Sunsets, sunrises, flowers, the kitchen fan, fireworks, neighbourhood cats, etc. I learned how to shoot macro, do light painting, long exposures and even, heaven forbid… HDR. (Early HDR was soooo bad) I learned how to shoot water droplets using off camera flash. I bought the Adobe Lightroom software. I even started my webpage (which looked very different from today). So, when baby Grace arrived, I applied all that I learned on her. She was probably the most documented baby on the block. She was born to a daddy paparazzi. Thankfully, I didn't do HDR on her.
Sunrise in a Death Valley salt flat
When and how did you get into large format film photography? What is it about the equipment and the process that appeals to you?
I started shooting large format film in 2017. But before that, I had been shooting digital since 2008. Around 2015, I started to feel something was missing. I would come back from a photo trip with around 1000 images and feel good about 3 of them. A little afterwards, I wouldn’t feel any connection to any of them. It was then that I found Ben Horne's YouTube channel. It initially caught my eye because he was exploring Death Valley, a place I had just started exploring myself. He also had a funny looking camera that I had no interest in.
I started shooting large format film in 2017. But before that, I had been shooting digital since 2008. Around 2015, I started to feel something was missing. I would come back from a photo trip with around 1000 images and feel good about 3 of them. A little afterwards, I wouldn’t feel any connection to any of them.
The more I watched his videos, the more I learned about how he took his images. He wasn't taking dozens of images at a time, no HDR, no focus stacking (he actually did that once, though). He took forever to take a shot, and sometimes, he wouldn't take one at all. He walked around with a huge backpack just to carry his photo gear. He didn't take himself too seriously, and he didn't really talk a lot of technical details, but he took you through what he was thinking and experiencing… and that captivated me. After a couple of years of watching his videos (and Alan Brock's YouTube channel as well), I purchased a 4x5 camera, and I was a beginner again. Photography was exciting and fun once more. I made a lot of mistakes, but I learned from them.
You can look at large format landscape photography in either a glass half full or glass half empty kind of way. Yes, the technology is ancient. It is bulky. It is heavy. Film is expensive. It is hard to use. It is obsolete. However, because it is all those things and more, it slows me down. It makes me focus. It’s no longer about how many shots I can take; it just becomes about the one I am about to take. It helps me to be more present and savor all that is around me. There are lots of things you will not be able to shoot with this gear, but if you embrace it, the limitations of the gear will not confine you. It will free you to quickly find what you CAN shoot.
Eastern Sierra pond in fall
I like the tactile feeling of it. The weight of the gear. The feel of the wood on the camera. I have to unfold the camera and set it up myself. I decide which of my 4 lenses to use. I have to manually focus the camera and apply any needed camera movements. I decide what film to use. I choose the aperture and shutter speed based on the meter reading that I take with my handheld light meter. I have to remember to adjust for reciprocity failure if needed. Add filters, if needed. If the conditions are right, I make a shot. When I get home, I process the film, scan it and edit the image. With this equipment and process, I am intimately connected to each image. A lot of effort and thought goes into each one. It is a slow, manual process, so I make fewer images. Because of that, every successful image is a treasure, and every failure is a lesson.
Looking back at it, shooting large format film was the single best thing that I did for my photography. It definitely is not for everyone. It's not about the technology, or how many images you can take, or the convenience, or the megapixels, etc. For me, it's about the experience before, during and after making the shot. There is a feeling of pride that lasts when you see one of your successful images on a light table and hold the film in your hands. The film that YOU made from beginning to end. Well, actually, it's about the film that I made, but you get the picture.
Looking back at it, shooting large format film was the single best thing that I did for my photography. It definitely is not for everyone. It's not about the technology, or how many images you can take, or the convenience, or the megapixels, etc. For me, it's about the experience before, during and after making the shot.
Three Brothers after a winter storm in Yosemite
Which cameras and films are your current favourites? Has this changed in the time you’ve been using film?
My current favourite and recently purchased camera is my Chamonix Alpinist X 8x10 field camera. It’s a modern wooden field camera that uses carbon fiber and anodized aluminum parts. It’s so precise and well-built that it’s just a joy to use; old school tech with a new school twist. It’s very lightweight for an 8x10 camera at about 6 pounds. As with everything large format, it’s expensive but after about 4 months of using it, I still feel that it was worth it.
My first large format camera was a "Shen Hao HZX45 II A" 4x5 camera. I shot with it for 4 years and then transitioned to an Intrepid 8x10 MkII. Then over to the Intrepid 8x10 Mk III until I got the Chamonix. Each new camera became the favourite. Hopefully, I won't be purchasing any more new favourites for a while. (I took a big hit on that last one.)
My current favourite film is Ilford Delta 100. It's a very clean film. I'm comfortable rating it anywhere from ISO 50-400 with no noticeable grain on 8x10. I develop using HC110, 1:32 dilution. Since I started shooting 8x10, I gravitated towards black and white film because of the ridiculous price of Fuji Provia 100, a colour slide film which is my second favourite film. And because of the disappearance of Fuji Velvia 50, another colour slide film… my third favourite.
When I was shooting mostly 4x5, Velvia 50 was a lot more attainable and I primarily shot with that film. Black and white was somewhat of an afterthought since I was really infatuated with the look of slide film on a light table… and still am.
Eastern Sierra high contrast reeds
What part does digital play in your process? Which parts of the workflow especially interest you and have you got to the point of printing your negatives and transparencies?
As far as actually taking the photo, there is very little that digital takes part in other than using my Sekonic L-758DR light meter. The camera is really just an expensive light tight box that holds your lens on one side and the film on the other. I use the Viewfinder app on my iPhone to help me frame up the shot before I take the camera out. I use the same app to take scouting photos. I tend to take some videos and pictures on my phone that get synced up to the Adobe Cloud and eventually to Lightroom Classic on my computer.
The part of the workflow that I am currently most interested in and the reason I still haven't replaced the printer is the platinum palladium print process. I have been threatening to contact print my negatives using platinum palladium for a while now.
These photos and video help remind me what the scene was like when I was there. I also take some hand notes of my settings and miscellaneous things on a little notepad.
After I go home and process the film, I scan it with an Epson V800 flatbed scanner. The film goes into a binder. I remove the dust spots from the scanned image with Photoshop, apply sharpening and import it into Lightroom. In Lightroom I use the iPhone shots from the location to get the GPS location and add the notes from my notepad to the image exif data. I try and do most of my editing in Lightroom as I like the non-destructive nature of it as well as its cataloging capabilities. After that, the images will eventually go on my website and social media.
Unfortunately, I don't have a dedicated darkroom to traditionally print my negatives and my inkjet printer broke down a couple of years ago. When the printer was working, I definitely printed my photos. It's very satisfying having the print in your hands.
The part of the workflow that I am currently most interested in and the reason I still haven't replaced the printer is the platinum palladium print process. I have been threatening to contact print my negatives using platinum palladium for a while now. I managed to collect all the equipment that I need to do it with. It's a little intimidating starting something that can get pretty expensive and time consuming. Then again, I'm shooting 8x10 film, so that shouldn't be a reason not to start platinum palladium printing. I think it would be great to be able to have an all analog process from capture to print. (iPhone photos and videos excluded.) So since I said it here on this article, I guess I'll have to start eventually.
Would you like to choose 2 or 3 photographs from your own portfolio and tell us a little about why they are special to you or your experience of making them?
Tree in fall colour, Zion Canyon
Tree in fall colour, Zion Canyon
This photo was shot on 4x5 Velvia 50. It wasn't really taken by me but by my 10 year old daughter. Back in 2019, I took her to Zion National Park for her first camping trip. We were just exploring the canyon and came upon this tree. I thought it would be fun to show her how her dad took photos. I set the camera up, had her look under the dark cloth and let her take the shot. This was her first large format photo. (Or actually, the second exposure. Follow the link for more details on what happened.) That was a great trip, and I'll always remember it.
Eastern Sierra tree in infrared
Eastern Sierra tree in infrared
This tree in the Eastern Sierra was shot on 4x5 IR film in 2021. When I first came across the tree, it was a bit windy. So, the image didn't turn out due to all of the motion blur. I came back the following year and was fortunate enough to capture it on a calm day. I eventually got an 11x14 platinum palladium print made by Michael Strickland, and it looks absolutely beautiful. It's currently framed and hanging on the wall behind my computer. Every so often, I take a magnifying glass and count the leaves. This is the reason why I want to try my hand at platinum palladium printing.
Flooded badwater basin
Flooded badwater basin
This was a recent photo taken in October 2023 at Death Valley. Badwater Basin became a lake due to Hurricane Hillary hitting the area in August of that year. The storm, however, damaged all the roads going in and out of Death Valley. I was monitoring the road status for months until it finally opened. I found my opening with the weather, work and home, and I made my way there. I scouted the area and found a good spot well before the light. I had plenty of time to set up my camera and enjoy just being out there. This was shot on 8x10 Fuji Provia 100. Provia only has about 5 stops of dynamic range. (Think shooting jpg.) I had to meter it perfectly so that the detail in the dark mountains (left), as well as the detail in the highlights, would be preserved. I used a soft 2-stop grad and placed it just below the horizon to make sure the glow from the sky, as well as the glow in the water, wouldn't blow out. Once the sun started to set, everything became still and quiet. I had to stand perfectly still for at least a minute so that the ripples from my movements went away to ensure that I could capture a perfect reflection. Then, I made the image. It's the quietest place that I have experienced, and the view that evening was surreal. It is one of the many reasons why I love visiting Death Valley. Seeing this film on a light table reminds me why I shoot large format films (and why I can't stop shooting colour completely). To me, this shot was made, not taken. The process of making it started after Hillary left Death Valley.
Tell us a little more about your ‘local’ area and the places that you are drawn back to?
I consider myself very lucky living in Southern California where the Eastern Sierra, Death Valley and Yosemite are all within driving distance from me (about 4-6 hours’ drive). Their proximity is key because I like visiting places often to get a better understanding of them.
The Eastern Sierra has some of the tallest mountains in the lower 48. It is the place I go for fall colour, but it offers so much more than that throughout the year. There are hidden gems scattered all over Highway 395, no matter the season. You just have to take the time and look. Admittedly, I have only explored the easy to get to areas. I would like to someday hike into the backcountry to experience the amazing landscape there.
The Eastern Sierra has some of the tallest mountains in the lower 48. It is the place I go for fall colour, but it offers so much more than that throughout the year. There are hidden gems scattered all over Highway 395, no matter the season. You just have to take the time and look..
Dead bush on volcanic soil in the Eastern Sierra
Death Valley is so vast and diverse geologically from its sand dunes, salt flats, playas, badlands and canyons that it's just hard to choose which one I would want to try and shoot given the very limited time I usually have. The more you get to know this place, the more changes you will notice every year. The extreme silence and solitude that you can experience there is like no other.
There is nothing like Yosemite right after or during a winter storm. Consider yourself very lucky if you are in Yosemite Valley at that time. Anywhere you are, everywhere you look, it'll feel like you are in one of Ansel Adams' photographs.
You have a number of compositions on your website in both colour and black and white. Do you shoot using film or convert later? Do you have a personal preference between colour and monochrome?
I try to stay true to the film that I shot. If I shoot colour film, the final image will be a colour image. If I want to see both, I'll shoot both colour and black and white film. I usually have a good idea of how I want the final image to look like before capture.
Currently, I prefer to shoot with black and white film. I like the timelessness of it. It simplifies the image and emphasizes shapes and textures. Since it's a negative film, it affords more creative freedom with dodging and burning. I think 8x10 black and white film would be ideal for contact printing.
Eastern Sierra pond
Joshua Tree NP rocks
What difference has photography made to your view of the world? What have you gained through it, and in particular through large format work?
Photography has given me a set of new eyes. It taught me how to see differently… artistically. It’s like the movie The Matrix. Once I took the red pill, everything looked different, and there was no going back. It took me to places I would never have gone if I didn't have a camera. It made me learn more about the particular areas I visit year after year. When I learned more about a place, I gained a deeper appreciation of it. When you appreciate something, you want to protect it. So I try and leave the places I visit better than I found them and practice a leave no trace principle.
Large format teaches you patience and perseverance. It's a slow process, and it doesn't do well if you hurry it. The slow process gives me more time to enjoy the scene that I am photographing. When mistakes inevitably happen, I get angry, and I might cry, but eventually, it encourages me to come back and try again.
I’ve found a small but great community of large format photographers out there. I've had the pleasure to actually meet some of them and consider some of them my friends. They are all passionate about their craft and are great people.
I’ve found a small but great community of large format photographers out there. I've had the pleasure to actually meet some of them and consider some of them my friends. They are all passionate about their craft and are great people.
Eastern Sierra frozen mud cracks
Do you have any particular projects or ambitions for the future or themes that you would like to explore further?
As I mentioned before, I have wanted to try platinum palladium contact printing some of my negatives. It's been on my mind ever since I started shooting 8x10 and it's another reason why I started to shoot more black and white film. If it does well, maybe I'll start offering some of them for sale. If that doesn't work out, I’ll have to leave it to the professionals and buy a printer.
In terms of themes that I would like to explore… In the short term, I think snowy scenes are pretty magical, especially in black and white. Being from southern California, those kinds of scenes can be pretty rare. Hopefully, I'll get to shoot some this year. In the long term, when my daughter is off to college, I would like to take longer trips to visit and explore my bucket list of places to go: Utah, New Mexico, Northern CA, Oregon, Washington, Yellowstone, Glacier, etc.
If you had to take a break from all things photographic for a week, what would you end up doing? What other hobbies or interests do you have?
I would like to say that I would spend it getting in shape outdoors. I am very fortunate that I live near the beach, and during the summers, when my photography slows down and my daughter is out of school, I tend to run on the beach in the mornings before work and try and take walks in the evenings. (I've been putting on some weight lately, so I really need to do this.) I'm happiest outdoors. Since it is the start of winter, I would love to dust off the snowboard and go snowboarding with my brother and friends as if I were in my 20s again. Who knows if I'll get to do that, though?
Sunset on the Pacific
And finally, is there someone whose photography you enjoy – perhaps someone that we may not have come across - and whose work you think we should feature in a future issue? They can be amateur or professional.
Ian Ruhter does some incredible work on wet plate collodion. He is a highly experimental photographer, which I love and admire. He once had a project where he drove around in a delivery truck that he turned into a camera obscura. In essence, he turned the truck into a giant camera. He made some incredible images with that truck. His Color Field project is also pretty amazing. I would love to learn more about what he is currently up to.
Thanks, Jay. You may have tempted a few more to consider dipping their toes into the deeper waters of film. Do let us know if you fulfil that ambition to print…
Jay’s photography can be found on his website, and if you’d like to see images and what goes into them, you’ll find him on Instagram.
You can find out more about The Darkslides, the collective of large format film landscape photographers that Jay mentioned, here. https://www.thedarkslides.com/.
For almost three years, I kept revisiting the Portofino promontory in Liguria every time fog and mist were to be seen shrouding the headland not far from where I live. Such peculiar transpiration phenomenon – which is rather frequent in the area and essential to the local microclimate – completely transformed before my eyes an otherwise familiar forest, stripping it of its geographical connotations in order to accommodate an ethereal and non-existent place which was being distilled upon Earth.
I almost felt as if I had been given the opportunity to witness a prodigious spell whilst it was being cast, as the air – now instilled with suspended icy and watery drops for my lungs – would turn the surrounding landscape into a translucent appearance, constantly emerging and disappearing, as I penetrated and breathed the fabric of a lucid dream.
We come from all walks of life. Photography has distanced itself from the trappings of class and has welcomed all comers. Regardless if we use a Phase One or just a cell phone, our true image sensor is our imagination. We have this in common; we can see things beyond just the literal and discern their deeper meanings. And, if we’re lucky, perhaps translate that greater importance that we sense into a physical form we can share with others.
We aren’t photographers. We’re thinkers. Philosophers. Protectors of nature.
We have a passion to see and share our sight with others in the hopes, if nothing else, to have just one person understand. But, even if we don’t, we still achieve it for ourselves.
We have a communal desire to get out into nature, tread lightly, and think hard. To sit and ponder, or sometimes to have no thoughts at all, surrounded by beauty and solitude. Could this be the pinnacle of human existence? We think so.
I was attracted to the yellow “cascade” of a distant larch, falling into the red-orange leaves of what I think is a young beech; Great Wood Borrowdale
A colourful beauty!
I was just 13 years old when my father first took me on a camping holiday to the Alps, and as we hiked along mountain paths, he pointed out the various trees growing on the slopes. Of course, Christmas Trees were especially exciting for a young boy to see in nature, but I also remember the Arolla (Swiss) pine with its long and sometimes curved needles and the elegant Larch. This tree - Larix decidua or European larch - is the only native European deciduous conifer, dropping its needles (actually leaves) in the autumn. There are two other European species, namely the Carpathian larch and the Poland larch.
Other larch species can be found around Europe, such as the Russian/Siberian larch and the Japanese larch, though these are not considered native. For this article, I gathered information from a variety of websites, including the Woodland Trust, Wikipedia, Forestry England and British and overseas suppliers of tree seedlings. For those who want to know more, there is an excellent and quite detailed paper here: https://forest.jrc.ec.europa.eu/media/atlas/Larix_decidua.pdf
I was just 13 years old when my father first took me on a camping holiday to the Alps, and as we hiked along mountain paths, he pointed out the various trees growing on the slopes.
Young shoot showing early autumn colour: Great Wood Borrowdale
Larch can reach typically around 20 metres but also grow to as much as 45m in height and 3-4 metres in width; it thrives in cooler parts of the northern hemisphere, e.g. forests at high latitudes and high in the mountains further south. Larches are long-lived, 250 years is usual but there have been some that lived for 1000 years and even 2000 years.
Here in Europe, larches can most often be found in the Alps, Carpathians and some forests in central-eastern Europe. Larches can withstand huge swings in temperature and survive very hard frosts; they prefer wet but well-drained soil conditions. They are susceptible to canker in wet, boggy soils. There are few places in the northern Baltic states where larches grow, possibly because of poor habitat conditions. Incidentally, here in the UK, it was introduced by the English botanist and gardener John Tradescant in the seventeenth century.
Young female flower-cone; Virginia Water Surrey
Older cone and younger female cones in the background; Virginia Water Surrey
According to a BBC article from last year (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-62178124) all larches in south-west Scotland will be felled over the next 10 years or so, as this is the best way to combat the disease phytophthora ramorum. That’s a staggering 10 million trees!
Larches are probably best known for their beautiful golden yellow autumn colour, though later in the season, the yellow turns to orange and brown before the needles finally drop. In mountainous regions the colour varies with elevation and to what extent the trees are sheltered. Higher up the trees might be yellow whereas lower down (or in a warmer spot) the needles can still be green. In the spring the bright green shoots bear “flowers” with creamy-yellow males pointing downwards and red/pink/purple females that grow upwards.
Larches are probably best known for their beautiful golden yellow autumn colour, though later in the season, the yellow turns to orange and brown before the needles finally drop. In mountainous regions the colour varies with elevation and to what extent the trees are sheltered.
These turn into small greenish cones which ripen to a reddish brownish. Older cones can stay on the tree for several years.
An upright larch at Lago de Braes still shows summer green needles. Some of its friends on the other bank are already yellow
Larch is generally considered to be fast growing and in forestry nurseries can be used as a wind-break to protect slower growing trees such as oak and beech. The wood of the larch is strong and is used in furniture making, boat-building, fencing, and various outdoor wooden articles, roof shingles (which can often be seen on old Alpine chalets), and other construction uses where durability is required, as well as for paper pulp. Opinions about the strength of larch vary, but apparently, those that grow in tough climatic conditions (e.g. Siberia, Canada) are indeed more than strong enough for heavy construction use. Larches can grow very straight with few lower branches, thus giving long planks almost free of knots.
Elegant larch in soft directional sunlight; Tires Village, Dolomites (infra-red)
The resin from larch has a variety of uses in industrial chemistry (including to make solvents), in perfumery and in medicine.
A few of the images shown here are from the Great Wood in Borrowdale and Virginia Water in Surrey, but the majority are from the Italian Dolomites, which I visited in the autumn of 2019.
Larch trees support a variety of wildlife, including some moths and their caterpillars, birds such as capercaillie and black grouse and, according to my research around the internet, species such as siskin and lesser redpoll, which I freely admit I have never heard of!
A few of the images shown here are from the Great Wood in Borrowdale and Virginia Water in Surrey, but the majority are from the Italian Dolomites, which I visited in the autumn of 2019. Perhaps counter-intuitively, I have made a number of images of autumnal larch in mono infra-red. Although autumn colour is the main attraction, I find that the upright elegance of larches, often mixed with firs and spruces, makes for an attractive pattern of tones.
I was attracted to the yellow “cascade” of a distant larch, falling into the red-orange leaves of what I think is a young beech; Great Wood Borrowdale
Young shoot showing early autumn colour; Great Wood Borrowdale
Older cone and younger female cones in the background; Virginia Water Surrey
Young female flower-cone; Virginia Water Surrey
An upright larch at Lago de Braes still showing summer green needles. Some of its friends on the other bank are already yellow
Elegant larch in soft directional sunlight; Tires Village, Dolomites (infra-red)
Elegant larch in soft directional sunlight just turning yellow; Tires Village, Dolomites
Autumnal larch, detail; Dolomites
Sunlit larch against the shaded dolomite of the Sella group, a huge bastion of rock; its colour comes from the blue sky above.
Sunlit larch against the shaded dolomite of the Sella group, a huge bastion of rock; its colour comes from the blue sky above.
Misty larch, en route to Lago Lantro
Larches as far as the eye can see!
Larch impressions – 1
Larch impressions – 2
Lago Antorno with larches and other conifers (infra-red)
Lago Antorno & the Tre Cime di Lavaredo again with larches and other conifers (infra-red)
I first saw this image at the Meeting of Minds Landscape Photography conference in 2019. It was just one of many outstanding and compelling photographs that we witnessed during Sandra’s awe inspiring presentation.This particular image immediately etched itself on my conscienceless and has stayed with me ever since. Rarely do I see an image that reawakens my youthful wanderlust and makes me yearn to leap on a plane and fly off to some unspoilt wilderness north of the arctic circle.
Advendalen is a 30km long valley on the island of Spitsbergen and features in Sandra’s book LYS. This impressive collection of words and photography is the result of a four year project she embarked on with fellow photographer Werner Bollmann. The landscapes, plants and wildlife of northern Europe are poetically assembled in a manner the captures the moods, moments and drama of life above the arctic circle with harmony and deep feeling. It is a book the sets out to show the essence of the landscapes rather than endeavouring to depict classic views of familiar places.
The rugged rocky coast of Varanger was photographed with a long shutter time (140 seconds) in the blue hour
Introduction
Like most photographers, I am generally particularly concerned with photos taken not long ago. Photos from ongoing projects and recent photo trips are extensively reviewed, assessed, selected and edited. A very small proportion of all those photos are then eventually used and published, and that small selection then will represent these trips and projects from that moment on. After that, all the other images are rarely looked back at.
Nevertheless, it can be very interesting and inspiring to occasionally look back in more detail at a photo trip made some time ago. Not only will you, with today's perspective and knowledge, perhaps discover other gems among the photos or make different choices in image editing due to more advanced techniques. It is also fun to relive the trip in all its facets again, especially if it is a trip you keep fond memories of. For the vast majority of the world's population, photos are first and foremost memories. Why shouldn't that function have any significance for photographers?
Recently, through my photos, I went back to a photo trip that was perhaps the perfect trip in many ways, a winter trip to the remote Varanger fjord in northeastern Norway. I'm going to explain why this was such a special trip for me, will you travel with me?
Vanda’s images are full of life, love, joy and place - and increasingly the kind of place you might get to on your way to or from work, or in your lunch hour. She seems to be able to squeeze every (soft and misty) moment out of the day. The beauty extends to Vanda’s website, too - the way that it is laid out, the use of words and poetry, and the overall sentiment. She freely admits that for her, photography is about life rather than life being about photography.
When I first interviewed Vanda for On Landscape, her photography was driven by a love of travel, especially to the coast. Over time - without losing any of that desire to explore the country she loves - her work has become much more personal and she now admits that she needs to develop a connection to place to photograph it.
In the intervening period, Vanda has become a popular speaker and presenter, and a regular judge for photographic competitions.
I’m trying to get my head around how time has flown since our Featured Photographer interview with you in 2014. Do any particular experiences or highlights come to mind during this time? I know that you were particularly pleased to receive a Gold medal for your Thursley Common ‘Winter Sun’ portfolio in the RHS Botanical Art and Photography Portfolio Competition.
Time has certainly flown by fast. It seems like yesterday, yet so much has happened since.
For me, landscape photography is a solitary pursuit. I usually venture out on my own to be able to fully immerse myself in my surroundings and create a connection with the scene. However, there are times when sharing your experiences and your work with others feels right. Social media is usually the obvious answer, but there is nothing better than meeting in person. Joining several photography groups, such as Landscape Collective UK, Arena Photographers and most recently, the more informal Dorset Landscape Group has been a welcome change. I get the best out of both worlds. I get to spend time with highly talented, like-minded photographers who cover a wide range of styles and perspectives. The encouragement and support I receive make me feel free to share my work, including my most personal and unfinished projects, knowing that the feedback and advice will always be truthful and non-judgmental.
Speaking about sharing, I also started to get invitations to camera clubs, photographic societies and events. It has been a wonderful experience to be able to give something back and to encourage others to find their own view of the world. One of the most memorable events was my first ever presentation day. I still remember the butterflies in my stomach when standing in front of a large audience at an educational institute in Belgium. There have been many other days and evenings since. Some abroad, such as an unforgettable Fotofestival in Denmark, where I met some incredible photographers. Many others here in the UK are all very enjoyable, sharing my work and thoughts with many talented people and making new friends along the way.
There have been several joint exhibitions, the OXO Gallery in London, Denbies Wine Estate in Surrey, and a couple of galleries in France, amongst others. The Thursley Common portfolio, exhibited together with several other medalists in the Saatchi Gallery in London, was a total surprise and the cherry on top of the cake.
For every artist the journey into creating the things they wish to be making starts with gaining enough technical knowledge so the tools that are used do not get in the way of creating. For photographers, this means that when you first get your hands on a camera, you need to learn how to operate it, what aperture, shutter speed, and iso mean and how to use them to your advantage. How a level horizon line is most often more pleasing than one that is not, where to focus, how to use the different focus methods available in the camera, and the list goes on. If your technical knowledge is sufficient to not get in the way of making the photographs you feel called to make, it is time to shift the focus to composition and not spend too much time learning other technical things a camera can do that you will probably never use.
A painter knows how to use a paintbrush, what kind of surface he likes to use and which paints he prefers. Rarely does he know the entire chemical composition of the paints he is using.
A painter knows how to use a paintbrush, what kind of surface he likes to use and which paints he prefers. Rarely does he know the entire chemical composition of the paints he is using.
He knows about the way the paints behave on certain substrates, but he spends his time learning how to paint, what pressure to use with his brush, the way a bend of the wrist can make the paintbrush flow more easily over the canvas, how to mix the paints, juxtapose colour and distribute elements over the frame, rather than getting in lost in technical trivia.
I have a secret I need to confess. One of the selfish reasons I co-founded the Natural Landscape Photography Awards was to find more ways to expose myself to photography that has gone under the radar due to the democratisation of sub-par photography thanks to social media algorithms. Much to my glee, the Awards have accomplished that goal in spades.
I’ve been so lucky to discover some incredible photographers who otherwise would have never come across my radar, and of course, in turn, I want to expose the rest of the world to their work. One such photographer is Sho Hoshino, a Japanese photographer specialising in forest scenes in the Nagano Prefecture, just west of Tokyo.
I’ve been so lucky to discover some incredible photographers who otherwise would have never come across my radar, and of course, in turn, I want to expose the rest of the world to their work. One such photographer is Sho Hoshino, a Japanese photographer specialising in forest scenes in the Nagano Prefecture, just west of Tokyo. By studying Sho’s work, I think there are a few takeaways worth noting that other photographers can learn from:
Leaning heavily into an emotional connection with place will yield tremendous photographic results;
Creating depth in our 2-dimensional photographs using colour, texture, and light helps to transform them into 3-dimensional pieces of art;
Revisiting similar locations throughout the four seasons helps solidify our connections with them and can help yield great results.
When I first reached out to Sho for this article, he shared with me how his love for forest photography was spawned. One day while shooting at the foot of Mt. Fuji, he encountered an unexpected thick fog. At first, he was depressed because his main objective was to photograph Mt. Fuji, but then the fog and forest brought back the sensations of his childhood. His interest in trees was reawakened, and he quickly shifted his photographic focus to the forest, tapping into a long-lost emotional connection with the place. By focusing our photography on places we have an emotional connection with, we improve our chances of making great photographs. Since we have a deeper familiarity with the subtle nuances that exist there, we are able to notice things other photographers cannot, which allows us to infuse ourselves into the outcome of our work.
Another aspect of Sho’s work that I find appealing is how he is consistently able to create a sense of depth in his images of the forest. Anyone who has ever photographed in the forest knows that it is not very easy to make sense of the chaos found there, and it can often seem impossible to convey the charm and intricacies of the forest through a single image. Sho has been able to create a sense of depth by using three tools - colour, texture, and light. By pairing complementary colours such as red and green, Sho masterfully gives the eye a way to move through the frame. Similarly, the use of texture from mosses, snow, ice, frost, or flowers provides the viewer with tidbits of visual interest throughout the frame, accentuating the feeling of depth. Lastly, by using light or lack of light in playful ways, Sho creates depth by forcing the viewer’s gaze through the image in a thoughtful pattern or direction. These are all excellent tools in the landscape photographer’s toolbox that we should all pay more attention to.
Sho has been able to create a sense of depth by using three tools - colour, texture, and light. By pairing complementary colours such as red and green, Sho masterfully gives the eye a way to move through the frame.
Finally, Sho has found a way to visit locations over and over again throughout all four seasons. By revisiting the same areas in a variety of conditions, photographers enable themselves to increase their familiarity and strengthen intimate bonds with a place, which in turn improves how we see photographs there. In fact, Sho shared with me that this year he physically moved his home to the Nagano Prefecture in order to be closer to the places he loves to photograph. This is something that I think serious photographers should consider in their own pursuit of the craft. While it may seem a lofty sacrifice to move you and your family closer to the places you love (and it indeed usually is), it will most certainly enable you to create better work in a more consistent fashion. All too often, I hear nature photographers complain about how far away they live from their favourite places while at the same time talking about their frustration with not being able to elevate their photography or make it financially as a photographer. As harsh as it may sound, I think if you fully intend to be dead serious about your pursuit of this craft as a professional, sacrifices are needed.
To truly give yourself the best chances of success in landscape photography, it is ideal to live close to the places you are most connected to in your work. Often times, these places have fewer job opportunities and are more costly to live in, so it truly is a sacrifice to make it a reality; however, the end result is that you are more able to consistently photograph the subjects you love on a more frequent basis - all hopefully yielding better photographic results.
To truly give yourself the best chances of success in landscape photography, it is ideal to live close to the places you are most connected to in your work.
In 2015, I moved my family to an expensive mountain town in Colorado that had very few job prospects, with the knowledge that I was putting myself closer to the places I love to photograph. It was a risky move that still costs me more money than I’d like to admit; however, I wouldn’t change my decision for the world because I now have my favourite places within a short drive any time I want to make photographs. Seeing Sho make a similar choice in his own photographic pursuits solidifies my opinion that this sort of sacrifice can pay off in helping us make more personally meaningful work.
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There has been a proliferation of aerial images in contemporary Australian landscape photography. These aerial images are quite often very abstract in nature, which begs the question – what is the visual language of aerial photography?
Australia is an age-old worn-down land. It is the flattest and driest inhabited continent in the world. It is not easy to comprehend from ground level. But from the air, the Australian land reveals its powerful identity, full of contrast: harsh and varied. A land weathered and carved by the forces of nature and the passing of millennia.
Australia is an age-old worn-down land. It is the flattest and driest inhabited continent in the world. It is not easy to comprehend from ground level. But from the air, the Australian land reveals its powerful identity, full of contrast: harsh and varied. A land weathered and carved by the forces of nature and the passing of millennia.
To most people, flying is a way of getting from A to B, but for me, it is an opportunity to observe the landscape from a different perspective. It is quite surprising how revealing the landscape can be, even from a commercial jet. The aerial point of view has compounded my appreciation of Australia’s landscape’s diversity. Each journey becomes a flight of discovery as the countryside below tells something about its natural history and evolution. The challenge for me is how to interpret the complexity and intricacies of the landscape before me..
When starting out in photography, I was puzzled why people took black and white landscape images. Perhaps I could see a place for it in minimalist, long exposure seascapes where the palette is naturally monochromatic. But otherwise, it felt like an affectation, as if the photographer was trying a little too hard to give their images the sheen of “fine art”. Why would you take colour away from the landscape, I thought, when that’s not how the world looks?
Discovering this image from Nathan Wirth helped me realise that black and white landscape photography is not about showing how a landscape looks. It’s about showing how it feels.
Ian Hill writes on his website that he is compelled by the imagery of words as much as pictures. Photography is a process of enquiry; he observes, listens, and tries to understand the land. Although he lives in a well-known area, his black and white images abstract place and question our connection and response to it.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, what your early interests were, and what you went on to do?
I grew up in the flatlands of South Lincolnshire – a little ironic, given that I have lived amongst mountains for most of my adult life. I left there when I was 17 to study Geology and Environmental Science and went on to work in environmental education. Most recently I have had a career in developing low-carbon projects; I currently work at a University in Scotland, helping academics to do interesting things with environmental research. I live, however, in Cumbria, on the edge of the Lake District.
How did you become interested in photography, and what were your early images of or about?
Oddly, I don’t remember why I became so interested in photography. I think photography adopted me rather than the other way around.
In my late teens, I devoured culture; I was an avid reader, and I started to visit the art gallery in nearby Lincoln. I think I was desperate to understand a world that was more varied and interesting than the rural area in which I lived.
In my late teens, I devoured culture; I was an avid reader, and I started to visit the art gallery in nearby Lincoln. I think I was desperate to understand a world that was more varied and interesting than the rural area in which I lived.
At around this time, I picked up an old camera which was lying around my parent’s home, and started to take and develop B&W photographs; the local landscape, the odd flatness of the land; the way snow lay in furrowed fields in winter. I have no idea how I learnt these skills; I guess I borrowed a book from the local library and simply experimented. I developed films in the airing cupboard at home. I had access to one of those old ‘Gnome’ enlargers at my school – you know the sort, they look like a 1960s hairdryer and emit the fading glow of a dying lightbulb. I loved it. I was hooked, irrevocably.
Very early, I realised that black & white was my medium – I had been brought up on monochrome photos in the family cupboard, and this was an era (the end of the ‘70s or beginning of the ‘80s) when newspaper photographs were still in B&W. The ability to capture texture and tone somehow captivated me, and I began to notice the work of photographers which was in B&W.
I never liked photography. Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand.~Robert Mapplethorpe
For some time, I have been questioning my love of photography. It seems an almost heretical thought to consider, given it’s what I do. Whether I call myself a photographer or a photographic artist, it’s what my life centres around. It has given my life purpose. And yet, I ask myself, do I love photography, or instead do I love what photography offers me? Is the act of photography nothing more than a means to an end rather than an end in itself?
Out of curiosity, I Googled the term “photography for photography’s sake,” a take on the classic “art for art’s sake” argument, a belief that art should exist independent of any utility. As expected, “photography for photography’s sake” means one makes photos because it is intrinsically rewarding and without regard for fame, popularity, or social media “likes.” Fair enough, those are all very poor and inadequate reasons for photography. Interestingly (and perhaps tellingly), no definition listed creativity or self-expression as possible outcomes of photography. Are those not much worthier reasons?
Whether I call myself a photographer or a photographic artist, it’s what my life centres around. It has given my life purpose. And yet, I ask myself, do I love photography, or instead do I love what photography offers me?
For years my wife and I have been planning a trip to Ireland. When the time comes, I plan on leaving the camera home. Aside from the burden of having to lug my equipment around, the photos I would make would be mostly superficial impressions of the Irish landscape. They would most likely be documentary in nature, objective representations of what I saw. How could they be anything but? I know nothing of Ireland other than what I’ve seen in photos.
It is clear that there is no classification of the Universe not being arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what thing the universe is.~Jorge Luis Borges,
from The Analytical Language of John Wilkins
Inspiration comes in many forms. In this case, it was reading The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer that provoked an idea. Dyer, right at the beginning of the book cites the Jorge Luis Borges short story called The Analytical Language of John Wilkins1. In that story, Borges describes different attempts to create a language that would define a classification of things by the nature of how the language is itself structured. John Wilkins (~1614 to 1672) was a natural philosopher, a founding member of the Royal Society of London, and eventually the Bishop of Chester2. He made an attempt to create a universal language and related system of measurements (similar to the metric system in being based on powers of 10). That is not, however, the focus of attention here. The extract relates to Borges’ description in the story of the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. This, he suggests, is a certain Chinese encyclopaedia in which it is written that the world of the animals can be classified as follows:
those that belong to the Emperor
embalmed ones
those that are trained
suckling pigs
mermaids
fabulous ones
stray dogs
those included in the present classification
those that tremble as if they were mad
innumerable ones
those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush
others
those that have just broken a flower vase
hose that, from a long way off, look like flies.
A perfect and all-encompassing classification (perhaps I will have to go back to Borges – I have never really been a fan of magic realism but his classification is wonderful in the literal sense of the word). The inspiration, of course, was then to think about how we might classify landscape photography in a similarly wonderful way. Indeed, it turns out that we can directly borrow the categories of the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, but some need a little modification. Here, then, is a first draft (with some commentary and a little judicious twists of meaning). As in the original, the classes overlap to some extent.
The inspiration, of course, was then to think about how we might classify landscape photography in a similarly wonderful way. Indeed, it turns out that we can directly borrow the categories of the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, but some need a little modification.
a) those taken by Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams (1902-1984) can surely be regarded as the emperor of influencers in landscape photography – at least for a certain period of the 20th Century. Emphasis on technique and “natural” landscapes (sparking a reaction in what came to be called the New Topographics movement) but providing a framework for educating photographers (particularly in his books on The Camera, The Negative and The Print, which are still in press in the 1995 editions revised by Robert Baker). Less convincing in colour. His influence persists today – at least for those working in (or imitating) monochrome large format.
b) those embalmed in museums
One definition of embalmed is the sense of being fixed for the foreseeable future. For photography that can be interpreted as prints that are being curated and stored under ideal conditions for their preservation (images stored on vulnerable digital media really do not come under this category). Such embalmed images include notably again Ansel Adams and other celebrated photographers in the collections of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. Other important permanent collections of historical landscape photography can be found at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Ansel Adams actually produced what he called Museum Sets of some of his most popular prints, with the intention that they should be sold (at a discount) only to Museums or to buyers with a history of donating to Museums or Educational Institutions. These constraints were embodied in a contract that also applied to subsequent owners. Images from the photographers commissioned by the US Farm Security Administration in the 1930s (including Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein) are held in the Library of Congress (see (g) stray dogs below).
c) those that have trains
One of many sub-genres of landscape photography (see (l) below). Even if the train is the main object, rather than the landscape itself, if the train is not too prominent then the landscape might be of greater interest (to some of us) – though lighting and framing will be constrained by when and where a photogenic train (often with a steam locomotive) actually passes a location. Experience on the Settle to Carlisle line suggests that this sometimes involves the dangers caused by groups of fast moving cars on narrow roads as train photography enthusiasts try to get between prime locations faster than the train.
Landscape with train: A fleeting appearance of the sun coincided luckily on 21 May 2022 with the passage of the southbound Cumbrian Mountain Express hauled by 46115 Scots Guardsman on the approach to Ais Gill summit on the Settle-Carlisle line in Mallerstang. The distinctive mass of Wild Boar Fell dominates the scene; the train has just climbed up the shoulder of the fell along the Eden valley, which separates Wild Boar Fell from Mallerstang Edge. Photo by John Cooper-Smith (with permission).
Similarly applies to some other sub-genres, such as wildlife photography, though the subject is often much too prominent, and the landscape is ruined by being out of focus ….
d) suckling pigs (recipes)
There are, of course, many examples of mermaids with little or no clothing photographed in the landscape. Most examples tend not to show the fishy tail (although, rather peculiarly, photos of mermaids with fishy tails appear to have become a sub-genre of portrait photography for which there are also instructional videos on YouTube)
Suckling pigs are raised to be slaughtered and eaten young, for which there are a variety of recipes. The analogy here might be the many various recipes that are available on YouTube videos for improving your landscape photography. Just searching a couple of photoblog sites yields titles such as: How to Master Mood in Landscape Photography in Under 5 Minutes; The Only Rule You Need for Landscape Photography; The Six Pillars for a Good Landscape Photo; How To Get Stunning Light Each Daytime for Landscape Photography; How to get Great Landscape Photos in Dull Conditions; How to use a Wide Angle Lens for Landscape Photography; How to Shoot Landscape Panoramas with a Telephoto Lens; What is the Best Position for the Horizon in a Landscape Photo; or Six Practical Drone Tips to Get Better Landscape Photos. To be sampled critically (links not provided here … but you can always search on the title of course!).
e) mermaids
There are, of course, many examples of mermaids with little or no clothing photographed in the landscape. Most examples tend not to show the fishy tail (although, rather peculiarly, photos of mermaids with fishy tails appears to have become a sub-genre of portrait photography for which there are also instructional videos on YouTube). More generally, this class comprises of landscapes featuring nude bodies, a topic that has attracted many celebrated photographers including Edward and Brett Weston (1886-1958 and 1911-1993), Bill Brandt (1904-1983), and Jean-Loup Sieff (1933-2000). As with train and wildlife photography, this will often detract from the landscape, but in some cases, the light and shade on the forms of the nude become the landscape, as in the ultra-wide angle images of Bill Brandt.
The Mermaid as landscape: Bill Brandt, Baie des Anges, 1959
This has now been taken to extremes, of course, by the landscapes of Spencer Tunick (b.1967), featuring hundreds or even thousands of naked people, such as his images on the Aletsch Glacier taken in conjunction with a Greenpeace campaign about glacier loss3.
This is an important category. There are many fabulous landscape images in the sense of being excellent, but perhaps more interesting are those in the older definition of fabulous as imaginary. The use of imagination, of course, implies photographic Art, which might be interpreted in two senses: (i) there is the sense in which an image is post-processed to be unrecognizable from the scene that was before the camera (sky replacements, object removal, overuse of the saturation slider, or adding snow leopards into Himalayan landscapes4, etc); (ii) there is the sense in which the photographer wants to convey his image of the unseen characteristics of the object photographed (essence, metaphor, Borges’ magic realism, etc). We could say that this category, therefore, represents photography as performance (see also the comment on synthography under h).
g) stray dogs
Stray dogs perhaps appear more commonly in the genre of travel photography but, as with trains, can often have remarkable landscapes in the background (there are apparently over 9500 stray dog images on Getty Images and over 35000 on istockphoto.com). Some celebrated stray dog photographs are listed here5, including that of the Parc des Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, by Joseph Koudelka (b.1938) in 1987.
Joseph Koudelka, Parc des Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, 1987
h) those that are included in the present classification
This class is evidently self-reflexive. Considering the classes as sets, then in set theory, it is completed by class (l) below to include all landscape photographs ever taken and hence implying some redundancy (see under (j) below).
Those that are not included in the present classification should perhaps include the special category of “synthography” in which digital landscape images are created by computer programs that have gone feral given some descriptive text input6.
i) those that tremble as if they were mad
This class clearly refers to photographers who use intentional camera movements (ICM)7. Unintentional tremblings have in the past few years been greatly reduced by the implementation of in-camera and on-lens image stabilisation.
j) innumerable ones
This class has evidently grown dramatically in the age of digital and smart phones, now that everyone and his monkey can be considered to be a photographer. This has led to the production of innumerable redundant images in the sense of the philosopher Vilém Flusser8 (1920-1991), notably of course of sunrises and sunsets but with an unfortunate tendency for the landscape to be obscured by the photographer standing in front of it.
Selfie by Naruto the Monkey, obscuring the landscape but with nice bokeh 9
k) those spotted with a very fine camel hair brush
Many of you will not remember but this is a hark back to the pre-digital age when many hours were spent after sessions in the darkroom with brush and ink to obscure the effects of tiny dust spots and blank spots in the negative on the final print. This was an important (and time consuming) skill in producing exhibition quality monochrome prints.
Many of you will not remember but this is a hark back to the pre-digital age when many hours were spent after sessions in the darkroom with brush and ink to obscure the effects of tiny dust spots and blank spots in the negative on the final print.
a) others
This class clearly exists just in case we missed anything important. We can include here a number of sub-categories including:
those with swirly bokeh
those with a milky way in a blue sky and a foreground taken earlier
those with the sounds of cow bells
those with an aurora
those with Buachaille Etive Mòr
those on repeat
those that are panoramics
those with slot canyons
those with centred horizons
those with more than a rock
those with shipping forecasts
those on repeat
those with red-filtered black skies
those of rivers and sand bars taken from the air
those taken in subglacial caves
those with circular star trails
those with Aspen trees in autumn
those with red lava at dusk
those with hoar frost
those with a clump of wild flowers in the foreground
those with the rule of thirds
those that only exist on Instagram, immediately forgotten
those with trees in mist
those with the colours of Landmannalaugar
those with blurry water
those with resonance
those with the golden ratio
those with black Deadvlei trees
those where all the ice has melted
those with the descending call of curlews in spring
those that sell
those on repeat
m) those that have just broken a link with the real
With this category we have to be somewhat circumspect since it has been generally agreed in the discussions in On Landscape that no photograph can be considered as real (except in the sense of being a physical artifact). While some representations might be considered more real than others to the viewer (possibly even those synthographics generated by ignorant computer programs), perhaps we should say no more (but see the category of fabulous ones above).
n) those that from a long way off look like a photographic workshop
or multiple workshops gathered together in a classic location with photographers in serried ranks, tripod to tripod, all disappointed that the light is not as good as in the photos they have seen of the same location (e.g. Mesa Arch, Horsetail Falls, Jøkelsàlen, etc). Something best viewed from afar and avoided. Has been a major mechanism of relatively unknown places evolving into classic landscape photography locations, before the workshops move on to something new (from Iceland to Lofoten, to Greenland, to the Lencóis Maranhenses in Brazil, to …)
The Earth viewed from space: Spot all the photographic workshop groups
That seems to have covered just about everything but if you think that some other categories should be added, then please make suggestions in the comments.
My favourite place to photograph is the Fontainebleau Forest. From my first visit, I felt a strong bond and a natural attraction to it. A personal affinity as tangible as the imposing boulders that dot the landscape. I’m not happy to leave it, and when away, I find ease in knowing that I’ll soon be back there, which is also where home is.
Two decades of travelling and relocations and the consequential crescendo of an ever more abstract concept of “home” that built in my mind made such attachment with any place highly unlikely.
I never thought I would describe a place in such a way, to the exclusion of all other locations, known or unknown. Two decades of travelling and relocations and the consequential crescendo of an ever more abstract concept of “home” that built in my mind made such attachment with any place highly unlikely.
But where is home if not in our minds? And what is a voice, if not the loudest expression of one’s self? So, how can I profess such surprising fondness for a real place, which coexists inside and outside my mind, to suddenly wanting to call it “home”? I do so for the voices in my head.
Being there
I had no knowledge of the existence of this natural area before moving next to it following my girlfriend’s career change. The first time I stepped on the sandy terrain of the Fontainebleau forest and gazed around the scenery, I heard a whisper in my ears telling me where to go. A longing feeling for this unknown geography materialised in me. As my visits to the forest increased, I heard my instinct speaking to me through this voice more often. At times, I would just hear, "Go that way", "Stay here", or "Look harder". Over time, my need to spend more time in the forest increased, and I began to trust and follow this voice more.
It might seem odd to be reviewing a book which, self-evidently, is full of documentary photography, not landscapes. But this is no ordinary photo documentary book; its creator, Paul Wakefield, is unquestionably one of the world’s greatest landscape photographers. And for that reason, if no other, it is a compelling work for On Landscape readers.
I admit a strong personal interest. Paul and I met for the first time at a National Trust photographer’s social gathering in London in the early 1990s. I already had all his books, co-authored with Jan Morris, and was more than a little overawed to be speaking with someone whose work so inspired me. Oblivious to my nerves, Paul was keen to talk about his personal documentary work in India. He intended, he told me, to make it into a book.
I admit a strong personal interest. Paul and I met for the first time at a National Trust photographer’s social gathering in London in the early 1990s. I already had all his books, co-authored with Jan Morris, and was more than a little overawed to be speaking with someone whose work so inspired me.
I recall then that he didn’t really see this work as especially distinct from his landscape photography. His landscape work, his commercial work, his documentary work was in a sense, all personal. But in India, he did forgo his beloved 5x4 inch Ebony and shoot, as he explained then, with a mixture of Leica and Fujifilm 6x9 (fixed lens) cameras. No one I knew shot digital at the time, and his use of colour negative film was probably the biggest revelation.
Paul and I have met several times since, and the India work has come up occasionally in conversation. But it did seem as if, like many photography passion projects, this was one that might never see the light of day.
So it was with some surprise that we sat down to coffee together a couple of months ago, and he showed me the first copy off the press of Signs of Devotion, a body of work that started in the 1980s and was essentially completed by 2001, over twenty years ago.
Anyone who has his book, The Landscape, will know the standards Paul has set for design, printing, paper quality, and binding. If anything, Signs of Devotion perhaps surpasses it. The paper is an unusually heavyweight, textured (coated) stock, well-matched to the style of the images. He has a knack for finding special writers to work with, such as Jan Morris in his early books and Robert Macfarlane in The Landscape. Sara Wheeler’s beautiful essay opens Signs of Devotion, and combined with Shrivatsa Goswami’s excellent introduction, these written contributions raise expectations as we move into the photographs.
Yet, even so, the photographs exceed them. The precision and purpose of Paul’s pictures give his scenes and subjects the same significance and depth as a Renaissance painting. This analogy might seem odd, given that late 20th century India is a world away from 16th century Florence, Venice, or Flanders. But the curious, hazy softness and warmth of the light, presumably a combination of heat, dust and humidity, along with the dense fabric of his compositions, make this comparison unavoidable.
The precision and purpose of Paul’s pictures give his scenes and subjects the same significance and depth as a Renaissance painting. This analogy might seem odd, given that late 20th century India is a world away from 16th century Florence, Venice, or Flanders.
Photography and painting do have plenty in common, but the practitioner in each art has to know the particular strengths and limitations of their medium. Self-evidently, photography has to prioritise the unfolding reality in front of the camera. In Paul’s case, his sense of timing, space, and the choreography of figures remind us that he is, first and foremost (perhaps I would say this) a landscape artist.
Because he sees and thinks with a landscape photographer’s sense of positioning, perspective and eye for detail, these images have a richness and complexity that rewards the attentive viewer more than any other documentary photographs I have seen. Almost every picture seems packed with incident and detail, all of it observed, noted, included – framed – because it represents something of the essence of life on the street (as it mostly is) in India. The viewer can revel in the process of interpreting the story in each one as if approaching the end of a particularly engaging jigsaw puzzle.
It is often said that painting is an additive art (defined by what is put in) while photography is subtractive (defined by what is left out). Yet Signs of Devotion is filled with many images that seem defined by what is left in. However trivial or random small objects, shapes and surfaces might seem, in these compositions, they contribute to the whole. They are evidence that everything matters, that humanity and other animals exist in – and depend on – the incidental texture of everyday reality.
The work proves the importance of immersed observation. It is as if the photographer has become part of the place and the moment, lost in the daily tasks, duties, and often chaotic social interactions and events that make up the mystery of the Indian street. Some of the images defy our sense of what composition is, and yet they work due to their tension and balance (pp. 23, 28, 66). It is important to remember that although the work was completed some years ago, it represents hundreds or even thousands of hours on location with the camera.
For sure, he must have made thousands of photographs in India, and Paul’s final selection no doubt leaves out many more wonderful images. The final sequencing is understated and based on visual compatibility, which is sometimes geographically specific. For the most part, the viewer may draw their own story from the page pairing and the overall flow. I have been happy to browse through again and again, spotting previously unnoticed details or marvelling at the human stories that play out on the streets and riverbanks of India. Each photograph is worth spending time with. Some, pages 11, 19, 21, 45, 46, 52, 67, 78, 89, verge on the miraculous.
For sure, he must have made thousands of photographs in India, and Paul’s final selection no doubt leaves out many more wonderful images. The final sequencing is understated and based on visual compatibility, which is sometimes geographically specific.
Most photographers have more than a passing interest in method and technique, but when that method is almost completely invisible because the images are so absorbing, then that is the greatest technique of all. It’s tempting to comment on Paul’s understanding of the colour characteristics of negative film and the visual consistency of limiting his approach to a couple of lenses at most, but really, none of that seems to matter.
What does matter is the sense of time, or perhaps, an absence of it. Sara Wheeler’s essay is entitled, a Hand to Catch Time, an idea echoed in the orange hand print that fills the page before the photographs begin. There are dates on all of the photographs in the excellent catalogue pages at the back of the book, but there is little to indicate that the date was 1992…or 1892…or possibly 2092? This must be an illusion… a local would notice changes that have happened, clothing and transportation, for example. But surely many of the scenes, and especially the rituals observed, were the same five hundred years before and, with luck, will be in another five hundred years. As with all photography, Paul’s Leica may indeed have caught a specific moment in time, but somehow, the images defy time’s gravity.
The work is so compelling that we are left wanting to know more. I was lucky to have Paul talk me through the background to a few, but he has left the captions in the catalogue very simple, just place and year date only. Such minimalism leaves much to the imagination. But it would also be good to know more of the circumstances behind each image. Or perhaps some of them, anyway.
I have only been to India once, in 2010, and then to Ladakh, that Himalayan stronghold in the far north of this gigantic country. It probably isn’t typical of India and so I came to this book with little personal history, insight, or preconception of what to expect. Reading the excellent introductory essays and, above all, having feasted on the images has helped me feel I have made an inner journey there.
I’d like to finish by quoting from Shrivatsa Goswami’s final passage in the book itself:
Paul Wakefield has properly walked upon this path of seeing. He has seen the vast field of Indian rites as they are. His eye behind the camera has received, rather than imposed itself on the seen. His absence allows the seen-scene to fill the frame. He has immersed himself in this cultural space. His devotion to untainted truth and beauty makes it possible for ordinary moments to speak for the extraordinary. His pictures depict life as it is; from courtyards to market lanes, animals to trees, temples to festivals. Paul has allowed his seen subjects to speak for themselves.
I wish I’d written that!
Paul’s book is available on his website. It is, naturally, highly recommended!
There is often an ancillary to being a committed coast hugger. Whilst living in fiery southern England, access to the stretch of coast I explored was usually through the New Forest. Often, there was light streaming through the chaos of the trees and bracken, and so, rather than heading straight through, I started to stop and consequently concentrated on the forest itself. Soon, there was a project. The New Forest is an extremely popular place for visitors throughout the year, especially so during daylight hours in summer. Through the project, I wanted to show how the forest looked outside of those times and perhaps provide a motivation for other photographers to engage with an environment in their own personal way.
It is fair to say that much has been said about getting to know your part of the landscape, which is invaluable in terms of accessing and recording the change or nature of light and the way the land evolves. Such was my first engagement with Forvie in Aberdeenshire. Initially, it was the beach, the sea and how, in the winter months, the sea and sky merge within the same colour palette. That sense of peace and of losing yourself in the landscape and the photography process.
To get to the Forvie coast, there is a need to trek/hike/yomp (I call it a trek, but my partner says it is a mild stroll) through the sand dunes. I was used to a few dunes when living on the south coast, but these were something else. The Sands of Forvie are part of the Forvie National Nature Reserve, which covers almost a thousand hectares of sand dunes and dune heath between the North Sea and River Ythan estuary.
The Sands of Forvie are part of the Forvie National Nature Reserve, which covers almost a thousand hectares of sand dunes and dune heath between the North Sea and River Ythan estuary.
The dunes are highly mobile - the fifth largest sand dune system in Britain - and can reach up to twenty metres in height.
During the past five years, there has been an extensive engagement with these dunes and I have made many photographs of the textures, the abstracts and of the dune system.
The first engagement was in late January and was mostly about recording the dune system in context by making wider images with the sea as background and some sunset sky. There was also the attraction of recent frost, causing the dunes to look as though covered by an icing sugar coating with a strong sun, allowing a variety of textures with shadow lines like mini fantasy worlds. It was wonderful - the curves of sand lines leading to the dune tops with a small cloudscape accompanied by images of an abstract nature of the sand patterns and the effect of the frost alongside the relationship with the grasses. Well, it was all very enjoyable being out next to the coast in the fresh Aberdeenshire weather, and something obviously had happened. I wanted to return and although there were no project ideas at that time, I felt that it had to be in frosty conditions and to immerse myself in a relatively small area of the dune system.
I returned a year later due to the frosty conditions and although they were a few dune portraits, they did not have the sea as background - they were isolated against cloudy skies. I began to take more and more abstract images as though as if from a panoramic view of an Arabian landscape. The strong sunlight really helped, as did the strong winds of the previous days that had swept away any footprints and provided excellent ripples. This sort of approach continued into the next year with more and more concentration on abstracts and forms.
In 2022, there was a different shift in my approach. During a second visit in March, I thought could I make a coherent project from just a day's visit with images being part of a wider body of work? From that single day, I made a small monochrome project called March Days (March as, well, that was the month and March as in the route March takes to get to the dunes…), and a subsequent book was printed.
By then, there was a driving force to return to see if work might be made within these types of constraints. January Days was a second body of monochrome work bringing together dune portraits, textures, forms and abstracts divided into crest, deep, flow, frost, grass and ripple.
By then, there was a driving force to return to see if work might be made within these types of constraints. January Days was a second body of monochrome work bringing together dune portraits, textures, forms and abstracts divided into crest, deep, flow, frost, grass and ripple. A further small book was published. This approach has continued to the present day. In the middle part of the year, much of the dune system is fenced off for protection of bird breeding sites, but my work is always concentrated away from those in a very small part of the dunes.
There is something special about losing yourself in the photographic process, trying to create a series of works within a tight time and geographical constraints. On reflection, it is the way that I work within my projects, although never intentionally.
A visit is best after a good wind-bound day and ideally frosty conditions, and there is no need for the so-called golden hours as I have and continue to make work in the bright, cloudless midday sunshine with the consequence of wonderful textures and shadows.
In 2018, my wife and I vacationed in northern England. Still fairly new to landscape photography, I brought my camera gear and a desire to shoot outside our home region of Atlantic Canada. I was also determined to visit the Joe Cornish Gallery in Northallerton, Joe Cornish being one of the few British photographers of whom I’d then heard. I was, of course, delighted to see prints of his work and also to find prints by American Charles Cramer, another early favourite of mine.
Browsing the gallery’s other offerings, I was suddenly arrested by a powerful winter scene: lodged in the snow, an explosive tangle of bare, stunted birch trees dominate the foreground; more birch retreat into the distance. At the horizon, a pink evening glow might be the Belt of Venus. Gosh, this could almost be a Canadian winter scene – except where I live, we don’t have that splendidly gnarly type of birch.
What first drew me to Lizzie Shepherd’s Arctic birches at sunset, Lake Tornetrask, were its lovely muted colours. Winter in northern regions is sufficiently devoid of strong colour that we’re tempted to revert to monochrome. (A splendid example, Lizzie Shepherd’s Snow Lines, forms the subject of Rachael Talibart’s “End Frame” essay in issue 226.) Colour is essential here, however, and the overall scene is rendered in cold, calm pastels: blue-white for the snow, just slightly bluer for the evening sky, and delicate pinks for the distant, sunkissed mountains. (Yes, that’s not Venus’ belt but snow-capped mountains, likely on the far side of Sweden’s Lake Torneträsk.)
Delicate colours, then: bright, frigid, and still. The birches, however, riot against this stillness, their twist-ed limbs writhe in strongly contrasting patches of blue-white and black; and the more distant mass of birch draw a fuzzy grey band below the pink and blue mountains.
I think it’s fair to say that only a handful of people consistently take great photographs of the mountains in the UK. For one, the act of getting up into the mountains isn’t trivial. For an additional hurdle, if you want all season coverage, getting up into the mountains in winter is a hard and potentially dangerous activity.
Once you’ve filtered for the people who can do this regularly, you need to filter them down even further on the ability to take great photographs. The biggest difference between roadside1 and mountain photography is that if you want to recompose a picture, instead of walking around your subject for a few minutes, you need to climb up and down cliffs and potentially try to find another mountain to ascend to get a different view. This means a great deal of planning in advance if you want to be in the right place.
[1] if you want an arbitrary definition, anything less than a km from the car
Finally, once we’ve filtered down to people who can do this, we then get to the point where we’re looking for people who are willing to commit to a multi-year project to amass a body of work on an area and to build this into an engaging book.
Finally, once we’ve filtered down to people who can do this, we then get to the point where we’re looking for people who are willing to commit to a multi-year project to amass a body of work on an area and to build this into an engaging book.
I reckon that means there’s maybe 10 photographers in the UK capable of committing to this and it’s not surprise that only one or two follow it up long enough actually to produce a book.
So, we should be grateful to Alex for the persistence, vision and skill to get to this point. And that’s before even considering the book!!
The Project
So before taking a look at the book, what is it about. The Great Wilderness sounds like it’s a secret hideaway in the depths of the Himalayas, a place that takes a backcountry flight to get close to and then multiple kayak portages to arrive at the base of a hidden glacier below imposing mountains. Well, it’s probably as close as you’ll get to this in Scotland and the alternative book name would have been “The Fisherfield Forest” which suggests an old growth Canadian boreal forest in the depths of the Yukon, which is equally misleading when, in fact, it’s a mostly treeless region of bog and remote mountains on the West coast of Scotland. For those a little familiar with the Highlands, it spans the area between Loch Maree and An Teallach/Loch Broom.
I asked Alex why he chose to follow up the Northwest book with this particular area
And there is so much on offer in the area. It’s one of the most geologically interesting places in Scotland, with some of the oldest rocks in the world. It also has some of the oldest pinewood forests in the area around Loch Maree, internationally recognised by UNSECO
“The natural progression from ‘Northwest’ seemed to simply be ‘West’. So during the first lockdown summer, I headed to Kintail for a few days. It's a wonderful mountain area, and I enjoyed some great weather too, but it was clear after that first hike that there was less photographic potential. The more continuous ridges in much of the highlands might be great if you want to bag multiple summits in a day, but it places restrictions on the views from the tops and restricts early and late light from getting into the valleys.
The following week I was running a workshop in Fisherfield and realised just how much potential there was that I hadn't really delivered upon in Northwest. That autumn I planned a trip hiking in the Dundonnel area that went brilliantly, and that sealed the deal.”
And there is so much on offer in the area. It’s one of the most geologically interesting places in Scotland, with some of the oldest rocks in the world. It also has some of the oldest pinewood forests in the area around Loch Maree, internationally recognised by UNSECO.
Alex has divided the book into four main sections covering An-Teallach, Fisherfield 6, Letterewe and finally Loch Maree. Each section has a map, an introduction and there are four essays spread throughout detailing some of Alex’s experiences creating the pictures for the book.
There are also some visually engaging maps of the area that are art works in themselves. Exploring them is like looking for treasure on a old pirate map and in the following pages, treasyre is exactly what we get. Here’s a sample of the map from the An-Teallach area.
I think you’ll agree that a wandering eye on this feels more organic than the equivalent Ordnance Survey map.
The Book
I won’t say a lot about the quality of the book beyond the fact that you won’t get much better. The printing is amazing, the cloth-wrapped hardcover with the embossed lettering and graphics is superb, the paper is thick with a subtle silk sheen, and the binding is tight without hindering the view of the double-page spread panoramas included. Check the photos if you want to see more.
I’ll admit my involvement to some small degree during the printing phase of the book process. Alex and I both print books at Johnson’s of Nantwich, a fabulous small print company that have been very helpful in allowing us to work on press and also to experiment some with the way that the files are prepared for the book, the proofs printed and to see how the final book folios come off press, allowing us to tweak the colours as things are printing.
If you’ve ever printed a book, I think you will probably have encountered the occasional problem, and a company is made or broken by its attitude to how these can be avoided, fixed or circumvented in a different manner. Our experiences have been no different (with multiple printers) and Johnson’s allowed Alex and I to try different methods to achieve the best printing results. Whilst not perfect (no litho print process is - although with the very knowledgeable press manager Matt gets it close) it has meant that the printed images are very, very close to the digital files I can see in Indesign.
The success of printing is a balance between never being happy with how good things are going so that you keep on trying to get things better and having a pragmatic approach where you can see the big picture. Between myself and Alex I think we hit a decent balance (he’s the perfectionist by the way!).
I asked Alex if he learned anything while creating his second book project and if he had any advice.
“As far as starting out goes, a project like this is incredibly daunting. So its best just to start and see where you get without tying yourself down to specific goals. Initially I did a few trips with the vague idea that this would be my next book and made 30 or so images that I felt were publishable. Only a handful of those images ended up in the book, but it nevertheless gave me some momentum. If I’d used the kind of specific planning approach, I eventually employed right from the outset it would have been much more difficult to get going and far less enjoyable. So start small and perhaps start with a Zine - it’s a brilliant format to share work and with a small digital (not litho) print you can keep costs down too (not least because case binding a hardback book is about half of the cost!)
As for the design and organisation, I know of a few people who are far more qualified to talk on the subject (Sandra Bartocha springs to mind)! But I do think it is important to make design choices that are personal to you. In many ways, the design of the book is as boring as it gets! Photographs are simply presented, generally full bleed or with even borders on each side because I don’t want viewers get distracted by an unusual ‘designer’ layout. There are no blank pages for “breathing space” – I find that annoying! The paper is a high quality, but still fairly standard 200gsm silk paper so you don’t notice the paper either. But I’ve pushed the boat out in other respects. I’ve gone with a green cloth cover because I just got bored of all these neutral tones we tend to see on the covers of photography books (and I loved this particular book cloth). I also tested the cloth quite extensively to make sure it didn’t mark easily, something that has bothered me about other books in the past that only look smart when they are new! I also both embossed and foiled the cover, which adds an extra process to the production and adds a fair chunk to the cost, but to me that kind of thing builds a bit of curiosity and excitement to open the book in the first place.”
The Photographs
As much as all the binding, paper, maps, essays, graphic design and the likes are very interesting and a key component of a successful book, its the pictures that we’re here for really. If they don’t live up to expectations or are repetitive or if there are too many ‘fillers’ then we won’t be fully satisfied.
Fortunately, and not unexpectedly with Alex, the images are all excellent. There are some absolute standouts (the selection of which will probably be different depending on your tastes) but there are also a breadth of subject and place that gives an organic sense of place.
Fortunately, and not unexpectedly with Alex, the images are all excellent. There are some absolute standouts (the selection of which will probably be different depending on your tastes - see a few of mine below) but there are also a breadth of subject and place that gives an organic sense of place. Nearly every image is a long view of some sort (Alex doesn’t add lots of intimate details, so you’ll have to get that kick from the foreground interest) but the compositions are such that you can feel you’ve actually walked alongside Alex in some way.
One of the pleasing sections for me reflects well on Alex’s environmental credentials. Despite spending time photographing the amazing islands of Loch Maree, he has chosen not to tell that undoubtedly interesting story because to do so might draw too much attention to a very delicate environment. He’s absolutely right to do so, as there have only recently been devastating fires from camping on one of the main islands, with locals spending multiple days trying to put them out. I hope some of this delicate approach rubs off on the book’s readers.
Everybody will have their own favourite photographs from the book, and I'm no exception, so I asked Alex if I could include a few of my favourites, without spoiling some of the surprise for if you buy the book! So here's a couple and there are a few more in the gallery at the bottom.
Conclusion
I think it’s fairly obvious that I really like the book. Alex has hit publishing gold again with “The Great Wilderness”, a visual feast delivered from the most remote mountain area in Scotland. I spent my own money buying a copy (I know the margins on books like this, so I’ll always buy if I can) and don’t regret a penny. It epitomises much of what I like about photography, and photography books in general. I also reminds me so much of why I moved to the Highlands.
If you’re a photographer and love grand landscapes and mountains, then look no further for your next book, and if you don’t have Alex’s first book (NorthWest), I’d keep an eye on those second-hand websites! Highly recommended! (and it will sell out!).
Go and buy the book direct from Alex’s website - give him something to do while he’s helping nurse the baby!
My final question to Alex was “what’s next?”
“The worst thing about finishing 'Northwest' was giving myself a one-year break from projects, which actually manifested as a purposeless creative vacuum, so I won't make that mistake again! Torridon is next, and I plan to almost exactly duplicate the format and design for that book. I think some people will see this as a little repetitive, just going over old ground (literally) that I covered in the last book. But I have realised that if there is anything that sets me apart as a photographer, its a determination and level of obsession which ultimately allows me to produce work that few others would be willing to commit to. I already have some images under my belt, but it will be a few years at least before that book emerges, and perhaps more once the full implications of raising a child hit home!”
And finally, keep an eye out for a new podcast feature in the New Year with Joe Cornish where Alex will be our first guest!
In this issue, we talk to Mark James Ford and feature some of his photography. I say some, as Mark has a diverse portfolio that includes panoramas, landscapes, flora, fauna and astrophotography. We’re concentrating on the abstract and macro, but you’ll find links to explore his other work in our feature. Mark has had a long standing interest in photography and a foot firmly in both art and science. Now living in Germany, he has access to some special places that motivate him beyond the local that the universality of macro can sometimes suggest through its removal of context.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, what your early interests were, and what you went on to do? How did photography come into your life and what were your early images of, or about?
I was born in a suburb of Birmingham, England, in 1963 and grew up on the outer edge of a satellite town. In the one direction, school and everything to do with urban life; in the other, fields, woods, and a wonderful view across Staffordshire to the distant spires of Lichfield Cathedral some 15km away. Spending much of my free time - from an age where I was allowed to venture unattended and through my teenage years - in this semi-rural environment, I was exposed to and developed an appreciation of Nature and the changing of the seasons.
I have always been very creative. Between the ages of twelve to sixteen I spent many hours almost every evening in the school in an informal group that did nothing but draw, sketch, and paint exploring and developing ideas and methods continuously. I will be forever grateful to the teacher who gave us this opportunity and pushed us ever harder to understand what we were doing and why, and who was able to enthuse us so effectively. During this period, actually, at the age of twelve, I drew a series of 6 pictures of a single rose as it opened, matured, and eventually died. A process which mesmerised me completely and which introduced me to the idea of the ‘Beautiful Death’. This idea we pursued many times with other natural objects. It should probably then be no surprise that this aspect of Beauty has stayed with me all of my life, ultimately manifesting itself in my love of Autumn.
This interest in everything that is around me - what I see, what I can’t see, and what lies behind the beauty that is the natural world - led to a passion for the sciences and particularly chemistry, which I think is the most creative science. Unusually I guess, I pursued chemistry with just an equal passion as fine art, combining the two when, between the ages of 17-18, I was allowed to use a fully kitted out dark room (photography was not on the school curriculum). Teaching myself, I photographed and developed black and white film learning as many development techniques as I could and the actual meaning and execution of processes like ‘dodge,’ ‘burn’ and ‘mask’. The images themselves were, in retrospect, naive and immature, but sometimes the seeds of future work could be seen in pictures that did little more than show a simple structure or shape (man-made or natural) or a lone tree.
Black oak branches in winter, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, California 1994
The majority of photographs are representations of the external events in the world about us; what emotional response is evoked arises from the subject itself. But art, I believe, is most concerned with the internal event; the incredible spiritual and emotional insight and enlightenment generated within us, the deeper penetration of meaning and the ability to communicate to others what we experience and what we create… it begins with some external event. What we do with the external events, through this distillation of the internal event mechanisms, comprises what we, as photographers, present to the world as art.~Ansel Adams
My long journey, living in and next to Yosemite over four decades, has been a joyous one. Reading Ansel's words quoted above helped me reflect on my outward journey in this Sierra landscape that launched my photographic life, a life that gave me an expressive outlet for my internal emotions.
I came here as a young man "to climb these mountains and get their good tidings," as John Muir famously wrote. I spent most of my free time in the high country, away from the crowds. I surveyed topographic maps to find unique perspectives, mostly away from well-traveled trails. Working for the National Park Service, I had one night to backpack in and back out the next day, so these were hardly the epic treks into the wilderness of any legendary status. However, with each exploration out there, I came back with a deeper affinity for the landscape.
Cottonwood Bark, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, California 1986
The sum of those early wilderness experiences led me to learn where I needed to be and where I was happiest. I had found Home. My photography developed out of those adventures in three national parks, first for two summers in Glacier National and in North Cascades National Park, and then in early Yosemite years. In Yosemite, I delivered my rolls of film to The Ansel Adams Gallery, where my film was sent off for development. And then, a week or so later, I'd return to pick up the developed slides and drop off more film. The anticipation to see if I had made images that reflected my experience was an exquisite combination of part thrill and part dread.
My visits to The Ansel Adams Gallery were educational and inspirational. I knew very little about Ansel Adams back then, except that my college Photo 101 prof didn't like his work. He didn't like colour photography much, either. But on those gallery walls, Ansel's prints glowed, revealing the magic of this landscape, and showed me the potential Yosemite offered me. A few years later, I joined the gallery as the resident photographer.
I learned many technical aspects of making photographs. More significantly, I learned to translate my emotional connections to my subjects through the craft I was learning, discovering "the deeper penetration of meaning and the ability to communicate to others what we experience and what we create," as Ansel put it.
Cottonwood leaves and cloud reflections, Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California 2013
On the day I started work in May 1980, I was transformed from an NPS labourer into a professional photographer. While working at the gallery, I began teaching photography and also served as exhibit curator. I learned many technical aspects of making photographs. More significantly, I learned to translate my emotional connections to my subjects through the craft I was learning, discovering "the deeper penetration of meaning and the ability to communicate to others what we experience and what we create," as Ansel put it.
I had the opportunity to listen to many world-renowned photographers talk about their images during the Ansel Adams workshops: Jerry Uelsmann, Ernst Hass, Joel Meyerowitz, Ruth Bernhardt, Paul Caponigro, Richard Misrach, Robert Glenn Ketchum, John Sexton, and Alan Ross, to mention a few. A recurring theme, encouraged by the instructors, was to push past ordinary ways to make images, to blaze one's own path, and to do so with the highest possible quality. Every one of those photographers had their own approach to supporting themselves as artists, using their business approaches to allow themselves to survive as artists and flourish creatively.
Reflections at Young Lakes, Yosemite National Park, California 1977
On one of my first hikes in Yosemite's backcountry in 1977, I visited a wonderous string of lakes near the Sierra Crest. Rising at dawn, I circled the shoreline in search of compositions. Once the sun broke over the high ridgeline above, I was enchanted by the nearly perfect reflections and light skimming across the talus and cliffs across the lake. Even so early in my creative development, I sought out detailed or abstract landscapes like this alpine lake reflection. I didn't have the words or understanding of why, but my instincts were in the right place, avoiding the greater context, the postcard view.
Even so early in my creative development, I sought out detailed or abstract landscapes like this alpine lake reflection. I didn't have the words or understanding of why, but my instincts were in the right place, avoiding the greater context, the postcard view.
Corn Lilies, Crane Flat Meadow, Yosemite National Park, California 1986
Horsetail Fall 2023
My book includes 23 Black and White photographs. Although I can't resist making dramatic "Anselesque" images when Yosemite presents the opportunity, I lean towards these quieter moments composed on a smaller scale.
My book includes 23 Black and White photographs. Although I can't resist making dramatic "Anselesque" images when Yosemite presents the opportunity, I lean towards these quieter moments composed on a smaller scale. As an example of a subtler image, I’m sharing a high-key rendition of corn lily leaves that reveal a wonderful graphical grace and a glowing sense of light
As an example of a subtler image, I’m sharing a high-key rendition of corn lily leaves that reveal a wonderful graphical grace and a glowing sense of light. But in a nod to Ansel and his influences on me, my waterfall photograph conveys the magic and drama one can often find in Yosemite Valley.
The thrill of such moments hasn't diminished for me. Whether seeing this misty meadow, the lacey texture of waterfall spray, the glint of Sierra sunlight on granite, or the tapestries of an evening forest, Yosemite has delivered a transcendent experience to me.
My journey out into nature so long ago, finding Home in Yosemite, nurtured in sanctuary, helped me look within and be confident that my vision was worthy and worth sharing.
There and back again.
William Neill
I was suddenly arrested in the long crunching path up the ridge by an exceedingly pointed awareness of the light. The moment I paused, the full impact of the mood was upon me; I saw more clearly than I have ever seen before or since the minute detail of the grasses ...the small flotsam of the forest, the motion of the high clouds streaming above the peaks... I dreamed that for a moment time stood quietly, and the vision became but the shadow of an infinitely greater world -- and I had within the grasp of consciousness a transcendental experience.~Ansel Adams
One of the joys of hosting a photography podcast is exposure to so many incredible photographers. At the end of every podcast episode, I ask my guests to recommend other photographers who inspire them. Through this one question, I’ve discovered that there is an immense, nearly endless pool of talent in this community we call nature photography, and that is so incredibly exciting! Through the past year, one name has consistently been shared when I ask this single question - Michael DiMeola. Upon first inspection of Michael’s work, one is struck by the simplicity and consistency of his images.
This article concerns my long-lasting love affair with a wild meadow next to where I live.
Church Meadow lies next to the River Brett in Suffolk. The river meanders through the mid Suffolk countryside, past unspoilt medieval wool villages like Kettlebaston, Chelsworth & Kersey before joining the River Stour on the Essex border in ‘Constable Country’. The river is bordered along much of its route by water meadows.
Meadows like this have been retained over the centuries as a defensive flood measure. They have the capacity to accommodate flood water after heavy rain. Apart from mills, houses were generally built further back from the river on slightly higher ground. This has allowed the meadows to remain undisturbed for a very long time.
This particular meadow has been much the same for many hundreds of years. Thanks to old Manorial Court Rolls the ownership and use of all this land is known from about 1300. Two medieval timber-framed houses once stood at its edge till the Lord of the Manor demolished them in about 1750. A small part had an orchard once. Another section was a ‘tenterpiece’, where skins and fleeces were dried and stretched out on ‘tenterhooks’. There is no trace of the old houses. What remains is about 5 acres of unspoilt wild meadow. The meadow appears in many old photographs from 1860 onwards. These images and numerous paintings of the village over the years confirm that it really hasn’t changed much. I feel less like the owner and more like the current custodian of something that needs to be preserved for future generations.
This particular meadow has been much the same for many hundreds of years. Thanks to old Manorial Court Rolls the ownership and use of all this land is known from about 1300.
Church Meadow has been managed in the traditional way as much as possible. The key is to avoid the build up of nutrients. Wildflowers do best in ‘poor’ soil. Grazing with livestock is very useful as the grass is eaten right back, and nutrients are removed from the soil. Alternatively, in some years, in June or early July, the meadow is cut for hay, which is then taken away. Combined with an autumn graze, this is a great way to keep the grasses very short over winter so that wildflowers have a better chance at the start of the next growing season. This also helps discourage plants like nettles which only grow well in nitrate-rich soils.
I have optimised the management of my meadow as much as possible for over 20 years now. A previous owner cut the grass in the meadow fairly regularly to keep it short. The cuttings were always left in place, meaning that nutrients were not being removed. Over the years of my management, the changes have been very pleasing. The number and variety of wildflowers has increased greatly. Cow parsley erupts in May, along with great swathes of buttercups, where once only little clusters of these plants appeared.
The range of plants is more diverse than one might imagine on a quick inspection. A ten minute survey a few years ago reached a count of 40 different species in one corner of the meadow. The plant and flower names are a rich source of fascination and beauty in themselves. Reading the names pulls you back to the days of folk remedies and lore. A few of the plant and flower species include: Oxeye daisy, Common mallow, Stitchwort, Lady’s Bedstraw, Pignut, Ground Ivy, Cow Parsley, Hemlock, Ramsons (aka Wild Garlic), Common Sorrel, Broad-leafed dock, Tufted Vetch, Red Clover, Bugle, Cowslips, Primrose, Cleavers (aka Sticky Willy, Goose Grass), Cranesbill, Stitchwort, Red Campion, White Campion (‘Grave Flower’), Speedwell, Poppies, Stinging nettle, Ribwort Plantain, Dead nettle, Teasels, Buttercups and various Thistles. There is a huge variety of grasses, including: Tufted Hair-grass, Quaking grass, Red Fescue, Cocksfoot grass, Meadow foxtail, Yorkshire fog, Lesser Timothy etc. as well as various sedges and rushes.
Much of the fauna in the meadow remains hidden from easy view. Significant numbers of mice, shrews and voles inhabit the long grass. I can occasionally stumble upon a group of tiny, newly emerged baby mice playing outside their hole. When the meadow is cut, the tractor is followed closely by a Kestrel that swoops periodically to mantle over an unfortunate vole and carries it off to the nest.
Significant numbers of mice, shrews and voles inhabit the long grass. I can occasionally stumble upon a group of tiny, newly emerged baby mice playing outside their hole. When the meadow is cut, the tractor is followed closely by a Kestrel that swoops periodically to mantle over an unfortunate vole and carries it off to the nest.
Grass snakes and slow worms are generally well hidden but are occasionally glimpsed. Muntjac deer, fox, badger, otter, water vole, and water shrew have all been photographed by me on the meadow and river bank. Birdlife is abundant. A buzzard has nested in one tree, and a barn owl is regularly seen gliding over the long grass in the early evening light. Pheasant and French Partridge skulk in the deep grass. The insect life is similarly abundant, with countless bees, butterflies, moths, beetles and other bugs. After 20 years, I am still now finding insects that I’ve never seen before clinging to my clothing after a walk through the meadow.
Winter is a quieter time in the meadow, but larger plants, such as the poisonous hemlock, can be 8 feet tall or more. They die off slowly, covered in frost on some mornings. Teasels similarly retain their structure for months.
For years now, I have come to love sitting or even lying in the meadow in Spring or Summer and taking the opportunity to feel more connected with nature and to experience the sense of peace and tranquillity there. In this mad rush of a modern world, this feels very important to me. This has also nurtured my creativity. The seasonally evolving tapestry of colours, textures and tones is a constant source of inspiration. Witnessing its subtle beauties has instilled in me a deep appreciation of the wonders of life and a sense of responsibility towards the environment.
I have been taking photographs of this meadow for almost 30 years. I’ve owned it for 21 years. Initial images were all wider views, such as of the expanse of buttercups between the mature oak and chestnut trees or of horses grazing in the long grass. One year a young New Forest pony that had been captured in the regular round-up there, was allowed to graze the meadow for a few months with an older point-to-pointer for company. I loved watching it grow and develop as it slowly shed its fluffy coat and turned into a promising but spirited adult. That made for quite a few pleasing images.
Rather than wide views, I have started to get closer, to make images of the details and of the feel of the place. I particularly like the late afternoon light as it rakes over the meadow, with long shadows cast by the mature trees of the churchyard next door. I have made images with my back to the light and into the light, as well as side lit.
In more recent times, I have begun to transition to more personal, perhaps even expressive image making in the meadow. Rather than wide views, I have started to get closer, to make images of the details and of the feel of the place. I particularly like the late afternoon light as it rakes over the meadow, with long shadows cast by the mature trees of the churchyard next door. I have made images with my back to the light and into the light, as well as side lit.
My first discovery was how the view changed completely if I squatted down low or even lay on the ground. I did this as carefully as possible, trying to keep damage to a minimum. I began to experiment with different focal lengths and wider apertures. I tried my macro lens up close, then a 50mm prime lens at a longer distance. I even tried using a 80-400mm zoom at 300-400mm. All of this was using manual focus and exposure, hand-held. I could have used a tripod but it felt too restrictive. It is absolutely fascinating, patiently panning around, zooming in and out, playing with the focus ring at wide apertures as the lens peers through the layers of thick, complex vegetation. Little seed heads, or flowers, or strands of grass would come in and out of focus. This very shallow depth of field drew attention to subtle elements and hidden treasures in the environment that might otherwise go unnoticed. For me the resulting images convey not only a sense of intimacy but also a sense of calmness, perhaps too of romanticism and even of mystery.
These images were greatly affected by the direction of light. Whilst shooting into the sun at eye level had worked well enough, it gave results that were too harsh and contrasty when crouching low.
My second discovery was playing with the lit and unlit areas, particularly late in the day. A friend suggested placing myself in an unlit area but shooting towards a lit area, with the resulting view ‘emerging’ from the shadows. I found this to be an excellent way of framing the view and distilling the subject.
Some days were productive, others weren’t. I tried different parts of the meadow, different times of day and different lighting. Even within the meadow, there is a lot of variety in the mix of the grasses, textures etc, so I had plenty of choice.
Other ideas I have tried include shooting fractionally above the tops of the cow parsley or grasses, focussing on a single stem or on a tree branch behind; shooting from under a tree, looking out through its leaves; shooting on dewy mornings with little spider webs catching the light.
I hope that my work conveys a sense of ethereal beauty, transporting viewers to a dreamlike realm where they can engage with the emotions and stories embedded within the frame. The images presented here concentrate on late Spring and early Summer when life seems to be at its most varied and abundant.
I hope that my work conveys a sense of ethereal beauty, transporting viewers to a dreamlike realm where they can engage with the emotions and stories embedded within the frame. The images presented here concentrate on late Spring and early Summer when life seems to be at its most varied and abundant.
This year the meadow was cut earlier than I would like. Beggars can’t be choosers! I was given the offer of a free proper hay cut. The hay would be used by a local couple to keep their flock of Suffolk and Shetland sheep going over winter. Apparently, the North of England has a shortage of hay, but locally there is a great excess, so it was great to find someone to take it away and use it. If I’d paid for it to be cut I’d have paid a few hundred pounds. As it is I’ve traded the hay for the promise of some very fine organic lamb for the freezer in a few months' time. It was a good trade - a ‘win-win’.
When the day of the cut arrived, it was quite an emotional moment watching a giant tractor eat up my beloved meadow. In about 90 minutes, it was transformed from a chest high wonderland of long, lush grass and wildflowers to lower than ankle level and a whole lot of dust. The local kestrel enjoyed catching some of the mice and voles that were disturbed. A huge grass snake made a sudden bit for freedom and gave me quite a fright as I watched the tractor do its work.
My meadow has been cut really short. The cut hay has all been removed. Not all of the cow parsley and buttercups had set seed fully, but overall it's much better than leaving it uncut or partly grazed. I’m still hoping for a late autumn graze this year.
If you have retained your child-like sense of wonder for snow, then it’s likely that you’ll be enthralled by Jorma’s landscapes from the far north of Finland, which are all the more remarkable for the fact that they are taken during the polar night. But before you pack your bags, read on, as it’s certainly not the easiest place to get to and photograph and Jorma, for one, may not be overjoyed if you head there – it’s nothing personal, and I understand the value that he places on both tranquillity and the remaining wild country.
When I first got in touch with Jorma, he was on a fishing trip, and my proposals caused a few surprising ripples. It also gave me an insight into the precious nature of summer that far north, so we’ve waited until October to speak to him, in that period before the long and photogenic winter begins. It would be misleading though, to suggest that our feature is just about those magical landscapes, as the attraction was as much for the abstract images that Jorma makes and the way that he combines these.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself and your early interests?
I am already over 60 years old and currently live in the very north of Finland, close to the border between Norway and Russia. Since childhood, I have lived in many places around Finland, but the places I love the most are Eastern Finland near Lake Saimaa and Northern Finland. I spent a lot of my childhood in nature, as all children of that time did when nature started right at the doorstep. At that time, nature was still completely untouched; nowadays, this can only be found in the very northern part of the country.
When did you first pick up a camera and what did you photograph at that time? Where did this lead?
When I was young, I wasn't particularly interested in photography, and my family wasn't interested in arts or culture at all. I found photography quite by chance when I wanted photos of car races. I bought a cheap SLR camera, but right away, I noticed that it was rubbish, and I started to buy better equipment. Over the course of a few years, I attended some photography courses taught by really famous domestic and foreign teachers. I mainly did black and white and quite a lot of street and people photography
At the time, I was working on the railways, but after five years as a hobby, I jumped on the train of professional photography and became an assistant in an advertising photography studio.
Along with other photography, I have always been a passionate landscape photographer because, for example, the equipment for bird photography is too expensive and it is nicer to watch animals and their activities than to hunt them.
After a couple of years, I started my own photography company where I specialised in architectural, industrial and magazine photography. I stopped the company years ago, but I have done magazine photography from time to time.
Along with other photography, I have always been a passionate landscape photographer because, for example, the equipment for bird photography is too expensive and it is nicer to watch animals and their activities than to hunt them. As a young man, it was good to put on a photo exhibition every year, and at that time they were of course black and white because colour photos made from slides were too expensive. We had a good group of friends, and pictures were sometimes put on the walls of bars or in the lobbies of cinemas. A friend and I even made two exhibitions on the wall of the Leningrad Palace of Culture in the Soviet Union. It was nice there, on adventurous photography trips - the longest I spent was five weeks photographing the lives of people in small villages.
During the slide days, I sold quite a lot of pictures for calendars and postcards. More than 35 years ago, you got many times more money for the pictures compared to today's negligible compensations, which seem mostly like contempt for photographers. The same applies to the sale of prints. In the summer, I tried to sell some of my exhibition photos framed under glass at the market here in Lapland. They thought 50 euros for a 50x70cm picture was an outrageous price. The best feedback was when a gentleman told his lady that the frames were good. Trash that picture and replace it with your own pictures. One parliamentarian would have liked to buy a few prints, but nothing has been heard since I said €80 for a 50x70 print. It was probably too cheap a price.
Who (photographers, artists or individuals) or what has most inspired you, or driven you forward in your own development as a photographer?
Although I mainly do colour photography myself, the photographers I greatly appreciate are users of black and white film. The culture of Finnish landscape photography existed perhaps a hundred years ago, and since then, there has not been a generation of photographers who were interested in the subject. That's why only Pentti Sammallahti has been my favourite photographer among the Finns. The world famous Sebastião Salgado is a photographer I really appreciate through his wonderful black and white works—especially his mammoth book "Genesis", which I've been browsing from time to time.
I've also started working on my photos in black and white, but I guess I'm too critical because only a few photos seem to work as I'd like. In Finnish landscape and other nature photography, there seems to be a general perception that nature photography is a piece of cake and that it is possible to make quick profits without hard work.
In Finnish landscape and other nature photography, there seems to be a general perception that nature photography is a piece of cake and that it is possible to make quick profits without hard work.
However, the top is really narrow and, especially in landscape photography, even narrower. There are perhaps a couple of dozen landscape photographers worth considering in Finland, so the appreciation is also minimal. Especially here in the Arctic region, landscape photography requires a lot of work because, many times, it may take three days of hiking or canoeing to get to a good shooting location. I had to stop long hikes after falling ill with rheumatism a few years ago. I had to change my working methods, and moving to the vicinity of roads or boat routes was a must. This was perhaps not a bad thing because this is how I discovered abstract drone landscape photography, and it changed my way of thinking in the right direction. I had been dissatisfied with my shooting style for a long time, which repeated old mannerisms, and the reform was incredibly difficult to do. This has been a difficult change because there has been little or no expert feedback.
It doesn't warm up much, even though there is a lot of praise on social media when you know yourself that something is wrong. The somewhat abstract pictures have received a lukewarm reception, but this work requires a hard head and persistence. The caravan moves, and the dogs bark. You get the best feedback from yourself when you notice that you are constantly developing in the direction that gives you the best satisfaction.
Tell us a little more about where you live and the places that you are repeatedly drawn back to?
I have always enjoyed and almost loved the Arctic region because my mother's family originates - in the 17th century - from Lapland, Norway, from the very small town of Kautokeino. Around Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian Lapland, I have worked in tourism as a group guide, taking tourists fishing in the fishing waters of the fells. Fishing and photography are also mostly my hobbies because you can't make a full-time living here.
On my photography trips, I often travel to northern Norway, which is only a few hours away. Fortunately, there has not yet been an international invasion of photographers to these regions that are dear to me, like, for example, Lofoten, where I will not go even if paid. There, the locals have considered starting to tax photography tourists who block the roads and every parking space. I haven't met another photographer in the northeast for years, and that gives me room to breathe (typical Finnish character). Previously, I couldn't photograph if someone else photographed with me. Nowadays, it doesn't matter. Thank you, ageing.
On my photography trips, I often travel to northern Norway, which is only a few hours away. Fortunately, there has not yet been an international invasion of photographers to these regions that are dear to me, like, for example, Lofoten, where I will not go even if paid.
I began my research by looking through your social media feed to get a sense for the change that takes place over the months. It looks to be a country that is good for the soul; one that fosters a strong connection with nature, land and season. How would you describe the rhythms of life and nature throughout the year? And what are the practicalities?
People in the north say we have eight seasons. Between autumn and winter, there is still early winter, which brings the first snow, and it's freezing even during the day. Before winter, it's time to harvest, which here is either fishing or hunting for winter storage in the freezer. Now, I mainly fish for white fish, which I eat at least once a week. In November, the sun disappears behind the southern horizon, and the polar night begins, lasting a couple of months when the sun is not visible even during the day.
I'm looking forward to the polar night because the ground is covered with snow, and the light is incredibly beautiful - as if the whole bright five hours were painted in golden and pastel colours. During a full moon, it can be so bright that you can read a newspaper. In the upper landscape of Northern Norway, the light is even more wonderful, but it is bright enough only for a couple of hours.
Of course, the winter here is long, and there is usually six months of snow on the ground. You might imagine that winter would be a dark time, but in the north, it is never as dark as in the south because the snow reflects light even in the middle of the night. I have always loved the brightness of winter, and I look forward to winter photography. I have standard filming locations that I go to if the weather is pleasant and particularly cold. The summer lasts for a few months, and then I move around a lot in the large Inarijärvi, which the locals call the Lapland Sea. When the sun doesn't set for a couple of months, sometimes it feels that there is light more than enough.
During the polar night, it can often be really cold, and -30 degrees C is normal. In this weather, you must shoot for less than two hours, and the camera's batteries don't last very long either. I've had -28C when it's very cold to fly a drone, and the device only works really well as long as the batteries are warm. Fingers just get cold easily because the controller has to be handled with open hands sometimes. The worst cold where I have done magazine photography work has been -36C, which was otherwise okay, but the camera's batteries ran out in five minutes, and the lens creaked as if it was about to break. It was funny when the hunter being filmed was hustling with open hands as if he hadn't felt the cold.
Northern Finland is not a famous photography region because we don't have great mountains, lovely waterfalls and rugged coastlines. Here, there is only forest up to the Urals, swamps where you can't see the opposite shore and big lakes where some local wilderness men, who know the conditions well, will drown every year. Tourism is the biggest employer, but the almost industrialised product does not appeal to local people, like the British and Chinese, who come to take pictures of Santa Claus and hurry past quickly when the local reindeer herder is cutting up the reindeer carcass.
Polar nighttime is interesting because it might confuse even a local resident, and the two-month twilight that precedes it evicts those who have moved from the south back to the light pollution of cities in their third year at the latest. .
Polar nighttime is interesting because it might confuse even a local resident, and the two-month twilight that precedes it evicts those who have moved from the south back to the light pollution of cities in their third year at the latest. This is nicknamed "Arctic hysteria". As a counterweight, the sun doesn't set for two months in the summer, and many suffer from insomnia then. In summer, the only opportunity to take photos is often in the middle of the night, when the light is really beautiful. For tourism, you can easily get to Lapland by flying, as there are several flights a day from Helsinki.
In winter, the situation in Northeastern Norway is even harsher because it is even less populated, and the weather is often hellish. Roads are frequently closed due to the wind, and you can only move according to the schedule behind the plough. Accommodation establishments are closed in winter, and if you can get to one, the price is far from reasonable. On the other hand, if you are used to travelling in Antarctica or Greenland on your photography trips, then the price doesn't matter. OK, but in Norway, you can fly to almost every one of the smallest villages if the weather permits. In summer, Northeast Norway is beautiful and incredibly colourful, with huge flower meadows and rocky small waterfalls. Actually, it is exactly the same landscape as in Scotland.
Would you like to choose 2 or 3 favourite photographs from your own portfolio and tell us a little about why they are special to you, or your experience of making them?
Abstract sand
I have several regular photography locations around the north. I've been to a small sandy beach on the Varang fjord in Northern Norway dozens of times and got some nice pictures. The beach is really small and inconspicuous, but the tide can build the best patterns on it for hundreds of kilometres. Or at least what places I know. These triptych pictures were taken 15 years ago, but they have become one of the most beautiful entities when combining pictures. This is also my first triptych and has been an important direction indicator for my later works. What is special about these is that the pictures were taken on the same trip, and the patterns on the beach were absolutely magical then. I have never found exactly the same patterns, even though I try to observe the patterns precisely. Sometimes there have been high waves, and the beach is full of small pieces of seashells, and you can't get anything sensible out of it. In general, I love the very calm sea that caresses the gentle sandy beach, letting the patterns slowly form.
First abstract
In 2021, I was commissioned to make a video piece about the great Tenojoki in the north. The name of the river in Norwegian is Tanaelva. The river is more than 1km wide in many places and has large sandy areas just above the surface of the river. While flying the drone above the river, my attention was caught by the peculiar shapes drawn on the water-covered sandbanks. The polarising filter clearly revealed what the surface of the water had hidden. This requires completely calm and cloudless weather so that the camera can see below the surface of the water.
This picture is one of the very first abstracts I photographed on the river, and with these pictures, I learned what is required in taming chaos. Very often, when you look at the drone's small monitor, everything looks confused and downright chaotic. The horizontality of the picture also makes it difficult to understand what you see when it would be best to shoot the picture vertically. Today, I've learned to photograph objects vertically, but it required a bit of eye training. I also photograph some objects with several adjacent frames so they cover a large area. With new modern drones, you can also take vertical pictures, but those drones are too expensive to acquire.
This started a photography project that I am still working on now, maybe for several more years. The filming area has expanded from the river Tanaelva to Tanavuono and its huge tidal coast.
The final coast
Five years ago, I was working in the wintertime in Northern Norway, and I had just received my first full-frame camera. The previous one was a low resolution small sensor camera, and of course, the difference was really great. When I couldn't afford to buy nice lenses, I had to shoot with cheap Tamron lenses, the brand I still use today.
The winter weather in Finnmark can be really rough, and it's not every day that you feel like going out with your camera. Over 20m/sec wind and bitterly cold will freeze even the roughest, and when the roads may be covered with snowmaking, the journey is not easy. The strongest gusts of wind can knock the car or the photographer off the cliff, and the camera tripod has fallen over many times due to the strong wind, but fortunately, equipment damage has been avoided.
This picture has especially stuck in my mind because of the fierce weather, and it's a great, well-timed shot. There were dozens of photos taken, and everything was right in only one frame.
The light changed in seconds, and you had to wait for just the right splash of water because the height of the waves varied greatly. I was behind the car, taking shelter from the wind so that the picture could be even slightly sharp. The picture has been called "The Final Coast" for a long time because I felt then that this beach in the North Cape is the last one a person can walk on. Next is just the endless sea. The image is noisy and rough, and its colours are only blue, so it fits well in black and white, and its problems are not clearly visible. By some strange thought, I consider this picture to be one of the best I have ever photographed.
You recently exhibited some of your abstracts under the title “Time Passing Through”. You often present them as triptychs. Is this a way of making images that you are increasingly drawn to, and do you have any particular ambitions for the future?
I have never felt that I am very creative or artistic in my own work. However, every now and then, a small spark of artistry has appeared.
I like to tell stories with my pictures, which is why I often group them into groups of three or four pictures that support each other. I have taken them even further in triptych-type ensembles of three very intimate pictures, whose pictures are really close to each other but yet different.
The abstract photography project I started a few years ago, mainly in Northern Norway, has already brought with it one exhibition last summer, and I am planning the next one for 2025. There are also plans to enquire about the possibility of holding an exhibition in Norway, but that is still quite a distant dream. Putting on the exhibition completely depends on the grants because its price is easily thousands of euros. A small pension is not even nearly enough for photography trips or expensive prints. I hold small exhibitions every year, for example, in the library of my region. I have a printer, and I print the pictures for exhibitions with that. The plans are to make a panoramic photo exhibition in the future because I already have 140 cm wide glass frames for the pictures. But this still remains in the photography phase.
I like to tell stories with my pictures, which is why I often group them into groups of three or four pictures that support each other. I have taken them even further in triptych-type ensembles of three very intimate pictures, whose pictures are really close to each other but yet different. Connecting three pictures into a story is quite difficult, and I have a lot of beginnings of two pictures, but the third, perhaps the most important one, is missing. These are also live all the time, and a new picture might be a better option than the original. I think that normal landscape photography will gradually become less popular because it has not recently given me as much satisfaction as slightly more artistic interpretations. I've also started writing poems which would be shown alongside abstract triptychs; maybe in the next exhibition, I'll connect poems with the pictures in some way. Anyway, I'm excited about writing, and I've been saving short story blanks and notes. I have written some magazine articles, but the more creative writing has had less attention.
Can you give readers a brief insight into your set up – from photographic equipment through processing to printing? Which parts of the workflow especially interest you and where do you feel you can make the most difference to the end result?
I work with photography almost every day, either taking pictures or processing or printing some interesting pictures. I had a 15-year break from photography from 1991 when all my equipment was stolen. I started taking photos again 20 years ago when the first reasonably priced SLR camera came on the market. I have copied some exhibition photos from that time and they work perfectly well alongside those taken with modern cameras. They require somewhat more fine-tuning, but today's Photoshop makes it easier than with the early versions. When I got a printer a couple of years ago, it radically changed my image processing. From the prints, I could clearly see what was bad in the processing and what needed to be improved, and I began to fully study image processing.
I think image processing is fun, and I can edit a difficult image for several days. However, a slightly longer break often helps me better than working for a long time. I often go back to my old photos and make new, and often better, versions of them than the ones I made a couple of years ago.
I think image processing is fun, and I can edit a difficult image for several days. However, a slightly longer break often helps me better than working for a long time. I often go back to my old photos and make new, and often better, versions of them than the ones I made a couple of years ago.
My filming equipment is quite normal and very affordable. A Nikon D750 camera and lenses made by Tamron and some ancient Nikkors from the 80s. Of these, I use the PC 35/2.8 Nikkor a lot because I often take panoramic photos and this lens is really well suited for that. I have the distance adjustment taped on, and I almost always use f22, which is very sharp and gives a large depth of field. With it, you can shoot really large and incredibly sharp multi-line panoramas or just two-image horizontal panoramas whenever you want.
My drone equipment - a Mavic 2 Pro - is also starting to get old, but when it works and with the current Photoshop, you can get perfectly decent 60x90cm prints from even a small-cell image file, so I haven't needed an update. I have developed my shooting and image processing technique as well as it is possible with my skills, and now I am satisfied with it. In particular, the drone requires an effective polarisation filter for these water pictures, without which I might not have found these abstracts. Now, the Nisi landscape filter is always attached to the camera, and I almost never even take it off. I have sometimes used graduated filters, but by bracketing the images and post-processing you get a better result.
We all start off thinking that our photography is about place, subject, season… only at some point to realise that we are intrinsically part of it in what we respond to, and what we choose to show. What have you discovered through photography?
I think I have learned to understand and appreciate other forms of art. Even modern art is, to some extent, okay. This also leads to the fact that I have worked with several artists to photograph their work, and I also photographed for a book about the art collections of Kouvola city.
There are thousands of nature photography enthusiasts in Finland, and up to 25,000 photos are entered into the annual nature photography competition. There are about 2,500 landscape pictures, but the quality of the pictures is not very convincing.
If you had to take a break from all things photographic for a week, what would you end up doing? What other hobbies or interests do you have? I’ve a feeling that fishing mayget a mention, as you caught something unexpected on the day that my first email reached you!
Besides photography, I don't really have any other hobbies other than wilderness life. I also travel to other Nordic countries, usually for fishing and taking photos. I wish that writing would become even more important, but I can't promise that.
I also enjoy cooking and baking from time to time. This week, I have been baking almost every day when the weather has been bad for photography.
Is there a landscape photography ‘scene’ or community in Finland? What subjects and styles are popular, and have there been any noticeable shifts in the time that you’ve been making images?
There are thousands of nature photography enthusiasts in Finland, and up to 25,000 photos are entered into the annual nature photography competition. There are about 2,500 landscape pictures, but the quality of the pictures is not very convincing. I have participated a few times and always placed in the top ten. However, I'm not that interested in the competition because the judging of the pictures seems to be random between different years. To some extent, I have participated in international competitions and had some success, especially a few gold medals and other top places in the Nordic Society of Photography competitions. These are interesting because the pictures are not sorted into different categories, but portraits, art pictures and landscape pictures compete in the same series. I have often been the only awarded landscape photographer.
And finally, is there someone whose photography you enjoy - perhaps someone that we may not have come across - and whose work you think we should feature in a future issue? They can be amateur or professional.
I could suggest a Finn who is more of an art landscape photographer than me: Kirsi Mackenzie.
Thanks very much, Jorma. You’ve given us a fascinating insight into your life. I’m sure readers will appreciate your photography and the direction that you are taking and want to wish you well with your exhibition plans and writing.
Picking a photo for Endframe was exquisite torture. There isn’t a photographer I revere above all others. (There are too many to choose from!) Or even one particular favourite ‘go-to’ photo. (Ditto!) And don’t get me started on locations; I could happily wile away an afternoon looking at great landscape images from anywhere on the planet. Thinking about it, I could happily wile away an afternoon looking at great photos on any subject, not just landscapes.
Can you see how difficult this proved to be?
So, after spending a few hours quietly going mad through indecision, I decided to cheat. I’ve picked an image shot by a robot. And one taken in a place almost (but not quite) as far as it’s possible to get before reaching the cold emptiness of interstellar space.
Welcome to our 4x4 feature, which is a set of four mini landscape photography portfolios which has been submitted for publishing. Each portfolio consists of four images related in some way. Whether that's location, a project, a theme or a story. Added:
Submit Your 4x4 Portfolio
Interested in submitting your work? We are always keen to get submissions, so please do get in touch! Do you have a project or article idea that you'd like to get published? Then drop us a line. We are always looking for articles.
I have a very special relationship with Le Mont Saint-Michel. It's a mix of endless wonder and a feeling of being in a familiar place, like home.
When I came to live in Brittany a few years ago (for the photo, of course), I wanted to be near the Mont, to be able to go there at any time, in any season.
Over time, I have therefore discovered wonderful places to photograph this unique site, at sunrise or sunset, during high tide, or even during the full moon.These images of the same place, but all photographed from different places, are what I am showing you today.
Don't forget that it is very tempting to come to the region during the summer, but it gets increasingly crowded every year during this season. Also, and particularly for taking pictures, I cannot advise you too much to plan your trip in spring or autumn, which are perfect seasons to discover the region which benefits from a mild and temperate climate.
The infinite shapes and textures of icebergs in Antarctica fascinate me again and again. Every iceberg is unique in its formation, size, and shape. Some are small, while others are massive, towering behemoths that dwarf everything around them. But what really captures the imagination is the intricate network of ridges and channels that make up their surfaces.
Icebergs are formed from the glaciers that flow from the interior of the continent to the edge of the sea. When the glacier reaches the ocean, it begins to break apart, creating icebergs of various sizes. The shapes and textures of these icebergs are determined by a variety of factors, including the rate of melting, the presence of cracks and fissures, and the impact of waves and wind.
Some of the most stunning shapes and textures are created by the melting of the iceberg's surface. As the sun beats down on the ice, it causes it to melt and refreeze, creating intricate patterns of ridges and channels that seem to go on forever. Other shapes are created by the impact of waves and wind, which can carve deep channels and curves into the surface of the ice.
The textures of the icebergs are just as varied as their shapes. Some are smooth and glassy, while others are rough and jagged. Some are translucent, allowing light to pass through, while others are opaque and appear almost black in colour. And then there are the colours - from the deep blues and greens of the densest ice to the brilliant whites of freshly fallen snow.
Living in The Netherlands, most of the coast is sand. In search for a chance of scenery, I followed Google maps south-wards finding the coast just below Calais in France within a short 4 hour drive. Here the first cliffs shape the coastal landscape bringing rocks, pebbles and bunkers from the Atlantikwall.
We're hypnotised into wanting to find out what's out there. We look for answers in the dark while forgetting our questions. Considering my fascination with this theme, I decided to demonstrate images of plants, earth, wood, water, and everything related to nature that may resemble other planets inspired by photos of our solar system.
The Natural Landscape Photography Awards 2023 finished its judging just over a week ago and I’m really happy with how everything went. <chatgpt: insert superlative about landscape photographs>Exquisitely captured, this stunning collection of landscape photographs transports viewers on an awe-inspiring journey through nature's most breathtaking vistas, evoking an unparalleled sense of wonder and serenity.</chatgpt>
<chatgpt: insert sentence about how great the organisers and judges were>I am absolutely elated and overjoyed by the seamless and successful judging of the competition! Witnessing the meticulous and fair evaluation process unfold was immensely gratifying, and I couldn't be prouder of the judges' unwavering dedication and expertise. Their commitment to fairness and excellence truly shone through, ensuring that each participant's work was given the utmost attention and consideration.</chatgpt>
Ahem, sorry - I’ve been playing with ChatGPT and I couldn’t help giving it a shot at helping write my intro. Don’t worry, it’s sort of ‘on topic’ as one of the challenges photography competitions are facing is the way that image generative AI is getting so bloody good (just like it can write schmoozy PR content better than me!).
I’ve previously written an article on AI (at the start of this year) but even in the short time since then, the ability to guide the software and the accuracy and detail of the results has made it even more amazing/scary.
At the NLPA, our defence against this process (and those who chase similar creations through Photoshop processed work) is the checking of RAW files, and as long as these are very difficult to fake, I’m hoping we’ll still be able to use them to screen images and to be able to present our entrants work as ‘not deceptive’. Not deceptive is a tough thing to quantify but the judges and organisers have a natural sense of where ‘too far’ is and we talk about this openly.
So, what were the winners like? The following article presents some of my favourite images and collections (projects/portfolios) from the competition. But first I wanted to explain a little bit about the process that I haven’t talked about before (you can read more about the overall process in this article from last year).
Nearly all competitions judge work using a numerical system and NLPA is no exception. We ask each judge to score images from 0 to 5, where a 5 value is the judges favourite and the 1 value is still a good image but, in that judges opinion, it doesn't stand a chance of winning.
Now this is where most competitions end. The averaged scores are calculated and the top 5 or 10 in each category are selected and then the judges vote first, second and third place. The picture with the most points wins.
However, our process diverges from most competitions here. Once we have our judges scores, we take all the images that the judges scored a 5 for (indicating a personal favourite) plus a selection of images that rated well across all judges but weren’t quite favourites (especially images that were not ‘immediate’ pleasers but might be growers). This ends up with approximately 60 images for each category.
Our judges are then given these images and asked to live with them for a while until the finals (approximately two weeks) and then pick their three favourites from each category. This final selection is then presented to the judges during the live voting.
Over the six hours of live voting, we probably spend an hour on each category. We ask the judges to vote for their 1st through 4th choice on our new ‘live voting’ panel (see below) and the judges are then asked if they want to advocate for an image they liked that isn’t doing well. Once this feedback process is complete, the images are reduced to a top six and a final vote is held and we talk about whether we are happy with the results of this (we usually are but sometimes judges would like to change their votes or we’ll have a final vote on 1st or 2nd etc).
So the judges have a considerable amount of time to look at and to grow into an image beyond the scoring process.
The interesting outcome of this is that, in the final judging process, images that scored well in the first rounds may well place lower than images that scored less.
This changes the outcome of competitions more than you would think. Images that are often instantly applauded, can often become tiring or just not have a lot of depth. Whereas images that may look less interesting at first can intrigue a viewer later. A jugdes personal relationship with a picture might grow as they notice different parts that resonate with them (or other judges point out things that they missed).
We had a great example of this in our main category finalists. In our case, the overall winner of photograph of the year scored a lower aggregate score than winner of the Intimate category from which it was selected.
In the images below, the caption shows the score distribution as a five figure number similar to this 55331. This score would be two maximum 5* scores, two 3* and one 1* score.
Gabriel Stankiewicz, Overall Winner (53310 avg = 2.4)
Also, the Grand Scenic winner scored less the the Grand Scenic runner up.
Björn Nehrhoff von Holderberg, Grand Scenic, Winner (55210 avg = 2.6)
Xavier Lequarre, Grand Scenic, Runner Up (55544 avg = 4.6)
In this case, Xavier's image was joing highest in the competition for the initial rating across all images. We should add a comment that most of the people seeing Xavier's image questioned the birds, they were just too good to be true. But true they are and what an amazing image.
As a last example, the winner of the Abstract and Details category scored less than the second place image
Eric Bennett, Abstract and Details, Winner (55332 avg = 3.6)
Matt Redfern, Abstract and Details, Runner Up (54442 avg = 3.8)
Far from being a flaw with our competition, this is significant evidence that the process by which we slowly bring sets of images forward in the final stages of the competition allows the judges to pick images that go beyond an instant reaction. We hope that people who spend some time with the images in our compilation books will have the same reaction.
However, enough talk! Here are the winners of the 2023 Natural Landscape Photography Awards. We've shown you the overall winner and the winners of the three main categories. Here's a selection of images from the Special Awards and from my personal favourites. After a quick conclusion from Mr AI ...
CONCLUSION
Special Category Winners
Martin Bürner, Environmental, Winner
Matt Redfern, Common Places, Winner
James Hider, Water Worlds, Winner
Alexandre Deschaumes, Mountains, Winner
Peter Eastway. Aerial, Winner
David Hunter, Nightscape, Winner
Harry Lichtman, Black and White, Winner
A Selection of Personal Favourites
Jackie Matear
Martin Maier
Jan Erik Waider
Andrew Mielzynski
Kurt Lawson
Kyle Goetsch
Competition Gallery
Martin Bürner, Environmental, Winner
Andrew Mielzynski
Stewart Hamilton
Gregory Cruthis
Matt Redfern, Common Places, Winner
Joe Rainbow
Pal Hermansen, Aerial, Runner Up
Jackie Matear
Kurt Lawson
David Hunter, Nightscape, Winner
Grant Dixon, Mountains, Runner Up
Kyle Goetsch
Harry Lichtman, Black and White, Winner
Martin Maier
James Hider, Water Worlds, Winner
Prajit Ravindran, Black and White, Runner Up
Jay Tayag
Barbara Seiberl-Stark, Water Worlds, Runner Up
Mieke Boynton, Common Places, Runner Up
Peter Eastway. Aerial, Winner
Peter Coskun
Jan Erik Waider
Alexandre Deschaumes, Mountains, Winner
Natalia Harper
Peter Coskun
Cesar Llaneza Rodriguez, Intimate Landscape, Runner Up
Takahashi Hiroto, Intimate Landscapes, Winner
Gabriel Stankiewicz, Photograph of the Year, Winner
Matt Redfern, Abstract and Details, Runner Up
Eric Bennett, Abstract and Details, Winner
Xavier Lequarre, Grand Scenic, Runner Up
Björn Nehrhoff von Holderberg, Grand Scenic, Winner
To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. ~Elliott Erwitt
Since I've been on the boats I've seen loads. I've seen a perfect winter shot that just needs the right amount of snow, the right light… ~Mark Littlejohn1
The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it? ~Edward Weston
It is often said that photography is all about the light and being in the right place to take advantage of the light. While we do not normally have much control over the light on a landscape, being in the right place implies something about learning how to see the photographic possibilities at a place and the potential for the right light that may not always be apparent at the first visit.
More than 25 years ago, I was lucky enough to find a house in the upper Eden Valley in Cumbria, the part known as Mallerstang. This was just a year or so after buying my first medium format camera (a Mamiya 6).
When travelling, we may not always have the luxury of returning for a second visit (but it is a common theme in photographic books about Iceland, for example, that the photographer has made multiple visits over many years or, in some cases, even gone to live there). For some places, we may be able to revisit many times and experience directly many of the possibilities. Mark Littlejohn has expressed this well in the quotation above with respect to the many times he has worked on the Ullswater ferry boats. This article is about learning how to see in that way at a little piece of Eden, a place that might be completely overlooked by passers-by.
More than 25 years ago, I was lucky enough to find a house in the upper Eden Valley in Cumbria, the part known as Mallerstang. This was just a year or so after buying my first medium format camera (a Mamiya 6). Mallerstang was a perfect place to explore with the new camera2. But, throughout those 25 years and the transition from film to digital, I have found myself coming back again and again to a small reach upstream of the bridge to Shoregill, where the river tumbles over a short series of low, moss-covered, limestone rock steps. A general view of this river's reach in winter is shown below. The rock steps are in the foreground, with a variety of boulders projecting from the surface at all but the highest flows further downstream. Upstream of the steps is a pool, not really deep enough to swim in, but there, the water flows more slowly, reflecting the colours of the sky and the shadows of the surrounding trees.
Clear winter light on A little piece of Eden Glows intensely blue3
River Eden at Shoregill, looking downstream in winter 2021
It is a little piece of Eden for the photographer, both literally and metaphorically, that nearly always yields an interesting image or two; images that change with the state of the river and the way in which the direction and quality of the light interact with the caustics and reflected sky pools and land pools formed as the water flows over the steps or around the boulders4.
In recent years, the effects of climate change have become increasingly visible and noticeable. Almost daily news reports appear about extreme rainfall, floods, forest fires, temperature records, the disappearance of species and so on. It is now clear that the climate crisis is not just going to happen in the future but that we are already in the middle of it. Also, the effects are no longer limited to the polar regions and glaciers and small islands in distant oceans; virtually every country is already affected to a greater or lesser extent. My own country, the Netherlands, had a wake-up call in the summer of 2021. Just like its neighbours Germany and Belgium, it was ravaged by extreme rainfall and heavy flooding. Whereas in Germany and Belgium, there were fatalities, in the Netherlands, there was mainly enormous material damage.
I had been asking myself for some time how, as a landscape photographer, I could portray climate change in my own country. The conclusion was always that this was difficult because the effects were not yet visible. Admittedly, measures have been taken for some time to make the Netherlands safer, for instance, by raising river dykes and giving rivers more room to flood. Still, these measures mainly involve infrastructural works, and I don't find them particularly attractive to portray as a photographer.
A group of flowers (scentless camomile) in the flowing water, photographed from the shore.
So when the first reports trickled in about the severe flooding in the southern province of Limburg, I was immediately alert. This was real; now it was getting very close all of a sudden. The river Maas had burst its banks in several places, and the village of Valkenburg, in particular, had been devastated. Many streets had been flooded, and numerous houses, shops and hotels had suffered major water damage. I briefly considered travelling to the hard-hit region to photograph the flood disaster. In the end, I refrained from doing so. I realised I had no press pass and was also afraid I would get in the way of the relief efforts.
So when the first reports trickled in about the severe flooding in the southern province of Limburg, I was immediately alert. This was real; now it was getting very close all of a sudden. The river Maas had burst its banks in several places, and the village of Valkenburg, in particular, had been devastated.
Moreover, there were already enough other photographers on site, and I wondered whether I would be able to add anything. Finally, of course, I am not a press photographer but a landscape and nature photographer.
A small group of young people hang out on one of the sunny lawns between the allées of trees, while another visitor stretches out for a nap.
Amidst the seemingly endless sprawl of concrete and asphalt that comprises Mexico City's landscape, there is a place where you can sit in a tree-rimmed meadow and listen to the morning calls of robins and warblers, the hammer of a woodpecker and the gentle thrum of the hummingbird. Viveros is a 96-acre park located in the southern municipality of Coyoacán, a vital green space in the heart of one of the world's greatest conurbations. I have spent many pleasant hours wandering around its expansive grounds, taking advantage of the shade and oxygen provided by the thousands of trees.
Viveros was founded and designed by the urban planner Miguel Angel de Quevado (1862-1946). Born in Mexico and raised in France, Quevado received his Bachelor of Science at the University of Bordeaux, then studied civil engineering and hydrology at the École Polytechnique in Paris. He returned to Mexico City in 1887 and worked in a variety of jobs, including as Director of Public Works and later as a high ranking official in the Secretariat of Agriculture, where he oversaw arboreal research and management. He founded the Central Committee of Forests and Tree Areas, which was the first environmental protection institution in Mexico.
Viveros was founded and designed by the urban planner Miguel Angel de Quevado (1862-1946). Born in Mexico and raised in France, Quevado received his Bachelor of Science at the University of Bordeaux, then studied civil engineering and hydrology at the École Polytechnique in Paris.
Statue of Miguel Angel de Quevado, the "Apostle of the Trees," greets visitors at the southwest gate of Viveros.
Quevado was part of a generation of wealthy, highly paternalistic urban reformers who believed in a direct correspondence between environment and behaviour, and that to modify the quality of one is to modify the other. To this end, they imagined that improving the physical conditions of housing, sanitation, and overcrowding would result in a more hygienic, productive, and well behaved population. Despite this moralistic vision, reformers racked up important achievements such as new social housing, a greatly extended sewer system, and parks and open spaces.
In 1901, Quevado donated the first hectare of land to what would become Viveros ("The nurseries") out of his own property. Over the next twenty years, the park grew through purchases of adjacent hacienda land. The municipal administration recognized Viveros in 1917, and in 1936, the federal government declared it a National Park. It also became home to several government institutions, including the National Forest Research Institute, the Secretariat of the Environment and Natural Resources, and the Secretariat for Public Works and Urban Development.
Evergreen saplings in starter pods at the Viveros tree nursery. When they are ready, crews will transfer them to parks, playgrounds, and street tree pits throughout the city.
Today, Viveros remains the city's principal tree nursery. Large areas are set aside for seedlings and saplings, which can be transplanted into parks, playgrounds, schoolyards, sidewalks, and restoration projects across the metropolis. There are also numerous allées of mature trees grouped by species, including sweetgum, ash, cedar, Chinese elm, jacaranda, acacia, pears, and various pines and eucalyptus. Such a diversity of trees, with their varied heights and structures, make Viveros a rich bird habitat and a major destination for bird watchers in the city.
There are also numerous allées of mature trees grouped by species, including sweetgum, ash, cedar, Chinese elm, jacaranda, acacia, pears, and various pines and eucalyptus. Such a diversity of trees, with their varied heights and structures, make Viveros a rich bird habitat and a major destination for bird watchers in the city.
An allée of white cedar trees with their long soft needles and gnarled trunks, on the north side of Viveros.
In addition to the arboreal sections, areas are devoted to arid and semi-arid plants, with a large collection of cacti and succulents from the surrounding Valley of Mexico. These species are adapted to the saline conditions of Mexico City's soil, as well as to its high altitude and oscillating wet/dry seasons. There are also plants that thrive in the various pedregals- stony landscapes of basalt laid down through successive volcanic eruptions over time. Rounding out the arid and semi-arid section are species common to Oaxaca, Puebla, Chiapas, Vera Cruz, and other states.
The semi-arid section includes blue agave, nopal, barrel cactus, and many other species important to Mexican ecology and culture.
Finally, the entire park is intersected with and encircled by pathways. Even with 2500 to 3000 visitors daily, the park seldom feels crowded as people fan out across the paths, meadows, lawns, playgrounds, and shady seating areas. Runners can use the peripheral path, while others can walk leisurely among the allées between the trees. A large workout station anchors the southeast side, along with playgrounds and basketball courts. At the centre of the park is a bullfighting practice ring where young toreadors train and perfect their craft. There are also areas dedicated to spiritual and religious practice, including a lawn for Tai Chi, an outdoor Buddhist temple and meditation ground, and a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe mounted to a tree.
The great oval at the centre of Viveros is home to a toreador school, and park visitors can watch students and teachers practice their craft.
The sanctuary for health an iron grill decorated with white lilies, where parkgoers can pray to the Virgin of Guadalupe for health and healing.
At the northeast corner of the park is a large and popular Mercado de Plantas, a gardening centre with numerous vendors selling seeds, seedlings, flowers, pots, statuary, equipment, soil and fertilizer. The centre maintains a large display of botanical species, especially of flowering plants and a herbarium for cooks and healers. Every year at Christmas the center hosts a manger diorama competition, with elaborate scenes recreating the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.
One of a dozen entries in the annual Christmas competition that features elaborate dioramas depicting the birth of Jesus, blending Biblical and folk stories.
Weekends find the park packed with people from the surrounding neighbourhoods of Florida, Axotla, San Ángel, Del Carmen, Santa Catarina, and Xoco. Adding to their numbers are visitors from more distant areas of the city drawn to the calm green landscape and varied activities on offer at Viveros. In addition to visiting the playgrounds and workout stations or watching the toreadors at practice in the central oval, parkgoers can enjoy weekend events such as art festivals, concerts, and plays.
Weekdays bring a different rhythm to the park. Runners, joggers, and bird watchers stream into Viveros as early as 6am when staff open the gates. By mid-morning, the traffic noise from the six-lane Avenida Universidad crescendos along the western edge of the park. Most of the joggers have cleared out, and the playgrounds fill with pre-school children. As 1pm approaches, workers from surrounding areas begin filing into the park to eat packed lunches, followed in the 3-4pm range by small groups of high school kids who use the park to cut through or to hang out after the last bell. Families stroll into and out of the park from 4-6pm, imbibing ice cream, paletas, and snacks from the many vendors that cluster around the gates. Finally, at 6pm, the gates close and staff usher people out for the night.
Early morning visitors cross paths in the southwest part of Viveros.
Families enjoy a later afternoon stroll along one of the principal east-west paths in Viveros.
Despite its origins in a paternalistic middle class vision of a conflict free urban future, Viveros today is one of the world's great urban parks and a crucial breath of life for Mexico City. Its trees not only take in tons of carbon dioxide and return oxygen, but they also metabolise pollution, reduce surface temperature, slow rainwater infiltration, and shade the world. The trunks, branches, roots, and canopy also provide interlacing habitat for diverse species of mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, and fungi.
Despite its origins in a paternalistic middle class vision of a conflict free urban future, Viveros today is one of the world's great urban parks and a crucial breath of life for Mexico City. Its trees not only take in tons of carbon dioxide and return oxygen, but they also metabolise pollution, reduce surface temperature, slow rainwater infiltration, and shade the world.
The expansive open space invites a multitude of people across class lines to find shade, recreation, and a break from the frantic pace of the streets. As climate change and urban expansion result in increasing habitat loss, temperatures, and flooding, Mexico City will need green oases like Viveros more than ever.
Fountain and snack vendors in a small public square at the southeast corner of Viveros.
Newly prepared sapling containers in the nursery.
A long allée of tall, straight pine trees on the north side of Viveros.
Striking red flowers of the Fuchsia plant, a succulent that grows natively in semi-arid coastal and montaine slope regions of southwest Mexico.
The nopal cactus and its bloom of sweet prickly pear fruit, with various deciduous trees rising up in the background.
Heavily canopied southeast portion of Viveros, with the wall of a school that backs onto the park.
One of the many horticultural and garden supply vendors at the Mercado de Plantas, located at the northeast corner of the park.
Hundreds of ceramic pots on offer at the Mercado de Plantas.
Wide range of herbs on offer in the Mercado de Plantas, supplied for a wide variety of cooking, healing, and aesthetic uses.
It's dawn, and the few streets you can discern at the foot of these strange towers are still deserted by life. We imagine it still asleep, stretched out behind these tiny windows that we come to scrutinize. They're eye-shaped, and you wonder whether we're looking at them or they're spying on you. The sky is turning yellow with the sun's first rays, and the bluish towers are still struggling to warm up. They have a strange allure, like science fiction that has aged a little, weathered by time, days, nights and the sun that tirelessly rises and sets.
We are in France, in the Parisian suburbs, where for four years, photographer Laurent Kronental has focused on the large-scale architectural complexes hastily built after the Second World War and the elderly people who inhabit them. "Souvenir d'un futur" captures the striking contrast between the ageing generation who occupy these grandiose Brutalist-style residential complexes and the futuristic architecture that was once considered a symbol of progress and modernity.
Today, however, reality seems a far cry from the imagination of yesteryear. The suburbs are the focus of some of France's major tensions, usually embodied by a distraught youth whose future no longer looks so prosperous. Issues such as immigration, integration, unemployment and, more broadly, global warming are clouding the skyline.
Continuing our look at the history of landscape, I was looking for the next significant artists or art after the Dutch Golden Age, which I talked about in the previous article. In most of the books on art that I’ve seen, Claude ‘Lorrain’ Gellée gets mentioned repeatedly as the artist who raised landscape painting up to be considered a significant art form and who gets ‘rediscovered’ during the romantic period by Constable, Gainsborough, Turner, etc.
If you'd like to take a look at these three previous article, the links are here:-
If you'd like to take a look at these two articles the links are here :-
Claude Lorrain’s legacy can be summarised as a perfecting of the ‘ideal landscape’. Inspired by the best of the Italian landscape, he created scenes with immersive, divine light and exquisite balance. Constable said he was “The most perfect landscape painter the world has ever seen". But I wanted to know how he became so influential through the age, even today.
Claude 'Lorrain' Gellée (1604-1682)
A little background first. Claude’s full name is Claude Gellée, but he was named from his birth place, Lorraine in France. He was born around 1600 and was orphaned at the age of twelve and subsequently went to live with his older brother, who was himself an artist in inlay work and probably taught Claude some sketching. However, his first trade was as a pâtissiers (mmm, cake) and his move to Italy, when he was around 16/17, was on the back of this skill where he was employed by Goffredo Wals and then Agostino Tassi, who made him an apprentice. Both Wals and Tassi were landscapists, Wals on small scenes and Tassi on larger frescoes.
When he was around 21, he returned to France to become an apprentice to the Duke of Lorraine but shortly moved back to Rome, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Xuan-Hui Ng began photographing as a form of self-therapy while she was grieving the loss of her mother. Spending time in nature gave her a sense of perspective and reignited a sense of wonder, reminding her that there is much to live for. Her interest in photography grew out of a desire to prolong the tranquillity that she experienced, and she describes her images as a collaborative effort with nature.
We touch on what Xuan has gained from mentoring, pacing and learning to live with serendipity, as well as the circle that has brought her back to workshops as an instructor. Xuan has previously said that she finds it difficult to write about her photography, yet you’ll find that she talks about it eloquently.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, what early interests you had, and what you went on to do?
I was born and raised in Singapore. I learnt ballet and piano as a child and later competed in sailing (in the “Optimist” and “420” categories). I’m a TV addict and watched lots of Cantonese TV series with my mother as a child. In college, I fell in love with comedies like “Dracula, Dead and Loving it”, “Space Balls” and “The Young Frankenstein”.
I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and spent a year at the International Monetary Fund as a research assistant. My mother’s death from colon cancer prompted me to return to Asia to be closer to home. One of my best buddies from college was working in Hong Kong at an investment bank and seemed to be really enjoying it. I decided to apply for a job at the same firm and spent the next 14 years in investment banking and finance related jobs.
Did you have any early exposure to photography or art?
I had no formal education in photography or any art related fields. My world until age 33 had been all about economics and finance, strategy and negotiations. The only brush with the art world was in my 1st year of college when I went shopping for a poster for my dormitory room. I fell in love with Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise” without knowing who he was.
I next fell in love with Marc Chagall’s work for his bold use of colours and his fantastical themes. My current love is Li Huayi, a contemporary ink painting artist from China
The poster prompted me to read up about him. One thing led to another, and the books I bought introduced me to Renoir, Degas and other impressionists. I next fell in love with Marc Chagall’s work for his bold use of colours and his fantastical themes. My current love is Li Huayi, a contemporary ink painting artist from China. I like the simplicity and the meditative touch of his ink brush paintings. I am also a fan of Goto Sumio, a prominent Japanese artist whose museum I visit once or twice a year for inspiration.
I love mysteries, stories with twists and turns, with plotlines that are not obvious. Also, I listen to music whenever I am driving from place to place to photograph. My mind gets really busy and often distracted, but music helps me to focus.
At first, these preferences or influences permeated through my work unconsciously. By that, I mean I’m naturally drawn, for example, to scenes that resemble the backdrop of a ballet or a fairytale. But now, I pursue them a little more consciously.
Who (photographers, artists or individuals) or what has most inspired you, or driven you forward in your own development as a photographer?
Many people have helped shape my photography life, including Arthur Meyerson, Elizabeth Opalenik, Mac Holbert, Mary Virginia Swanson, and Elizabeth Krist. I met most of them through the Santa Fe Workshops.
I’ll highlight two mentors in particular here. One is Nevada Wier, who mentored me for three years through the Santa Fe Workshops’ mentorship program. She taught me the ABCs of photography and helped me discover and develop my voice in photography. The other is Masumi Takahashi, a photographer and guide from Hokkaido, Japan. He taught me about nature and how to photograph various natural phenomena more effectively.
Continuing education is important for me, especially since I was not formally trained in photography. Also, I get bored easily and am concerned that the audience will get bored by my images too. I want to keep maturing and evolving as an artist.
In recent years, I enrolled in workshops taught together by Freeman Patterson and Andre Gallant. Also, I just completed a workshop, “Poetry of Abstraction”, with Susan Burnstine.
In recent years, I enrolled in workshops taught together by Freeman Patterson and Andre Gallant. Also, I just completed a workshop, “Poetry of Abstraction”, with Susan Burnstine.
How valuable has it been to be encouraged to pace yourself and to moderate your ambitions to show work – to evolve first and more fully before putting your photography on view? I sense that you might otherwise have wanted to run more quickly.
I need to thank Nevada for keeping me in check. You’re so insightful to say that I had wanted to run more quickly. She told me that she’d introduce me to Mary Virginia Swanson (“Swanee”), a consultant for artists when I was ready. Eagerly, and later, rather impatiently, I waited for that “green sign”.
I am very grateful that Nevada did that for me. By the time I attended portfolio reviews, my images were ready. I was ready. Although the comments were mostly positive, the less positive ones did affect me. But I was sufficiently emotionally mature to take them in my stride. I learned during the reviews that reviewers like different images. What’s valuable for me is knowing which images were more well liked and which were less. When enough people don’t like a certain image, it’s important to understand why. Sometimes we need to hear a piece of advice more than once before it sinks in. I think that reviews are a test of one’s convictions. We are at liberty to agree or disagree with the reviewers, but it’s important to listen and digest the feedback.
When enough people don’t like a certain image, it’s important to understand why. Sometimes we need to hear a piece of advice more than once before it sinks in. I think that reviews are a test of one’s convictions.
Also, I’ve received some invaluable advice from the reviewers, for example, from Aline Smithson, Victoria Chapman and Suzanne Revy, who suggested that I write to reflect my current motivations, beyond the initial grief, in my artist statements.
These reviews also gave me my big breaks - I met Paula Toganarelli, the former curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography at the PhotoNOLA portfolio Reviews, Elin Spring of “What will you remember?” at LACP’s Exposure Weekend and Manfred Zollner of “fotoMAGAZIN” at Fotofest. They featured my work, giving it the much-required exposure. It was also at the Fotofest online reviews that I met Geoffrey Koslov and Bryn Larsen the co-owners of Foto Relevance gallery, who signed me on as an artist. At Fotofest last year, Crista Dix, the current curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography, offered me a solo exhibition opportunity at the museum in December this year.
Would you like to choose 2 or 3 favourite photographs from your own portfolio and tell us a little about why they are special to you, or your experience of making them?
There are three images that are significant to me.
Serendipity #14
I was on the verge of giving up on photographing diamond dust when I chanced upon a small pillar of diamond dust (“sun pillar”) between two ordinary farmhouses. It reminded me to never give up and to keep looking for beauty in the mundane because ordinary moments can turn extraordinary in the blink of an eye. I have very few images where the subject is right in the middle of the image, but this was one image that I felt worked. I had variations with the pillar of light on the side, but I kept coming back to this rendition of the image.
Serendipity #6
The second image was taken in a small snowstorm. It was all white, and I could barely make out the tree trunk and branches. I wasn’t sure if I liked the image initially, but it grew on me over time. This image taught me that the lack of colours can be just as powerful and encouraged me to be more adventurous in my experiments.
Remembrance #3
The third image was one of my first forays into long exposure. It was made on the first day of my first trip to the Hirosaki Castle in Aomori. Each image took 30 seconds to create, unlike most of my images, which were taken in less than a second, but I persisted in getting what I considered to be my favourite composition. My initial capture did not include the reflection of the branch. However, while inching left and right to create different variations of the image, I saw the reflection. This reminded me of the importance of not staying rooted to a spot and to exhaust all possibilities of a scene by “working the subject”.
Japan clearly had a big impact on you as a child, as you chose to make it your home and manage your career around that ambition. Tell us about the places that you are repeatedly drawn to? How easy is it for you to travel and to find enough time for your photography?
I’m repeatedly drawn to Central Hokkaido, where I first visited with my family when I was seven years old. Being there each time reminds me of the simplicity and purity of childhood. Central Hokkaido is a magical place – filled with mountains, forests, rolling fields, rivers and lakes. The distinct seasons and significant temperature differences between night and day give rise to some amazing natural phenomena, such as mist, frost and diamond dust. My desire to spend more time in Central Hokkaido led me to move to work in Japan and to eventually leave my finance job in 2013.
It’s very easy to travel in Japan, but I still have my day job, which restricts me a little. However, Covid-19 has brought my work online, so that was a silver lining for me.
I’m repeatedly drawn to Central Hokkaido, where I first visited with my family when I was seven years old. Being there each time reminds me of the simplicity and purity of childhood. Central Hokkaido is a magical place – filled with mountains, forests, rolling fields, rivers and lakes
Can you give readers a brief insight into your set up – from photographic equipment through processing to printing? Which parts of the workflow especially interest you, and where do you feel you can make the most difference to the end result?
I used to photograph with a Canon 5D m¥Mark IV. I now use a Panasonic Lumix G9 Pro with a Leica DG Vario-Elmarit lens. I have an Epson SureColor printer that handles up to 17 inch wide paper.
My images are single exposure images made in camera. The “layers”, the “texture”, that you see are created with what I call “nature’s toolkit” which includes snow, rain, and even insects.
I don’t do multiple exposure or composites but I follow and admire many artists who use these techniques. However, it’s just not what I do with my nature images because what gives me the thrill is looking for beauty in the mundane and also chancing upon amazing scenes.
I think the image has to be “right” at the outset. It’s not possible to save it using Photoshop. Rather, it would be a different exercise altogether. That said, without Photoshop, I cannot bring out the essence of the images because the camera simply cannot replicate the colours, the light and the emotion I felt when photographing.
What does nature and photography, offer you? Which for you now comes first – being out in nature, or chasing the next image or series of images? You’ve written about actively pursuing aspects of nature, but I wonder if it has perhaps taught you to slow down a little too.
To be honest, I am quite stressed when photographing nature because it’s constantly changing, and it’s so easy to miss capturing the moment you witnessed.
I keep going, however, because I feel I owe it to nature to eternalise these serendipitous encounters that I’ve been blessed with. It’s a challenge, but it’s also where the thrill lies.
I keep going, however, because I feel I owe it to nature to eternalise these serendipitous encounters that I’ve been blessed with. It’s a challenge, but it’s also where the thrill lies.
So, photographing nature hasn’t taught me to slow down, but it has taught me to “let go”. The difficulty of photographing nature is you can’t dictate whether it’ll be rain or shine, or when the insects will appear, or when the flower petals will fly. Of course, as I become more experienced in photographing nature, I also become better at predicting some of these natural phenomena. However, nature loves to throw us surprises. So, trying to predict what will happen with 100% accuracy or trying to capture every single moment is impossible. I can only do my best and leave the rest to chance.
Do you have any particular projects or ambitions for the future or themes that you would like to explore further? You have among other things begun to chase charcoal powder in ‘Winter’s Coda’?
I would like to visit the Arctic Circle and revisit Iceland. I would like to do a series on rain. I realised it’s missing from my collection while preparing for my lectures for Santa Fe Workshops.
I’ve actually chased charcoal powder for a while, but I was more diligent about it last year because I had fewer diamond dust sightings. I find that the charcoal powder scenes are harder to photograph because I find them more literal.
Is it important for you to feel that you are moving on and finding something new, even if you are still visiting the same places?
Yes, I think “moving on and finding something new” is important to me. Increasingly, I find it difficult to make images that add something “extra” or “special”, and fear that my images are becoming “more of the same”.
I think it’s good to photograph in both new and old places. Photographing in new places can be both intimidating and exhilarating due to the unknown. I realised I’m using similar techniques like “backlighting” and “reflection”, but very often, different subjects and places demand a new approach, a new way of seeing creatively.
I think it’s good to photograph in both new and old places. Photographing in new places can be both intimidating and exhilarating due to the unknown. I realised I’m using similar techniques like “backlighting” and “reflection”, but very often, different subjects and places demand a new approach, a new way of seeing creatively. I enjoy that challenge. When I return to the “old” places, I find myself bringing the influences of the new places and subjects back with me.
How excited are you to begin to tread in the footsteps of those who have inspired and educated you, giving talks and now a workshop for Santa Fe Workshops?
I feel very blessed and fortunate, and I don’t take this opportunity for granted. It was beyond my wildest dreams when Reid Callanan, the director of the Santa Fe Workshops, wrote to invite me to teach for them. It’s both an honour and a privilege. Nevada told me that teaching has made her a better photographer. I agree with her fully because I was already experiencing the benefits, even at the preparation stage, when I was putting the lecture materials together. For example, I realised I had not been photographing in rain much, and I had not been photographing “layers” recently.
If you had to take a break from all things photographic for a week, what would you end up doing? What other hobbies or interests do you have?
I have been doing that every now and then. I love to swim, do gyrotonic and gyrokinesis, watch TV series and simply do nothing! Sleep is underrated!
And finally, is there someone whose photography you enjoy – perhaps someone that we may not have come across - and whose work you think we should feature in a future issue? They can be amateur or professional. Please include a link to their website or social media, as appropriate.
I’m a fan of Huibo Hou, Sandra Bartocha and Samuel Feron’s work.
Huibo photographs in black and white. I’m amazed at how she “sculpts” light in her images, and I love how she brings out detail in her blacks, adding more dimension and complexity to her images.
Sandra is a master at intimate landscapes and creating emotionally evoking images. She is unafraid, not bound by rules.
I’m a huge fan of Samuel’s creative interpretations of nature. His collections are so creative and cohesive. They have redefined what constitutes “a series” for me. He is also a very thoughtful photographer, and I find myself quoting what he has said in interviews during my workshop.
Her solo exhibition ‘Transcendence: Awakening the Soul’ will be at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, Massachusetts from 12 December - 7 January 2024.
We’re also fans of Huibo Hou and Sandra Bartocha, and you can read our interviews and articles they have written.
During an excursion through the Taunus mountains, I passed through one of the many beech woods that cover the mountains. It was a cold winter's day, shrouded in a low layer of clouds that gave the landscape a deep purple colour, and the thin layer of snow that had fallen the night before was barely visible.
During an excursion through the Taunus mountains, I passed through one of the many beech woods that cover the mountains. It was a cold winter's day, shrouded in a low layer of clouds that gave the landscape a deep purple colour, and the thin layer of snow that had fallen the night before was barely visible.
In this somber and melancholy landscape, the silent beeches rose black as the skeletons of a cathedral in ruins. My boots splashed through the thick mixture of snow and mud on the road, and I heard the echoes of a few creaking noises that softly broke the silence around me. I looked towards the tops of the trees and saw that they were swaying restlessly, getting closer and then moving away.
I was apprehensive, remembering some scientific article that explained that trees are capable of communicating with each other and reacting collectively to threats and aggressions from their surroundings. At that moment, I thought that the beeches, like a herd alarmed by a threat, were shifting nervously, warning each other of the presence of a danger, which was none other than myself, a human being – the species responsible for centuries of mass destruction of the woods – who was entering their territory. Small and alone as I was, I was anguished at being seen as a danger by the trees.
My relationship with the Earth has changed substantially over the years – due, among other things, to my love for landscape photography –and since that excursion, my relationship with trees has changed even more.
Science has contributed knowledge about the sensitivity and intelligence of the different living beings on Earth. While in the 1970s, I was sceptical about the assumption that talking to plants helped them grow more healthily. Today, I talk to them while watering them, just in case.
So, when I go on an excursion to take photos, in order not to cause any fear among the trees – real or imaginary, who knows – as I thought I had done on that winter excursion when I enter a wood, I usually murmur a greeting, whistle in reply to birdsong and, from time to time, rest the palms of my hands on the rough bark of an oak or elm, on the smooth bark of a beech or poplar, or on the fascinating bark of a birch tree.
And like the trees, I have the patience necessary to enjoy their company. But, despite everything, I can't help returning from each excursion with a certain elegiac feeling.
In short, rites of peace, rites of concord between species. Perhaps Claude Lévi-Strauss was right when he wrote, “It is therefore better, instead of contrasting magic and science, to compare them as two parallel modes of acquiring knowledge.”
Once the trees have been warned that I come in peace, I walk quietly and with a certain reverence among these still, silent beings, and I try to capture their beauty, harmony and dignity with the camera as they appear before me. I cannot avoid a tendency to romanticise them, as suggested by Novalis when claiming that the world had to be romanticised, “giving the ordinary a superior meaning, the vulgar a mysterious aspect, the known the dignity of the unknown, the finite an infinite appearance.”
I like to go on these photographic excursions where the trees live, especially in autumn and winter, when the fog and snow take over; I enjoy the silence and the light, whether I am taking photos or not. And like the trees, I have the patience necessary to enjoy their company. But, despite everything, I can't help returning from each excursion with a certain elegiac feeling.
Snow and Fog
On days when the landscape is covered in mist and snow, I prefer to walk around the edges of the woods rather than go into them.
These border spaces constitute, in these circumstances, a dual, ambiguous, inert world. On the one hand, the veiled shadow of the forest huddled together like a fearful herd; on the other, the tide of imprecision that runs through the landscape, greatly simplified, now revealing and now hiding the shadows of solitary trees. We will never know if they were dissenters and heterodox trees expelled from the forest or hermits and anchorites that sought another life in those translucent spaces.
Silence
Walking aimlessly through these woods, sometimes, very occasionally, one has magical, almost metaphysical encounters with arcane totems: the still-upright trunk of a dead tree in a corner of a clearing, suspended in the middle of a gesture whose meaning we do not know
In protected natural spaces (protected? from what? As absurd as it may seem, from us), silence subtly permeates the remote depths of the woods, a silence that any creak, echo or murmur turns into an almost tangible substance.
Walking aimlessly through these woods, sometimes, very occasionally, one has magical, almost metaphysical encounters with arcane totems: the still-upright trunk of a dead tree in a corner of a clearing, suspended in the middle of a gesture whose meaning we do not know; a broken, twisted tree, embalmed with mosses and lichens, already oblivious to the life that continues around it; a tree in a shady corner lying on a mound of fallen leaves, as if waiting with infinite patience for the mourners at its funeral.
In those encounters, silence becomes a feeling that invades and overwhelms us.
Light
During the winter, the trees and woods plunge into a shadowy, distant, silent state. Not even the snowfalls – scarcer and scarcer each year – manage to give the forest a less gloomy appearance.
Sometimes, however, there are moments of revelation. The forest becomes the mirage of a fantastic Gothic cathedral. Beech, oak, birch and spruce trees become sharply outlined columns that ascend vertiginously to support with their branches – for a few moments vaulted ribs and arches – a dome of weightless, diffuse light.
In these brief moments, the light reverberates between the trees, and the passage of time is suspended in the midst of a serene silence. And in the most remote corners of the forest, there are glimpses of chapels that house sylvan idols, whose meaning we do not know.
Patience
From time to time, on excursions, I come across specimens of huge trees. Although their shapes are very different, depending on the type of tree, whether beech, oak, chestnut, pine or spruce, their bearing is truly impressive.
From time to time, on excursions, I come across specimens of huge trees. Although their shapes are very different, depending on the type of tree, whether beech, oak, chestnut, pine or spruce, their bearing is truly impressive. When I look at those very tall trees, which are venerable, old and enormous and have branches that give them the appearance of fantastic beings, I think of Hermann Hesse's words about patience, the passage of time and silence: all development, all the beauty of the world needs time, and is based on patience and silence.
Elegy
Sometimes I walk through landscapes traversed by a breath of despair, in which time and space swirl in phantasmagorical whirlwinds that are barely perceptible and must be the timeless gazes of the lost souls of the trees that inhabited those landscapes, agitated and in pain because of what those landscapes were, and are no longer.
One of the most compelling aspects of photography is the fact that every photograph is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional world, and yet there are photographers who are able to utilize techniques to trick the human eye into seeing two-dimensional objects in three dimensions. Even more fascinating is that through the use of shutter speed and aperture, a skilled photographer can also incorporate the fourth dimension - time. The subject of today’s essay, Klaus Axelsen, is a master at leveraging various tools in order to bring forth multi-dimensional visual delights in his photography. There are four tools and compositional aids in particular that Klaus uses to accomplish this task - form, shape, texture, and movement.
I was first introduced to Klaus’ photography when he submitted some stunning images to the Natural Landscape Photography Awards. I was so moved by his photography that I insisted that his work be represented in our perennial fine art photography books. Since then, I’ve spent some time looking closely at his images to try to determine what makes them so successful.
I first visited Mewslade Bay on the southwest corner of the Gower 28 years ago in 1995 whilst on a family holiday. I noted its great potential for me to photograph and planned to return as soon as possible with just my camera. I’d recently taken the big step of moving from 35mm slides to large format 5x4 black and white film photography and was keen to explore this new location.
I’ve been a keen photographer since the age of 16 when my parents bought me a Vöitlander Vito B to take on a school trip. It was with me throughout school and university. In 1973, I joined ILFORD in the production and engineering department. During my 13 years with ILFORD, my photography interest grew using first an OM1 and then an OM4 camera. My job had no direct involvement with photography but it was a real perk to be able to use the company’s products and darkrooms - for free! It was some 8 years after leaving ILFORD that I finally took the plunge into large format, and that was my preferred way of working for about the next 18 years when digital capture finally took over. Certain aspects of digital grabbed my attention much earlier in that I soon took to scanning my negatives, processing in Photoshop and printing with ink.
During the 10 years or so after my first visit to Mewslade, I returned with my 5x4 about 7 or 8 times, each for one day visits. The sandy bay is barely 500 yards wide at low tide, and the beach is inaccessible on either side of high tide. It is, therefore, important to plan a visit using tide tables otherwise, there’s potential disappointment. It’s best to be there during spring tides (large tidal coefficient) which is when the tide goes out the farthest and allows brief access to some small areas at the west of the bay that are otherwise inaccessible. Beware not to be stranded as the tide comes in!
During my early visits, I was preoccupied with photographing the vistas, views and scenes afforded by the beach with protruding rocks, the cliffs and the sea, which offered much variety and material to create compositions. The bay faces almost due south, so it is sunlit (when it shines!) throughout the day. As my photography progressed, I became increasingly drawn to what we now call “intimate landscapes”.
The bay faces almost due south, so it is sunlit (when it shines!) throughout the day. As my photography progressed, I became increasingly drawn to what we now call “intimate landscapes”.
I submitted a set of images to Roger Maile’s Creative Monochrome / PhotoArt International (remember that?), which included two images from Mewslade and much to my delight, they were published in issue 30 in Oct/Nov 2002. I’ll refer back to a coincidence relating to this a little later!
Digital capture finally caught up with me in 2010, and on my occasional visits to Mewslade gave me the option of colour or monochrome. I now enjoy producing images in both colour and monochrome and find that my work ends up about 50:50.
I’ve been a member of the RPS for several years. Around the start of 2020, I began to think of applying for an RPS distinction and with a local photography friend, we arranged to attend a 1:1 review day where we could discuss our ideas and candidates for consideration. I’d thought carefully about whether to try for an LRPS but eventually realised that I’d prefer to focus on my particular area of photographic interest, landscape, which starts at the ARPS level. Shortly before the review day, COVID arrived, and the review was cancelled, putting paid to any ambition I’d had. My intention was to take to the review a set of monochrome landscape prints which I’d produced over a long period of time, all of which were vistas and panoramas, and all were taken from easily accessible locations, none requiring any strenuous hiking or overnight camping. I wanted to illustrate what is “there for all to see”.
Almost two years later, I arranged for an RPS 1:1 advisory session with Tony Worobiec, a member of the RPS Landscape Panel. This took place over Zoom in early May 2022 and was very helpful and instructive.
In short, I was on the right track but still had some way to go. Towards the end of the session, I mentioned that I did have an alternative panel of monochrome prints, but all of the intimate landscapes from just one location, Mewslade Bay. Seeing this alternative, there was a very enthusiastic response, which I was encouraged to pursue.
Tony made several suggestions about how I could tackle some of the weaknesses that he felt needed addressing before I submitted my panel for assessment. These included ensuring that my 150 word “Statement of Intent” closely supported my 15 image panel, and vice versa. Tony provided some very positive advice about how the panel layout could be improved and some suggestions that some of the images weren’t quite up to the quality of the rest. In short, I was on the right track but still had some way to go. Towards the end of the session, I mentioned that I did have an alternative panel of monochrome prints, but all of the intimate landscapes from just one location, Mewslade Bay. Seeing this alternative, there was a very enthusiastic response, which I was encouraged to pursue.
At this point, I decided to make one further trip to Mewslade to see if I could find a few more images to fill a couple of areas that I wanted to improve. I’m so pleased that I made that trip, as it resulted in my finding a few more candidate images.
I then embarked on some further refinements to improve the balance and cohesion of my panel, which also entailed making a couple of substitutes from my last trip as well as some rearrangements. And this became my submission. I printed my 15 monochrome images and mounted them on 500x400mm board, prepared my final Statement of Intent and a layout print of how the prints are to be displayed on assessment day. Whilst most of the 15 images were taken digitally in the last few years, one image was taken on 5x4 film about 25 years ago.
I personally delivered the whole package to the RPS in Bristol, preferring not to entrust my precious work to anyone else. This was done on 20th July 2022, just two days before I had knee replacement surgery. I had been working to a deadline! The assessment was scheduled for 14th September.
In addition to the delivery of the prints, it is a requirement to also provide the 15 images as digital files for the assessment panel to review personally in advance of the actual “in hand” assessment.
It seems to be something that arises out of the repeating cycles of assembling and adjusting rather than a specific definable objective. I did find it very helpful to regularly stand well back from each candidate panel arrangement to the point where the individual images took a back seat to the overall impression that the arrangement made.
I’ve tried hard to put into words how cohesion and balance work and have found it almost impossible. It seems to be something that arises out of the repeating cycles of assembling and adjusting rather than a specific definable objective. I did find it very helpful to regularly stand well back from each candidate panel arrangement to the point where the individual images took a back seat to the overall impression that the arrangement made.
I attended the assessment day on Zoom. It was somewhat nerve-wracking to observe my work being discussed by the five highly regarded assessors. Joe Cornish chaired the assessment with Tony Worobiec, Tim Rudman, Paul Mitchell and Alex Nail. They had reviewed the digital images beforehand. A particularly positive comment was how the prints now seen in hand and examined carefully were far more satisfying than the first impressions made by viewing the digital versions on screen. And members expressed how good it was to see a panel of intimate landscapes printed in monochrome.
The coincidence referred to earlier is that in the issue of Creative Monochrome where there were 2 Mewslade and 7 other of my monochrome landscape images, there were also two articles written by my ARPS assessors Tony Worobiec and Tim Rudman! I know neither of them.
I’m occasionally asked what it means to have been awarded an ARPS. I suspect that I feel, like most who receive an award, that it is an acknowledgement from and recognition by fellow photographers for having achieved a significantly high level of competence and vision. Something to be very proud of.
Mewslade Bay: “Statement of Intent”
Over the course of 25 years, I’ve been taking photographs at Mewslade Bay on The Gower peninsula and at every visit, I find fresh interpretations and compositions.
For two hours, on either side of high tide, this small 500 metre wide bay is completely submerged. When the tide recedes, its varied and fascinating underwater landscape is revealed around the base of the steep cliffs. Remarkable rock sculptures and textured rocks are decorated with numerous patches of mussels and barnacles sitting above the few small rock pools and streams across the sand. The only significant landscape variable at this inspiring location is the light; the rocks and beach hardly change.
My panel is intended to show the fascinating variety of inspiring, intimate landscapes created by the sea along this short stretch of coast. Presenting Mewslade’s landscape in monochrome brings focus to the shapes, patterns and textures available for the creation of images.
RPS Special Interest Group
The Landscape Special Interest Group is dedicated to encouraging landscape photography and advancing the skills of its practitioners. Since its launch in 2016, the group has welcomed photographers of all levels, from beginners to experts, and offers a range of events, publications, and online platforms for members to share their work and collaborate with others. Find out more on their website.
Some of my favourite images are those that require me to spend some real time and effort understanding what I’m looking at. Having made me stop and stare, they don’t always offer up any clear answers, containing something tantalisingly close to reality but leaving so much open to interpretation and imagination. Photographs that grab me with something as simple as colours and shapes and then invite me to look closer.
Chris Harrison is a friend and a fellow Brighton based photographer. In June 2022, I exhibited some of his work at my gallery, and over the course of a month, I was lucky to be able to watch hundreds of people look at this picture and have broadly the same reaction as I did when I first saw it. They stop and look, often captured by the broad sweeps of red, blue and grey, and then they step a little closer and try to find something that gives a clue as to what they are seeing. Is it a painting or a photograph? Is it a single image or some sort of collage? Trying to unlock this puzzle meant that people often spent more time with this picture than many others, enjoying the questions it asked and the answers they found.
The photograph (a single image) is the view through a very damp and smeary window on the top of a double decker bus. I think anyone who has spent time on a fuggy bus journey on a wet winter day can relate to the condensation dripping down the windows and the blurry view of slow traffic and wet people scurrying around below. Chris describes this as a photograph taken at the end of a long day, which he felt had yielded nothing of any interest, and I think it’s easy to see some of that frustration in the picture. As viewers, we are trapped on the bus, too, the details of the view blurred and hidden around the edges. We want to see more, but we can’t.
As summer is ending and fall will be making its annual appearance soon, I can’t help but wonder what kind of scenery it will display. When I first moved to Utah from Panama in 2012, I took it for granted that each year would summon a vibrant and colourful show as the maples, oaks, and aspens would explode with dazzling hues of red, yellow, and orange. Golden leaves would carpet the forest floor. The sunlight would turn soft and silver as it filtered through grey clouds. The air would turn crisp, clean, and cool.
I enjoy experiencing and photographing every season, as each one possesses its own kind of unique beauty and essence—the naked trees and hushed quiet of winter; the radiant greens, rain showers, and buds of spring; the fields of wildflowers and thawing alpine lakes of summer—but over the years I have come to look forward to autumn the most. Perhaps it is because I was born in the middle of fall. However, in recent years, it has become less and less predictable as to what each autumn season will bring.
2020 was the driest and hottest fall season I have ever experienced. In fact, it didn’t feel like fall at all. The signature colours were absent, as trees dropped their leaves while still green, a survival tactic they employ to decrease their surface area when subject to too much sunlight and heat. This is done to prevent perspiring too much moisture and to be able to retain enough water to survive winter. However, if they cannot photosynthesise for sufficient time before going dormant for the long winter, they may not have enough glucose to make it until spring. But just like us, trees will die of thirst much sooner than hunger. (Here's an article on the science of autumn/fall colour/color - Tim)
Between travels, we’re catching up with US photographer Joseph Rossbach, who has a love of the outdoors and photography that began in his school days. He made the decision to commit to nature photography relatively early, and we talk about how he has made a career of it. He’s clearly happiest in the field and has estimated that he spends half his year travelling across the US. Joe still has his film cameras and occasionally uses them. In between the application and patience that he learned through film photography is applied to his digital work, whether open landscapes or complex woodland.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up and what your early interests were?
I grew up along the Chesapeake Bay in a somewhat rural area in Maryland and come from a tight knit family. I was raised by my stay at home Mom and Dad and have both a younger sister and a brother. Growing up through the 8’s, life was filled with playing outside, hiking, swimming in the bay, fishing and all kinds of outdoor pursuits. No computers, video games or cell phones during my childhood, which I am very thankful for. Not having those kinds of distractions allowed for lots of time with friends and family, and lots of adventures in the woods and through the neighborhood.
You went into photography straight out of high school. Did anything in particular prompt your choice of career and how hard was it to make it work financially?
That's true. When I graduated High School, I already had a love of photography and knew that I wanted to have some kind of a career in the medium. Art school is something I considered, but most of the photographic programs available were aimed towards commercial photography, such as glamour, portrait, etc. I knew I wanted to pursue outdoor photography and frankly, it seemed like it would be a waste of money at the time. So, I took jobs in photography freelancing for years. I learned a lot about the business of photography over those many years, and it also taught me about deadlines and responsibility. I made just enough money all those years to put it right back into travel, and enough ramen noodles to keep me fed.
‘Flux’ is the first exhibition by Geraint Evans. It aims to raise funds for the Leeds Hospital Charity, the fundraising arm of the Leeds Cancer Centre. 35% of any sales will go to this very worthy cause, providing specialist medical equipment, research and development and patient ‘home comforts’ to patients in Bexley Wing, St James’s University Hospital.
November 2023 – January 2024 St James's University Hospital, Beckett Street, Leeds, LS9 7TF
Woodland Wonder
Well, firstly, this is a collection of images from the woodlands of West and North Yorkshire.
West and North Yorkshire are not well endowed with woodland. The region is best known for its moors, such as Ilkley, gritstone landscapes as at Brimham, and rivers: the Wharfe, Aire and Nidd. However, nestled in the steep-sided valleys created by those rivers that begin life in the limestone Yorkshire Dales to the west and which then cut through the overlying gritstone, are hidden wooded areas.
These are not the easiest woods to access. They occupy steeply sloping valley sides with few paths, and they are certainly chaotic. They have none of the order we often see in woodland photographs. Although humans have, of course, exploited these woods over centuries, their use has been largely confined to quarrying the grit that lies beneath rather than felling the trees, so these locations are home to many old specimens: oak, beech, the blighted ash and of course the ubiquitous birch, interspersed with hawthorn and many gorgeous examples of rowan.
I’m sure we have all read about and watched many vlogs telling us how to simplify woodland images, telling us you can only take woodland photographs in the mist - but for me, while a bit of mist is lovely, it is composing the relationships of elements in a woodland scene that is so rewarding. While I like a lone tree or a winding path as much as the next person, that’s a very rare sight in the woods of Yorkshire. Therefore, what I have always sought to do is make images that express the complex and changing forms, patterns, textures and colours of these wooded areas. What inspires and engages me is the interrelationship between these elements.
All the photographs in the exhibition are taken in these woods. All are within 30 minutes’ drive of my home on the edge of Leeds.
I seriously began attempting to photograph these woods on my walks with my first digital camera in 2014. But it was only when I acquired a Hasselblad 501c with its 6x6 format and discovered the colours I was getting from using Kodax Porta and Fujifilm Provia film that I found what I had been looking for. I have a digital camera and love using it, but there was something about the images I was getting back, once developed, and then digitally worked on in Lightroom, that I loved, and for me, evoked what I had seen, experienced and felt in the woods.
The images themselves were the result of spending hours in a few woodland settings. Both as a child and then an adult, I have always spent time in the woods. It was this love of woods, the change to my photography that I found with the Hasselblad and the slow realisation that I had a body of work that led me to think that I could perhaps go forward and submit for a Royal Photographic Society Associate Fellowship. This I successfully did in May 2021, the panel being chaired by none other than a certain Mr Joe Cornish.
Cancer, and comfort
So why an exhibition in a Leeds hospital for the Leeds Hospital Charity? Well, not long after that RPS submission, at the end of May 2021, I developed a sore throat - but as you do, and as COVID was all around, I did nothing for a for a few days. Then, on closer examination with a head torch, I discovered not a sore throat but a very large and angry red lump where my left tonsil should have been. All those adverts and advice are right - check yourself!
There followed an amazing and bewilderingly rapid series of biopsies, scans and meetings, the upshot of which was a diagnosis of stage 4 cancer in my tonsil, neck and, unfortunately, a further spread to an area in my hip bone. Shockingly, the prognosis was not good. At one point, my partner and were informed that palliative treatment was the only option, without which I would probably have about a year. I’ll not bore you with the ins and outs of what happened next and of the treatment, suffice to say that after a course of chemotherapy followed by courses of radiotherapy to throat, neck and hip, I had this June 2023, my one year all clear scan, much to the surprise of all.
The NHS care, support, treatment and ongoing aftercare have been overwhelming. Across every department and every level, from GPs, community nurses, support teams, aftercare teams, dental, chemo and radiotherapy staff to the Oncology consultants, the level of professionalism and patient care blew me and my partner away.
Throughout treatment, at least when I wasn’t laid out with a dose of chemo or during the hardest radiotherapy treatment time, supported by my wonderful partner, I was out in those same woods. I recall, in particular, a day in November near the end of my chemo, just standing in the woods, completely soaked, yet feeling that there was nowhere else I’d rather be. The colours were hanging on in the last of the leaves, and the rain was that sort, so fine it formed almost a mist. Being immersed in the outdoors in the landscape gave me a sense of calm, a pool of calm in a sea of anxiety. A moment, glade-like, of happiness, surrounded by complex dark undergrowth. What I hope my images speak of is that calm, that glade. The connection with the landscape that I felt then in a fog of chemo, in a mist of rain.
The photographs also speak, I hope, of other things I felt during that time. For me, at least, the images portray the way in which woods change, they flux over the seasons and their complexity, their interwovenness in a way that made me think about myself. The changes I was going through, which so many of us will experience, and the complex nature of our bodies.
Every visit to the Bexley Wing of St James Hospital (and there were many, including 35 days straight with Christmas off for just the throat and neck radiotherapy) also meant one bright, uplifting experience each time, which was to walk through the foyer of the wing, the exhibition space. The foyer space is very large and white and very bright. Each visit meant passing the uplifting works of art that are hung there, pausing to look, see and soak up some of the light. What gave me the push to think an exhibition might be possible was seeing the abstract paintings of someone I knew, someone I had not seen for years but who, in a former life I’d stood on street corners with, flogging a certain left wing paper every Saturday, and who had also gone through a very similar experience to me.
Seeing Paul’s work, experiencing the joy of walking through the foyer, along with having a body of work that had continued to sustain me during a tough time led me to take the plunge and speak to St James about a possible exhibition, with the aim of hopefully giving something back for all the care, support, treatment - and above all, my life - by supporting the Leeds Hospital Charity.
Selecting images, having the right level of scan and size, and choosing paper and frames have all been a lot to learn, but if some images were to sell, then it would be for a very worthy cause.
Venue and directions
Bexley Wing, St James's University Hospital, Beckett Street, Leeds, LS9 7TF
Artists are often consumed by their work, devoted to their craft and isolated to the point of appearing selfish beings. As a child, I have always been fascinated by one's dedication to the arts, and as an adult, it is the way I approach not only my work but also my life. Notoriously, many artists didn't invest much time cultivating relationships, not even the closest ones, furthering the perception of being selfish. Why is that? Is it the unwillingness to spend time doing other things besides their art? Is it because the search for inspiration requires a certain lifestyle? Or, maybe, is it because their selfishness is difficult to understand for those who aren't like them?
Alberto, surprised about my news, asked how I was planning to turn my passion for photography into a profession. As I initiated verbalising my response, I paused, gazed away and said something I wasn't expecting to say, something I wouldn't have shared so easily with others. "It takes selfishness", I said.
A rare meeting
My parent's house is located on top of an isolated hill with only another house in its vicinity. Alberto's parents live in that house, but despite him being my neighbour, I hardly saw him growing up. From the few occasions I happened to spend time with him, I knew he was a clever person with a bright future. Out of mutual respect, we always said that we should meet up, but we never really did, except for one time, during a time of changes in our lives, when we were both 28 years old. Coincidentally, we had both gone back to our hometown on the Samnite Apennines to visit our parents during the summer. Our paths crossed one morning along the unpaved road leading uphill, and after a quick chat, we decided to meet in a café after lunch.
Alberto had just passed a state exam and was set to start a new job as a mathematician for the Italian national railway company and to move to a new city. As it happens, I quit my animation career the previous year to try to make a living as a travel and landscape photographer and moved from northern England to France, following a career change from my (French) girlfriend.
Alberto, surprised about my news, asked how I was planning to turn my passion for photography into a profession. As I initiated verbalising my response, I paused, gazed away and said something I wasn't expecting to say, something I wouldn't have shared so easily with others. "It takes selfishness", I said. Even more surprised, he wanted to know what I meant by that.
In my previous article, “Landscape Photography - Solitude or Isolation?” (On Landscape Issue 280), I presented a view that there is a tangible difference between solitude and isolation in the context of landscape and nature photography. I suggested that there are times when being alone in nature is not always a positive experience, particularly for those people who suffer from mental health issues such as anxiety or depression.
I have given this topic further thought both during and after a recent trip to visit a very close friend, Klaus, in Germany. We spent a whole week together, spending hours every day out in the field, sometimes creating images while standing a few yards apart, other times in the same general area but not within sight of each other. Reflecting on that time, I have recognised and appreciated just how positive and valuable the experience was.
My overall feeling is that I experienced a mix of solitude and socialisation, both positive from my perspective. Each of us could choose to spend time alone, taking ourselves away to search for a composition without any input or influence from the other.
My overall feeling is that I experienced a mix of solitude and socialisation, both positive from my perspective. Each of us could choose to spend time alone, taking ourselves away to search for a composition without any input or influence from the other. Equally, we could choose to spend time together working in the same area, enjoying the environment, sharing some friendly banter, and providing each other with valuable and objective feedback on composition, technique, and individual creativity.
During the week, I did not experience one moment of isolation. I could choose to be on my own, to have periods of quiet solitude and reflection, or I could choose to spend time in the company of my friend. Even in those times, I still experienced a sense of solitude when working on a specific image. Composing the image, considering the technical requirements, and then finally the act of reviewing the image is a complete process that stimulates solitude, that feeling of timelessness when you are completely absorbed in your practice and when the world outside of your own mind is temporarily switched off and forgotten. Between images, I benefitted greatly from the social aspects of practising my photography alongside a special friend, a like-minded person with aligned values about nature, the environment, and our approach to photography. The practice of seeking critical feedback from someone you respect is incredibly valuable and rewarding, and in my case only served to stimulate my creativity and willingness to adopt techniques that previously I might have been closed to.
Spending time practising photography with another person can simply represent an act of socialisation. However, it can also mean so much more. It can lead to a longer-term collaboration with a much deeper and more rewarding relationship. Sharing your creative process, your ideas, and your images and offering critical feedback are all advantageous but rely upon a great deal of trust. Trust that the feedback you offer and that which you receive is given with the best of intent and will result in learning and insight rather than a loss of confidence. In my experience, a high level of trust is needed for a collaborative relationship to work. Therefore, it is very important to ensure your values and motives are aligned.
Over time, a collaboration can grow beyond the simple act of spending time together in the field. My friendship with Klaus started when we met at a workshop in Torridon in 2019, and the friendship has grown since then but also has developed into a photographic collaboration. In addition to meeting up to take photographs or attend workshops together, we have a regular video call where we take the opportunity to review and critique each other’s images, shared in advance. .
I know that there will always be days when that feeling of isolation will visit me and will fill me with sadness, anxiety, and possibly temporary depression. That is simply the way it is, and the challenge is to manage and minimise those occasions in whatever way possible.
I personally have found this practice incredibly rewarding, receiving feedback which often has resulted in minor changes which have improved the photograph. We know the feedback is given with good intent, and the trust between us means that we can offer opinions without fear of upset. Equally, we both know we can agree to disagree.
In conclusion, I stand by my assertion that the solitary practice of photography is not always beneficial to our wellbeing, and that there are some significant benefits to be gained from spending time with other photographers in the field or in the wider aspects of photography. I know that there will always be days when that feeling of isolation will visit me and will fill me with sadness, anxiety, and possibly temporary depression. That is simply the way it is, and the challenge is to manage and minimise those occasions in whatever way possible. For me personally, I will look for more opportunities to spend time out in the field with others, not at the expense of seeking solitude, but as an antidote to isolation, and for the undoubted benefits of friendship, support, and personal development.
I began my photography journey nearly 30 years ago, inspired by the work of Ansel Adams and my love for the deserts of the American Southwest. Over the years, my photography has continuously evolved, transitioning from film to digital and, years later, back to film, from black and white photography to colour, and finally to large format photography with both colour and black and white film, ultimately producing Silver Gelatin prints in the darkroom. In recent years, when photographing in colour, I find myself avoiding grand landscapes with skies and instead focusing more on capturing patterns, colours, and trees.
Art possesses the ability to evoke emotions that often cannot be expressed in words. Photography, in particular, freezes a moment in time with the hope of conveying the photographer's intended emotions to the viewer. One photographer who exemplifies mastery in this art is Christopher Burkett, who has skillfully and patiently been creating photographs for many decades. Often referred to as the colour Ansel Adams of the modern world, Burkett meticulously prints all his work on Cibachrome photographic paper made from 8x10 colour transparencies.
His artistic vision, love of natural beauty, and remarkable technical craftsmanship combine to express the grace, light, and beauty of the natural world. A quote from the artist's own statement captures this essence perfectly: “The miracle of life unfolds before our eyes and is seen in the tapestry of creation. All of our world, each living cell, every stone and drop of water, even the air and light around us, reflects and mirrors the glory and presence of the Creator and calls us to respond with wonder and praise.”
My introduction to Burkett's body of work occurred at a gallery in the town of Carmel-by-the-Sea in Northern California. Viewing his photos in person is a must. Having exclusively used a large format camera for the past 10 years, I can truly appreciate the patience and skills involved in his photographs. If you have ever made an exposure in the woodland using a large format camera, you understand that it often requires an exposure time ranging from four to forty seconds! This challenge is further compounded by the movement of leaves caused by the slightest breeze. A woodland scene can genuinely test one's patience and skills.
Welcome to our 4x4 feature, which is a set of four mini landscape photography portfolios which has been submitted for publishing. Each portfolio consists of four images related in some way. Whether that's location, a project, a theme or a story.
The natural beauty of Dumfries and Galloway, I always find myself with my camera in hand, ready to get the next shot. With the weather constantly changing, it allows for dramatic lighting, which always helps to add extra drama to the photograph. The scale of the vast landscapes is always stunning and deeply inspiring, I find myself taking a moment to reflect and take in the views around me.
I enjoy exploring Dumfries and Galloway as the scenery inspires me to get outdoors and appreciate the natural environment. This series of images shows how quickly the weather changes and the natural beauty that the country has to offer.
I have read that there is such a technique called ICM Photography, wherever you turn your camera to slow shutter speed. The camera movement mimics that of a moving subject to keep the subject sharp and the background blurred.
I come from a Photography background and I believe this type of photography brings out the expressionist painter in all of us. I think that it is important in ICM Photography that how you want to express yourself with your camera.
A four-mile sand spit is the defining feature of a unique park on the Pacific coast at Manzanita, Oregon. Nehalem Bay State Park is a place of many wonders, where the sand spit separates the ocean on one side from the bay on the other. The bay has been formed by the confluence of the beautiful Nehalem River with the Pacific. For a number of years, it has been a favourite place of mine for walking, photographing and, in general, contemplating the wonders of the natural world.
At low tide on the bay side, one can often see bits of seagrass, and I have been fascinated by the swirling patterns created by the receding tides, forming one of a kind designs while seeming to freeze the grasses in motion—that is, until the tide comes in again. For me, these ‘artistic’ grass patterns prove that Nature really is the consummate artist. The rest of us merely copy.
I’ve talked previously about a schism in landscape photography between the ‘traditional’ and the ‘contemporary’. The difference between the search for the beautiful and wild and the pseudo-documentary or post-modern approach which seems to preclude the concept of beauty.
This reductive approach to the range of photography out there has, fortunately, become a little less clear over the last decade. There are many people creating beautiful, traditional landscape photographs with a project-based approach, philosophy or story (etc.), and there are many contemporary photographers who have begun to embrace beauty (or should I say, these photographers are beginning to get recognition where previously they may have not).
Unfortunately, finding photographers that ‘bridge the divide’ is often difficult, and potential viewers on either side of that divide quite often have a look 'over the wall' and quickly retreat once their preconceptions are confirmed.
This is why I was really pleased to discover Hoxton Mini Press’ “This Pleasant Land”. Rosalind Jana, the books author, has chosen a range of photographers that despite living on the contemporary side of the 'wall', create work that is a damn sight more accessible than a lot of contemporary landscape photography (that typically recycles New Topographics ad infinitum or tends more toward social documentary and the alt-architectural).
The work ranges from the more overtly beautiful, classical works from the likes of Paul Hart, Nicholas J R White and Harry Cory Wright to the classically contemporary social landscapes of Simon Roberts and Melanie Friend and the more post-modern landscapes of Jem Southam and Robert Darch to the experimental landscapes of Sarah Pickering and Miriam Nabarro.
But the joy of the book isn’t in further pigeonholing content, it is from absorbing the content with an open mind and discovering for yourself what makes the work what it is. Like most compilations, you probably won’t like all the work within, but if you’ve an open mind, I’m sure you’ll appreciate quite a lot of it, and perhaps it might provide some germ of inspiration for your own work.
So what have I taken from the book? I’ll pick out six photographers that made me think more about the sort of work I want to create.
Robin Friend - Bastard Countryside
Robin’s photographs of the collision of the man made and the natural and the recalamtion of human detritus, are beguiling to me. The images are ugly beautiful. They initially repulse (slightly), especially if you have a classic landscape photographer's desire for beauty. But upon examining them, they grow on you. Perhaps I don’t want to create similar work but I love the upending of expectation and the desire to create strong and compelling compositions from difficult subjects.
The accident of the random place where childhood takes place has an indelible imprint on one’s relationship with one’s surroundings. In my case, building microcosms in the humid grass, playing hide-and-seek by the crags, climbing trees in the woods and jumping into the cold beck are the childhood experiences that helped to build a playful relationship with the natural environment. Student and then adult life led to cities and to decades of living abroad in a dry Mediterranean climate where land had no mystery and seemed to be nothing but property. Memories of the lost childhood experiences crept into dreams, and a growing melancholic nostalgia demanded attention.
Decades ago, while showing my young son a Japanese children’s picture book of a man’s journey through landscapes of Europe1,
Shanshui Hua (山水画) is an ancient (11th Century) style of traditional Chinese landscape painting that depicts natural scenes, including mountains, water and waterfalls.
the possibility of telling the story of a puzzling search for harmony began to reactivate my creativity and photographic practice. The possibility of creating a scroll-like photographic labyrinth, ‘an inward journey that explores the outside world,’2 began to take shape and organise my research.
Shanshui Hua (山水画) is an ancient (11th Century) style of traditional Chinese landscape painting that depicts natural scenes, including mountains, water and waterfalls. Reading these and similar Japanese and Korean landscapes, the eye is taken out of Western perspective and into a two-dimensional space that moves through time as the journey unravels vertically and horizontally along symbolic and suggestive paths, bridges, rocks and trees in the visually poetic journey through the landscape. The ancient Shanshui artists explored the relationship between urban life and people’s yearning for nature3.
They developed a code of representation that included winding Paths that lead to a Threshold and then a Heart or focal point that defines the meaning of the painting. The rhythmic movement of lines used in calligraphy and ink painting developed into innovative techniques for producing multiple perspectives, which the most renowned Shanshui artist, Guo Xi, called ‘the angle of totality’. This allegorical style of painting allowed the artists to relate mood to the natural scenes: light and dark, mist and vapours, and so create feelings of lightness, sadness or tranquillity4.
Early Spring, painted by Northern Song dynasty artist Guo Xi (c.1020 – c. 1090 AD)
I recently returned back to live in the north of England. The hills and valleys have a rich history covered by woodland moss. In the 8th Century, the English monk and historian, The Venerable Bede, called this last British Celtic kingdom to fall to the Angles Silva Elmete: The Forest of Elmet. In his collaboration with the photographer Fay Godwin, the poet Ted Hughes described this area of the Calder Valley, west of Halifax, as ‘an uninhabitable wilderness’ before it became the ‘hardest worked river in England’ in the introduction to Remains of Elmet5. The combination of poetry and photography tells stories that take the reader to wormholes through the history and geography of the area.,
I recently returned back to live in the north of England. The hills and valleys have a rich history covered by woodland moss. In the 8th Century, the English monk and historian, The Venerable Bede, called this last British Celtic kingdom to fall to the Angles Silva Elmete: The Forest of Elmet.
310 million years ago, the water from the tops of the soggy Pennine hills cut deep, ebbing and flowing valleys through the grit and sandstone and down to the valley of the River Calder. Before the railways and canals were built, these streams powered the early industrial age, and the paths beside them connected communities. Now, the moss-covered ruins of derelict mills and overgrown pack horse trails along the valleys tell what ‘remains’ of this history. These photographs were taken in this wild woodland area along the flowing water through the seasons with Shanshui paintings in mind.
Cameras are Time Machines that can transport one back to the emotions of when the frame was taken. However, the intentional use of visual references, composition and allegory takes one on quite another journey that connects past and present cultures through shared visual language. Ink on silk calligraphy gave no room for error, but photography allows control of intention through a process of reduction. Some of the process is about what is intended, but much more is about what is not. The photographic process involves a conceptual but intuitive framing, distancing and focusing that reduces the real field of perception to a very different composed rectangle. The reduction eliminates unwanted figures and highlights those desired.
The rangefinder facilitates peripheral vision and multiple, slightly different, frames of the same scene, and the depth of field control allows for evocative suggestion of elements similar to ‘the angle of totality’ – then the editing identifies the overly composed and formal; the picturesque or bucolic; the romantic and the plain boring - or the interestingly banal that fits the intention. A sense of timelessness is one of the intentions that determines this reduction. Completely natural scenes are of interest, where only trees, trails, thresholds, rivers and stones appear - Signs of modern life are not.
Cultivating paradox through the gentle juxtaposition of elements generates the same childhood pleasure as described above: The flow of water over the stillness of stone the movement of leaves in the wind. The Daoist juxtaposition of the enduring and the ephemeral6 is mirrored by the photographic instant - and a lifetime.
The flow of water over the stillness of stone the movement of leaves in the wind. The Daoist juxtaposition of the enduring and the ephemeral6 is mirrored by the photographic instant - and a lifetime.
Why? Who is this for? The idea that an artistic expression of harmony was an allegory for reinforcing the dominant social foundations is still a compelling argument. Landscape art has long been associated with power and order, especially in 11th Century dynastic China. My early artwork from the mid-1980’s, created during my ecological awakening, addressed a feeling of helpless alienation. However, at this moment of environmental crisis, creating lyrically evocative narratives that connect us to our landscape is an act of resistance. This way of perceiving the natural world has also become a personal way of building a playful relationship with the landscape that addresses memory, nostalgia, history, landscape, place, storytelling and the passing of time.
References
Anno, M. (1997) ‘Anno’s journey’ Penguin Publishing Group
Quote taken from Ward, P. (2021) ‘The archive of Bernard Taylor’ Understory Books
I first chatted with Kristel back in 2018 when she launched her first book, VARIATIONS WITH TREES. What struck me was her dedication and her vision for her landscape photography. She said in the interview, "Photography is now more than just a passion for me; it's a way of living and the best way to express myself more creatively."
From doing many interviews, I know the painstaking hours that must be spent researching subjects, being out in the landscape in all weathers with the camera, post processing and compiling photographs for the book. Her way of life has obviously enabled her to creatively tell the intimate story of "The River Allier" (The lifeblood of the Auvergne landscape, stretching 425 km from South to North in the heart of France).
She has collaborated with the pianist Fabrizio Paterlini, who wrote an album inspired by the images and ideas from Kristel's book (to be released soon!). A great example of how music and photographs can work together to create great pieces of creative output.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, what your early interests were, and what you went on to do?
I spent my childhood in the Netherlands, close to the serene forests and white dunes. Although the area was beautiful, I didn't always appreciate the natural wonders around me, especially as my friends would often go to the beach while my family took us on vacation in the Italian Dolomites. My father loved long hikes, and so we spent our holidays at higher altitudes, carrying enough supplies in our backpacks for whole-day treks. On weekends and after school, I often found myself on the tennis courts. This changed rapidly when I moved to Amsterdam and started a career in the corporate world. It made me travel a lot, professionally and privately. My passion for photography started in Asia, where I fell in love with the cultures and captured intimate scenes of locals and their colourful surroundings.
Eventually, I moved to Auvergne, in central France, where I was able to reconnect with the mountains and forests that had captivated me during my youth. It was then that I truly realised just how precious those memories and experiences were from my childhood.
At what point did photography become more than a hobby? Did anything in particular prompt this?
My fortieth year proved to be a turning point in my life. I was on the verge of burning out, so I decided to step off the corporate treadmill to focus on my photography.
Although I am primarily self-taught in photography, I enrolled in various masterclasses and evening courses at the Amsterdam Photo Academy. After moving to France, I made photography my primary focus and started organising my own workshops. My client base quickly expanded beyond France to the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, and even the USA. Soon, I received my first assignments and joined Nordic Vision Fotoreizen, the Dutch photo travel company. At that time and still now, I am the only woman among a team of eleven photographers (https://fotoreizen.net/team). Gender inequality is still quite common in the (nature) photography industry. However, I am pleased to see more women entering the professional world, although progress remains slow in all aspects. Photography has become my creative way of life, and although my income is much lower, I have no regrets about the decision to turn my life around.
You worked as a communication consultant for a pharmaceutical company before you moved to being a full-time landscape photographer. How did you manage the transition?
I consider myself fortunate that my employer allowed me to work independently during a transition period to finalise my projects in France. This gradual approach allowed me to gradually say farewell to the corporate world and welcome my new life. When my contract ended, I had a brief moment of doubt, wondering if I had made the right choice. However, as I focused more on my photography, my concerns faded away, and I was able to embrace a new way of living, one that was more creative and fulfilling.
The series LS XII, shot in the Puna plateau between Argentina and Bolivia, came together as many things in life: a compromise. I use a 4x4 to travel around; while on a project, I live in it to be able to stay as close as possible to what I want to explore and photograph. It’s a mandatory thing to be able to move in deserts and also have a safe place to sleep, cook and live. Originally, I wanted to follow up the series I shot in 2017 in the States, using a rented one, but to my great surprise, they didn’t let me send my 4x4 from Europe to the States. But they said, ‘You can ship it to Uruguay or Argentina, no problem’. Three days later, I came back to the broker with a yes but without a plan.
I had a few people talking to me about ‘some mountains in the north of Argentina’, but my idea of it was something like the Peruvian rainbow mountain, a limited place with tourists around. Little did I know I was going to discover an area of roughly half a million square km, the size of France for quick comparison, of an altitude desert between 3200 and 5000+ meters above sea level. But I also discovered it doesn’t have the same road network as France, I discovered how intensely hot the sun is at that altitude, how cold it could get at night, and how dry, windy, sandy, dusty, salty and exhausting conditions could be; and how remote places are.
Iceland and Morocco are the other places I shot in which I really felt cut off from the world, but there’s no comparison with the Puna. It took me a total of 6 months, divided into three trips, to be confident with the amount of material I had because, of course, given the above conditions, every advancement was very costly in terms of resources, and every error could be fatal in the sense of having to abandon the car in a very remote place. Even so, I had my moments of “Will I make it through this?” the highlight of which was being stranded overnight at 5,000m while caught in a lightning storm. Or when I pushed it to the limits of my resistance by sleeping ten days straight at an average of -15 Celsius while trying to get out of the car to photograph at sunrise and sunset, then changing to only sunset, and then changing to ‘better get out of here soon’.
As for every new environment I get to photograph, the first time is the most critical; not having first hand experience of what it means to travel in that environment brings risks, and mistakes are inevitable. No matter how prepared I try to be by reading blogs and gathering information, there’s always a discrepancy between what I imagine and what I’m actually able to do.
As for every new environment I get to photograph, the first time is the most critical; not having first hand experience of what it means to travel in that environment brings risks, and mistakes are inevitable. No matter how prepared I try to be by reading blogs and gathering information, there’s always a discrepancy between what I imagine and what I’m actually able to do.
Adding up to all this, we also had a pandemic in the middle and all the subsequent bureaucratic struggle to justify a car with an Italian license plate left in South America. But as always in travelling, all these struggles are quickly overshadowed by how enriching the experiences are to the point I always joke that all these efforts for photo series are just an excuse to go out there and force me into self-development. I see and get to spend time in places I would have never seen otherwise, get to appreciate knowing people who live differently and practically became a solo traveller with good chances of surviving also into the most remote places of South America.
But as always in travelling, all these struggles are quickly overshadowed by how enriching the experiences are to the point I always joke that all these efforts for photo series are just an excuse to go out there and force me into self-development.
But even so, by looking at the whole map of South America, I only covered a fraction of it, and also, within that fraction, there are still places that would have deserved more time and are definitely worth a second visit.
After all this struggle, I was left with a relatively huge amount of images, around 260 large format negatives, which took a while to drum scan and edit and that I’m now presenting to you and on my website as well. The element that was strikingly present while I was working on the series was the pioneeristic feeling it had, contrary to the previous series that I shot in the Canaries, of which every single angle is known, and that wanted to use the landscape to play with the perception of Time and Space, this time I really couldn’t do much more than trying to drive to a place, get out, explore and photograph.
I’ve let things arrive to me rather than going on a hunt for a particular thing that would help me illustrate what I had in mind. As a result, it came out as a conceptually speaking vintage series, and it was no more than a virgin land, a guy and a camera.
It brought me back to the voyeuristic period of my learning about photography; I felt like the land was so overwhelming that rather than thinking about what to do with its angles, I could only, like in a dream, let events flow and see what the landscape was sending to me during my daily wanderings.
It brought me back to the voyeuristic period of my learning about photography; I felt like the land was so overwhelming that rather than thinking about what to do with its angles, I could only, like in a dream, let events flow and see what the landscape was sending to me during my daily wanderings.
I floated into my photographic routine around a place up to the point when, after some days, I thought I had enough and then moved towards the next possibility I had in mind. Maybe 100 km away, into an offroad path, keeping an eye on how much fuel was left in the tanks, how much water I had, and sincerely giving a thank you to the engine when it was flawlessly starting every morning out of a freezing night not leaving me stranded in the middle of nowhere.
I’ve always loved the sound of crows cawing. It has been suggested that they may even have their own language. Every Summer, when I was a small boy, rooks would nest in a tree in a neighbour’s garden. I would lie in bed listening to them talk and try to imagine what they were saying. Why make a noise at all? The sound of crows cawing remains incredibly comforting to me
Writing about work is such a strange thing to do, for me at least. Especially a few years after a series has been finished, made into a book and exhibited, etc. But at the same time, there is perhaps a clarity and focus afforded by the passage of time. At the beginning, the reasons for creation are always very intense and difficult. The ideas ebb and flow; there's confusion and self-doubt amongst other scatter-brained moments of bewilderment. But show me anyone who doesn't go through that process. I think it's inevitable; it's just some people hide it better than others. So, coming back to this work has been a rather enlightening experience for me.
There were numerous original reasons for making it, all interwoven with my life at the time, and while these reasons are still incredibly personal, I have found a little peace since then. A few people played a part in the creation of this work, albeit indirectly and not always in a positive way, however, their inclusion, while not immediately obvious in the photographs, is nonetheless there and, in a small sense, is a goodbye to them. We also had a global pandemic while I was making the work, plus the inevitable Brexit fallout.
Maybe I should talk a little about the work itself? I'm often asked what the white line is in some of the photographs. Life divided. We'll touch on this later on. It's actually a fold in a print of the work, which was subsequently rescanned for those of you who are interested. The handwritten notes that I included were usually attached to deflated balloons, which, thanks to a prevailing wind, seemed to make their way to where I made most of the work.
To begin with, I didn't connect the notes with the work I was making, I just started to collect them whenever I saw them (occasionally going to great lengths to remove them from high branches or generally difficult places. I still have scars but at the very least I picked up some litter). After a while, it became clear that the words in these notes were narrating the story as it was being made, so with some subtractions for sensitive words or names, I incorporated them into the series. They were mostly messages to passed loved ones, which fit almost too snugly with my own reasons for making the work in the first place.
After a while, it became clear that the words in these notes were narrating the story as it was being made, so with some subtractions for sensitive words or names, I incorporated them into the series. They were mostly messages to passed loved ones, which fit almost too snugly with my own reasons for making the work in the first place.
So on we went, and it slowly became something tangible. Then, thanks to a few very kind people, it became a book, which I think is the perfect vehicle for the work. Making a book (and I've been lucky enough to do a few now) is such a strange process as it affords a full stop to making the work and the opportunity for other people to bring their own ideas and thoughts to bear upon it. I purposely didn't include any introductory text (there is some at the very back) because I didn't want to lead anyone or fill their heads with any preconceptions. I felt that was the very least I could do. And if I'm honest, this is probably my biggest 'Marmite' series to date. I realised a long time ago that I'm a Marmite photographer (you should see some of my direct messages), but then I've never quite fit anywhere in the photographic pantheon, or at least I've never felt like I've fit in anywhere. And I'd like to keep it that way. .
The 'birds' work started before the pandemic, then continued during (albeit in a limited fashion). While the world was starved of human contact, I honestly didn't find that aspect of it difficult. But solitude is always just a tiny stumble to loneliness. Anyway, it's all there in the work if you want to take a look.
Of course, I want people to see the work. I want to connect with an audience, but I find that incredibly difficult. The dichotomy of wanting to connect but being uncomfortable or unable to do so is one of my many, many flaws. But it's part of me and probably finds its way into all aspects of my practice quite naturally. Going back to the white line in the pictures, in some ways, I've put that barrier up already, it's right there, manifested in the physical image.
The 'birds' work started before the pandemic, then continued during (albeit in a limited fashion). While the world was starved of human contact, I honestly didn't find that aspect of it difficult. But solitude is always just a tiny stumble to loneliness. Anyway, it's all there in the work if you want to take a look. Of course, there were moments of pleasure and hope. I think the murmurations I was lucky enough to see really helped. I would go to a specific place at a specific time, and while it didn't always happen, even the starlings coming home to roost in groups was a pleasure to see. It became such a grounding experience amongst the chaos and uncertainty of life during a global pandemic. But life is always chaotic and uncertain. I think the biggest aspect of the 'birds' work is realising that fact and accepting it.
Someone much more poetic than I could ever be said, 'Loneliness is a great place to visit; just don't take any friends'. As photographers, we largely work alone, and I suspect while we're all looking for something different, there's more that unites us as a community than divides us. By and large, people are great, and I think, in simplistic terms, making photographs is simply a fantastic way to live life. To be privileged enough to show them to a wider audience in the form of a book is, for me at least, a pretty mind-bending experience. It's something I never thought for a second I would ever get to do. But there we go. There are a few copies left if you're interested. There should be a link knocking about somewhere.
Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions, please keep them to yourselves. Ta.
