Welcome to our 4x4 feature which is a set of four mini landscape photography portfolios submitted from our subscribers. Each portfolios consisting of four images related in some way.
Interested in submitting your work? We're on the lookout for new portfolios for the next few issues, so please do get in touch!
One weekend in late January I just didn’t believe the evening weather forecast for a chance of snow, after all, we hardly ever get any in the London area. However, a light frost was expected so early in the morning I set off to the local woods. It was still rather murky when I arrived and sadly not quite cold enough for the frosted leaves I was hoping to photograph.
I wandered around looking for intimate cameo landscapes, just enjoying being out in nature, when to my surprise a few snowflakes started to appear. Then seemingly out of nowhere, I found myself in something approaching a proper blizzard! The wind had picked up, blowing snow across the scene and in just a few minutes it had settled on the ground and was plastering the trees from one side. Changing my mindset and my lens, I looked for characterful trees hoping to catch their “gesture”; I also looked for more formal compositions of the majestic solid trunks against the falling snow. And yes, I even succumbed to two frames using ICM to get a more impressionistic feel.
With the snow reflecting the diffuse light, the conditions brightened but despite this, there was a certain creepiness in the deathly quiet, with hardly another soul to be seen or heard. I felt very alone. In processing the images I decided to retain most of the cold blue cast; the wood had become otherworldly, almost mystical and a rather dark treatment seemed appropriate.
Containing five of the ten largest trees in the world, Sequoia National Park is notable for its fantastic display of old-growth sequoia forests, and the survival of these massive trees is dependent on water and fire in equal measure. All throughout the forest, the effects of decades of fire is evident by burn scars, as well as juvenile sequoia seedlings establishing themselves in burn areas, a reminder that fire is an integral part of the ecosystem here, and allows for growth of young trees.
Conversely, the sequoia’s survival also depends on the absorption of moisture and nutrients from the dense fog layer that is common in California's varied climate. Walking the trails among the most massive trees on earth in the ethereal mist and the snow was like being in a dream, and reminds me of humankind’s minuteness, yet powerful influence over the fate of these timeless organisms.
I started my journey as a nature photographer a few years ago, at a difficult time in my life. Walking in the woods with a camera was my way to handle the demons chasing me after too much pressure, too long. Since then I have continued with my walks, trying to learn and develop the skill of making pictures. I am fascinated by the trees and how they make me feel at peace with myself. I love their calm beauty and their solid beings. I am drawn to the complex and love to find small parts of the structure in the seemingly chaotic scenes. The woodland chaos is what makes me calm more than anything.
In the past year I have noticed my interest in photographing the woods through the woods. I have a strong tendency of making pictures where something is blocking the view or where the composition is built around a feeling of peeking in on the scene. Maybe it represents my personality deep within, as an onlooker of things around me.
The pictures I have chosen here represents this feeling for me and I hope they will say something to you too.
Sawhill Ponds is located in Boulder County, Colorado. I hadn't been there in years and during this last year of pandemic, I started revisiting every open space located within a 50 mile radius. Sawhill Ponds is indeed magical in winter with its frozen ponds, bare trees and the odd geese here and there. I'm fascinated with trees, my main subject these days, and started a FB page called Tree Lama with contributors from all over the globe. Trees need our help. Deforestation exacerbates our climate emergency and I'm trying to bring awareness of that to as many people as possible. The trees at Sawhill Ponds speak to me and share their wisdom with me.
In our wildest aberrations we dream of an equilibrium we have left behind and which we naively expect to find at the end of our errors.Albert Camus
In the late 1950s, Edward Abbey worked as a ranger in what was then Arches National Monument in Utah (today Arches National Park). About a decade later, in 1968, Abbey recalled his times in Arches in a book titled Desert Solitaire. In the introduction to the book, based on what he witnessed in the years after his experiences as a ranger, Abbey wrote, “most of what I write about in this book is already gone or going under fast. This is not a travel guide but an elegy.”
Desert Solitaire became a rallying cry for what would later evolve into the American environmental movement, with Abbey as one of its somewhat reluctant leaders. (
In this issue, we’re delighted to find out more about the work of Peter Heaton. From ‘Dark Landscapes’ to the complexities of layered visuals, drawings and text - and sound - Peter shares with the viewer his home ground of North Yorkshire and the Yorkshire Wolds, some of the thoughts and emotions attached to being in the landscape, as well as his concerns for our environment. It’s a fascinating insight into how stories can be developed, the evolution of technique, and how we might try to bring back into the picture what lies beyond the selectivity of our compositions.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, your early interests and education, and what that led you to do as a career?
I grew up in a small town in Lancashire called Clayton–le-Moors, probably best known for being the home of the Nori Brickworks (the story goes that it should have actually been the ‘Iron’ brickworks, but no one remembered to reverse the lettering on the moulds for the bricks). If you venture east, it is on the fringes of some of the most beautiful landscape in the country… the Ribble Valley, and Trough of Bowland. If you go west you are into the heart of (what was) industrial Lancashire with its profusion of mill towns.
The Leeds-Liverpool canal snakes gently through Clayton evoking a slower pace of life, the M65 Motorway with its associations of high speed and progress was driven mercilessly straight through the centre of it back in the late seventies. This meant that for years I grew up amongst streets of boarded up semi-derelict buildings, which were waiting for the final permissions to be granted to demolish them all.
My Dad, a keen fell runner, tried to encourage me to take up running and although I was a member of Clayton-Le-Moors Harriers for a time I never really took to it. Going with my Mum to watch him compete in races in the Yorkshire Dales instilled in me a love of the countryside, but I much preferred the pace of walking, where you noticed a lot more about your surroundings and didn’t get out of breath.
Much later in life I was introduced to a system of personality typing called the ‘Enneagram’ (nothing at all to do with the Irish singer) which describes nine personality types and how they interpret the world and manage their emotions. It is not a simple system, as it at first may appear, it is extremely nuanced and my type - the No 5 - is termed ‘The Observer’. I suspect that many photographers reading this would find resonance with the No 5. Take the test (there are several on the internet)… you may find it surprisingly revealing.
I attended school in nearby Blackburn and after A-Levels (Art, English Lit, General Studies) I went to Rochdale College of Art to do an Arts Foundation Course. Up to this point I had never touched a camera; after this point I never really put one down.
After graduating in 1980 I began to teach Photography and Film Making on a part-time basis. Moving on from there to Associate Lecture posts, then to a full time post teaching photography across a range of full and part time Art and Design courses, I eventually became Head of Photography at York College. Later I returned to being an Associate Lecturer in order to be able to concentrate more on my own work.
The past twelve months or so has reinforced the notion for most landscape photographers that being in the landscape, although perhaps restricted closer to home, is the place to ground oneself. The worldwide pandemic has also opened other people's eyes to the importance of immersing themselves in nature in order to maintain emotional mental health, but my story goes back farther than that.
I have been working on a project that I call Trailings for almost two years, a journey that has been restorative for me. Walks along the trails became more than exercise, they took me outside myself and my thoughts, taking negative energy and turning it into something positive. It became important for me to share my story.
Trailings is a personal exploration of the relationship between observation and mental health. Over the past few years, I began to realise how submerging myself in the natural world impacted my state of mind, and this connection became the inspiration behind my project. It seems that the world is in agreement - recent studies have shown that walking in nature is the answer to the COVID-19 pandemic blues.
I live in the town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, which has a population of approximately 9,000 people. Like many small towns in Canada, the downtown was a wasteland of empty, dilapidated buildings interspersed with "fast cash" and pre-loved goods shops. But the town has been favoured with some positive changes over the past few years, and revitalisation has brought life back to our downtown. Best of all, the town is blessed with a river running through it and the Centennial Trail, an 8 kilometre multi-use trail that meanders through forested areas. In recent years, additional connecting trails have been added through the area, making it possible to walk for hours in nature while still being in the centre of a developed area.
Water Dance
Research has shown that there are many physical benefits of walking. Walking can help burn calories, strengthen the heart, lower blood sugar, ease joint pain, boost immune function, boost energy, and extend life.
Every day, I walked with one of our family dogs along the aforementioned river and trails of our small town. The days in 2019 seemed quite bleak to me, but during one walk something happened and I literally stopped in my tracks. I felt different and, to my astonishment, I realised I was happy. After so many weeks and months of feeling like I carried a physical weight on my shoulders, I felt a lightness that had become unknown to me. What was the cause of this? I stood still, looked, and listened. The scenery that I had been trudging through every day without really seeing seemed unremarkable, but that was the moment things changed for me. I took a photograph with my phone to mark the occasion and made the conscious decision to start taking notice of the world around me.
Trailings are defined as "to mark out, to track, to tread down or make a path through grass or the like". I left no evidence on the trails I tread. Instead, the trailings of my walks left a path through my mind, opening it up to possibilities, creativity, and positivity. Walking with my camera was my therapy, used as a means of processing and overcoming life's challenges. I walked five to ten kilometres every day, documenting the journey and providing fodder for personal introspection.
In the beginning, I made some notes when I returned home. It was so cold today, my teeth ached as I walked along the river. The ospreys have returned, the leaves are starting to come out. I made small observations, nothing extraordinary. During this time period, my project was a documentary capture of my trail walks with my camera, interesting things that caught my eye.
Some people might find walking the same route each and every day to be mundane, but I found the opposite to be true. Familiarity of place gave me a new perspective, and I started to notice details previously overlooked.
I started carrying a notebook on my walks, and my writings became more introspective, less simple documentation. I began printing my photographs and pinned them to a bulletin board above my desk, and noticed that many common themes were emerging. Did my photographs portray my state of mind? What was the motivation for making these images? Why did the project matter so much to me? There were lots to puzzle over.
At the start of my project, I was making many dark images which, in retrospect, may have been my way of expressing my innermost thoughts. I processed these complex, even fussy, images in black and white, unconsciously revealing a distressed state of mind.
Skeleton
Solitary Confinement
During this time of introspection and observation, I also made many abstract images - details of bark, patterns in the ice, reflections in the water, lichen covered rocks. Did my interest in this type of image reflect my confused state of mind? Every day I was filled with self-doubt about this project. Who else would be interested, who else would care? Then I ventured into the woods again and was filled with confidence, the forest wanted me to capture these stories. It sounds crazy, I know. Letting my mind wander and wonder at Nature's talent in putting together such beautiful constructions led me to thoughts that spending time in nature reveals that everything is interconnected. Our happiness and fulfilment is also interconnected, and to attain happiness we need to give it away to others. We must give in order to receive.
Over time my photographs seemed to lighten and become more playful. I became enamoured with patterns in the ice and I spent many hours searching for unique images, amazed that something motionless could convey so much vitality.
Effervescence
Fish Out of Water
Sometimes I saw beauty where others might see destruction. I was fascinated with a section of trees with mid-summer leaves that had been chewed through by insects. I thought they were beautiful, resembling delicate lace, and returned to the same area several times to take a series of photographs.
Lacework
I realised that I must have been smitten with reflections when a passer-by said he had seen me in the same spot many times. It had become second nature for me to stop in my favourite locations and check the reflection of the day. There was an endless variety....full of colour, monochrome, smooth as glass, rippled with raindrops. I never tired of making images of reflections, and truly believe I could fill a whole book on just this subject.
Blue Sky Day
Floaters
Wikipedia describes journal therapy as a writing therapy focusing on the writer's internal experiences, thoughts and feelings. In my experience, pictorialisation is therapeutic and much more meaningful because I am a visual person. I used my camera as a tool, and I told my stories through pictures. By observing small details in the world around me, my mind emptied of its problems. After a time, I eventually achieved an inner peace, a quiet joy.
Time can't be captured, but photos can tell the story of passing time. Photographing the same subject over months and seasons was a way for me to gain perspective. Returning to the same location over a period of time captured very different results. Nature has a way of teaching us that allowing time to pass can help us, and the cycles of life will ebb and flow.
Triptych of Water Dance, I'll Cry if I Want To, Barely There
Over time, my documentary photography became more refined and I created images that conveyed my own sense of style, trying to convey stories in a minimalist way.
Left Hanging
Wind Dance
Haves and Have Nots)
When I became aware that this project might be a story worth sharing, I started to curate a collection of photographs that told a story, a visual representation of the stages of emotional healing. A solitary leaf can conceptualise sorrow, or life balance, or even exhilaration. The limbs of a tree give voice to the wind and tell their story of challenges faced, some won, and some lost.
Becoming mindful of the environment is a feast for the senses. Not only do we discover new details with our eyes, but we become aware of our other senses as well. Smell the sweet scent of pine needles drying in the hot summer sun, the damp decay of the leaves in late fall. Hear the cheerful chirping of birds in the spring, the roar of the wind through the treetops during a storm, the crunch of stones beneath our feet. Feel the leathery smoothness of the leaves, the sticky sap of the fallen pine cones, and the many, many textures of the bark on the trees.
This project has shown me that it's the small things that matter. It's the small things that make our world worth living in and help us to know that we are human, we are vulnerable. We are. fragile, but we can heal.
Shifting Seasons
For the eleventh iteration of this column, I wanted to showcase the work of a photographer who has focused his lenses on the oft-forgotten Adirondack Mountains of New York – Chris Murray. Chris is a photographic artist flying under the typical social media radar whose work is deserving of more attention and appreciation. Chris works primarily in the landscape of his home: the woods, lakes, mountains, and streams of New York State and the Adirondack Mountains. When I look through his work, I am immediately struck by how cleverly and tenderly he has developed a deep relationship with his home and the natural subjects he has found there. His images of his subjects are intimate and timeless expressions of nature, exuding ideas and emotions ranging from excitement to melancholy.
According to Chris, his interest in photographing landscapes is derived mainly from his love of the natural world, the same love that led him to choose geology as his first profession. In photography, he strives to make images that reflect his sensibilities and how he sees the world. His goal is to make images that are not a literal documentation of place, but rather a creative expression of his relationship with the subject. Chris’ photography tends toward the quiet and intimate with a creative focus on simplicity and detail. This is perhaps most profoundly seen in his work with local forests and trees, where he has focused a great deal of attention. In these images, I can see how he is able to weave his personal artistic expression of the world he sees with the relationship he has of that world in a way that conveys both complexity and simplicity at the same time. This duality allows for the expression of emotional states as well as the distillation of other concepts and ideals such as harmony, resolve, resilience, and contemplation.
Paddling through the ancient cypress groves in the soft mist of the early morning transports you to another place and time. These 2,000 year old trees in and around the Atchafalaya Basin exude a special kind of magic and mystery. Words and even photographs fall short of conveying the experience of silently floating through the water among these ancient trees decorated in fall colour and draped in Spanish moss. I’d been thinking about photographing the fall colours in the bayous for quite a while and in more than one way, it felt like coming home.
Going back nearly fifty years, I remember the best of times spent among the cypress trees along the oxbow lakes and sloughs of the Mississippi River with family and close friends. These were the places where we gathered to connect to the outdoors and connect with one another. Being out on the water early, in the mist and among the cypress trees was always a part of those special times.
Making photographs that resonate with yourself and especially others, isn’t altogether easy. Maybe that’s also a big part of the attraction to photographing the landscape. I’d done some kayaking in the past and had photographed in and around water before but never photographed in the bayous. This would be something completely new and easily some of the more technically challenging photography I’d attempted over the last twenty years. The creative challenge was exciting and provided the fuel to push through the long days of paddling and difficult camera setups.
While you can certainly photograph the bayous from the shore or use waders, it seemed the best way to really experience the miles and miles of cypress groves was by exploring and photographing from a kayak. The bayous are at their magical best in the soft light of the early morning, right around sunrise while the mist adds a quiet mood to the scene. But with exposures one minute or longer, there’s not really a great way to photograph inside the kayak and shoot handheld. This meant using my tallest tripod—around seven feet high—and anchoring the tripod legs into the bottom of the muddy bayou. Next, the camera had to be mounted onto the ball head before starting the exposure, all the while attempting to keep the kayak from floating back into the tripod and camera. On more than a few occasions, the camera sat precariously just a few inches above the water. It all became a process of letting go, literally and figuratively.
Of course, photographing in the low light at the margins of the day means doing a fair bit of paddling through the bayous in the pitch dark. This is altogether a different feeling and experience. Peace and quiet surround you while floating into the silent darkness although you can’t help but feel an eerie, unseen presence. More than a few times, pairs of red eyes from the resident alligators would appear before slowly submerging into the black water. Couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was lurking close by, just out of sight.
Reflections on the surface of the water also provided an interesting visual experience. Paddling into the reflections of the fall colours and cypress trees felt like floating into a painting, a very surreal and mesmerising experience. Each day of exploring seemed to end with the physical exhaustion of paddling for miles and the overwhelming feeling of the landscape’s intense beauty and otherworldly qualities.
There has been a lot of wonderful conversation around the mindful approach to photography and slowing down. No doubt, photographing from a kayak is a great way to slow down. It often required thirty minutes or more just to get the camera in position to make a single exposure—all the while making sure the camera didn’t end up in the bottom of the bayou. It’s not at all surprising to see current or former large format film photographers create compelling images with such thoughtful compositions through a slower, more considered approach. Even though they may be shooting digital now, the process of slowing down and carefully considering compositions is quite evident throughout their work. Somehow, gliding through the water slowly and smoothly, seemed to help the mind to slow down and the compositions to flow.
I didn’t approach this photographic adventure with any particular outcome in mind. But, after processing the images in my home studio, it seemed that a folio project would be an interesting challenge to tackle. Beyond sharing images electronically, folios provide a tangible outcome of the creative process that can be achieved with just ten to twelve images, for example. It’s possible the folio could evolve into a monograph with many more images but that might be years in the making. A folio project continues the creative process from your field work as you develop the single images and begin to think about them more as a cohesive group. This adds to the creative decision making, especially around the colour harmony, aspect ratio, and sequencing of the images. Folios often include a portion of narrative that can accompany the prints to share more of the personal expression details for the project. While photographs can definitely stand on their own and communicate thoughts, emotion, or story, adding text can provide more clarity around what the photographer is trying to express. The combination of text with images can be an important step in the photographer’s connection to self and others.
Much has been written too, about the benefits of printing your own work.
In the end, the experience of photographing in the bayous was an incredible new adventure but more than that, it provided a connection to the past, to memories of people and places that had faded into the mists of time. Reconnecting to those deeply personal places and people refreshes the spirit and energises creating thinking and expression. I’m happy to have completed the small project and am already planning to return again, to see what additional secrets the bayous might reveal.
When approached about providing a submission to the end frame series, my thoughts went to artists rather than images. While there are numerous photographic artists who inspire me and whom I follow both as image makers and authors on this forum and others, my winnowing process was a short one. It led me to “Trees From a Train No. 109” by Cole Thompson because it says so much about Cole. I’ll go back a few years in order to make my point.
My first encounter with Cole Thompson was at his presentation to the Loveland Photographic Society which I attended soon after I retired. At that point, my photography knowledge was wanting, and I knew nothing about this photographer. While I was impressed with his images, his presentation left me perplexed. No Photoshop layers? Dodge and burn the image? Remove sensor spots in Photoshop instead of ACR? Photographic celibacy? Vision? Especially vision! He was an enigma for me, a relative novice. However, with time, a coffee shop meeting, visits to his studio and digital dialogues my perspective changed, and I came to know and have great respect for him and his art. His vision concept was a bit more difficult for me to grasp, perhaps because I needed to experience it in order to grasp it.
Cole’s images are nearly all black and white; however, he is not a dark minimalist. He doesn’t photograph the iconic places, nor does he follow in someone else’s photographic footsteps. His portfolios have little if any subject matter connectivity and his simple six-step image processing is well-documented in YouTube videos. Long exposure is a favourite technique, and he usually travels to photograph – without extensive preparative study of his destination.
We already own Doug Chinnery's book 'Abstract Mindedness' where he donated 100% of the profits from the book to the Young Minds mental health charity (which is devoted to helping young people who struggle with mental health issues) and we really wanted to support Paul Gotts & John Ash's book project 'New Beginnings' which also supports this charity too.
In April 2021 they asked six talented photographers to make some images around the theme of “New Beginnings” and the real prospect of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK receding. Each of the photographers was asked questions about how they interpreted the title “New Beginnings” and how they found working to the tight deadlines for the project.
The project “New Beginnings” - what was the inspiration for this and how did the project come about?
Paul Gotts: The project began when Andy Holliman contacted me in March of this year. He had listened to Euan Ross and me talking on the Biblioscapes about the books I had helped pull together in 2019 – “Brand New Day” and “Just Now”. The idea of the earlier books was to give possibly a first opportunity for a photographer to take images around a specific theme, curate them down to half a dozen and see them in a printed book, at an affordable cost. These books had featured six or seven photographers and Andy mentioned he liked the idea….it started from there really, when John and I talked about pulling something together along the same lines.
John Ash: As Paul has said, this book is the 3rd (so far!) that has been produced, giving previously unpublished photographers the opportunity to be part of something exciting. After a chance meeting with Paul at the Connected Exhibition a few years ago, I was lucky enough to be one of the photographers involved in the first book. This then led to Paul asking me to help with pulling together New Beginnings.
Did you start with the intention of making a book or did that idea follow later?
Paul Gotts: Absolutely. We started with the intention of publishing a book showcasing the work of six photographers. As we talked further, we reflected on our experiences in 2019 and decided to ask the photographers if we could form a group that would donate all the proceeds to a charity – everyone was happy to proceed on that basis. We then discussed ways in which those proceeds could be maximised and from that developed the options to purchase a chosen image of each photographer as a special print and even offering a limited edition of handmade books. We are in the fortunate position that master printer Andrew Atkinson can prepare the A5 prints, and I can make the handmade books.
John Ash: The object was always to produce a book and it was the theme of the book that came later! Each book has evolved, with this being the first one that includes options for prints and also handmade editions.
Doug Chinnery has written the foreword and says “As I have immersed myself in their art, I have lost myself in their vision and am intrigued by the diverse and contrasting ways they each have in looking at their subject and theme.
Paul Gotts: We were looking for a theme of renewal and the prospect of the COVID pandemic in the UK coming more and more under control. We searched for some song lyrics that might give the photographers a neat structure to work around without being too constrictive. John came up with a Toyah Willcox song and “New Beginnings” was born.
The vision of collaboration was around fun, support and encouragement. Early on it became clear that everyone was happy for peer review of draft images, words and design. I think it worked.
Everyone we approached seemed delighted to be asked, had no hesitation in accepting the offer and has been consistently enthusiastic about the project as a whole. In terms of the “dream” team, we clearly had to ask Andy! John suggested getting Andrew on board. John and I had been on a sequencing course with Susi in 2020 and we had talked often about books. Susi suggested Jan….. Valerie was well known to both of us through her work in Derby and Sheffield Hospitals. Tim had been a great supporter and advocate of the concept of the earlier books and we knew he was desperate to get into print.
Tim Allott
At the draft stage of the book Rob Knight, David Noble and Euan Ross were all generous with their time in offering advice for the final version.
John Ash: We needed a theme that was relevant but could also be interpreted in different ways. One of the great things about having 6 different photographers is seeing the range of responses. I think that Rob and Karen Knights’ “Connected” event has really helped bring people together, and I think all those involved can be linked back in some way.
All who have involved themselves in this project have contributed their profits to the Young Minds UK mental health charity. What is the connection to this charity and why did you choose it?
Paul Gotts: Even when we produced “Brand New Day” in 2019, four of the six photographers donated their share of the proceeds to the Motor Neurone Disease Association, so in that sense we kept the same model. Doug Chinnery has been a friend, mentor and shining light for many of us over the years and as we knew of his work for YoungMinds UK in publishing “Abstract Mindedness” it seemed an appropriate choice to us. More than 1 in 10 children have some sort of mental health problem, which can seriously damage a young person's life. Left untreated, problems can persist into adulthood. YoungMinds UK works to ensure that effective services are in place to help troubled children and to prevent problems arising in the first place. Through their confidential Parents Information Service they offer help over the telephone to parents who are worried about the emotional well-being of a child.
We were thrilled when Doug agreed to write the Foreword to “New Beginnings” and help in any other way he could.
John Ash: The main objective of the book was to give the photographers an experience, there was never any expectation that anyone was going to get rich taking part in this. Previously the decisions on donating the profits to charity were made after the event. This time we decided (with the agreement of all involved) that we wanted to do that from the start. Doug’s influence on both of us and his fantastic book, made YoungMinds an obvious choice and very appropriate.
How can people purchase the book?
The best way to get a copy of the book or prints is via the website:
https://bit.ly/new-beginnings-book
Once on the site navigate to the “Contact” page to get in touch with Paul and he will take your address and set out the payment options. The following options are available:
In terms of maximising proceeds for YoungMinds UK we cannot afford to be left with expensive unwanted copies of the books or prints on the shelf i.e. the print run will satisfy the pre-orders but nothing beyond that. We would love to sell more copies of the book and prints and can now offer the opportunity of extending the pre-order phase to Friday 4th June 2021. Please be aware that the four handmade books have already been bought.
How did you go about interpreting the title of the project?
Tim Allott: The lyrics of the song Paul and John selected for inspiration are all about creating positive change, an optimistic vision of finding new beginnings and new surroundings. I am a physical geographer, and as part of my working life, I get to study some of the amazing peatland restoration projects in our upland landscapes.
Susi Petherick: The invitation to take part in this book came in March and we were to take our images in April so springtime felt so right for ‘New Beginnings’ for me. New shoots, flowers emerging, light changing, fresh green leaves appearing on trees. Springtime feels such an optimistic time to me, the end of winter and darkness and the beginning of new life, new light and brings with it such feelings of hope and optimism.
Susi Petherick
Valerie Dalling: The pandemic has been so tough for everyone in many different ways, and for me, when lockdown eased and I was able to venture out again, Curbar Edge was at the top of my list. Despite it only being 6 miles from my Peak District home, I had been unable to spend time somewhere that has special meaning for me, and I’d missed it very much. I knew this would be the perfect location for the project.
Jan Beesley: Spring is often used as a metaphor for the hope and anticipation of a new beginning. This year, after what we had all been through in 2020 and the seemingly never-ending lockdown winter, the vibrant new buds of spring seemed to have even more resonance.
Andy Holliman: The title suggested several obvious themes around the loosening of lockdown regulations and spring being a time of new growth of flora and new life of fauna. I wanted to explore some quite simplified graphic images so concentrated on trees. Most of the month gave us clear blue skies which worked well with the white and yellow blossom.
I’d explored the idea of the signs that were appearing in pub and café windows about opening soon but this didn’t produce a satisfying set of images.
I’ve been intrigued for a long time by the idea of old industrial structures that once seemed so large and permanent but slowly disappear back into the fabric of the city when they become redundant. There was a short railway line to Greenwich that closed over 100 years ago, the path can be traced if you know where to look but most of it has disappeared under allotments, houses and a nature reserve. This suggested the idea of ‘New Beginnings’ on a much longer timescale. In the end I put the trees & cranes and the railway line idea to the rest of the photographers in the group; trees and cranes were a clear winner.
Andrew Atkinson: I had just come out of shielding so wasn’t really interested to head outside straight away. My thoughts turned to still life photography. As we had just moved into spring, I felt the onset of colour and flowers could demonstrate ‘New Beginnings’.
“The photographers curated their work down to six or seven images each which, together with their personal statements, makes up the bulk of this book.” How did you go about curating your own work?
Tim Allott: Truth be told, I used help. Last year I took an excellent course on how to sequence images run by Rob Knight and David Noble. One of the ‘take homes’ was that using other folks’ eyes is essential for curation, either through formal mentoring or through informal consultation.
I self-curated my images into proposed sets, along with alternative images. I then asked for feedback from the other photographers and editors of the project. Their responses reassured that most choices were sound, but they also nudged me to meet my aims more completely. A key intention was to maintain ambiguity of content and scale across the set of images. However, I fell into the trap of shoehorning in a standard wide angle landscape image, tempted as it had been popular on social media. It did not fit. Instinctively I knew it was not right to include this image, but a helpful comment highlighting this helped me kick it into touch. Another perceptive comment identified an overlooked image to enhance the sequence. These inputs really helped improve and finalise my set. A real benefit of this kind of collaboration is easy access to helpful and supportive critical feedback. Another was seeing how other sets of images were curated and developed, a terrific learning experience.
Susi Petherick: I took a range of images over the first three weeks of April, printed them out as contact sheets, cut up, spread across the floor and played with all sorts of permutations. The idea I had for the final way of selecting the 6 was moving from darker to lighter to reflect that move from winter to spring. I wanted a range of leaves and flowers and key to all was having both light and dark in them with varying degrees of each as you move from 1 to 6. I checked out with a couple of others too. Always good to check that you aren’t holding on to favourites even if they don’t fit!
Valerie Dalling:
Valerie Dalling: The decision which images to use and the format in which my work would be presented came from within to be honest; I seemed to instinctively know, despite my very different approach to the project, a risk I felt I needed to take to push myself in terms of connecting my photography with my painting.
Jan Beesley: Deciding what to include and what to exclude is such a difficult task! It’s hard to let go of images you really like, but which just don’t fit in the set. I also write short poems to go with the images so these had to work together as well. In the end I tried to keep to a relatively consistent colour palette to try and link them together in some way. I also thought of them as pairs of images, which meant that some images had to go because they didn’t have a natural “partner”.
Andy Holliman: I wanted the images to be in pairs of trees and cranes, matched in the colours in the images. This allowed me to narrow down the selection to about 6 pairs. I then picked my favourite of each subject and selected an image that balanced the page spread.
Andrew Atkinson: I felt my chosen subject helped me curate my work. I was in a position that the sequencing was dictated by the subject.
Jan Beesley
How did the project evolve? Did you have to refine the vision of what you wanted to achieve?
Tim Allott: I quite quickly came up with two different project ideas around restoration but decided to focus on bog pools. This was partly due to logistics and partly through a desire to explore a technical challenge (how to take aerial images of the pools without a drone, which are not permitted on National Trust land folks!). I already had an idea of the types and range of images I was after. I refined this during my first proper exploratory visit to the site. Some of the images I envisaged relied on strong evening side-light, so it was a matter of getting out there when conditions were right, and when time allowed.
Susi Petherick: We had just a month to complete the 6 and the statement, I started with some notes for the statement to go with the images so that I was clear about my vision before I started taking photos. When I had finally selected the 6 I wrote up the statement in full and then double checked the images against this. Again I checked the words and images out with a couple of others to make sure that there was a good fit.
Valerie Dalling: I spend hours up there, very often simply sitting and absorbing the landscape. I have always found Curbar Edge a very spiritual place, it helps my wellbeing, lifts my spirits and brings me peace. The rocks I sit on during these times of reflection became my focus for the project. Refining the vision wasn’t necessary, how my paintings evolved though, remains unexplained, it just happened. One minute I was mark making with my paint focusing on the contours of the rocks, and the next they seemed to take on a life of their own, becoming more otherworldly.
Jan Beesley: I had been working on a project looking at the stark skeletons of winter trees, so representing ‘New Beginnings’ via the newly emerging buds and blossom seemed a natural step. I didn’t really change this idea during the project, but I did refine the way I went about it and also decided to stop adding more new images after a certain point. It was then a question of reviewing the work I had and focussing on the themes of new life in the new leaves and blossom.
Andy Holliman
Andy Holliman: For most of the month I had the idea of multiple exposures of spring blossom on the trees, but I had a feeling this wasn’t enough. On a workshop with Paul Kenny a few years ago he’d emphasised the importance of taking an idea as far as it can go and ensuring that as many avenues as possible have been explored.
The idea of the cranes came on a walk through my local park to photograph trees for the project. There are many on the skyline in my area, their colours matched those of the blossom and against the blue skies allowed a similar style of graphic image.
Andrew Atkinson: From previous experience I have seen a refinement of an idea as I progressed through to completion. Unusually, this project stayed on track, which is not something that would normally happen.
How long has it taken from concept to completion?
Tim Allott: Four weeks. Paul and John launched the project at the start of April and gave us exactly a month to conceptualise, take the images and finalise the sets. Like many, I can suffer from Douglas Adams-itis (“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by”), so the gently imposed but very firm timetable for delivery by the end of April became an embedded part of the process.
Susi Petherick: I had three weeks to do images and one week to make the selections and refine the statement. Having this time limit felt really useful. Getting down to just six images was a challenge but it felt really useful to do!
Valerie Dalling: Although time was quite limited, we all rose to the challenge and the beautiful book is now on course for this month’s pre-orders and June publication.
Jan Beesley: Each individual photographer had roughly a month to complete the project with a short period for final edits and words, although we had had some time to think about it before the project started.
I think having a relatively short timeframe was good for concentrating the mind and reducing procrastination – at least in my case!
Andy Holliman: We were given the theme on April 1st, the first of my selected images was taken on April 4th and the last on April 25th so time was getting a bit tight towards the end. Fortunately the subjects were easily accessible and all of the images that made it into the book were taken within a few miles of home.
Andrew Atkinson: Three weeks in total! However, would/could have been quicker. My first attempt was impacted by the tulip I had chosen as I did not want it to open. So I had to start again with a different tulip, which helped as I knew what I wanted to achieve by then.
Andrew Atkinson
What were the main challenges in this collaboration?
Tim Allott: Trying to hold a 22-foot pole set at a 45-degree angle steady in a 20-mph wind. Otherwise, it has been an absolute joy.
Susi Petherick: I knew a couple of people in the group of photographers (one only very minimally) so it was interesting to work on this not knowing really what people were going to be producing or in a couple of instances what kind of work they did. I did check with one participant when I knew what he was working on as it was very similar to my plan B (tulips) so I was happy to stick with my first idea. People’s work has ended up very diverse which has been really interesting. Paul and John have been brilliant in supporting this effort.
Valerie Dalling: I admit to being a little apprehensive about my own interpretation of the theme, I didn’t want to let anyone down, and yet I was really pleased I did choose to step out of my comfort zone and push the boundaries. Everyone has been very supportive, we have all encouraged each other, and I actually can’t think of anything specific that I found challenging with the collaboration per se. It was a real team effort, with Paul and John doing a fantastic job at the helm, Doug providing a super Foreword for us, Andrew’s help with individual launch edition prints, and all the other photographers were great to work alongside. To be able to support such a worthy charity as part of this collaboration has been an absolute pleasure, and I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.
Jan Beesley: The main challenge I think was to pull everything together within a relatively short timeframe. However, I think this was also beneficial as it helped us all to really focus on the project wholeheartedly. I think the collaboration worked extremely well. It has been a joy to work with other photographers on a common project and see how we have all interpreted the brief in our different ways. All credit to Paul and John for collating the final beautiful book supporting a very worthwhile charity.
Andy Holliman: The overall timetable was deliberately short, this is certainly an interesting creative challenge! Given that possible interpretations of the theme by the other photographers could overlap I wanted to try and create something individual. Ultimately this needn’t have been a concern as all of us have produced very different work.
Andrew Atkinson: I think the biggest challenge was overcoming self-doubt. Making sure I produced images that I was proud of and communicated the brief. Thankfully I think I managed it.
Henri Cartier-Bresson loomed large in the 1970s as I was discovering photography. His wonderful, witty documentary photographs are classics of their kind, and his mantra, “The Decisive Moment” remains well-known and understood by photographers.
But the Decisive Moment is also something of a marketing ploy for Cartier-Bresson and his legacy. Out of context, his pictures give the appearance of being made while wandering in which he has recognised the pictorial potential of a (street) scene, snapped one brilliant exposure, and moved on.
It reinforces the idea of the solitary genius artist-photographer, turning brass-plated reality into solid gold images, with (very French!) creativity and sophistication.
A more realistic view, according to Alan Zeinrich, the Decisive Moment was when – looking at the B&W 35mm contact sheets with his darkroom printer – Cartier-Bresson declared, “Print that One!”
That interpretation may seem unfair, but it reminds us of the reality that Henri also had to work as hard as all photographers do making photographs; this often means having to make many exposures, as we work a way into a full understanding of what we are looking at.
In September 2019 a funeral service was held on the former bed of the Pizol Glacier in Switzerland1. The glacier had lost 80% of its volume since 2006 and was now small enough to be declared dead by those mourners present. In September 2020, some 200 people gathered at the foot of the remnant Trient Glacier in the Canton of Valais for a memorial to Switzerland’s disappeared glaciers. 80% of Switzerland’s remaining glaciers are small “glacierets”, vulnerable to higher temperatures and the lack of snow accumulation in winter2. These trends are also resulting in some dramatic retreat of major glaciers and modelling studies suggest that most of the ice in the Alps will have disappeared by 2100, regardless of future anthropogenic emissions3.
Snout of the Morteratsch Glacier in 2018 and post marking position of the snout in 2015
This is, however, not a new phenomenon. Many glaciers have been retreating since the end of the “Little Ice Age” (roughly 1300 – 1850), a period of relatively cold weather that also included the last time that a frost fair was held on the River Thames in London in 1814. This retreat has been marked out along a popular walk to the foot of the Morteratsch Glacier in the Engadine. Posts mark the position of the snout of the glacier at intervals since measurements started in 1878. The retreat in the 120 years to 1998 was 1.8km.
In the early autumn of 2019, I was privileged to be one of twelve photographers, led by Anthony Spencer and Joe Cornish on a photographic “expedition” to the North East Greenland Coast.
The inaccessibility of this area, the distance north and the consequent absence of any human activity or infrastructure, makes it a very rarely visited part of the globe. It was truly a small expedition, even the crew and the other guides on the ship, the RV Kinfish, had not crossed the Greenland Sea from Svalbard, or indeed ever been to many of the places we explored.
I had poured over the maps of where we were going and looked at Google Earth. I wanted to see the icebergs, the glaciers, sea ice and if we were lucky polar bears, muskox, arctic hares, seals and whales.
The two day crossing from Svalbard was rough and grey. We were thrown about our small icebreaker by a sea rolling us against the direction we wanted to go. We limited our movements about the ship to a minimum and processed the images we had taken in Svalbard before heading for Greenland.
We woke up on the third morning, aware that Kinfish was calm in the water. Rushing up on deck we saw a quiet sea, the low Greenland coast in the distance and a massive, beautiful iceberg full of curves and topped with a row of kittiwake. From then on almost every hour on Kinfish brought amazing sights and experiences that I don’t think anyone on board will forget in a hurry.
We were lucky and saw many polar bears, the first on the morning we arrived in Greenland. The following day we experienced the sea ice. We also saw other inhabitants of an autumnal Greenland from time to time such as muskox and arctic hare, a variety of seals and whales and walrus. We saw massive young icebergs, several kilometres long. We saw smaller old decaying bergs sculpted by the sea and wind and all sizes and shapes in between. But there were two other things that captivated my attention, particularly when we went ashore and when we were sailing through the rarely visited fjord systems.
The first was the tundra. The word “tundra” derives from the Finnish word tunturia, meaning barren or treeless hill but this may be a little misleading. Before heading north I had started to read “Arctic Dreams” by Barry Lopez. I had not got very far into the book, but one small section about tundra vegetation stuck in my head;
“Much of the tundra of course appears treeless, when, in many places, it is actually covered in trees - a thick matting of short, ancient willows and birches. You realise suddenly that you are wandering about on top of a forest.”.
The short Arctic summer (and others factors described in detail in “Arctic Dreams”) creates a low growth of vegetation and of course, early September was autumn there, so this low plant life was sporting spectacular colour. I was therefore prepared for the low “forest” but not the autumn colours or the sheer delicacy and beauty of the ground.
There is an image by Paul Wakefield in his book “The Landscape”, shot in Culbin Forest which has always inspired me to remember to look down as well as ahead. It is of the gentle forest floor covered with pine cones and needles, stones, lichen and twigs. At first glance, it looks like a random selection of the area, but on a closer look, you can see how carefully Paul has selected a part of the forest floor where the components created a natural, balanced composition, so the selection is not random at all.
Paul Wakefield, Culbin Forest
There is also a Paul Strand image of the ground which has always stuck with me. It is just called “Seaweed” (the one on page 58) in his book “Tir a Mhurain” about South Uist. It is a simple mono image of thin, string like seaweed tangled in the sand on the beach. In many ways, on its own, it is an unremarkable photograph but the concept of making an image from something so simple definitely left an impression on me. These two images (and many others) made me realise that the ground beneath your feet can be as interesting and beautiful as the horizon.
The second element which I had known about in theory, but was unprepared for, was the geology. It was, to quote our Canadian guide Beau Pruneau “insane”. In the fjords, up to 2000 metre high mountains, drop vertically into the water, revealing the stripes, patterns and colours of the geology. I know next to nothing about geology and am generally happy to appreciate the visual results of age, geological activity and weather, rather than understand the nuances of how and when that was all created1.
That said it was clear that each fold in the rock and each stripe and pattern was a chapter in the history of the Earth. We were able to visit the area, only in the small window of time during the year when the fjords were accessible. We also knew that within a short time after we left the whole area would return to winter. The feeling of timelessness created by the geology and the mountains seemed at odds with the idea that within a few weeks, winter would make the whole region look totally different. Sometimes it was hard to believe we were somewhere real on the planet and not some sort of imagined film set.
Photographically we had three scenarios. The first, and the one we spent most of the time doing, was shooting from Kinfish as she cruised the coast and the fjords. The second was shooting from the Zodiacs and the third was shooting ashore.
Shooting from the Kinfish and the Zodiacs was totally out of my comfort zone i.e. all handheld. Having no nice reassuring tripod threw up a lot of technical challenges.
I took two camera bodies. A Fuji XT3 with the Fuji18-135 which is the lens I use most of the time. I also had a Fuji X-H1 (which has image stabilisation which the X-T3 does not) set up with the Fuji 100-400. This meant I could move from one to the other like a wedding photographer and it kept life simple. Images come and go fast when shooting from Kinfish and the Zodiacs so there is little or no time to change lenses in any event.
It was a constant juggling of exposure, aperture and iso. Looking back through my images there is wide variation in all of these.
But I also remember one evening shooting a sea bird perched handily on a perfectly shaped chunk of sea ice in fading light and getting very frustrated with the decisions and compromises I was having to make. Joe Cornish was with me and said words to the effect that I should not compromise the creativity of the images in search of technical perfection. This struck a big chord with me and felt like a licence to stress less and just enjoy where we were and enjoy creating the images.
The first place we went ashore was called Mygbukta, also known as Mosquito Bay. It was marked with a single wooden house and signs of occasional human presence. It is the site of some Greenland history, in particular attempts by Norway to steal Greenland from the Danes.
On this particular day, separate polar bears had been sighted from Kinfish either side of the house. They were far enough away for us to go ashore but for a shorter visit than planned and with less kit in case a hasty retreat was needed, which meant no tripods. Looking back at my images from that day now, I am amazed at how calm the sea is on this exposed eastern coastline far north of the Arctic Circle. There were no waves or wind. The sea was a calm millpond lapping silently on the stony shoreline without disturbing the fragments of ice on the beach.
This part of the coast had a gentler landscape than we were about to experience in the fjords, but autumn had turned the ground into an orange and yellow coloured carpet. This was my first step onto the Greenland tundra and the infertile ground at my feet looked so different from anything I had ever experience before. Some areas looked cracked and bare, others boggy from the melting permafrost, but on closer inspection, a lot of the ground was covered with tiny lichens and mosses and small areas of ice.
In one place I was stopped short by a small bone which was half buried in the ground. It looked as if the earth was slowly absorbing it. A full circle of life. This proved difficult to photograph because of the contrast between the bright white bone and some white lichen with tiny dark intricate shadows. I love this image because of what it represents rather than, despite my many attempts at processing it, for its beauty. I have thought about monochrome, but for me that would take away an important element, its colour, even if it is a slightly sludgy green.
By the shore, the gentle wind had blown grasses, leaves and feathers into an almost perfectly arranged “still-life” and this is another of my favourite images from the trip. The soft colour palette seems to match the gentle curves of the feathers and the small leaves had dulled to greys and browns, some with silver veins and hairs. There were fine roots and driftwood and other general autumnal detritus. The gentleness of this image was also hard to reconcile with the stark Arctic landscape around it and the harshness of the half buried bone.
This first visit ashore had really brought the tundra to my attention and it had absorbed me for the whole of the short time we had to spend there before returning to Kinfish moored out in the bay.
One of the most astounding places we visited was a fjord right at the end of the Kejser-Franz-Joseph Fjord system. We arrived first thing in the morning and we were all instantly out on deck to wonder at the sight we saw. It was a totally calm silent morning, no wind and only the wash of Kinfish disturbing the water. Ahead of us was an iceberg “graveyard”.
By then we were getting used to shooting from the Zodiac, but with seven of us in each of the small craft, trying to find the space to make the shots we wanted required a good degree of good humoured give and take with each other and a lot of help from the guides in charge of where we went and at what speed. It was quite the most intense experience as we were all aware that this was something quite special.
We then went ashore where we found muskox trails all along the side of the fjord and the sound of wolves from the far side. A frost gave the ground a speckled appearance and outlined some of the stones in white. It all looked quite ghostly. There were ground hugging willows with their orange leaves startling against the grey ground. The red stripes we had seen from Kinfish and the Zodiacs, translated into intense low red bushes.
In one place, a half frozen stream of water flowed gently downhill. For a short time the water reflected light from the other side of the fjord and it looked like a stream of liquid gold flowing over the grey frosted earth and rocks. Among the vegetation there were the hoof marks of Muskox and they can be seen in a couple of my images. Here they feel like an integral part of the landscape not an unwanted intrusion. It was very different from the icebergs and water but totally captivating.
In the afternoon we returned to the shore but the light then was very bright and I found it hard to find compositions. Looking back, I think being in these extraordinary places created a constant pressure to make images because I knew it was highly unlikely that I would ever go back. However that afternoon I enjoyed the (relatively) warm sun, the silence and just “being” in this special place, trying to take it all in and absorb the experience and environment.
Two days later we went ashore at a place with a totally unpronounceable name so we adopted Beau’s version which was “Seagulls Eat Carpets”. It was one of the few places where it was possible to get “up close and personal” with the “insane” geology of East Greenland. It is an amazing place. All of the stripes, curls and colours of the geology in the mountains were laid before us on the ground. The stripes are Ice Age deposits of limestone and dolomite called tillites and are about 600 to 542 million years old.
We only had a couple of hours there, I could have spent a week. Here I was, back on familiar technical ground with a tripod and I even had a filter or two out of the bag. Aware that we only had a couple of hours before we had to move on, I felt like a kid in a sweet shop and in hindsight, rather rushed in. I wish I had taken a little longer to look around and get more of a feel for the place, as I usually would in a new location..
The colours, patterns and shapes of the rock formations were beautiful and right there, close up, with sea and mountains as a backdrop. Also, the now familiar autumnal vegetation was sparsely but stubbornly growing in this dry, rocky terrain adding yet another dimension to the location. We were there early in the morning and the light was beautiful. There were large areas of red rock with white and pink “tillite” stripes going through it and others where these stripes had crumbled into coloured shards or revealed alternate flat layers of red rock and startlingly white limestone. As with most of our time in Greenland, there was very little wind and the sea in the sheltered fjords was very quiet.
The final place where we were able to go ashore and experience the tundra vegetation was Red Island in Scoresbysund. It is exactly as the name implies, a small island of solid red rock with the added attraction of another iceberg graveyard. Here the vegetation was denser, a bit like heather, but with delicate and complex patterns, colours and textures. We Zodiaced through the icebergs to Red Island, wading ashore through brash ice then on to the top where we spent the afternoon photographing from the ridge which ran along the length of the Island. Although we had not climbed far, the height gave a new perspective of the area. Kinfish looked small in the distance. On one side was a narrow channel between the Island and mainland with icebergs packed into it.
I made some images with the autumnal tundra in the foreground and the cool bergs behind. However the sharp geometric shapes and cool blue colours of these bergs and their shadows above and below water, to me, sit uncomfortably with the softness and warm tones of the tundra foliage. .
On the other side of the Island, the grounded icebergs stretched away into the distance under a magenta grey sky. We were all sad to leave Red Island as this was effectively the end of our time in Greenland, the next day we were heading to Iceland and home.
Back home, eighteen months later and I am still finding images which had been overlooked and my “favourites” collection continues to expand. As well as impressive and beautiful icebergs and polar bears, the collection has many images of the tundra and they are just as evocative of our time on Kinfish. I consider myself extremely lucky to have visited this part of the world and seen this hidden land for myself.
1For those who would like to know a little more about the geology I found a very interesting and readable article on the Geology of East Greenland.
For this issue, we’re catching up with Finn Hopson. Tim visited Finn in 2015 shortly after he opened the Brighton Photography Gallery. There’s a lot to enjoy here, from how looking at the sea/water on a daily basis can prompt new thoughts and activities, to continuing to make beautiful images of the South Downs despite a pandemic. It does of course help if they’re on your doorstep, but the selection of images here – most of which were made during 2020 – do show the value of knowing your home ground whether it’s finding a new location, developing ideas for future projects, or simply avoiding the crowds.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been six years since Tim talked to you. At the time, you’d recently set up the Brighton Photography Gallery. I’m sure you anticipated there would be challenges ahead, even without a pandemic. How have you coped, adapted, and remained motivated?
July 2021 will mark seven years since I opened the gallery. It still feels like a new thing to me, but this is the longest I’ve ever done anything and my children can’t remember a time before we had the place. No one is more surprised than me that it has worked, and it’s worked better than I ever imagined when I took a chance on it in 2014.
When Tim visited me in early 2015 we were in the middle of a huge building site for the Brighton i360 viewing tower, which made the first three years here particularly challenging. With hindsight, this was a really good test of resilience and self-motivation and that experience has helped me cope with the new challenges of the pandemic.
As of March 2021, the gallery will have been closed to the public for six of the last twelve months and there’s obviously very little I can do about it, so I’ve had to try and remain rather stoic and hope that better times will return.
To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.Elliott Erwitt
Over 100 years ago, Joshua trees got their name from Mormon pioneers who were reminded of the prophet Joshua directing them toward the Promised Land. Despite their uniqueness, Joshua trees are not as majestic as a redwood or a sequoia, nor as charming as a Monterey cypress. It’s easy to understand why Joshua trees require a little time to warm up to. Mary Hunter Austin, an early champion of the desert, noted the “unhappy growth of the tree yuccas” and their “bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age, tipped with panicles of fetid, greenish bloom.” These might seem like harsh words, but Austin was keenly aware of the time required to build a sense of place in the desert. This is a lesson I’ve learned slowly over time as well.
Growing up on the Colorado Plateau, my younger self never would have suspected I’d create such strong ties to the Mojave Desert, nor that it would play such a large role in my creative and photographic development. I’ll always maintain my roots in the Four Corners region, but now southern California is my home. Twenty years ago, I moved here to attend graduate school and never left.
Shortly after my arrival, I sought out Joshua Tree National Park for the first time. I had heard about ‘Joshua Tree’ through rock climbing circles. I’ve returned regularly since that first visit, and now after two decades of exploration, I am looking back on how it has shaped my photographic vision, as well as why it’s been such an instrumental landscape in my understanding of place.
There’s a print of this image hanging on my wall, where it greets me each time I make my morning coffee. The sheer beauty of it never fails to lift my heart. I can only imagine Theo’s delight at finding this beach during perfect morning light where everything conspired to make a great image: the textured sand, the crusty line of snow, the warm waves of grass, the blue waves of water, the rosy light, and the backdrop of purple mountains.
Of course, the image didn’t ‘just happen.’ Great images never just happen. It takes a lot of work to find the exact angle and the right settings to put all these ingredients together into an image that is just as magical as the morning must have felt to the photographer. That’s the hand of the master.
This photo of a beach in west Scotland just before dawn belongs to Theo’s monumental project, Shaped by the Sea, published in book form in 2018. For three years he travelled all along Europe’s Atlantic coastline, photographing more than 50 beaches in nine different countries. Each of the photos is evocative and unique. Not only a tribute to his artistry but proof that long, intensive work on a single theme can lead to imaginative and innovative art.
I’ve written quite a lot about competitions in the past but being as we’re so close to the opening of submissions for the Natural Landscape Photography Awards, I wanted to go into a bit more detail about the process of judging, the potential pitfalls and how we’ve tried to mitigate some of them.
The first question any competition organisers should be asking themselves is “What is the goal of the competition?”. Sadly, there are many competitions that seem to exist as a marketing exercise and/or a way of making money for the organisers. We’ll try to ignore those and give our imaginary organisers the benefit of the doubt. Most competition organisers will say the purpose is “to select and showcase the best images”... as if that gets us any closer to a useful answer. The problem is that the ‘best images’ approach can lead to all sorts of creative cul-de-sacs and in most cases, the result is ‘the most wow’ images. This can end up with a very tiring and homogenous collection of classically sublime mountain, aerial and nightscape images with a few oddball compositions and lucky shots (or composites) to fill them out.
When we were planning our competition, we were keen for it to be a tool to showcase an inspiring and varied collection of images that represented some of the most interesting and creative work we were seeing online and in person. We wanted to somehow use the competition to curate a virtual exhibition that we all would love to see.
Obviously, exhibitions are hard to organise and expensive (and they don’t have a huge reach) but the next best thing, in my mind at least, is a well-produced fine art book. Therefore, we decided our goal was, essentially, to brief the judges to not necessarily find the ‘best’ or ‘most impactful’ images but to select a range of about 100 or so photographs that really represent the most inspiring work submitted. Along the way, we would obviously have to choose a set of category winners and an overall grand winner but every image in that final set should be able to stand, not just on its own but alongside all the rest of the works selected.
Who should judge? Tough question. As a type of art, landscape photography is inherently subjective. Yes, there are often images that most people will like more than other images but there are also sometimes images it’s almost impossible to say they are ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than others. These often inspire really strong feelings in at least some viewers. This leads to a discussion around whether it’s better that a small number of people love an image or that everybody likes an image – see our ‘scoring’ discussion for more on that.
Most people who engage in an activity at a certain level are interested in the opinions of their peers (if they want to be judged at all). For example, if I wanted someone to pick out some landscape photography books for me to buy, I’d nearly always choose other landscape photographers, and if those photographers just happened to be widely respected for their aesthetic judgement and skills, all the better.
When we were looking at which judges to ask, we had a few criteria. Some of those were pragmatic, for instance it would be great if they had a high profile to help promote the competition in this first year. But they also had to represent a wide array of styles and practices if possible.
We also wanted judges who will have seen a lot of photographs and know about the compositional and post-processing cliches, the iconic, over photographed locations, etc. so that they could recognise originality and creativity - and also notice flaws in post processing and composition when they saw them.
Again, from a distance, this looks like an easy one. Just pick the best images. However, the best according to who? Are the judges choosing based on their own subjective tastes or are they trying to second guess an audience’s tastes?
When I’ve been asked to judge competitions before, I’ve had to work these criteria out for myself. My own tastes can be somewhat idiosyncratic and perhaps change depending on what I’ve been looking at recently or the types of work I’ve been interested in creating recently. So, in most cases, I’ve tried to be a little more objective. However, I also know I’ve been hired because of who I am and so trying to be completely objective would deny some of my own personal experiences.
There are some general decisions to be made about what aspects of photography are to be judged. Is originality to be rewarded? (and, conversely, are cliche’s to be avoided)? This may mean that some photographs, although quite impressive, might be passed by for ones that show novel composition, original subject matter or surprising use of light and form.
Other criteria would be around how judges should balance subject and moment vs composition and visual balance etc. i.e. an amazing photograph can be about the right place and the right time. It can also about the photographer having worked hard to create a stunning compositional structure with a subject matter that is usually difficult to work with.
Because our competition is about photography and the photographer, we’ll be briefing the judges to put more attention on the qualities the photographer brings to the work e.g. composition, the moment of capture (through lighting), balance, form, etc.
The use of categories in competitions is often a knee jerk reaction. Instead of paying much thought to them, the categories are chosen because ‘that’s what everyone else does’.
We’ve used categories as a way to separate and isolate types of image that have unique attributes that make them likely to be over or under-represented in the competition.
It was quite clear from having judged many previous competitions that aerial and night photography tended to be heavily represented. In particular, aerial photography shows such a ‘surprising’ view of the landscape that they tend to stand out when shown along with typical landscape views (and tend to still look ‘OK’ when over processed!).
The ability of the camera to represent the night sky in ways that we don’t tend to see with the naked eye also means that they stand out when judging competitions and hence these were separated out into a separate category.
We also wanted to ensure that intimate and abstract photographs had more of a chance of being seen and hence decide that a dedicated category for these would make sense.
We considered categories for other ‘niche’ subjects, film photography, environmental, etc. but we thought it would make more sense to have the option to recognise and draw attention to these in the final selection rather than try to separate them out.
Many competitions ask judges to score each entrant using a variety of different scales. And from the outside looking in, it seems an apparently sensible approach. After all, you compare two images and one gets a higher score than the other, how can that go wrong? However, when you’re hours or days into a judging process, can you really remember what a score of 65 meant two days ago vs a score of 69 today? Inevitably there will be scoring ‘drift’ and then the ability to assess the comparative quality of images goes out of the window.
Scoring can still be useful though, but the judges need something simple to remember whilst doing so. I would imagine most people can only hold a simple set of scores in their head, perhaps from 0=reject, 1=maybe, 2=OK, 3= good, 4=very good to 5=possible winner.
Given a 0-5 or 1-5 scale, it would be fairly straightforward to say all of the 4s and 5s (or 3s, 4s and 5s) go through to the second - depending on how many are in each category. (See ‘pre-judging’ for more information).
There is another possible problem with scoring though. Let’s consider the fact that some images really resonate with a few judges but don’t really do much for others. What happens when we compare these with images ones that just get given a ‘very good’ by everybody. Which one should be better?
If we look at the scores, we might end up with the following (presuming four judges).
This is the resonating image:
5,5,2,2
This is the very good image:
4,4,4,4
The resonating image gets 14 points but the very good image gets 16 points so obviously the very good image does better? Well, not so fast. Art is subjective and I might prefer to see an image that really resonates with a few judges than see the generally ‘pretty good’ image. There must be something about that image and I want to know what it is - hence a scoring system needs to consider more than just the ‘average’.
There is a reason we don’t use web-based tools to edit and post-process our photographs. They’re nearly all interminably slow, even on a fast internet connection. And try it on a flaky connection and it becomes a real pain.
Judging images is really just a form of editing and we have some great tools available for this already. I think most will be familiar with Adobe Lightroom and will agree that, when it's working OK, it’s simple to skip backwards and forward in Library mode, picking and rejecting images, giving them star rankings, reassessing, browsing through full pages of thumbnails and then having quick peeks at 100% views.
The judging process in a competition should feel the same way and we plan on distributing a local copy of the images to our judges in a Lightroom Catalog and then letting them grade and sort the images locally whereupon they can send a Lightroom Catalog back to us for further assessment.
The pre-judging of competitions is often a place where great photography gets rejected. This isn’t always true but it can sometimes seem that way when you compare the range of images that pass through to second rounds vs those that get rejected.
It used to be fairly common that pre-judging was done by either a different set of less well-known judges or sometimes by the organisers of the competition (in some cases the organisers' secretaries, PAs or interns).
When people see the almost random collection of images that get rejected or pass through to the next round, it often creates a quite visceral loss of faith in competitions.
I’ve spent quite a while considering this issue and, unfortunately, there is no ‘perfect’ answer. In an ideal world, every final round judge would look at every single entrant. However, I can guarantee that many potential judges would baulk at the idea of looking at every image in a large competition (even with significant remuneration!).
We have spent quite some time trying to come up with a compromise that on the one hand ensures that the judges get a chance to see everyone’s images but also making sure they could spend more time assessing images that stand a greater chance of making the final selections.
The way we have decided to do this is for the organisers (Alex Nail, Matt Payne, Rajesh Jyothiswaran and myself, Tim Parkin) to pre-sort all of the images using the 0-5 scoring system mentioned above. We would combine those scores and then present this pre-sorted Lightroom Catalog to the judges.
The judges can then focus most of their attention on the 3’s and 4’s while still being able to scan through the 2’s (and sanity check our 1’s) and finally seeing if they want to demote any of our 5’s.
We will brief the judges that this pre-sorting is only there to help them focus their time and not to influence their final choices. They still have all the images available to reassess and they can score any of them as they wish.
“But the judges will just choose one of their friends!”. It’s a fair accusation, after all, the great photographers are all friends with each other and have a desire to excluded everybody else from the industry and to share the profits between them.
Well - perhaps not. There may be a few people who are friends with each other, unsurprisingly as they tend to get invited to the same events. However, we have seen competitions where the winners have had a relationship of some sort with one or more of one of the commended or winners and so we have introduced a voluntary scheme where if a person recognises the photograph and has a relationship with the person in some way, they should recuse themselves from judging. This should only be an issue if they are related or close friends or have a business relationship (if a photographer is just regular workshop client, this should not be a problem but we will ask the judges to make us aware of this).
There is a lot to be said for remote judging. It makes the best use of time for all involved. It can spread the load across multiple days, allowing judges to take rests when they’re feeling a bit jaded or can’t concentrate appropriately. It also gives the judges a bit of flexibility when they can do the judging. However, there is so much to be said for discussing things in person. If you’ve ever sat and chatted about a book with a friend, you’ll know that each of you brings different knowledge to the conversation and the combined assessment is more than just the average of two different opinions.
I’m heavily influenced by my experiences with the wildlife photographer of the year awards where the final rounds are judged in person over a series of days. The resulting conversations are fascinating and each judge may have specialist or local knowledge that the others don’t have. The group often adapts its position on certain photos based on this information.
We would like for our judges to be able to meet in person for a few days for our awards but with our judges donating their time and with restrictions around Covid, we have compromised on a final day of judging in person after the sifting has been done remotely, to ensure that we have agreement on our winning and commended images.
Well, it’s not quite as bad as herding cats, but managing a set of independent, professional photographers should not be underestimated. Some may be quite outspoken, others may be quiet and withdrawn. Left to their own devices it would be possible if perhaps not likely, that the discussion, and hence the conclusions, could be over-influenced by one or more members of the group.
A good chairperson can mitigate most of these issues. They can keep the judging on a timetable, ensure each person’s voice is heard, prompt/remind judges of the criteria they are judging by, etc. The chairperson shouldn’t be making or influencing decisions but should be able to ensure things proceed along a timely and appropriate path.
And that's about it for my thoughts on judging. I think it pays to be as open as possible about your processes rather than have a 'black box' approach and if you have any suggestions for things I may have missed, which aren't clear or just general questions about the competition, please let me know in the comments below.
Welcome to our 4x4 feature which is a set of four mini landscape photography portfolios submitted from our subscribers. Each portfolios consisting of four images related in some way.
Interested in submitting your work? We're on the lookout for new portfolios for the next few issues, so please do get in touch!
Wonder is the first of all passions. RENE DESCARTES
A quote by Argentine poet Jorge Louis Borges was pivotal in helping me understand that art is a way and not a thing, it is a commitment one makes to being in the world. When asked, "What is the purpose of poetry?" Borges rhetorically responded, "What is the purpose of dawn? What is the purpose of a caress? What is the purpose of the smell of coffee? The purpose of poetry," he reflected, " is pleasure, it's for emotion, it's for living."
When I set out to make pictures I’m going out on an adventure, I’m going out to see what raw materials nature has to show me and how I might recast them into something other than what they are. This curiosity leaves the door ajar for those discoveries that occur at the intersection of chance and wisdom; I trust that I’ll return with a few pictures that capture Borges' sentiments with elegance, beauty, and wonderment, for in the end, the result of any good adventure should be awe and art.
I need to make pictures that look in rather than look at, pictures which offer the opportunity for a deeper dialogue with the viewer. An image that asks more questions than it answers is an image that delights and engages each time it is viewed. I strive to make photographs that are quiet and subtle, emotive and alive with intimacy, inventive and insightful. They are neither factual, nor representational: they are abstractions.
For a few years I’ve been experimenting with the creation of pictures in which recognizable raw materials morph into blurred abstractions of cloud-like colour fields, shaped shadows, and strange superimpositions through the optical trickery of long and macro lenses; this recasting of raw materials then becomes fertile ground for my explorations. With lenses racked out, I hunt serendipitously, close in amongst botanicals, where tiny shifts in my position result in fantastical landscapes that I can explore. Peering into these ephemeral worlds is breathtaking as I can't see the image until it reveals itself. In Looking at Photographs, John Szarkowski commented on a similar approach by Naomi Savage when he said of her picture, the result of a finicky darkroom process, “It is less about getting what one wants, and more a matter of being open to the possibility of wanting what one gets.”
To flesh out my notion of abstraction, let’s look at the sleight-of-hand captioned, Protea. A withered stamen hangs from a chaotic nest of ochre, twisted in a dying arabesque; evidence in a crime scene strewn with cloud-like blurs of sulfurous greens, cyanic blues, and the crimson of dried blood. On the left hangs a long cadaverous elbow – no longer just cellophane, but recast as a beautifully rendered bit player in a tableau vivant. One’s eye navigates this narcotic netherworld not cued by Renaissance perspective but quietly guided by subtle hints: the primary hues and their changes in tonality and density, the modulation of those hues by deep shadows, the more subtle cast shadows set adrift in space behind their objects, and the luminous background glow. Through abstraction and the illusions of lenses a dying bouquet lives in metaphor.
My passion for nature began at a very early age. Growing up in San Diego, CA in the 50s, we were outdoors from sunup until sundown exploring canyons and beaches and making pets of whatever creatures we could capture; we were home for chores, meals, and a bed and not much more. The natural world was and still is a source of solace and wonderment. It is the world which produced us, which holds our origins, and which remains the true home of our psyches.
Protea
To first search for an interesting place to visit and then try to catch the essence by photographing it really strengthens my experience of nature and gives me the drive to get out there. I very much appreciate the moments waiting for the conditions to take the image I have in my head. However, most of the time I have to return to the same location many times before I am satisfied and the image is in line with the idea I had in my head.
I really like to show the nature to people with a mood or atmosphere that most people (except photographers) do not experience. This means going there at odd times and especially during ”bad” weather conditions. Many people have said it and although I did not understand it at first, now I do: what ”normal” people call bad weather is good weather for photographers (and vice versa).
I believe I am in a process of change my photography vision. I use to strived towards grand vistas with large mountains and waterfalls (and I still like those types of places), but I am changing. I have started to appreciate smaller intimate landscapes much more. This has been inspired by YouTube/podcasts from photographers like Adam Gibbs and Alister Benn among others. Also reading articles here on On Landscape website has been really inspiring on this journey. Maybe I am following a trend, not sure where it will lead me but I like it. Time will tell.
The images in this 4x4 were all taken on 3 January 2021. I drove alone (these are covid-19 times) to a coastal area close to where I live. I wanted to make ”fine art” images with long exposures and with an ethereal look. It has been a dark year so I wanted to make dark images to reflect this. The plan was to turn the images to black and white. It was cold, windy and snowfall was blowing in from the sea - horrible weather for most but great for me! First I used exposure time to catch the textures in the waves (around 1-2 seconds), but after some experimentation and decided for longer times (20-30 seconds). I really like what the longer exposure did to the scene. I also focused on rock details in the water instead of the grand view. When I came home and opened the images on the computer I liked the monochrome colour tone so I decided to skip the black and white conversion, the images were naturally monochrome but with a colour tint. I also liked the drama in the scene which I enhanced by making the images darker, adding contrast and making them a little cooler in Lightroom.
I've been travelling the coast of Brittany for years in search of the most beautiful places, and that's not what is missing. Brittany is a fantastic playground for landscape photographers. However, the peculiarity of Finistère (the extreme west of Brittany) is to offer many wild, jagged coasts, and often with a lot of relief. All that I love ! All you have to do is be there at the right time, with colourful and cloudy skies!
A planned trip for epic views and glorious autumn colours in the Lake District was fortunately completely thwarted by intense rainfall. I was forced to ignore the epic and turn my attention to the smaller detail and I had a ball. The most rewarding and productive 3 days of photography resulted in both my gear and myself being utterly drenched but gave me so much joy and these four images are my favourites. My thanks go to Alister Benn for giving me the courage via his writing in On Landscape and his YouTube channel to let go and create.
My introduction to Iran as a location for photography and also as a country with a wealth of great photographers was whilst judging the environmental Photographer of the Year competition. I was surprised at the number of entries from Iran until they pointed out that Iranians were not generally able to enter many competitions because of having to pay in Western currency. The EPOTY competition was free to enter, and because of this, many photography schools submitted work and it showed a fascinatingly varied and beautiful landscape.
Since then I've seen a few great Iranian photographers whilst browsing online but Ali Shokri stood out as one that I was determined to include in On Landscape. Fortunately, he responded to our emails and obliged us with some interesting answers and great photographs. I hope you enjoy his work as much as I have. I highly recommend a look around his website if you have time after reading this.
Can you tell me a little about your education, childhood passions, early exposure to photography and vocation?
Since childhood, my passions were climbing trees and walks beside rivers with my friends. I was so curious and excited and wanted to experience everything. When my family and I went to my father's ancestral gardens I really wanted to capture those beauties of nature and wanted to show them to my friends and my family. I believed the camera is the best media to share my ideas. My job is to photograph nature, besides it, I have an art gallery in Tabriz city, but my main job is nature photography especially trees.
Tell me about why you love landscape photography? A little background on what your first passions were, what you studied and what job you ended up doing.
I studied Computer Network Engineering, but during my education, I knew I wouldn’t like to be an employed person. I wanted to have a job to connect directly with nature. So when I graduated, I went into art and continued with photography.
For the tenth iteration of this column, I decided to focus on the artwork of a photographer who prides himself on strict adherence to a more natural approach to making images while instilling a deeply rooted passion for storytelling from his local environs. Wayne Suggs is a photographer living in Las Cruces, New Mexico and many of his photographs are from right in his own backyard in the Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument. Wayne’s images are focused on showcasing the rugged juxtaposition between desolation and beauty with a reverence for the Indigenous cultures that came before.
Wayne, a New Mexico native, has been photographing the Southwest for over forty-five years and his love of his local scenes is quite apparent when one looks at his images and reads the descriptions that accompany his wonderful photographs.
I begin to look forward to the next winter almost before the last one is done. Spring, summer and autumn all bring their own attractions and I embrace each one in turn, but as I roam the Upper Dales, camera in hand, deep down there’s a yearning for winter’s return and whatever subject is framed by my viewfinder I can’t help but wonder how it would look blanketed in snow. As October fades and the in-between days of November slowly pass, my childlike excitement grows. I suspect I’m not alone!
This year the first heavy snow fell in the Upper Dales on 3rd December. Eight inches of snow on Buttertubs Pass and an uncontrolled slide down a steep section of road was enough to prevent a half-hearted attempt to reach the gallery in Muker. Instead we dug out the snow, gritted behind the tyres, reversed back up the slope, turned the car around and drove back home. A cup of tea later, warm outdoor gear on, we were trudging up Beggarmans Road towards Fleet Moss into the snow and the mist.
Buttertubs Pass, Swaledale
Moorland Fence, Buttertubs
The Upper Dales, where we live and work, lie in the far north west of the Yorkshire Dales, bordered by Cumbria to the west and County Durham to the North. The region encompasses the upper reaches of Wensleydale, its northerly neighbour Swaledale, and a number of side dales including Sleddale where we live.
Fell top or frost pocket it’s the transformational power of winter that I’m excited by; its ability to turn the ordinary - a wall, a fence, a stream - into something extraordinary; to throw forward something otherwise overlooked; to reveal structures usually hidden by chaos and complexity; to create shapes and patterns that exist for a moment or at most a few hours.
Pathways, Sleddale
Upper Swaledale, with its deep, narrow valley walled in by high fells has no shortage of such places. If you prefer the tops, follow the River Swale upstream towards Keld, Birkdale Common (474m) and the Cumbrian border. Alternatively make the short, stiff climb from Muker to the top of Kisdon Hill (499m) or take Buttertubs Pass out of Swaledale and (snow plough permitting) you’ll soon be on the high ground (528m) between Great Shunner Fell (716m) and Lovely Seat (675m). If you prefer the bottoms, seek out the many waterfalls, becks, hollows and meadows that surround Kisdon, including Kisdon Force and the wonderfully named Dirty Piece.
Wensleydale, wider and gentler in nature, holds its own delights. There are the fells of Addlebrough (481m), Dodd Fell (668m) and Wether Fell (614m) to explore. At the top of Fleet Moss (602m) you’ll discover the old roman supply route of Cam High Road. Take the western course towards Dodd Fell, with wonderful views of Ingleborough, to join the Pennine Way. Take the eastern course and you’ll cross the length of Wether Fell and have the option to drop north into Wensleydale or south into Raydale, home to North Yorkshire’s second largest lake, Semerwater, and England’s shortest river, The River Bain.
Dragonfly, River Bain, Raydale
Semmerwater, Raydale
Of course winter’s transformational power isn’t limited to rural idylls. Wherever temperatures plummet and snowfalls, whether it’s a city centre, a suburb, an industrial park or housing estate, if you have the time and inclination (and are happy to put up with the odd funny look from the passers-by) there’s the opportunity to discover something new.
Wherever I am there’s a mindfulness about working in these conditions that goes to the heart of my fulfilment and joy of being a photographer. Though I might set out with a particular subject in mind there comes a time (usually when my pre-visualisation comes face to face with stark reality) when the baggage of preconceived ideas is discarded. It’s then that the landscape becomes a blank canvas and I begin to look with fresh eyes, both at the grandeur of the place and its minutiae. Moorland streams, usually unnoticed, take the guise of snakes, upturned feeding troughs become space invaders, rough moorland becomes sand dunes, roads become lightning strikes, riverbanks ice realms. These are the times I become lost in the moment only to discover afterwards that I’ve spent an hour photographing a sheet of ice, or wire fence, or dry stone wall! It might take a while to tune in to the landscape; on some days you might not tune in at all, but with patience, the discovery of one thing usually triggers the discovery of another, and then another.
Gunnerside, Swaledale
Sidewinder, Fleet Moss, Sleddale
When out in wintery conditions the key (for me at least) is simplicity. I don’t want to be changing lenses or filters when the wind is whipping up a snowstorm, nor if I can help it having to set up a tripod. Though camera kit is secondary to the ability to look, the right gear is important. A decent view finder, low noise at higher ISO’s and a good dynamic range are all a help, and if like me you favour the simplicity of a fixed focal length lens (in my case 35mm) lots of megapixels will allow you to crop down afterwards.
I can’t claim that photographing winter’s transformation of the landscape will provide any deep and significant meaning or deliver any sort of message (though with time messages and meaning have a habit of revealing themselves). Instead, it will more likely make you cold and wet, and wishing you had a weather sealed camera! But for me, photography concerns aesthetics, discovery and simple fascination, and is first and foremost a means to record and share a new discovery or the moment I’ve just witnessed, so winter’s ability to shape something new is pure alchemy. To watch melt water flow beneath ice, with its random patterns and endless pathways, may not provide an insight into the human condition, but to my mind is beautiful and fascinating and that’s quite enough!
Equivalency is the ability to use the visual world as the plastic material for the photographer's expressive purposes. Minor White
After an exhibit of photographic portraits, Alfred Stieglitz was jarred when a critic suggested that the power of the portraits came from a hypnotic power Stieglitz exerted over his models. Recognising he did not actually have such powers, Stieglitz nonetheless wished to understand where the “hypnotising” effect came from: what made some photographs express more than just recognisable subjects. Stieglitz wanted to see if he could distil the effect and separate it from any impression having to do with the identity of the literal things portrayed in a photograph. Toward that end, he produced a portfolio of cloud photographs (clouds being the most benign thing he could think of) to see if he could reproduce the effect with ostensibly unexciting subject matter. He later dubbed the effect “equivalence,” stating cryptically “My cloud photographs are equivalents of my most profound life experience, my basic philosophy of life.”
“In looking at my photographs of clouds,” Stieglitz wrote, “people seem freer to think about the relationships in the pictures than about the subject matter for its own sake.”
Growing up in the western Great Lakes region of the US wandering and exploring the hardwood forests of Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan it seems I’ve always been enamoured with trees and the leaves that fill their branches. I could never thank my parents enough for not only allowing but encouraging my wanderlust of the environs of my youth. I remember numerous times picking up a “pretty leaf” or staring at leaves on branches, bunches of leaves on the ground or in pools of water, or for that matter whole trees. I’ve always just been amazed at the colours, veining, and shapes of leaves, being amazed at the lines within their surfaces creating patterns and textures. Trees are truly wonderful and interesting plants, the structure of the branches and the leaves upon those branches are portraits of their personality. They shade us from summer heat, block the cold winds of winter, provide us with nuts and other foods, but mostly they improve our visual environment and nourish the artistic soul. Trees are the stuff of poets, writers, painters and definitely photographers.
Red Maple Fall
Red Maple leaf against a tree trunk, Starved Rock State Park, LaSalle County, Illinois
It is no surprise then when I started photographing the natural world that my focus would quickly turn to leaves and trees as primary subject matter. As I started building my library of images I noticed that I had unconsciously been developing a theme of images around the subject of leaves. I didn’t look so much for such images as I just made my mind attuned to noticing such opportunities as I wandered through any environment. Part of this awareness was the early stages of the process of seeing artistically. I became acutely aware that when I noticed contrast, I found images. Now as I wander, I look for only one thing; contrast and leaves are often a study of contrasts.
My leaf images are in some ways, a fallback. In any season, in just about any light, especially subject matter small enough in size to allow for the use of a light diffuser disc. When nothing else is happening photographically, especially when in an environment not exciting for its landscape features, these little vignettes of nature abound. I’ve even found leaf shots where there’s not a tree in sight, leaves do blow around!
Early in my photographic life I read books and attended workshops and seminars to improve my art and learn my craft. I kept reading and hearing the photographers I admired and saw as mentors suggest and promote the concept of shooting themes. Themes can be project oriented or ongoing processes. For me, the themes I’ve developed as I’ve made images over the years are definitely more along the lines of ongoing interests, or maybe more like ongoing obsessions. There are certain subjects in nature that spark my interest and leaves are one of my most foremost interests. Studies of leaves are simply images I greatly enjoy making and will continue to do so as long as I photograph.
Skunk Cabbage Curls
Skunk Cabbage leaf edges and veining, Black Partridge Woods Forest Preserve, Cook County, Illinois
Textures of Green
Fern fronds and other leaves create a pattern of textures, roadside Forest Service road, Nicolet National Forest, Forest County, Wisconsin
There is artistry to a leaf that I find hard to put into words. In looking at leaves, the colours and veining, the patterns and textures, I get a good feeling. Leaves are nature’s artistry on display. Whether it be straight forward literal sharp images of groups of leaves, a whole leaf, or a piece of a leaf; or impressionistic images of the same using soft focus elements, subject movement or layered slices of the same image, looking at and photographing leaves gives me pleasure and wonderment at the perfect randomness of nature. The art of the leaf stirs my soul.
Artistic impressionism comes from such things as sheer natural beauty but also from the mystery contained within the subject matter. Where does the colour come from? Why does the veining take the structure it does? Why are the edges smooth or serrated? Why is the backside colour of many leaves a pastel version of the front? Why are some leaves thin and some thick? Science can and does answer all such questions and those are easily researched if one needs the answers. For me, it is the wonderment at such that fills my eyes and makes me want to photograph them in a manner that is clear as to beauty but also allows for the mystery within. Those elements allow me to share my wonderment with the viewers of my work.
Crimson Maple Red
Japanese Maple in fall colour against a blue autumn sky, DuPage County, Illinois
When I get good feelings or vibes at looking at a subject, it is a key to me that I’m much more likely to have that same sense of the feeling I had at the time of making the image and that it may come through to the viewer of that image. A sense of feeling, a sense of beauty… for beauty’s sake, and a sense of mystery all contribute to great images. With such elements you may make great images, with just one of two, you can make great images, without such elements you make documents, often interesting but rarely stunning. As I move from a forty year occupation in photography back to the avocation of photography that was my initial involvement as a youth, I find that images that stir and nurture my soul, artistically and otherwise, are the only images I’m interested in making. Many of these images are what a good friend of mind calls “book images”. These are the kinds of images we made initially for ourselves. Back in the heyday of nature photography “coffee table” book publishing, such images might also find their way into a book where publishers otherwise would have little or no interest in those same images.
My conversion from occupation to avocation fits so nicely with such “book images”, the kind of images that truly celebrate the artistic nature of leaves. Finding such image opportunities and making the images, but not worrying about finding a commercial audience is very freeing artistically. Instead, sharing images through my blog and presentations and all the various social media opportunities, allows me to share the celebration of the art of leaves and the art of nature to a much wider audience. Ridding yourself from commercial considerations with respect to subject and composition frees you to make the images you want to make, the images your soul requires, the images the artist in you requires.
Pagoda Birch
Pagoda Dogwood leaves form a pattern around a single Birch tree trunk, Newport State Park, Door County, Wisconsin
Take time in your own future wanderings of this earth to see the art of nature. Look at a leaf, study it, stand transfixed in its beauty and wonder at the mystery of how it came to be. And if you also have your camera with you, you’ll have an opportunity to make an image that not only satisfies your artistic desires but shares with your audience; the beauty, wonder, and mystery that is the art of a leaf, and that is the art of nature.
Beka Globe is a photographer based on the Isle of Harris. I originally came across her work whilst leading a workshop in the Hebrides. We drove past the studio that she runs with her husband Nikolai, stopped to have a look and discovered her wonderful and dramatic black and white photographs of the islands. The image that caught my eye that day was an astonishing photo of a wave called Romagi Sea, so close into the rip curl that it suggested Beka had been in the water when she took it (impossible, way too dangerous). But having spent time with her book Land, Sea and Sky I’ve come to admire her images of St Kilda even more, and the photo here: Boreray Gannets is a great example of the portfolio.
St Kilda…, it sounds like a lost place from the past: Celtic overtones, obscure Irish saints - although the name could equally be a corruption of the Old Norse words sunt kelda (meaning sweet well water) - the etymology itself takes us far away to a place that resonates of remoteness and distance. Extreme isolation. St Kilda is actually a small archipelago of islands (Hirta, Boreray, Dùn and Soay) 40 miles west of Benbecula in the North Atlantic Ocean. Battered by Atlantic storms in the winter it’s only during the summer that hardy travellers get a chance to visit. Although the islands were inhabited from the Iron Age, the last islanders were evacuated in 1930 having voted that their way of life was no longer sustainable. St Kilda is deserted and abandoned. The place has been left to seabirds: gannets, fulmars and puffins.
Boreray Gannets
The inaccessibility and remoteness of the location comes through strongly in Beka’s image.
Like many landscape photographers, I have scoured books for inspiration and motivation. I have numerous books on my shelves, some looked at more than others. I enjoy losing myself for an hour or two, thinking about the images, the locations, the idea behind them and the story of the locations.
Is there a pre story? What is the current story? And also what future does it have? One such image is a favourite and catches my attention. ‘Callanish Shadows’ by Wojciech Kruczynski'. This image takes me back to when I was younger and my imagination had no constraints before I ‘grew up’ when I was able to spend hours storytelling in my mind. This image brings back memories of family holidays and visits to castles and monuments, which fed my active, vivid imagination, especially as my father is an avid historian and loved ancient mythology.
Welcome to my first On Landscape book review and my thanks to Tim and Charlotte for offering me the opportunity to share some recent acquisitions with you.
A brief background to Biblioscapes. It is a lockdown side project I started back in April 2020 as a way of sharing a selection of the photobooks I own, offering people an opportunity to view the books as flick-through videos.
The website launched in August 2020 and I began recording a weekly podcast in September, discussing selected books with the photographers, artists and publishers who produced them to offer fellow book and photography lovers unique glimpses and insights into the work.
My favourite season for photography is winter and there’s nothing better than waking up to a fresh snowfall or a misty morning of frost on the ground. Within the pandemic times, my ability to travel in Scotland has been limited and the extent of my photography this winter was limited to one day’s dusting of snow in the city centre of Glasgow.
Instead, I have turned to my collection to soak up some winter sun, feel a sense of remoteness and experience the faraway, selecting three books that each capture a unique winter landscape.
Sandrine’s book is a tribute to the glaciers of Iceland which are of huge significance to the country’s identity and imagery, forming an important part of the landscape and one that many of us flock to photograph.
I came across Sandrine’s book Jokull by chance but was immediately drawn to her work; the incredible patterns and shapes made me initially think I was looking at images from another planet.
As someone with a number of books that feature the Icelandic landscape, Sandrine’s book provides a refreshing perspective, offering a different take on the glacial formations.
With a limited edition run of only 100 copies, I appreciate and admire Sandrine’s attention to detail and coherence with the red stitching and the coordinating red centre-fold, the different qualities of paper and the pouch itself.
Twenty years ago Gerry spent two months on the remote continent of Antarctica, armed with a large format camera and a desire and thirst to explore. It is an area I would like to visit, however, it is unlikely to happen anytime in the near future – with cost not Covid-19 being the primary factor.
Extending to over 14million sq km, there are few identifiable objects to provide us with that sense of scale, so as I view the images, I find myself being stopped in my tracks as I try to visualise the scale and imagine the surroundings for myself.
As one would expect with a large format camera, the detail in the photography is magnificent and the tonal range of the images has been beautifully captured.
If I could only visit one country time and time again, then Japan would almost certainly be it. I have been very fortunate to visit repeatedly over the past 15 years on holidays with my wife and I never grow tired of spotting the combinations of cultural traditions and technological advancements present within everyday Japanese contemporary life. There are many phenomena I have only ever seen in Japan including vending machines offering hot meals in the middle of nowhere.
Eiji’s work combines my love of the landscape with my fascination for culture, capturing a Japanese symbolic icon within the landscape. The magic is in the juxtaposition between the natural and the technological. The bold man-made machine standing out against Nature’s winter embrace.
The print quality and colour reproduction are both superb, evoking vibrancy and energy without being overpowering or intimidating. With its concertina binding, there is the opportunity to display and view this body of work as a miniature exhibition.
Beyond Words stocks both Gerry’s book and Eiji’s book while Sandrine’s book is available from her website.
In the early 1980s, I graduated from Edinburgh University with an honours degree in Environmental Chemistry. My final year research dissertation examined chemical processes involved in the destruction of the ozone layer.
I never went on to pursue a scientific career because, back then, environmentalism really wasn’t taken seriously and there were very few jobs that weren’t about trying to keep the big polluters just about on the right side of the law.
My interest in, and concerns for, environmental matters have never waned though, and it is this interest that led to the creation of my audiovisual 'Humans at Work project'.
Primarily a landscape photographer, I am particularly interested in creating impressionistic rather than literal representations of the landscape, with a lot of my work featuring ICM, double exposures and other in-camera techniques. In my pursuit of satisfying impressions of the landscape, I noticed that I was producing images that had a very foreboding feel to them. At first, this wasn’t a conscious choice; it was just the way that I felt the images needed to be processed. I then decided to bring these images together into a body of work to be featured on my website.
In 1981, a 23-year old photographer happened across a book in his local library. It was, In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods, by Galen Rowell. Documenting the 1975 American expedition to climb K2, the world’s second highest mountain, Rowell’s pictures dramatically illustrate the barely imaginable reality of the Karakoram. Located in a remote corner of Asia, where Pakistan, India, China and Afghanistan defend disputed borders, The Karakoram region remains little populated, and visitors are limited to elite rock climbers and mountaineers.
The young photographer was Colin Prior, and his new book, The Karakoram, is the culmination of a lifelong obsession sparked by that discovery in the library.
In particular, it was Rowell’s photograph of the Trango Towers that commandeered Colin’s imagination and drove him to visit and photograph the region, not just once, but on six different expeditions.
Fifteen years passed before the first of these adventures in 1996 when Colin was working on a British Airways commission. It was these commissions that launched his reputation as the panoramic mountain photographer par excellence. He returned to the Karakoram in 2004, 2013, 2014, 2015, and finally in 2019.
© Colin Prior
Any expedition to the mountain regions of Pakistan is fraught with risk. The mountaineering hazards are abundant, complicated by the demands of altitude that can affect judgment, health and sleep. In addition, there are rockfalls, avalanches, concealed crevasses on snow-covered glaciers, unpredictable and extreme weather. These and other hazards are all present just passing through such terrain, let alone when the climber/photographer needs to gain or lose elevation, and deploy many kilograms of sensitive and expensive camera gear.
Any adventurous traveller in Pakistan must also understand its political instability and the risk of ambush, robbery, kidnap… or worse… en route to or from the area.
For Colin, the rewards of facing these dangers was the chance to bear witness to the most dramatic mountain landscape on earth. Although he enjoyed some sponsorship on later expeditions, for most of the time he worked with no publishing contract, with no final outcome confirmed. Towards the end, the Pakistani High Commissioner played a key role in helping ensure the book was printed. But even so, Colin’s personal investment and commitment to fulfilling this huge task cannot be overstated.
And the good news is that all that risk, danger to life and limb, travel and trekking time, and months living in the extreme discomfort of altitude, in a tent, deprived of home comfort…all of this has paid off spectacularly.
© Colin Prior
The format is great; at 35cm x 29cm it is big, as befits a book of epic mountains, but not too big. And at 160 pages of high quality paper it is not awkwardly heavy, or cumbersome to hold in the hand. The design (in collaboration with Colin’s son Laurence) is beautiful with ample white space, and perfectly-judged proportions.
There is an excellent introduction by the photographer, and then six relatively brief reports on each of the expeditions. They are made through the (metaphorical) lens of a working photographer, and so are really insightful for On Landscape readers and others interested in the photographic perspective.
But they are more than that, for in its calm, restrained prose they convey with real eloquence the depth and experience of someone who has lived with the reality of the mountains around him. He focuses on the facts of light, on the vital role of his guides and porters who have done so much to make these expeditions possible, and there are vignettes of the small details of the environment, as well as the sublime beauty of the region’s great rock cathedrals.
© Colin Prior
The writing certainly sets the tone, yet it is the photographs that are the purpose of this book, and it is in the beauty and layered visual complexity of the photographs where most of us will dwell, as we turn the pages, slowly. There are three main Muztagh groups of images, organised geographically, which may be helpful for those who know the region. But this layout is a subtle structural detail only because the landscapes are all so uniformly spectacular.
Even though the theme is completely unified there are still numerous creative and artistic decisions that must be made about the pictures, layout, and sequence. Not the least is whether to ‘make’ the picture as colour, or black and white in the age of the digital raw file. Inspired by Vittorio Sella, whose pioneering work from the Karakoram is the first meaningful artistic photography done here, it might have been tempting to stay with black and white.
In fact, the book is a mix of black and white and colour. The purpose of the monochrome images is well-realised, emphasising texture, light, and the sculptural presence of the mountains. Colour brings a vivid depth and reality to these landscapes, emphasising mood and atmosphere, prompting different emotions.
I know Colin well enough to have followed the genesis of this project through the last fifteen years. The digital revolution had just begun when he made the first of these journeys. At that time Colin was shooting mainly panoramic images on Fuji transparency film. Subsequent years brought the full tsunami of multiple digital revolutions: the internet and digital dissemination of photographs; digital capture; digital post production; social media; artificial intelligence.
And so, as we leaf our way through The Karakoram, we are also digesting an artistic obsession that has bridged the analog and digital worlds.
I admit to being nervous of what this might have meant for the book. From my own experience, I know how tricky it was to cross this river, to relearn with the new, imperfect and rapidly changing technology of digital. And especially to combine images made on large and medium format film cameras in the early years, with ones made on smaller digital cameras in the later ones.
The digital cameras have come and gone at a dizzying pace, and there has been the overwhelming realisation that composing the picture alone is not enough. Once we would just shoot the transparency, and everything else would be taken care of by an expert print technician. Now we must also translate the raw image file ourselves, and edit for output, especially print.
Yet somehow, the viewer of this book is completely untroubled by these momentous background events. Can we tell what camera technology was used for a particular picture? No. There is a stylistic and aesthetic coherence throughout. That does enormous credit to the photographer’s consistency and clarity of vision. A deep commitment to synthesising the real, and the imagined is fully achieved. He even makes it look effortless, but the reality behind that effortless fulfilment could not be more different.
Technique is the last thing that comes to mind as we absorb the complex tapestry of these terrestrial monuments, but the fine detail and exquisite tonal rendering of the mountain landscape is the result of superb and consistent technique, whatever camera was used at the time. The film cameras get a mention in the backstory, and if like me you are always curious about the process, you might find the absence of detail about the digital ones frustrating. But ultimately knowing something about the cameras used is pretty irrelevant compared with what was done with them.
These mountains are some of the most geologically fascinating zones on earth. But this is not a geography/geology book, and the photographer has avoided including a geological essay or article to it. Neither is there a history of this critical borderline on the Asian continent, never far from turmoil today. And finally, there is also no mention of the burning issues of our time, climate change and habitat destruction which affects all regions but especially those where ice and snow play such a major role.
© Colin Prior
The decision to sidestep these questions in the text and narrative is debatable. It means that the book has a certain timeless aspect, and arguably it keeps the reader’s focus on the mountains themselves and the photographer’s experience there. Given the environmental changes that may come, these pictures do undoubtedly represent a time capsule, and will be a geographic reference (as well as a photographic benchmark) for generations to come.
© Colin Prior
But there is an essay by Mick Conefrey that adds some insight into the photographic history of the Karakoram. What emerges is the surprising fact that before Colin Prior only Jules Jacot-Guillarmod in 1902, Vittorio Sella in 1909, and Galen Rowell in 1975 had done significantly creative work here. Referring to Colin Prior’s The Karakoram, Conefrey’s essay ends with the following sentence: “Anyone who has travelled in the region will be instantly transported back; anyone who has never been there will be booking a ticket for the next plane.” The first half of the sentence may be indisputable, but the second half most definitely is (disputable). Coronavirus and current restrictions on air travel notwithstanding, Conefrey undersells the pictures if he implies they are an incentive for the rest of us to go there as well (although perhaps that is an understandable conclusion in the age of Instagram).
On the contrary, why rush off to see or photograph these sublime mountains? For what would be the point? The pictures in this book stand as an ecological alternative to the hazard and hardship of seeing the real thing. Leafing through these pages makes far more sense than plotting a trip to the Baltoro Glacier, and five or six weeks living out of a high altitude tent.
In every critical respect, The Karakoram is a phenomenal achievement. The mountains themselves are an endlessly absorbing wonder of snow, ice, rock detail, changing light, mood and colour. Yet I know – we all know – that simply pitching up with a camera doesn’t make the mountains come to life. That requires huge commitment, technical expertise, artistic vision, dogged determination…and keeping the faith with a young man who picked up that book in his local library and absorbed these mountains into his soul.
This book and these photographs truly are the summits of Colin Prior’s lifelong journey of the imagination. Although it has taken more than 100 years, finally, Vittorio Sella’s baton has been well and truly passed on to Colin Prior.
Highly Recommended.
© Colin Prior
The Karakoram: Ice Mountains of Pakistan by Colin Prior with an essay by Mick Conefrey, £50 Merrell Publishers. We always encourage people to support their local bookshops where possible.
After talking to Paulo, and reflecting on the many interviews I’ve undertaken for On Landscape, it’s clear that for everyone inspired at an early age by a parent or relative, there will be others who come to photography later in life. It doesn’t really matter when you start making images or begin any new creative pursuit, so long as the timing is of your choosing, and you trust yourself. What comes across in our interview with Paulo is a love of country, in all senses of the word, and a love of lifelong learning. It’s also a good reminder to us all to focus on the process, not the outcome.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, your education and early interests, and what that led you to do as a career?
I was brought up in the beautiful Araucanía region of southern Chile, in the sort of family that always maintained a close relationship with the wilderness. My father used to work at Nahuelbuta National Park in Araucanía region, which allowed me to spend the first six years of my life creating a deep bond with, and profound reverence for, this park. Such was the love of our family for Nahuelbuta N.P. that my parents decided, a few years later, to buy a few hectares of land in the neighbouring area of the park, building a log cabin a few months afterwards. I feel our cabin inevitably became another physical and emotional space among the many others that got seamlessly intertwined with the Park, the light, the scents of earth, the strangely beautiful geology and vegetation, and the poetic silence of this part of Araucanía region. All these spaces, and all that meaningful life created through a sustained and deep dialogue with nature, made considerable impacts on my psyche and determined the way I understood reality from a very early age. My unceasing interactions with the Park, as well as with other wilderness areas of southern Chile, also influenced my academic interests. I became a biologist and years later I moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to obtain a PhD in environmental sciences.
You’ve credited growing up in the National Parks of Chile as being formative. For those who haven’t (yet) visited, what would you like us to know about the country and its natural areas?
I’m not surprised when I’ve talked to people, especially from abroad, about Chile’s geography and biodiversity, when they immediately recall ‘Torres del Paine National Park’, in Patagonia.
My first job was at a newspaper in Stockholm, I was there for about a year. On the last day, my co-workers gave me a send-off gift. It was a toy farm. Their tongue-in-cheek idea was that I should spend time in my flat playing with the small plastic animals, as a way to safely prepare myself for the concept of country life.
It was a joke, but it was true. I was very much a city kid, preferring to be indoors or taking the odd walk in a park. The gift didn’t change much; I stayed indoors for most of my adult life. Years later, when I met my wife to be, she was quite shocked realising I did not own any outdoor wear. No wellies, no wind-breakers, nothing waterproof. It wasn’t until photography that things changed.
Today, I find myself going out into nature as often as I possibly can. Currently, I work on a project in a wetland close to Stockholm, where I wade waist-deep in icy water most of the time. It’s as damp and muddy as it could ever be.
Photography has the capacity to change the life of those who practice it. And maybe particularly so for landscape photography. It has definitely changed me
In an earlier article in On Landscape, I told the story of my first year in landscape photography, how I picked it up not so much out of love for the outdoors, but as a challenge and a desire to learn and perfect a new craft.
It’s no secret that 2020 was a very challenging year to be a landscape photographer; and, with Covid-19 still on the rampage, the prospects for 2021 don’t seem to promise much more. Perhaps it is the limitations on travel imposed by the virus that partly explains why I’ve been noticing that the “intimate landscape”, as a genre, has been receiving considerably more attention than it usually does from photographic communicators.
Too often the message is “since I can’t go to (fill in the exotic blank) I will concentrate more on the details in my local patch”.
The sigh, though inaudible, is implicit.
As a photographer who has preferred to photograph smallscapes for a very long time, I’d like to reassure photographers of the grand vista that that sigh is totally unwarranted. Slowing down and becoming intimate with your home turf may not be as adrenalin-inducing as visiting foreign locales, or garner as many likes on social media, but it does offer different challenges and other rewards.
I define “intimate landscape” very loosely. It’s not as big as the grand vista and it’s not so small that a macro lens is required. You might call it a Goldilocks landscape. It can be found anywhere, even in your backyard, but is often easily overlooked.
To me, the biggest challenge in photographing the intimate landscape is simply being able to recognise your subject. To do that requires two things: the ability to see, really see, and a willingness to happily embrace opportunism.
I happen to live in a geographic area that will never be found on anyone’s top ten list of photo destinations. I’ve even heard it said by some photographers that there is nothing to photograph here in Southwestern Ontario. They’re wrong about that, of course. When in an environment we know well we cease to take in the details of our surroundings beyond assigning them a generalised label in our mind, and then moving our attention on. Think of how we stop seeing our art until we hang it on a different wall.
“Seeing” what is there, as opposed to looking at it, is an active skill that demands cultivation. It takes practice to break down our immunity to the familiar. Successfully arriving at what Freeman Patterson, the noted Canadian photographer, calls a state of “relaxed attentiveness” can be a challenge and I would highly recommend his book, “Photography and the Art of Seeing” as a helpful guide to finding your way there.
An auditory example may make the concept somewhat clearer. When taking a walk in the woods, you may notice birdsong as a background accompaniment, a pleasant noise really; but, if you have developed birding skills when you listen attentively you’re able to identify individual species by their call. The walk immediately becomes a more specific and informed experience. Instead of “birds” you’ve heard a Wood Thrush and a Scarlet Tanager and you’re in a deciduous forest of Eastern North America. The sound is there for all to hear, but educated listening enriches your personal experience of it.
In a parallel way, learning to see attentively will have the effect of enlarging and enriching your world without the need to buy a ticket.
With a fine-tuned ability to see, photographic opportunities will inevitably increase; but that will be of small value unless there is a willingness to receive them with an open mind. It’s perfectly fine to have a goal in mind when going out with your camera, but it’s also important not to have your expectations blind you to what else is there. I’ve often been known to mutter unflattering words at on-screen photographers who have deemed their day’s efforts a failure because the weather conditions haven’t been what they had in mind while walking by endless possible subjects. If it means that you upend your plan to photograph in the woods and go to the beach instead, or even get no further from your car than the parking lot, so be it. What is important is having the flexibility to view unexpected opportunity as an advantage.
Photographing the intimate landscape requires studying the principles of visual design and learning how to apply them to your image in a way that differs somewhat from the grand landscape. Eliot Porter, whose exhibition “Intimate Landscapes” was the first solo show of colour photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, explained it this way.
“Photography of nature tends to be either centripetal or centrifugal. In the former, all elements of the picture converge toward a central point of interest, to which the eye is repeatedly drawn. The centrifugal photograph is a more lively composition, in which the eye is led to the corners and edges of the picture: the observer is thereby forced to consider what the photographer excluded in their selection.”
That is, when a photographer wants to share their awe at the mountainscape before them there is no ambiguity about who the star of the show is. Lighting conditions and supporting elements are all chosen to enhance the mountain’s leading role. There is no question about what we, as viewer, are meant to look at.
In an intimate landscape, more ambiguity exists. The photographer has more scope for personal expression and has chosen to select a small piece of the scene in front of them and exclude the rest. Why? What? And what else? These are all possible questions in the viewer’s mind. Rather than being presented with one easily identified subject, the viewer is led through and around the picture space by means of visual design. Whether the image “succeeds” or not ultimately lies in its ability to engage the viewer visually and imaginatively.
Personally, I find great gratification in photographing what others may view as unphotographable - in the sense of “Why bother?” Teasing out a small piece of visual order in a larger scene of chaos or making visible a detail that would otherwise go unnoticed is a quest I never tire of. My ultimate compliment was when I was told that I can photograph “nothing” and make it look good.
So I’d like to reassure grounded landscape photographers that they do not have to put photography on hold until the plague has passed. The Intimate Landscape contains a large world. There is never nothing to photograph.
I know that I’m preaching to the choir on the merits of the Intimate Landscape to a significant number of On Landscape’s readership. I can’t imagine that any are unfamiliar with the superb work of David Ward in that genre.
A less familiar name to some would be Krista McCuish, a fine photographer from Nova Scotia. She was a featured photographer in On Landscape in Issue 171.
I also can’t fail to mention the work of my photographic and life partner, Larry Monczka, whose work can be found, along with mine.
I was surprised, but honoured, to receive an email from Charlotte asking if I would like to contribute an article for End Frame. I’m sure that I’m like many photographers who read these articles – how could I possibly choose a single image? Over the years we are exposed to many great photographers and their work so, potentially, choosing an image would be extremely difficult. However, despite all the wonderful images I’ve seen, I kept coming back to one that I encountered early in my photographic journey - Gull’s Nest, Midsummer Eve, Isle of Skye, by Bill Brandt.
I saw this at an exhibition sometime in the 1980s and it made a deep impression on me. The nest in the foreground with its three eggs and a single feather has a wonderful sense of intimacy, of secrecy. The water beyond the nest, reflecting the late evening light in the sky, is calm, giving a feeling of tranquillity. The silhouetted mountains in the distance provide a sense of mystery. It’s an image of two halves, the nest and rocks being one half, the water and mountains the other. It seems almost absurd to think it but I can hear the silence. This was the first image that I remember giving me the powerful feeling of being transported to another place.
Welcome to our 4x4 feature which is a set of four mini landscape photography portfolios submitted from our subscribers. Each portfolios consisting of four images related in some way.
Interested in submitting your work? We're on the lookout for new portfolios for the next few issues, so please do get in touch!
All of the images were taken in Newcastle Emlyn in West Wales and document one of the parts of nature that I have always found beautiful - the period of time where the leaves are clinging on but will soon be gone. I have always been drawn to the glimpse of the autumn gone and the imminent winter to come. I usually express myself in black and white but for this series, the colour still remaining is important.
No hurry, hard and firm.
In a remarkable and necessary calm.
Between beams of light the colour crimson from the soil of Katueté, a municipality located in the central area of the Department of Canindeyu, Paraguay it stands out among the plants that live and flourish in it.
Fertile and desired these lands further embellish the dawns and sunsets.
My portfolio is a collection of photos taken throughout the years in different countries. I tend to travel a lot, which essentially inspires me to create and eventually ended up finding my very own perception of each landscape I visit.
For The Sea & The Salt I chose 4 different photos with 4 different locations:
I chose these pictures as a series because the sea is the main theme in my photography work, and even though Bolivia has no ocean or sea, it has the Uyuni Salt Flats, which thousands of years ago it used to be the Atlantic Ocean and at the sea I'm at peace.
With its remote glens, unforgiving rocky peaks and legends of beings who live in the wild and empty corries that lead deep into the heart of the Cuillin mountains, the Isle of Skye has been a refuge from the world this past year. As the people have retreated so the mountains have seemed to grow, not only in size and presence but also in silence. A silence that opens the mind to the landscape and a world beyond the reach of chaos.
A world where the imagination rules. Where the gabbro boulder in the darkening corrie is a sleeping witch, waiting to wake and travel the starry skies, greeting the uraisg on her journey to the coven on Raasay. The corrie where eyes blink and the soft sounds of luinneagan drift down from the heights.
These photographs portray found moments of hope and inspiration among bursts of unexpected light which broke the clouds and cascaded over the empty landscapes on the Isle of Skye. Unplanned, no time for tripod, filters or technique, just pure delight in passing moments that, like a meditation bell, ring in the soul for a long time after.
Well… clearly no camera is ever perfect but the compromises that had to be made in choices in features that suit the requirements of the dedicated landscape photographer seem to have reduced significantly with the introduction of the Fujifilm GFX 100S.
For my own journey after Large Format 5x4 film I predominantly used Nikon DSLR cameras with diversions to explore the benefits of mirrorless with the original Sony A7R I and II and medium format with the Pentax 645Z. Each of these were exciting cameras in their own right and capable of fantastic output but all had issues that ultimately had not been solved as well as the Nikon D850. Nikon’s mirrorless introduction with the Z7 was the best mirrorless I had used and coupled with the 24-70mm was more capable than the D850 equivalent and so very packable too.
Roll forward to December 2019 and several friends had picked up either the Fujifilm 50S or 50R and after some exhaustive side by side tests, I concluded that the Fuji medium format system would better suit my needs. Firstly, coming from 5x4 I nearly always crop to this format and take a lot of portrait oriented landscapes, the 3:2 format is so poor for this and the 4:3 format of the Fuji is a much better starting place. Secondly, the Fuji 50 files are so crisp giving apparent high levels of detail and sharpness principally due to the microlens design on the sensor, they print beautifully especially on matt papers. Fuji glass is universally excellent typically resolving well corner to corner. It was a tough decision moving away from Nikon which I have been using for 40 years but the Z system was just going to be too slow to fill out. In use, I have found the 50R to be excellent but it is not perfect.
Nidderdale, 1/320th sec at F5.6, GF100-200mm
at 200mm
I enjoyed quite a long spell with the Pentax 645Z which produced beautiful files but was a large and unnecessarily bulky option. The 50MP chip was very good at shadow detail but struggled with bright highlights especially in yellow and green (e.g. backlit Spring leaves or Autumn colour) where even underexposing and careful processing left little room to manipulate the files before breaking down. Shadow contrast and integrity is also a big difference. This has not been a problem with files from the Nikon or Sony in my experience. This difficulty is inherited to some extent by the 50S/R and is perhaps unsurprising for a relatively old design, it is not Back Side Illuminated and does not have gapless microlenses which bring benefits seen in cameras from the other manufacturers and what I was used to seeing from the Nikons.
Prior to the introduction of the 100S you had the option of excellent 50R/S which met the format and size criteria but needing careful management of certain highlights and artefacts from the sensor design OR modern sensors in right sized bodies but without the size and format advantage of the Fuji. The Fujifilm 100 had addressed many of these things but was not on the radar for most Landscape photographers because of its size (and cost). Many of us have been waiting for the 100S with eager anticipation as a marriage of modern FF sensor technology and physical camera size with the Fuji ‘sauce’ and delicious MF sensor.
I was fortunate and very grateful to get one of the first batches of 100S cameras from Alister at FFordes and have had enough time to form my own initial views of whether it indeed meets the headline.
Before I give my thoughts it is important to give the context that my usage of the technology available in the camera is very limited. I only shoot in ‘manual’, typically at base ISO but do use AF (single point AF-S) both for landscape work and personal family projects. I have one ‘Custom’ mode set up to Auto ISO in Manual for handheld work. I toggle OIS on/off as required. I have separated AF On from Shutter release so they can be operated independently (Back Button Focus). This is a very small subset of the capabilities of the camera (or any modern camera in fact!) so my observations reflect that. I implement this identical simple set-up for all the cameras I use. The pictures used are what I have been able to take locally perhaps rather than what I would hang on my wall.
Nidderdale. GFX 100S, 45mm 1/320th at F5.0
No surprises by now but this is a small camera and handles like one so is absolutely in the right space to pack easily. I have moved back to the same sized bags and ICU as I was using with the D850/Z series cameras. Buttons are intuitive to set up and use if you have handled any previous Fuji and not so alien if coming from Nikon so as to be an impediment. All in all, there are no size or handling compromises with the body over the 35mm choices available. Perhaps an alternative to the large 45-100mm would make sense if pack weight and size was an issue or at least a tripod collar.
The EVF has been a big area of discussion because it has not been upgraded from the original cameras and has a lower resolution than competitive Full Frame cameras. The Nikon Z EVF was a joy to use, the 50S/R felt a little dated by comparison but perfectly usable. The 100S comes with a boost mode which improves the quality at the expense of refresh rate. It is good for static subjects but I have noticed that it is subject to lag and the jitters taking pictures of lively subjects (like our new puppy). It also shimmers on specular highlights from water making composition difficult. Shimmering was equally troublesome with both boost on and off. I need to do more work with this to find the best options.
From the usage of AF that I have had, it is accurate and excellent and operates beyond the level that I can see in the dark to focus manually. Face and Eye detect do work well when I use the camera for family snaps (although it does not detect dogs!). I was pleased to see a dedicated ‘AF On’ button better sized and labelled on the 100S compared to the 50R as it is easier to find.
‘Peggy Sue’, 1/50th sec at F8.0. GF45-100mm at 100mm
One line summary is that the files, as expected, are richly detailed (amazingly so) and give very good colour and contrast in post processing. They are malleable taking quite big changes in contrast, exposure and colour well. They feel and behave like scaled up Nikon/Sony files rather than upgraded 50R/S files which is largely a good thing.
Comparing the post processing requirements – or ease of manipulation and how far you can push the manipulations whilst keeping a natural and realistic output is not something that is often discussed but this is really important. Most talk is about Dynamic Range and how much you can pull out of a single image but there is more to the IQ of a file than that. One of the areas that the modern sensors have really improved is in the quality of the shadow detail when you lift these areas in the file. The Nikon D850 and Z7 are very good at this, maintaining good contrast and colour fidelity in the detail in the shadows even with quite a big adjustment. The Pentax 645Z was poor and the Fuji 50s better but still not as good as the Nikon. The good news is that the 100S sensor behaves as you would hope and expect and now the shadows/blacks behave very well giving great scope for lifting to balance high contrast scenes. Noise appears linearly as you lift and the colour does not degrade. This was one of the difficult compromises in using a 50R/S compared to the Nikon D850/Z7. Attached are 2 pairs of test files where I was pushing the highlight/shadow processing from a single unfiltered file.
Heyshaw Moor, RAW 1/400th F10, 100-200mm Processed to taste and crop to 5x4
Highlights are similarly well controlled once you have worked out how to get the best exposure with a combination of Natural View, histogram and ‘blinkies’ at the taking stage vs histogram and ‘blinkies’ with the JPG settings applied at the review stage. For tripod work, I am experimenting with spot metering off a highlight and adding an adjustment because you can separate the meter and focus functions easily with the Fujis. The highlight colour is better controlled in files from the 100S especially in the yellows and oranges (e.g. of dawn) where it appears does not block up so quickly. No Spring greens yet so I have not been able to test the response to luminous lime greens that the old sensor sometimes struggled with. Pretty happy so far and a better base to work with than the 50R/S and on par with the Nikons.
Back Garden Sunset, GFX 100S, 1/100th at F5.6 GF 45mm F2.8 RAW and Processed to taste
One area that I have noticed a very big difference between the 50R/S and the 100S is in the perceived sharpness levels of the RAW files. Initially, I was disappointed with the file quality in this area as I had ported across my Lightroom settings from the 50R to the 100s. After some discussion and file sharing with knowledgeable friends it has become clear that the approach to sharpening has to be quite different with the 100S with very different values and also some tweaking of the clarity. No problems but just different and actually much more like the FF equivalents and perhaps unsurprisingly the Sony A7R iv (compared via one of The Knowledgeable friends!).
GFX 100S. Milvus 135mm 1/80th sec at F11, ISO 800 (handheld)
I have not got to grips with White Balance on the 100S, this is an area of difference that I had not expected between the 50R/S and the 100S. Fuji’s Auto White Balance (AWB) has always been very reliable although giving daylight values cooler than the standards. The 100S in AWB is much closer to 5500k for daylight scenes but the files seem too warm. I have to do more work in this area to get consistency across the 50R and the 100S and to get what I want colour wise as a starting point. Typically I had got used to WB being consistent across products in a range – certainly was with Nikon.
After 3 weeks of usage and hundreds of files I am very happy so far, the 100S is a better base to work with than the 50R/S and technically on par with the Nikons if you set aside the different format (and anecdotally the Sony A7Riv). The camera handles and feels like it has some DNA from the FF world and seems to have more in common with the Z7 I owned than the 50R/S in buttons and dials.
GFX 100S, 1/50th at F14, ISO 400 GF 45mm
I have no regrets in parting with my Nikons (although there is that Z9….) and am confident that the Fujifilm ecosystem of tools and professional support will enhance my output for the foreseeable future. I have kept the 50R as a back-up camera and for specific use on an Arca Swiss Universalis where the lack of grip is important. In all other respects the 100S is great news, a smaller packable camera backed up with a good well fleshed out lens system and with a modern and malleable sensor. I hate to say it but this camera does appear to tick all the boxes to be my ‘Perfect Landscape Camera’.
Guissecliffe, Nidderdale. GFX100S, 80mm 1/50th sec F13 3 Frame Stitch
I love the medium of photography, for with its unique realism it gives me the power to go beyond conventional ways of seeing and understanding and say, ‘This is real, too.’ ~Wynn Bullock
Of the many uses for photography, art is to me the most interesting and rewarding—both to view and to create. Considering works of art in terms of aesthetics alone, or expression alone, I admittedly can think of many more paintings and musical scores I would rank higher than even my favourite photographs. I am enamoured with artistic photographs—photographs expressing concepts beyond just representing (literally re-presenting) appearances—not because they are more beautiful or more expressive than works in other media, but because they are more challenging to make. The reason is that, unlike artists working in other media, photographic artists must first reconcile the paradoxical—in some ways antithetical—relationship between photography and art.
Photography is a medium designed to replicate objective, realistic, appearances, while art—at least of the last couple of centuries—is concerned with giving subjective expression to human creativity and imagination. Photographs are assumed by many to be literal representations, whereas art often conveys meaning by way of symbols, metaphors, and abstractions that require transcending or even repudiating realistic appearances. Photographers often are preoccupied with “rules,” while the nature of artistic temperament is to defy, to resist, and to oppose rules. For many photographers, the “how”—allegiance to the mechanics of making photographs—is of primary importance, sometimes to the detriment of the “what”—the concept and intent underlying the work, whereas for most artists in other media processes and materials generally are just means to expressive ends, their usefulness and importance being their plasticity and malleability: how well they lend themselves to manipulation rather than impose restrictions.
As a result of these contentions, photographic artists must always strike some balance among competing allegiances—to the medium, to creative expression, to common expectations and prejudices, to artistic freedom, to objective representation, to subjective intent.
It was probably over a decade ago, more like 15 years I imagine when I first saw Dan's photographs. I think it may have been on Fred Miranda or possibly via a blog circle. Dan's blog has been regularly kept up to date with photographs and writing since 2006 and he has always produced solid landscape photography that I have always had time for. So it's a little late to ask him to appear in On Landscape but hopefully he'll forgive me!
Can you tell me a little about your education, childhood passions, early exposure to photography etc.?
My photography interest began very early. My father was a talented amateur photographer. He introduced all four of his kids to photography early on, and I recall first visiting his home darkroom when I was a preteen. He started us with basic box cameras, and eventually let us borrow his older cameras. (No doubt a fine excuse to buy himself a new one!) I don’t remember the exact date, but I’m pretty certain that I had made prints before I started middle school.
He also had a collection of books featuring beautiful photography, and spending time with those books shaped my interest in landscape photography. He even took me to a local lecture by some guy named Ansel.
Like a surprising number of photographers, I have a serious background in music. When I entered college I followed that academic fork, and I earned degrees in music theory and composition, specialising in the then-new field of electronic music, the focus of my college teaching career.
Aspen Grove, Bishop Canyon
Twisted and leaning aspen trunks in a large grove in the Bishop Creek drainage, Sierra Nevada, California.
What are you most proud of in your photography?
That is a tough question! I think it may be that people find in my work a particular “way of seeing” that they identify with me. To be honest, it is hard to understand what that particular vision is comprised of, and it is through their eyes and discussions with them that I began to recognise it and understand it.
For the ninth iteration of this column, I decided to focus on the artwork of a photographer who has long inspired me, not only because her photographs are powerful, evocative, and unique, but because she is one heck of an amazing person and a fabulous steward of the natural places we all cherish. In fact, Jennifer is a co-founder of the Nature First Photography Alliance along with me and eight other photographers from Colorado. Her passion and commitment to nature are quite evident as seen in her actions and the way she creates her photographs. Jennifer’s photographic style and creative processes are quite fascinating to examine, and I am hopeful that this article does her work justice. To begin, let me say that I think Jennifer’s photography unfairly flies under the radar of what is often considered to be popular or mainstream and I am hopeful that this column provides her work the opportunity it deserves to be seen and appreciated.
Jennifer’s approach to photography is heavily influenced by her interesting educational and vocational upbringing and experiences, having a degree in geology and a background in veterinary medicine. As you can imagine, both sciences rely on the power of observing, as rocks cannot tell you how they were created, and animals cannot tell you what is wrong.
The debate about pre-visualising images when going out on a shoot seems to be never-ending and we can probably accept that there are advantages to both sides: pre-visualisation can help to achieve images that the photographer wants, but having an open mind does leave us receptive to “suggestion”; let the subjects come to us as we wander without pre-conceived ideas.
When visiting a new location, some photographers like to conduct internet searches of what others have already done there. The choices then are (i) to emulate an appealing image made by someone else, either shooting the same scene or getting the same “look” albeit of another subject; this implies having similar if not identical light and going through similar steps in post-processing; (ii) deliberately eschewing what others have done and looking for something different, but still with an idea already in mind. Most probably that would have been stimulated by the earlier research.
Taking a different approach, we could just go there and react to what we find. This latter approach could end up frustrating as we scout for subjects and possibly struggle to make something meaningful in a limited timeframe. On the other hand, not having a specific image in mind does free us to serendipitously explore subjects we might otherwise have passed by. Additionally, the more experienced we are, the more likely it is that we can transfer much of the learning we’ve gained to the new location and make a satisfactory image. And with that experience, we are more likely to be more confident, relaxed and thus more receptive to inspiration.
Back in January one of our readers, Anna McNay, got in touch to see if we'd be interested in an interview with Toby Deveson. He uses his old Nikkormat and the same 24mm lens that he ‘borrowed’ from his father more than 20 years ago. He finalises each frame in-camera and doesn't crop images in the darkroom. It got me thinking about how Toby worked around these constraints in his photography and how it influenced his approach. ~ Charlotte Parkin.
Anna McNay (AM): What sparked your passion for photography?
Toby Deveson (TD): We start with the million-dollar question… Straight in there, no punches pulled!
The truth is, I don’t know. There wasn’t one single thing.
My father used to take lots of photographs, and we used to sit through the usual slide shows that so many families of my generation had to. Although I do remember there was an element of family and friends admiring his skills as a photographer, rather than the actual memories of the holidays.
The house was also filled with coffee-table books – on artists, photographers, architecture, and travel. A very eclectic selection. And, on top of that, we used to watch many films, from musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, to “Star Wars”, “Citizen Kane” and “The Deer Hunter”. All the classics. And while they may have been unfashionable films in the 80s, they were classics for a reason, and all very photographic. Essentially, I grew up appreciating all things visual.
Within those coffee-table books were collections of photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Don McCullin, Bill Brandt and Ansel Adams, to name but a few. I adored them. I spent hours getting sucked into the images, seeing not only the small granular details but also the larger brushstrokes of their composition and tonal balance, as well as the narratives behind the images. It was the images, which punched me in the guts, that I loved the most.
I guess that with such a strong visual foundation to my life, from such an early age, I was able to keep building on that foundation, finding the limits of what I liked, and pushing those limits. A simple example: I loved the Beatles from a very early age – all their early tracks. It wasn’t long before I discovered their later, more psychedelic stuff, and from there, the more avant-garde, lesser-known tracks, bootlegs, jams, outtakes, and then John and Yoko’s tracks, the screaming, atonal soundscapes…
I remember clearly going into a darkroom for the first time. The father of one of my best friends at the time had a friend who had a professional darkroom, and he let us use it. We spent days taking photographs around Milan (where we lived), printing them into postcards (one at a time) and piling up about 10 different images, each printed 30 or so times, ready to set them out on a blanket on a street corner to sell. We didn’t sell many, but we had a huge amount of fun. Within weeks, I had built my first darkroom.
So, photography has always been within me and was born out of laziness and luck, passion and hard work. It came to life thanks to my parents, friends and surroundings. But without that fertile ground within me, it would have withered and died.
AM: What is it you love about landscape photography in particular?
TD: I think this question can be answered more by exploring what I didn’t like about documentary and reportage. My heroes, by the time I was a ‘fully-fledged, self-proclaimed photographer’, were Josef Koudelka, Sebastião Salgado and Mario Giacomelli. High contrast, from the soul, and loose. I knew of no landscape photographer who spoke to my soul in the same way. I liked that. I wanted to create work that was new and unique and spoke to my soul in the same that way so many powerful reportage photographers spoke to so many people around the world.
I was learning to tell photographic stories in the Romanian orphanages in the early 90s, and I felt I had to take ‘filler’ photographs, too. Empty rooms, details of discarded toys, blood smears on walls, and also the landscapes which surrounded the orphanages. Photo essays. Looking back, the landscapes were where I found peace and refuge from taking the other images.
And yet the landscapes were the images I always struggled with. I would return with scores of powerful images of people, which I loved printing and were well received by tutors (I was still at college at the time), and I quickly and easily found my voice. But my landscape images never had the same impact – that frustrated me and challenged me.
On top of that, as I faced graduating and having to start my ‘career’ as a photojournalist, I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of chasing hardship and suffering, and the psychological justifications of photographing people and their private lives. I found myself longing for the solitude of Mother Nature and her wilderness, being drawn more and more to the challenge of finding the same voice I had found in reportage, but in landscape photography. I wanted people to be left speechless, drained and exhausted from my landscapes, not my reportage. I was feeling increasingly disillusioned with people reacting more to the stories behind documentary photography than the images themselves. Landscape photography, for me, meant having no story to hide behind, simply a good photograph. And black-and-white landscapes meant you couldn’t hide your mediocre photograph behind a glorious sunset or location. You had to produce the goods with your composition and your artistic skill. That is what I loved, and that is what I was drawn to. I recently compared the challenge to ‘winning the Booker Prize for literature with a Mills and Boons novel’ – i.e. moving from ‘serious’ documentary photography to ‘chocolate-box, cliché, shallow’ landscape photography, yet succeeding in continuing to produce work with the same power, punch and soul as before.
AM: Can you give a little background on what your first artistic passions were?
TD: I wanted to be a painter, but never quite found the passion or ability to focus on a canvas for more than a few days. Photography, for me, comes in short, sharp bursts. Taking the photos, developing the film, contact sheets, printing, framing and exhibiting. It is much easier to cope with for lazy, easily distracted people!
Thinking about the passions that shaped me before photography though, I always come back to more abstract things. Solitude. Nature. Daydreaming. Travelling. I think they qualify as artistic passions – and they certainly influenced me and have stayed with me throughout my life.
AM: You studied photography at Brighton. Did this shape your use of film and your love of the darkroom?
TD: Yes and no. I was there in the pre-digital era, or, at least, before it became a serious ‘threat’ to the status quo. So, it was only ever film. I was there the year before the photography degree started, though. I was doing a course called Visual & Performing Arts. I chose it because it incorporated music in the course. I had done my Grade 8 theory of music when I was 14 and A-Level music alongside my art. I didn’t realise that the course was essentially for the ‘Kids from Fame’ and way outside my abilities and comfort zone. But I was the only person using photography as a medium, so the small darkroom in the attic of the building was pretty much mine. And the photography tutor, John Holloway, was incredibly supportive, knowledgeable and helpful. But I was also left to my own devices, and I developed as a photographer so much thanks to the freedom this offered me.
As I said above, I went to Romania while doing my degree. There was an organisation called Creative Aid for Romania, which I joined – having cycled to Eastern Europe from Milan when I was 17 or 18, weeks after the Iron Curtain fell, I felt an affinity with Eastern Europe. Creative Aid had started in response to the Romanian Orphanages being in the news and, essentially, they travelled out twice a year, overland, to paint murals and offer what was, looking back, a basic form of art therapy in the orphanages. I went out about four times and took the opportunity to be the self-appointed photographer. Being able to return to the country and the orphanages, at this stage of my development, so many times, was such a privilege. To be able to study my photographs each time and figure out how to improve them was a crucial part of my learning curve, morally and photographically.
For my course tutors to allow me to be absent for a couple of months at a time, especially in my final year, was very generous indeed. The trust and freedom they gave me shaped me immensely, too.
AM: Your day job is as a television cameraman. How has this influenced your photography or given you access to different locations?
TD: The only real influence is in the occasional opportunity presented to me for trips. I have been lucky enough to have had jobs around the world, and occasionally it works out that I have time off after a job, so I ask for a delayed return flight. I then hire a car and go and ‘play’.
AM: Were there any key moments in your life which shaped the way in which you developed as a photographer?
TD: After my first trip to Romania, I returned with what I thought were extremely powerful images. My memories were (to put it bluntly) of dying babies with big eyes looking up from their cots, and those were the images I returned with. They were what I had seen in the papers before I left, and they were what I took. I printed them and exhibited them, thinking I was the new Salgado. But the feedback I got said otherwise. They were slated. They were called lazy clichés. I was given abuse for turning my lens on dying children. I learned an important lesson in those months. I learned that you can’t hide behind your memories, and you can’t hide behind the story and suffering of the people you are photographing. I learned that if you are going to essentially rape a person by photographing their soul and their suffering, then the very least you can do is pour your own heart and soul into what you are doing and produce work that is earth shattering. Work that is beyond what you thought you were capable of. Anything less is morally unacceptable. So I returned, again and again, and pushed myself compositionally and photographically. I made sure I photographed my real experiences, not what I thought people expected to see. I found laughter and joy and fun, and I photographed that.
AM: Who has specifically helped you in realising your photographic ambitions over the past few years?
TD: The who is easy; Carla, my partner, is my inspiration and muse. She is a journalist, writer and TV presenter, and together we have started a podcast and YouTube channel called “Metralla Rosa”, for which we interview artists, musicians, writers, dancers, creators, and thinkers in general. Interesting and inspirational (and, yes, avant-garde and alternative) people. Carla is Venezuelan (with Italian roots – so the channel is multilingual), and when she moved to the UK, more than 10 years ago, she gave up an incredibly successful TV and radio career, and eventually ended up working as an artists’ model. So not only does she inspire me on a personal and artistic level, but she adores me photographing her.
The arrival of the iPhone, however, has had a huge, yet indirect, influence on my photography. Probably more so than any individual person. My ‘photography’ will always be analogue and black and white. But, over the years, it had become oh so serious. The iPhone, like the Box Brownie in the early 20th century, has brought photography to the masses. It made it fun for me again; it made it easy. Like with my 24mm lens, I couldn’t zoom, I framed at the time of taking, but I didn’t have to worry about printing or exhibiting. I took a photograph and moved on, no pressure, no drama. I had fun with colour, I had fun with composition. The iPhone has really helped me rediscover the fun in photography – it has helped me remember why I take photographs, why I fell in love with it in the first place.
AM: Before photography, you wrote music, which you have described as ‘avant-garde, atonal and arrhythmic,’ as well as ‘jarring and jolting’1. What synergies are there between your music and photography?
Many. They share the need I have always had to push the boundaries and make things uncomfortable, but not unpleasant. I still want people to fall into and lose themselves in my photographs, but I want to challenge them as they do so. I stopped writing music at about the same time I discovered my photographic voice, but, I think, if I had continued, I would have ended up doing the same thing. Making challenging but accessible music.
It is all too easy now to gloss over art. We are bombarded continuously with visuals. Powerful imagery is drowned daily in seas of mediocrity. Aspiring photographers are learning in the public, social-media eye, and it has become harder and harder for the truly talented and ground-breaking to rise above the noise. For imagery to catch the eye and remain with someone, it needs to be different, powerful and challenging, yet welcoming and familiar at the same time. That is what I hope I do with my landscapes.
AM: How differently do you approach photographing a landscape from photographing people?
TD: The process is identical. I use an old Nikkormat and a 24mm lens. I always felt I needed to be mobile and quick as people move and surroundings change, so definitely no tripod. I didn’t crop, so I needed to frame quickly but accurately. The lens was a prime and always the same, so I knew what to expect when I looked through the viewfinder. I wanted to work within strict and familiar parameters: just me, my eye, and my feet. That hasn’t changed at all now that I photograph Mother Nature instead of people. I move quickly and document my surroundings in as many different ways and from as many different positions as possible.
AM: As you have just said, you use your old Nikkormat and the same 24mm lens you ‘borrowed’ from your father more than 20 years ago. Do you enjoy working within these constraints, and do you think it has influenced how you approach your photography?
TD: Yes, I love it! By simplifying absolutely everything about the process leading up to and after the release of the shutter, I can give everything to that single moment. I can fully immerse myself in my surroundings. My raison d’être is to create the perfect, perfectly framed image. I live for that moment where it all comes together; that split second before you release the shutter, where you have created something by the seat of your pants, instinctively. All the rest is just noise and inconvenience. I have a love-hate relationship with it. To have the familiarity – and constraints – of my lens, camera body, film and paper gives me the freedom to let myself go and have fun when it matters most.
AM: You say in the video above that the image-making process is a two-way journey: there is what is coming into the camera, but you have to have something going the other way and put yourself into the film as well (the US idea of mirrors and windows). How do you personally balance these two aspects?
TD: I have no idea! It just is. The process is something that has happened naturally and organically.
AM: ‘To not be engulfed by her [Mother Nature], and to not rely on her to provide you with a stunning image, but to work with her and create something unique from something so universal’1. How does this express itself in your work?
TD: My mantra, and my process when I work, is to try and create an image from a location that no other photographer would think to create. I strive to come away with something that is unique and can only be mine.
This manifests itself in my process, I guess, in the way I arrive at a location and take the obvious photographs first. The safety shots. Especially in a fast-changing situation. Disappearing mist (which disappears far faster than most people realise) or fast-moving clouds. I make sure I have these obvious, slightly more cliché images in the can first (they are cliché for a reason – more often than not, they end up being the best). Then I start pushing: going for alternative framing, experimenting, changing the balance within the frame, playing with the possibilities. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. More often than not, it doesn’t. I fail a lot more often than I succeed!
AM: Do you feel you are the sole creator of your photographs, or does the landscape, or something else, play a role?
TD: I work incredibly hard to be the creator of my photographs.
AM: Does using an analogue rather than a digital camera change the way you interact with the landscape?
TD: No. I have never known any different. If a location is particularly stunning, once I have exhausted every possibility with the film camera, I will snap some photos on my iPhone – as memories, to send to Carla, or to friends, or maybe to post on Instagram. But I am there for the moment, for myself, and for my photography. Nothing will distract from that.
AM: Your images are never cropped but are framed when you are making the image. Is this a creative or technical decision?
TD: A bit of both. The original decision was one of laziness. Cropping was such a hassle. Getting the crops in the right place and making each print identical (crop-wise) was too much work. Plus, when I found it was encroaching on the taking of the photograph when I found myself thinking: ‘This framing isn’t quite right, but I can fix it later,’ I knew I had to nip that in the bud. I haven’t cropped (an analogue) image since perhaps 1990. It has since, of course, become a creative decision!
AM: You collectively refer to your landscape photographs as “West of the Sun”. Tell us more about where this title came from.
TD: It was taken from the title of a book by one of my favourite authors: “West of the Sun, South of the Border” by Haruki Murakami2. In it, he talks of never being able to get to the west of the sun. You can never overtake the sun as it travels ever westward. The origin of this train of thought in the book came from the Siberian prisoner camps and a mental illness and breakdown, whereby prisoners would drop their tools and, overwhelmed by the endless horizons and snow, just start walking towards the sun in a daze. But, to me, it also speaks of the need to always climb the next mountain, to chase your dreams, to find that other world somewhere over the rainbow. The endless search (for me) for that perfect, elusive image.
AM: How do you go about finding locations for your images? Do you work in a project style, focusing on a specific theme, or is it more location based?
TD: Assuming I am not limited by time or money, I, first of all, choose the country (no limitations, perhaps New Zealand or Japan; if time or money are a factor, perhaps Morocco or France). I buy as many maps as possible and do a quick search for national parks in the relevant Lonely Planet guidebooks or online. Then I roughly work out how many miles I think I can travel in the time I have before my return flight, try and connect as many national parks or interesting locations as possible on the maps, and then jump in a hire car at the airport and just drive!
I stop off in a supermarket, fill the backseat with water and food that won’t go off, and then I sleep in the car. A couple of hours before dusk, I start looking for a car park or a small road I can pull over on, ideally near to somewhere I want to photograph in the morning. I really do just follow my nose and instinct. I try to let the landscape guide me, as mystic as that sounds.
AM: Tell us a bit about two or three of your favourite photographs from your book, “West of the Sun”.
TD: The book is still not finished, but so far, as much as I try to detach my memories of the images from the actual images (to ensure I don’t confuse how good the photograph is with how good my memories are), some of my favourite images are the ones that have powerful memories and emotions attached to them. But there is no real consistency as to why an image becomes a favourite. Some, I fall in love with at the time of taking; some, I discover in the darkroom; and some, I print and put to one side, only to find them taking root in my psyche and becoming firm favourites in a ninja, sneaky way.
I always dreamed of going to Iceland to photograph, so to finally be there was thrilling. It took me a while to take a photograph I was pleased with, though – enough time for the worries and doubts about myself and my abilities to creep in. But then this one came along. It wasn’t the most striking location, but I found this shape and composition, which is abstract and inconclusive as far as scale goes, and I love that. I love that there is very little about it that says ‘Iceland’, with its majestic, sweeping landscapes.
This one was early in what was a grey, misty and dull morning. It was taken by the side of a road which was still very quiet. I was still stiff and cold from sleeping in the car, and I had been bitten to death by midges the day before. I had to stand on a small rock to get as high as possible, and I couldn’t tilt down any further because the lower bank of the river-cum-marsh would have crept into frame, so I knew the composition was going to be top heavy, yet something was telling me it would work. And it did. It is my favourite combination – an uncomfortable, weird composition, which still works perfectly. The grey drabness meant I knew I’d have to push the negative and make the mist as white as possible. The remaining land and water are so magical – I have spent hours getting lost in those shapes.
This one was taken on the side of a very busy dual carriageway. I had slammed on the brakes during the long trip back to where we were staying for our summer holidays, after a long day walking in the mountains, and left my tired and hungry kids in the car while I sprinted 50 or so metres to the end of the lay-by, to try and find a gap in the trees. I had to balance on the guard rails, feet jammed between the metal strips. I could feel the wind from passing cars blowing me off balance. I struggled to lose all the foreground (very difficult with a wide-angle lens), so had to feature one small tree bottom left. But I managed to make it work. Because the moment of taking the photograph was less than ideal, and I was by the side of a busy road, my expectations were low and my memories tainted. I almost didn’t want to like this one. I tentatively exhibited it and always felt apologetic about it. But it has slowly and consistently grown on me purely as an image.
AM: You obviously love working in the darkroom. Tell us more about your processes and how you go about printing your images.
TD: I hate working in the darkroom… I mean… I love it… Yes!
It really is a love-hate relationship. I love bringing the prints to life, but sometimes it is a struggle. I hate the slog of doing the contact sheets, especially when I return from a trip with 90-odd films. Developing the film is also a long process, as I only do two at a time (after watching someone in college use a tank with six films, getting it wrong, and ruining them all), but I also love it.
As for the actual prints, I usually knock off a few 8x10 of all the images I think I want to see. I get them about 80-90% right and move on. These are the prints I scan and use for my website. I fix what I didn’t quite get right in the darkroom, maybe darken the sky a bit or lighten something slightly in Photoshop. I usually give them a touch more contrast than the physical prints have, as there is nothing worse than a dull, grey print on the screen. I really don’t think a computer screen, no matter how good the scan, can show the subtleties of a darkroom print in the flesh, so I find I have to compensate by giving my ‘screen’ prints a bit more oomph.
Then, I eventually move on to my exhibition or portfolio prints. I tend to live with my 8x10s for a few months and make sure I still think they are good enough over time. To get a print 95-100% right, or as close to perfect as possible, can take anything between two to 10 attempts. But it usually averages out to about three. I tend to do about two to four prints a day. Then I touch them up and frame them or put them in the folio. I print to order, as far as sales go. I rarely print more than I need.
AM: You have a consistent contrasty ‘look’ to your prints. Do you have a good idea of how your images will appear in print while making them?
TD: I tend to use very heavy negatives, and that typically leads to high contrast. I generally have no idea how or why I have achieved the results I have, but I like it like that…
AM: What is next for you? Where do you see your photography going in terms of subject and style?
Right now, I see no imminent changes. I will still photograph people when the opportunities arise, but I will put all my heart and soul into adding to my landscapes, exhibiting, selling, and working towards a book which, at the moment, I intend to self-publish. I would like to find a gallery to represent me so I can increase my sales, abroad as well as in the UK, but I am also very happy with the way things are at the moment.
1http://art-corpus.blogspot.com/2020/12/toby-deveson-embracing-most-sacred.html
Many of you will already know or will have heard of The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce which is often cited as one of the greatest satirical works of American literature. Bierce was an American writer and soldier and his satirical dictionary started life as a newspaper column, with the first definition appearing in 1867. The first column with The Devil’s Dictionary as title appeared in The Wasp in 18811. The first entry in that column has a particular resonance today (ACCURACY, n. A certain uninteresting quality carefully excluded from human statements).
Ambrose Bierce around 18662
The Dictionary first appeared in book form as The Cynic’s Word Book in 1906, with 521 definitions but only for the letters A to L. The full work was published as volume 7 in The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce with his original title of The Devil’s Dictionary in 1911. Many of the definitions are enriched by citations and poems credited to different authors with wonderfully exotic names, all of them made up by Bierce. There have been numerous editions of the dictionary as a stand-alone volume since (including a fine Folio Editions volume with illustrations by Peter Forster)3. There have also been numerous translations and imitations4.
Just a few of my favourite Bierce definitions are
ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
ADMIRAL, n. That part of a war-ship which does the talking while the figure-head does the thinking.
APPETITE, n. An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a solution to the labour question.
BIGOT, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
CANNON, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.
DAY, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day improper—the former devoted to sins of business, the latter consecrated to the other sort. These two kinds of social activity overlap.
DEJEUNER, n. The breakfast of an American who has been in Paris. Variously pronounced.
DISTANCE, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs, and keep.
EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
And so on all the way to Z and (remembering that this was written at the end of the 19th Century) …
ZEUS, n. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names.
As is readily evident and by way of warning, Bierce was in no way politically correct and some of his definitions have not worn that well with time, including that for the photograph.
PHOTOGRAPH, n. A picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. It is a little better than the work of an Apache, but not quite as good as that of a Cheyenne.
That is the only mention of photography in The Devil’s Dictionary but clearly this is a subject area ripe for some clarifying definitions. I offer the following as a starting point5.
3-D pop [n]: The sickening noise made as the lens you were changing hits the ground.
45 [n]: Denotation used for some large format cameras and film. ALMOST the answer to life, the universe and everything for some photographers, but a little too big as not all the lenses they would like to use have sufficient coverage.
AA [n]: Help for monochrome photographers addicted to large format cameras, dark red filters and the smell of fixer.
Aberration [n]: What’s left of an image after the removal of distracting elements and sky replacement in Luminar or Photoshop.
APSC [n]: Acute Personality Split Camera; cannot decide whether to look down on all smaller formats of sensor or feel inferior to those with full frame sensors (see Full Frame)
Back-up [n]: An activity that you always intended to do before your PC failed (see Second Back-up).
Big Stopper [n]: A form of arrested development in photographic technique involving elimination of most detail.
Blue hour [n]: The period of swearing after finding that some essential element of gear has been left in the car several kilometres away.
Bokeh [n]: A result of using expensive lenses wide open to distract from an uninteresting main subject in an image (see also Swirly Bokeh).
Park bench with bokeh reflections, Dalton Square, Lancaster
Border [n]: The black lines added to a print to suggest that the image has not been cropped to cut out the unwanted elements included by poor framing (see Crop).
B-roll [n]: Video photographers’ name for a bacon butty.
Bulb setting [n]: mostly about 10cm deep and 10 cm apart.
Camera Club [n]: An embarrassment of judges very willing to criticise your latest work and give extensive and conflicting advice (see Judge).
Camera Collector [n]: A means of rapidly increasing prices on EBay after spreading rumours about the special character of a lens or the shutter sound of a vintage film camera (see Vintage, Rumours, Swirly Bokeh).
Camera shake [n]: Condition causing blurred images particularly common amongst the very young and very old (see ICM).
Chimping [n]: The sounds of disappointment made by photographers when reviewing their shots in camera.
Chromatic Aberration [n]: An aberration with additional drastic changes to white balance and colour wheels (see Aberration and Haze).
Circle of confusion [n]: Not really a circle (see Exposure Triangle).
Cloud [n]: (a) More than a cloud (see Equivalents); (b) A grey smear on an image taken with a Big Stopper; (c) (as in “The Cloud”) digital storage accounting for 2.5% of global carbon emissions and globally equivalent to 1.5 times total UK electricity consumption. Mostly used for storing selfies and images of cats, meals, and coffee mousse.
More than a cloud: view north from La Berra, Switzerland
Coffee [n]: The ultimate film developer for hipsters, but requiring remarkable will-power to waste good coffee in such a way.
Composite image [n]: Technique of combining images dating back to the 19th Century and STILL not made illegal.
Covid [n]: A global pandemic disaster resulting in the sad loss of some excellent photographers, cancellation of nearly all workshops, postponement of the On Landscape Meeting of Minds, and far fewer airplane contrails to remove in Photoshop.
Crop [n]: The plentiful harvest of wasted paper after a print session.
Cyanotype [n]: Digital print made before realising that the other print cartridges were empty.
Dark Room [n]: A place of torture where photographers are sent to spend hours trying to produce the print they envisaged in taking the picture (see Digital Darkroom, Print).
Decisive Moment [n]: The best image selected from a contact sheet or (more recently) from a series of images taken in burst mode.
Daguerreotype [n]: an alternative photographic process of producing almost invisible images on metal plates; not to be confused with …
Deguerreotype [n]: A type of war of words between the English and French as to who invented proper photography.
Depth of Field [n]: The number of comments after a camera review in DPReviews.
Diffraction [n]: An on-line argument between supporters of 2 camera brands that becomes more intense as the differences between the cameras become smaller.
Digital Darkroom [n]: A form of torture resulting from software that has far too many controls and options producing prints that still do not match what is on screen even after buying expensive calibration tools (see Print).
Drone [n]: A really REALLY annoying noise coming from above, increasingly found in the most peaceful landscape locations.
Electronic shutter [n]: (pre-2005 cameras) a disaster waiting to happen to your outrageously expensive film camera (see Xpan); (post-2015 cameras) a way of introducing uncontrolled blur into images of moving subjects.
Equivalents [n]: Concept introduced by Alfred Stieglitz to justify taking 350 ambiguous images of clouds. More recently applied to stacks of bricks in the Tate Gallery and the emotions conveyed by images of mousse on cups of coffee (see Redundant).
Cloud as Equivalent – Flühli, Switzerland
Essence [n]: A characteristic of Edward Weston’s photographs of rocks. Analogous to Schrödinger’s Cat in that it provides an excellent excuse for endless discussions about whether it is there or not.6
To be a rock
or more than a rock
that is the question:
Whether it is nobler to
attract the photographer’s gaze
or suffer the indignity of
being overlooked as
just a rock; left to sleep
but perchance to dream of
fame on a gallery wall.
Or, is it enough
to just exist and
be left in peace to lie.
Essence of a rock: perchance to dream or just to lie? Långholmen Sweden
Exc+++++ [a]: Camera on EBay with just a few patches of leatherette missing and a few points of corrosion on the body (see Minty).
Exposure compensation [n]: Model fees depending on degree of undress.
Exposure to the Right [n]: Street photography to preserve the highlights of the American Presidential Election. May leave some murky shadow areas.
Exposure triangle [n]: A concept designed to create a circle of confusion when a photographer is brave enough to switch from Auto mode.
F64 Group [n]: A group of early 20th Century American photographers who succeeded in elevating cabbage into Art.
Film [n]: A support for images for which the colours were always a bit disappointing when the prints came back from Boots.
Colours from Film: Wild Boar Fell, Mallerstang, Cumbria
Film Simulations [n]: A digital means of reproducing the disappointing colours of various types of film.
Filter [n]: A means of adding defects to a perfectly good lens.
Flektogon [n]: An old Zeiss lens design that has recently become much more expensive because of its pretty zebra camouflage. Mostly used for collecting dust (see Camera Collector).
Fn Button [n]: Unlabelled camera function control. Impossible to remember what function it controls and often seems to produce a different result each time it is pressed.
Focus stacking [n]: A technique for spending even more time in front of a computer that could be spent taking images (see HDR).
Full Frame [n]: A sensor with an inflated self-perception of superiority that is hardly justified when still 4 times smaller than 6x6 and 60 times smaller than 10x8.
Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) [n]: A condition common among photographers which results in spending all available hours reading reviews of cameras, lenses and all possible types of accessories on the internet. Appears to have been particularly contagious during 2020 lockdown (see Gear Head, Rumours).
There once was a gear head from York
Who was really a bit of a dork.
His GAS was so bad
He felt that he had
To declare himself NSFW.
Gear head [n]: A photographer infected with GAS; not to be confused with …
Geared Head [n]: My tripod supports something MUCH more expensive than yours.
Genesis [n]: The origins of the world and landscape photography. Somewhat after let there be really nice light and before the arrival of any colour.
Golden hour [n]: The period before sunset during which 95% of landscape photos entered into competitions are taken.
Golden Hour: Pendragon Castle, Mallerstang, Cumbria
Graffiti [n]: A subject for monochrome images made famous by Brassai. More recently used to add elements of colour to street photography (but the painting takes much longer than the photo and may be illegal).
Grandagon [n]: Rodenstock lens for the more mature photographer.
When I grow old,
I will wear a photographer’s vest
and a fisherman’s hat,
and grow a beard,
and go large format.
With tripod and dark cloth,
and black and white film,
with standing development,
without agitation,
for the tone and textures,
of classic prints.
Though the pack is so heavy
to lift from the floor
and the tripod weighs something
like lead,
And scanning the negs is
a real pain in the A.
Perhaps I’ll go Leica
instead.
Hasselblad [n]: 哈苏
Haze [n]: The result of a global disaster of drought and fires in California, Oregon, Washington, Siberia, Paraguay and Brazil in 2020. No longer easily removed using the Clarity slider, but easily turned orange to impress.
Haze near Flühli, Switzerland after arrival of smoke from California, September 2020 (after post-processing, see also Pre-Visualisation and Chromatic Aberration)
HDR [n]: Another technique for spending even more time in front of a computer that could be spent taking images (see Focus Stacking, ND Grad).
Histogram [n]: An option for obscuring the composition of an image in an electronic viewfinder.
Horizon [n]: As far as the eye can see during lockdown. Should not be placed right in the centre of the frame unless you are already famous. Probably best not placed vertically unless you are really very famous.
Hyperfocal distance [n]: Manic use of manual focus to check social distancing in post-Covid workshop groups.
Insurance [n]: That which you had the intention of buying before watching your tripod, camera and favourite lens topple slowly into a river (yes, it does happen).
Intentional camera movement (ICM) [n]: Post-hoc justification of a blurred image (see Camera Shake).
Image stabilisation [n]: A method of using extremely sophisticated mechanics and electronics to replace a simple camera support with 3 legs (see Tripod).
Jökulsárlón [n]: An unusual effect of the earth’s magnetic field in Iceland causing a particularly strong attractor of photographic workshop groups.
Judge [n]: (photographic) A person who has no idea what they are talking about.
Large Format [a]: Photographer with body mass index greater than 30.
Lens hoodie [n]: Required dress for street photography.
Long Exposure [n]: Sunburn consequent to having to wait for the Golden Hour.
Manual [n]: A guide to camera controls that has become increasingly incomprehensible with time. A small pamphlet of 8 pages in the age of film, now a book of hundreds of pages that requires buying an additional book of explanation (see Menu Option).
Megapixies [n pl.]: Source of the magic hidden in digital sensors, continually increased as a marketing ploy by camera companies. Can sometimes be detected as pixie dust at higher ISOs.
Menu Option [n]: A camera control that is impossible to find when you need it.
Metaphor [n]: A means by which photographers can encourage the viewer to take a closer look at an image by pretending there is a deeper meaning.7
Remains of ancient melèze above Prarions, Switzerland –
There must be a metaphor in there somewhere
Minimalism [n]: A fall-back when you really cannot find anything interesting to photograph.
Minimalism;
Already five syllables
Used in a haiku
Minimalism: Lac de Joux, Switzerland
Minty [a]: Camera on EBay with leatherette just starting to curl at the edges and a cloudy viewfinder.
Moi-ré [a]: A photographer who thinks it is all about him and his gear.
ND Grad [n]: A way to avoid spending too much time in front of the computer (see Filter, HDR).
Noise reduction [n]: Expensive high-tech headphones for use while waiting for some better light (see Golden Hour, Long Exposure).
Nude [n]: (a) A technique for ruining a perfectly good landscape photograph by adding an incongruous element (as in images by Edward Weston, Wynn Bullock, Jean-Loup Sieff); (b) landscape photography for studio photographers (see Exposure Compensation).
Original [a]: Art speak, as in “deeply original”; meaningless when applied to photographs.
Over-exposed [a]: Completely unclothed (see Exposure Compensation, Nude)
Petzval [n]: A 19th Century lens of simple design; revived in the 21st Century as an expensive way of getting blurry photos (or “velvety watercolour bokeh”) [see Bokeh].
Photography blogs [n]: On-line discussions of expensive hi-fi equipment, diet books, dogs, and existentialism.
Photoshop [n]: Digital dark room, complete with sink (of funds from a large number of photographers on a monthly basis) (see Digital Darkroom).
Physics [n]: (as in constrained by the laws of physics). Marketing ploy to justify the production of lenses that are ridiculously large and more and more expensive. Often cited in reviews of said lenses (see also Render).
Pictorialism [n]: Creating photographic Art by introducing blur and deep shadows. Now available as 2576 style files for less than $308.
Pinhole [n]: (a) a really annoying source of light leakage (but see Vintage); (b) an effective practical demonstration of the blurring effect of the physics of diffraction
Platinum Print [n]: A photograph that has sold a million copies (does not apply to single Andreas Gursky or Peter Lik photographs selling for more than a million pounds/euros/dollars).
Portfolio [n]: A collection of prints put together for other photographers to laugh at.
Powered by AI [a]: Changes decided by a computer that understands only 0s and 1s.
Pre-visualisation [n]: A justification of the use of extreme post-processing to rescue a poor image into something more acceptable.
Print [n]: A hard copy image, 99.5% of which are not quite right.
RAW [a]: files that are ripe for post-processing; should preferably not be over-cooked.
Reality [n]: philosophical concept; meaningless when applied to photographs
Redundant [a]: Another photograph of storm clouds clearing over Yosemite Falls from New Inspiration Point (or midday sun beams in Antelope Canyon, or sun rise at Mesa Arch, or sunset at Horsetail Falls, or the Wave at Coyote Buttes, or…. [add to personal taste])9.
Another redundant photograph: The Wave at Coyote Buttes, Arizona
Render [v]: (as in renders beautifully, 3D render) A marketing quality of a lens used to justify a very high price. Often cited in reviews of said lenses.
Resolution [n]: A marketing quality of a sensor that allows the photographer to produce prints that are far larger than they can ever afford to print and which is destroyed when the image is posted to Instagram.
Rule of Thirds [n]: A classification of images taken with a vintage rangefinder – one third out of focus (rangefinder alignment); one third over exposed (shutter running a bit slow); and one third taken with the lens cap inadvertently left on (see Vintage).
Rumours [n pl.]: (as in Canonrumours, Sonyrumours, Fujirumours, Nikonrumours, Leicarumours) an effective way of keeping gear heads occupied in between purchases of new cameras and lenses (see Gear Head).
Safe Light [n]: Safe light (see Golden Hour)
Saturation [n]: (as in over-saturation) A surfeit of Instagram sunsets.
Selfie [n]: A technique for ruining a perfectly good landscape photograph by putting a face (or faces) in front of it.
Second back-up [n]: An activity that you always intended to do before your networked hard disk failed.
Slow photography [n]: A project limited to one camera, one lens, one image per year and lots of Zen.
Pause a while and observe
The landscape and the light.
Pause a while and memorise
The play of wind and clouds.
Return again and pause to reflect
On the changes from before.
Finally, mount the camera,
Focus, tilt and shift,
Choose aperture and shutter speed,
Ready for the decisive moment.
Apart from the damn film holders,
Which were somehow left at home.
Pause a while and experience
The wondrous joy of Zen
In the Art of Slow Photography
Special edition [n]: It costs HOW MUCH???????
Sublime [a]: A way of increasing the appreciation of beauty in the landscape by looking through thousands of images on Flickr very very rapidly.
Subsidy [n]: List price contribution made by retired dentists and lawyers in support of Leica10.
Sunny 16 [n]: Method of perversely estimating exposure based on symbols printed inside an old Kodak film box rather than using a phone app.
Swirly Bokeh [n]: A result of using cheap Eastern European lenses wide open to distract from an uninteresting main subject in an image (see Bokeh, Petzval).
Tethered [a]: as in images by Nobuyoshi Araki; (see Zone System, extended)
Tilt/shift lens [n]: A very large lens for making people and cars look very very small.
Time Capsule [n]: A back-up that you always intended to do before your Mac failed (yes, it does happen) (see Second back-up).
Time Lapse [n]: The delay between exposing a film and getting it developed some months later (or not at all in the case of Garry Winogrand).
Tonal Gradation [n]: Fifty shades of grey. A much-valued property of monochrome film in nude photography (apparently) (see Over-exposed, Zone System).
Tripod [n]: A device used for manual image stabilisation, most likely to fail when close to water (see Insurance; Warranty).
Vignette [n]: That part of the animal remaining in the frame in a wildlife photo.
Red Squirrel Vignette; Mallerstang, Cumbria
Vintage [a]: Camera or lens for hipster photographers embracing lens flare and light leaks as a way of being Arty.
Vintage Zeiss Super Ikonta 531/16: Glacial Erratic, Mallerstang, Cumbria
Vlog [n]: Overlong video, mostly of opening boxes of new gear and photos of brick walls (see Gear Head).
Warranty [n]: A guarantee from the manufacturer that any benefits will expire from 1 to 10 days before the photographer has a malfunction or breakage.
Watermarked [n]: Inside of a lens after being retrieved from the river (see Insurance and Tripod).
Weather resistant [a]: Marketing speak for really REALLY not waterproof (see also Warranty and Watermarked).
White Balance [n]: An index of integration as the inverse percentage of white male ambassadors for each camera brand.
Workshop [n]: (photographic) (a) until recently, one of the few remaining ways to make some money for professional photographers (see Covid); (b) a successful way of dispersing original ideas to other photographers to ensure that all originality disappears.
Xpan [n]: A 35mm film Hasselblad made by Fuji that now costs more than when it was new (see Camera Collector); bought for future use as a paperweight (see Electronic Shutter).
Xtrans [n]: An alternative digital sensor; popular among gender fluid photographers.
Zeiss [n]: The god of optics in ancient mythology.
Zeiss, the God of Optics, represented in the form of a stereo camera (optics lost to ravages of time, unfortunately).
Zero-D [a]: An ultra-wide lens that only really rarely travels any distance from the shelf.
Zone System [n]: Concept for controlling monochrome exposures: originally 10 shades of grey (but which can be expanded to 50 for some improper purposes – see Tonal Gradation, Tethered, Over-exposed).
To finish with one last definition from Ambrose Bierce himself:
NONSENSE, n. The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary.11
1 For a more complete history see the article on the Devil’s Dictionary in Wikipedia
2 From Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Bierce
3 A full text of the Devil’s Dictionary can be found on-line as part of the Gutenberg Project
4 For a list see the Wikipedia article in footnote 1.
5 But after writing the list of definitions presented here I thought I had better check if it had been done before for photography. Indeed it has, by Roger Cicala the founder of Lens Rentals and by Jffield. Both have some really good definitions, but thankfully without too much overlap with the list above.
6 With apologies to Guy Tal, More than a Rock, Rocky Nook, 2013
7 With apologies to Joe Cornish in On Landscape Issue 216
8 With apologies to Andrew Sanderson in On Landscape Issue 218
9 See On Landscape "Landscape and the Philosophers of Photography"
10 With apologies to all retired dentists and lawyers who might have invested in Leica gear.
11 And apologies to anyone else who might have been offended at my wilful misuse of photographic terms.
As a Yorkshireman, it slightly grieves me to admit that one of my photographic idols was born in Lancashire! I shall forgive him for that because the elegant simplicity of Michael Kenna’s compositions had a profound impact on how I saw the landscape in my early days of photography. Even now, I can still see influences from his work in some of mine - particularly that of minimalism.
Born in 1953 and from a poor working-class family, Kenna learned about photography for a year at the Banbury School of Art before attending the London College of Printing where he graduated in 1976. He then moved to San Francisco for the opportunity to show and sell his work in galleries. As can be seen from his website, Kenna is well travelled, and I particularly like his project-based mind-set creating a cohesive set of images from each location he visits - something I place a lot of importance to in my work.
This photography project began as a piece of work to document a year in the life of Hollesley Marshes. It is an area I have been fascinated with for a while and one I walk to every morning with my dog. It is somewhere I have learnt so much about simply by observing the landscape and its wildlife on a daily basis.
In March 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic overtook all our lives and my project turned from a straight documentary to one which detailed my connection with the landscape through the constraints of my permitted daily exercise. The images portray fleeting moments captured during a morning walk. They were not pre planned, were mostly shot without a tripod or filters and represent my reaction to a scene at a particular moment in time. They are accompanied by text and are intended to be viewed as a visual sketchbook of a special place.
My project was initially inspired by my love of the Suffolk Coast. I often see this part of England portrayed in magazines and it is always the same locations that get featured. I have always wanted to redress the balance and show off what I consider to be the real Suffolk in my images. I chose Hollesley Marshes because it is on my doorstep and I have come to know the area really well. I wanted to explore the idea that familiarity, instead of breeding contempt, can actually enhance your photography. I believe that knowing a landscape intimately can really help capture the essence of a place.
I had always planned to produce a book of the project but in the beginning, it was going to be full colour (because that is what I love) and a seasonal guide.
This changed the focus of my project and the thinking behind it.
Once lockdown was in place I walked to the marsh every day with my dog as my permitted daily exercise and very soon this became my only reason to leave the house. I did not feel I could go with all my photography equipment and set up a tripod for long exposures or spend any length of time out with the camera because that seemed to be outside of the rules. So initially I felt that I would have to abandon my photography project for 2020.
However, the more I thought about it the more the constraints appealed to me and I decided to take my camera with me on my morning dog walk and capture what I saw.
There is something freeing about being out with just the camera, without the tripod and filters and just being able to react to a scene in front of you. I also found I was using photography as a way to escape what was going on in the news. When I was out with the camera, observing the wildlife and the light on the landscape I was completely absorbed and happy and so immersed that I forgot what was happening in the wider world.
This has always been my way of staying grounded. Anytime I have a bad day or am struggling with a problem I will take my camera and go out for a walk. An hour is usually enough to reset my thoughts and it was this ethos that I now felt I wanted to explore in my project.
I am not a nature photographer but I love nature. I wanted my project to portray this by focusing on my observations. I used a 70-200mm lens for most of the shots but this wasn’t really big enough for some of the things I wanted to shoot such as the barn owl that accompanied my walks most mornings or the marsh harrier that soared over the reeds. So I began to write down my observations in addition to taking the images. Together I wanted the words and pictures to build a sketchbook of the landscape I was walking through. I wanted readers to feel they were there with me walking in my footsteps.
The process of recording my walk in words and pictures was completely immersive and I felt such a strong connection with the landscape while I was out there.
When I came to put the book together I initially split the work into habitats. The marshes join the coast and are backed by farmland so I split the first part of the book into sections which followed the path through the landscape, the marsh itself, the fields, the river and the creek. The sections after that became about how the world changed as the pandemic evolved and how this impacted on the landscape.
My interaction with Hollesley Marshes helped me stay positive and grounded throughout the pandemic. I wanted to incorporate this into my story but I also wanted to show how the landscape changed during the year as a result of human activity.
In the spring the area was so quiet and full of wildlife, but by summer this had changed and the coast was full of tourists making the most of their freedom after lockdown. As autumn approached and the pandemic took off once again peace returned to the landscape particularly as the second lockdown took effect.
The images that I took for this project are not my usual landscape images. I love colour and most of my images are colour shots. With the time constraints on this project and the story that I wanted to tell I felt that the images were best shot in black and white. This portrayed the sketchbook feel I wanted for the book and was the most appropriate choice to accompany the text I had written. Although it is not my usual way of taking pictures I felt it was good to come out of my comfort zone and produce something different.
I hope that my project captures a special place on the Suffolk Coast - one that I feel is overlooked in favour of more iconic locations. To me this is the real Suffolk landscape; an amalgamation of grazing marsh, salt marsh, river and creek which has provided me with some of my most immersive times out in the landscape. I treasure my daily connection with nature in this small corner of Suffolk. It is something that I feel is vital for my wellbeing, it makes me feel alive and helps put everything else into perspective. In a turbulent world this is the place that keeps me grounded and I can’t imagine my life without it.
You can buy the book from Gill's website, £28.
It’s easy to think of abstracts as something small, a landscape within, but really it’s a question of scale. All that is needed is to remove the reference, the visual clues that help us to decipher that which we look at. For the ultimate in abstracts, take to the air. From the glacial rivers in Iceland that we have become familiar with to the landscapes of Australia, Kevin Krautgartner’s images show that there is plenty to find and enjoy at a larger scale. Some we can easily recognise, some are less obvious. The forces of nature and of man mix and beguile the viewer, even when the subject is the use and despoliation of our planet.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, your education and early interests, and what that led you to do as a career?
I grew up in a small town near Wuppertal in the western part of Germany. Already during my school years, I photographed with old cameras from my grandparents in the forest (at that time still analogue) and discovered my passion for photography. Photography was quickly joined by an interest in graphic design. So I focused more on these two areas in my professional career. After school, I started studying communication design with a focus on photography. During this time I created my first professional works and at the same time, I started my own business. Throughout my education, I still developed my analogue work in the darkroom. I miss that a little bit because I always found it super exciting to do the whole process by myself and to learn some background knowledge. I was fascinated by everything that has to do with photography, so in the beginning, I worked both in the studio and outdoors.
When you first became interested in photography, what kind of images did you want to make and what ambitions did you have?
On March 23rd last year I was due to hang an exhibition at the National Trust visitor centre, Brimham Rocks, in Nidderdale. On Sunday 22nd we digested the news of impending lockdown; I could scarcely believe that if I was to obey the letter of the law, I must cancel the whole enterprise. The exhibition was to be the fulfilment of my most personal creative work during the previous year.
My National Trust colleagues were expecting me and framer Andy Richardson of Wensleydale Galleries at 7.30am, on Monday the 23rd March.
Having slept on it I rose at 5.30 am on the 23rd, and called Andy at 6.15 am. He was already packing his van. I cancelled the whole endeavour; there was really no other choice.
A three month postponement was my assumption at the time… how wrong can you get? Now, with luck, I hope it might happen this summer, 2021. But so many dates, workshops, talks, tours have been postponed so many times, I’ll believe it’s going to happen only when I see the pictures hanging on the wall.
And so began the Year when Time itself – it seemed – stood still.
Constrained, deprived of work, limited to local movement… creatively-speaking it has been the strangest of all blessings-in-disguise.
Last Autumn, Neil from Beyond Words dropped me an email to say that he'd stocked a new book The Plain by Melanie Friend and suggested that it could be of interest to the readers of our magazine. I ordered a copy of the book and, over a cup of tea one afternoon, I took a read. The images drew me in and left me asking so many questions and the essays in the book drew me even deeper into the history of Salisbury Plain.
On the publisher's website, it states "The Plain is both the UK’s largest military training ground and also a conservation area shared with archaeologists and dog walkers, larks and corn buntings, wildflowers and rare forms of wildlife." How do these two worlds co-exists or do they?
We are delighted to publish our in-depth interview with Melanie, covering her love of photography, her earlier photojournalist career, her previous books and how the project The Plain started and evolved into the book. We hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have researching and publishing it.
Tell me about where your passion for photography came from and why the landscape is important to you?
Recently I’ve been digging around in my cupboards and unearthed a stash of negatives I didn’t know I had. It seems that in the mid-1970s, when I was a teenager, I’d photographed much more than I thought. Judging by the size of the negatives, I must have borrowed my Dad’s Box Brownie or my Mum’s Instamatic 126 to photograph my friends and family, just larking about, recording moments. Then I began to get more interested in compositions, graduating to owning an Olympus Trip, and eventually moving to SLRs in my early 20s, when I began to see photography in a different way.
In 1980/81, part of my editorial assistant job at African Business magazine was to organise the picture library, and I was intrigued by both the historic and contemporary photographs in the collection. Occasionally photographers came into the office and meeting them got me thinking; perhaps I could do that too? I saw photography as a way of escaping a lifetime behind a desk. I started teaching myself, and found regular commissioned work for a building magazine, before moving to newspaper work (the Times Education Supplement & The Independent, among others). As I became more politically involved, it was about documenting protest and injustice, seeing photography (at times too idealistically) as a tool for change, and as a way to communicate. The 1980s was the time of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership and there was a huge amount to protest about here in the UK – so I photographed numerous demonstrations. And in my 30s I travelled widely because of my work as a photojournalist (after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I focused on eastern Europe: Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, and what is now called North Macedonia), and I met amazing people I wouldn’t otherwise have met. So, in the beginning, my love of photography was bound up with the many adventures and friendships it brought me. Along the way, I also took inspiration from photography exhibitions and photographers’ monographs.
The weather is a continual topic of conversation for many living in the British Isles, and for landscape photographers, it becomes something of an obsession. Trying to predict the perfect combination of factors that will give a cloud inversion or a misty woodland or a stunning sunset can be utterly frustrating. In this issues instalment of our lockdown podcast, we talk to Joe and David about their approaches to the dark arts of the weather whisperer.
I will never forget the first time I saw the Dolomites. It was during the summer of 1996 when I was at our family home in northern Italy with my then young twin boys on our summer holidays from South Africa.
I remember driving up through the Val Gardena valley, where the road in some areas goes through deep valleys. After a certain point, the famous rocky peaks seemed to play hide and seek through the pine forests along the winding road and I could only wonder what lay beyond.
“The Dolomites are widely regarded as being among the most attractive mountain landscapes in the world,” states UNESCO, and on June 26, 2009, they were inscribed into the UNESCO World Heritage List. These mighty mountains hold a wide appeal for hikers, climbers, skiers, cyclists, historians, and naturally photographers not only here in Italy but throughout the world. They are a mountain range situated in the northern Italian Alps and have over 18 peaks which rise to above 3,000 metres in altitude. They feature some of the most beautiful mountain landscapes anywhere, with vertical walls, sheer cliffs and a high density of narrow, deep and long valleys.
The range and its characteristic rock take their name from the 18th-century French geologist Dieudonné de Dolomieu, who made the first scientific study of the region and its geology. These dramatic mountains are famous for their unique colours. In the Dolomites, the two moments of transition between light and darkness becomes even more special due to a distinctive trait that these mountains have, which make the rock formations take on a particular pink colour, a phenomenon called Enrosadira.
The source of the term Enrosadira comes from Ladin (a dialect spoken in this area of Italy) and means "to become pink". It is a range of colours that follow the light during sunrise and sunset, creating a spectacle that both fascinates and takes one’s breath away.
This splendid phenomenon has scientific origins; the Dolomites are composed of Dolomite rock, a compound of calcium carbonate and magnesium, elements that accentuate the reflectivity of the sun's rays. For this reason, when illuminated by the light, at dawn or at dusk, they develop many intense hues. This is a phenomenon that contrasts with their appearance during daytime when they take on cool tones and faded colours which then gives the Dolomites their name, the "Pale Mountains".
Words have power, and it is language that makes complex thought and precise awareness possible. But sometimes there are concepts and ideas swirling through our minds that we cannot name.
It is very satisfying to find a new word for a feeling that is so very familiar, but which I could never explain with the languages known to me. I was accordingly pleased when I stumbled upon the word 'Hiraeth' in Sally Mann's 'Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs' [Read Joe Cornish's article on the book here: https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2018/07/sally-mann]
Welsh is spoken by barely 20 percent of the population, so we can only hope that the evocative Welsh word hiraeth will somehow be preserved. It means “distance pain,” and I know all about it: a yearning for the lost places of our past, accompanied in extreme cases by tuneful lamentation (mine never got quite that bad).
Just like us southerners, the Welsh are often depicted as nostalgic and melancholic, their heads stuck in the past while pining for hopelessly lost causes. This attribution was conceived in the eighteenth century, and right from the beginning it was tied to a representation of landscapes: the blind bards of eighteenth-century fables are inseparable from the misty mountains in which they were imagined to strum their harps while giving voice to their hiraeth. Contemporary Welsh-speakers have continued that expression, linking memory and landscape most vividly in R. W. Parry’s sonnet in which the longed-for landscape communicates to the human heart, “the echo of an echo… the memory of a memory past.”
Distance pain is a real thing; hiraeth is not just a made-up neurasthenic disorder to which the Welsh and oversensitive, displaced southerners are susceptible. Looking through my long photographic and literary relationship with my own native soil I can perceive a definite kinship with those fokelorish bards wailing away about their place-pain. And similarly, after months of research in my mother’s archive, I am reasonably sure that some aspects of that sentimental Welshman, my mother’s father, are woven through my psyche and have emerged in my own landscapes as “the memory of a memory past.”
In the German language we have the words 'Heimweh' and 'Fernweh'. The English language has 'Wanderlust', which interestingly is also derived from German, but is not used in the same way anymore. In German, it is literally just the desire for walking/hiking, if at all used these days. There is 'Homesickness', which, as far as I understand, is used in a very specific way to describe the longing for the literal place of home while travelling.
So it seems that in either language, there is no word like the Welsh 'Hiraeth', which is 'Heimweh' and 'Fernweh' combined in one word, as well as the mournful longing for places that don't exist anymore, that maybe never existed, a place to belong, to call home. It's a beautiful word that in itself almost tells a story of loss and seeking.
I have known this feeling since my teenage years and the places I long for most and miss are not the same as the actual home areas where I was born and raised, even though I moved away from there almost 20 years ago.
The British Isles are one place that I have felt a special connection to since before I even travelled there for the first time. The feeling I had, when I first journeyed through the Kentish hills on a bus to London at the age of 14 is well remembered and still hard to describe. I have since often wondered where it’s coming from. Is it rooted somewhere deep in my DNA? I don't know… the earliest ancestors I can trace are from regions that are now Poland.
One answer is likely culture. The music I listened to and the books I read as a teenager originated mostly from Britain. I have always liked literature in which the landscape plays a major part, almost like a character itself… like the Moors in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Even Tolkien's Middle Earth is deeply rooted in British landscapes.
It is likely that this landscape that I now think of is largely idealised in my imagination, but nonetheless my actual journeys to Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales haven't disappointed so far. On the contrary, they always feed the longing to return which only grows with time and is accompanied by a certain unspecific ache - that is what Hiraeth means, I think.
I have been to many areas which look similar to some places of the British Isles like Brittany (Cornwall) and other areas in Central France. I liked them well enough, but the emotional connection is not the same, even though Brittany came quite close.
There are some other places for me that cannot be limited to a specific location on a map, which evoke similar emotions of longing. These are certain coastal regions, mountain areas (1000-3000 m altitude) and green valleys, rivers and forests. There seem to be certain types of landscapes, where I feel most at home. When I think of coastal areas, I see those of Central to Northern Europe in my mind's eye, whereas an exotic beach with palm trees doesn't do much for me. Even the Mediterranean coasts don't tickle me in the same way as the view of a rough rocky shoreline in Scotland.
I guess these kinds of landscapes are the ones that resonate most with my internal, spiritual landscape. It's where I feel most at ease and therefore at home. The question of why that is and why I have that strange attraction to the British Isles in particular, is likely one that will accompany me for the rest of my life.
Interestingly, when I am in one of these places it is still possible to feel that same longing while actually being there and looking at it. Sometimes it seems such an intense sense of place that it actually hurts.
So the emotion I feel when I look at images of mountains, the sea and deep forests is not only a longing to travel, but also longing for home - Hiraeth.
The photos I've chosen are those that express this concept most clearly for me and which cause this particular kind of ache most strongly. While looking through my photos I found that ‘Hiraeth’ is definitely one important reason why I am interested in landscape photography at all.
When I looked up the word I also found this wonderful poem which the author kindly allowed me to quote in this article. It also inspired me to write about this at all, because it made me see that I am not alone with these feelings that don’t seem to make much sense intellectually.
The most beautiful word I had ever heard
I hold it close to my chest like it is mine to keep
It is not, but still it feels as if it is a word just for me
To heal an aching heart
Its definition swirls in my mind and leaves me dumbfounded
Mouth ajar as the words echo in my memory
Hiraeth, a Welsh word
“Untranslatable deep nostalgia for a place or time that will never be again”
Or a place and time that never really was
A longing for home
There is a word for everything but who knew
There would even be a word floating to the precipice
Catching me before I fall
It whispers “you are not alone”
There is a word for this
A way to explain how I am feeling
And the word that means longing for home
Feels like home to me
Yes, this is it, the word I have been searching for
The word that rolls off of the tongue
And makes me feel like I am normal
Finally, there are words to describe how I am feeling
One word, I treasure it so
And as you hear its meaning maybe you too will feel held
In the space where you know something should be
From a time long forgotten
A time that never was
Ours to keep, ours to hold
Hiraeth
Hold me
You are home
Welcome to our 4x4 feature which is a set of four mini landscape photography portfolios submitted from our subscribers. Each portfolios consisting of four images related in some way.
Interested in submitting your work? We're on the lookout for new portfolios for the next few issues, so please do get in touch!
These four images are connected in diverse ways. First of all, they represent my main focus of interest in nature photography, namely trees and forests. Furthermore, they belong to a series of images taken in square format, which offers me an interesting variety of possible compositions in my opinion. Then I chose black and white processing for them in order to concentrate on the diverse structures found in woodlands. And finally, they all arose in the familiar surroundings close to my home in Austria on the outskirts of Vienna during the lockdown following the pandemic in 2020. My wife and I took up the opportunity to scout out the Biosphere Park Wienerwald (Vienna Woods), an extended forest area. We are familiar with this region since our childhood, yet slowing down and raising awareness in this period made it possible for us to see long-known places with different eyes.
I am drawn to grey, damp low light conditions. It might be correlated with that I am born in November and those conditions are appearing fairly often here in Sweden at that time period.
Visiting the island of Ikaria, I admired the combination of dense vegetation, gorges and forests with breathtaking seacoasts. Since the beginning of my exploration, I got the feeling that Ikaria is a place forgotten by time. It consists of vast mountainous areas with alternations in the natural habitat varying between green plains and bare rocks which have impressive formations, sculptured by the strong winds. This contrast caught my attention from the first moment and I really wanted to capture them.
The routes that cross the central part of the island, give a relaxing-panoramic view. Having crossed the central mountainous part and returning back to the hotel where I was staying, the trip had a surprise in store for me. At some point, my eyes were captivated by a river that crossed the underground part of the road. Leaving the car aside, I started searching for access to this hidden paradise.
The first thing I noticed when I went down, was the heavy winter landslides. Despite the river had dried up due to the summer conditions, it had created a small lake. The sunset light spread gently under the dense vegetation of the area, thus creating soft lighting. The rocks as well as the fallen leaves from the old plane trees covered by the dust of the landslides created a sense of a forgotten landscape in time which simultaneously gave me the feeling that despite the chaotic scenery, everything looked harmonious with each other.
With restricted travel this last year I set myself the challenge of finding interesting subjects in rural Cambridgeshire in the UK. I settled on intimate landscapes in three local woodlands Monk’s Wood, Woodwalton Fen, and Holme Fen. I ‘discovered’ them serendipitously in that I was not looking for them at the times I became aware of them. In some ways this seems to be a metaphor for finding intimate landscape subjects. You may be out in the field but not at all aware of what you will discover. Intimate landscape is all about discovering and revealing both the subject and one’s self.
Each of these woodlands has its own character and history despite being so close to one and other. The lesson here is to be curious and take time to explore the world around you. It is more diverse and interesting than a first impression might impart. Here are some of my notes on the subject at the time.
“It seems I am making regular rounds to my three local woodlands now. Each has a unique character and rather than being repetitive, I find new areas to explore afresh in some and comfort in the familiar places of ones I know better. Of course, these woodlands change all the time, with the seasons and the weather. If one looks carefully enough and is sensitive to subtleties, there is change all around.
This morning I visit Monk’s Wood. Growing up a hillside on determinedly clay soil it is markedly different from the two fen woodlands of Holme and Woodwalton. These latter two are pancake flat being in the drained marshes of the fens. They are also comparatively new.
The silver birches of Holme would not have turned up until after the draining of the fens as they prefer well drained soil. The nearby area of Whittlesey is the last of the fenlands to be drained so the forest is perhaps 150 years old.
Woodwalton Fen was purchased by Charles Rothschild in 1910 as a nature reserve. I am not sure the state of it then but a map from the 1860’s shows it to be a section of drained fenland much like the surrounding area. It is still laced with the drainage canals which are maintained as part of the reserve.
Monk’s Wood by contrast is what one might properly call ancient woodland though that term probably implies more than is true about the place. It is shown in medieval maps and so has been known for some time. It must be said that few of the trees seem that old, but woodlands were for centuries places where locals took resources like game and timber.”
Over the year I spent on this project I feel this focus has allowed me to improve my ability to find and capture intimate landscape images. Researching the history of these places has deepened my understanding of them as well. For instance, there is a curious lack of large old trees at Monk’s Wood despite being mentioned in the Domesday Book. It turns out that after World War I some Canadian lumbermen harvested all the big trees.
For now, I work exclusively with film as a means of connecting with my brother who was a talented photographer. I use a combination of medium format (Mamiya 645 Pro) and Large Format 4x5 (Intrepid 4x5). In medium format I favour a 150mm lens to get a tighter crop of small subjects. I am sometimes asked ‘why film?’ For me it has improved my photography by making me think more about the process. I also find film photography is like my other interests of fly fishing and woodworking. Flyfishing because of its contemplative outdoors nature. Woodworking because it is a challenging creative craft with a connection to the past.
I first saw this photograph when judging Outdoor Photographer of the Year back in 2017. The photographs were judged anonymously. Sometimes you can hazard a guess about the author but I’m not sure Lizzie would have been in most of the judges’ minds at the time because she is mostly known for her colour work. All of the judges liked this photograph and it was among those selected for inclusion in the book. I liked it so much that I am now the very happy owner of a beautiful print.
Lizzie has often talked about her preference for scenes that do not reference a specific place. This little view could be anywhere and that universality gives it relevance; we can all relate to it, imagine ourselves in a similar place, without having to go to extraordinary lengths to get there. In this strange age of limited travel, there’s comfort in that.
Although the subject is a snowy scene, this is not a cold photograph. The fringe of branches that gracefully dangle over the top of the frame create a sense of haven. We are almost cradled within the scene. I can imagine myself pausing under the branches of the tree, perhaps to enjoy a hot chocolate from my thermos as I admire the far tree line, before heading out into the cold again.
Most creative geniuses most of the time will display an eccentricity that strays noticeably away from normalcy while stopping just short of the utterly crazy. ~Dean Keith Simonton
Despite so many challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the requirement for social distancing also created opportunities for me to spend more time doing virtual presentations for camera clubs and other photography groups, answering photographers’ questions on a variety of topics. To my surprise, topics related to psychology seem to have been a recurring theme.
Much writing about creativity highlights the beneficial effects of artistic expression, which are many, but the psychology of highly creative people (especially those predisposed to what researchers refer to as “major,” or “Big-C” creativity) is not all positive, or even benign. As creativity researcher Dean Keith Simonton put it, “Creative geniuses may not be the kinds of folks you normally would want as lovers, friends, in-laws, coworkers, or neighbours.”
A common definition for creativity is the production of novel and useful products.
For the eighth iteration of this column, I decided to focus on the artwork of a photographer who I discovered through a stroke of luck. One of my friends and former podcast guests, and a truly wonderful black and white photographer in his own right, Chuck Kimmerle, emailed me to tell me about a photographer in Minnesota that neither of us had heard of before who has incredible work. Of course, I was very interested because I have found that finding high quality photography artists in the landscape and nature medium that I have never heard of before is quite a challenge in this digital age we find ourselves in. Upon examining Joel Truckenbrod’s work, I was immediately gobsmacked and impressed by his control of light, his use of composition, and the uniquely creative qualities found within it. Joel’s work oozes with personal expression, subtle yet wonderful nuance, and has an aethereal quality. Joel works exclusively within the black and white genre, which, admittedly, is not one that I find myself admiring very often; however, there is just something unique and interesting about Joel’s photography that pulls me in and gives me a glimpse into his soul. Perhaps these qualities are what we should all aspire to reach for in our own work as artists in this medium.
Joel is a native resident in the State of Minnesota along the northern boundary of the United States and the majority of his photographic work has been created there, especially the northeastern region near the Canadian border.
Editors Note: I should mention that this article wasn't solicited by us in relation to our recent announcement about the Natural Landscape Photography Awards and was actually submitted in draft form prior to the competition even being considered (Nov 2020). However, although the topic of realist vs creative photography is one that has been around since the dawn of photography itself, it does seem that the topic is once again rising to prominence. I'm sure there is no fundamental answer to this but as the debate goes on, we're very interested in different points of view. Take it away, Timothy...
Tell the truth and honour the place. ~ Jack Dykinga
Photoshop – transitive verb. To alter (a digital image) with Photoshop software or other image-editing software especially in a way that distorts reality (as for deliberately deceptive purposes) ~Merriam-Webster Dictionary
The subject of Guy Tal’s recent article, On Photographic Technology, (Vol. 213), may represent a sea change in landscape photography, yet it appears to have slipped by largely unchallenged. It is an important topic for us, especially with the recent introduction of artificial intelligence algorithms by Adobe and Luminar.
To summarise his position, Guy believes that the viewing public should – indeed, has – come to expect that landscape photographs are digitally manipulated by the photographer into an interpretation of a scene that did not actually exist. He said, “representation of realistic appearances is no longer the default, and may soon no longer even be the primary, use for photography.”
Referring to realistic photography, he asserts, “those who choose to practice this kind of photography will have to distinguish their work as such” and to “cease relying on common ignorance of the creative potential of the medium that is unlikely to persist.”
This is an important event in the history of landscape photography because it provides justification for the use of artificial intelligence. If traditional, reality-based photography has been pushed aside by creative digital photographers in pursuit of their artistic expression, the door is open to allow machines to further assist the artist-photographer in creating an entirely new level of abstraction.
Guy’s reference to GPS for navigation is a perfect analogy for AI. Just as pushing a button produces a pleasant female voice that guides us unthinking to our destination, soon all we will have to do is push a button to create a fantastic landscape image. AI will learn our creative tendencies, anticipate what we would create on our own and create an artistic expression for us through the miracle of mathematics.
According to recent push-emails from Luminar, AI will alter your image to “create breath-taking results” based on analysis of “thousands of shots from pro photographers.” This program will transform “any photo into a stunning masterpiece in the blink of an eye,” the purpose of which is to “bring you artistic success.”
In other words, soon you won’t have to take a great picture or learn all that Photoshop stuff or luminosity masks in order to garner Likes, win big competitions, teach workshops and represent brands. Just one click and you will leave Alex Noriega in the dust.
There you have it. The machine is going to do the work to make you an artist.
The natural extension of Guy’s thesis is that landscape photography will have moved from in-camera work based on reality to creative post-processing based on imagination to machine-created art based on algorithms. People who embrace this new technology will argue that the resulting masterpiece is based on their machine-learned creative history and, therefore, really is their creation. They just didn’t have to actually do anything to create it.
Several photographers with well-subscribed social media outlets, have openly lamented the arrival of AI and have expressed scepticism about its use in landscape photography. But isn’t this the same as, say, film-based photographers lamenting the use of Photoshop to alter images? AI is just one more step in the progression of technology to assist photographer-artists in self-expression. The silly part is that it creates rifts among us.
There is a way we can all pursue our passions without animosity towards each other or towards each other’s creative paths. Guy suggested that the realist photographers need to identify their images as such. Take that one step further. We all should identify our work as a process genre within landscape. Stupid idea, you say? Painters do it. They don’t just have paintings, they have genres within genres. They have oils, acrylics, watercolours, sketches, etc. They have photorealism, cubism, dadaism, impressionism, romanticism, etc., within portraiture, landscape, abstract, etc.
Realist photographers could proclaim their work as, well, photographs. Digital creatives could identify their work as photo-illustrations. And AI artists will find a word to identify their art.
This should be supported, possibly even required, by venues such as contests, exhibitions, publications and social media. The images would not have to be watermarked as such, but rather mentioned in the accompanying text. “Fred’s work brings a realistic view of the natural world.” “Ginger uses images captured in nature as a basis for her creative expression.” Images could be identified in metadata as a keyword. “Landscape, Portugal, sunset, photo-illustration.”
We should not throw this on the public to figure out or expect that they will assume all landscape photographs are a product of whatever the latest technology allows. Soon, landscape “photographs” will include everything from a well-executed picture of reality to a substantially fabricated creation. Now is the time to establish different genres within the field. Photographic technology is forcing us to make these declarations.
There’s something about the sea that bewitches, even for those of us who spend our lives largely anchored to the land. With a slow shutter something elemental, raw and at times overwhelming in power, becomes a quieter beast that we may contemplate at our leisure.
There seems an inevitability that Margaret Soraya has ended up making images of the sea, having swapped courses at college so that she could study close to it (in between swimming and surfing). Margaret describes her own values as being based around quiet, solitude and nature. She started leading landscape workshops two years ago and in developing her landscape offer has found a new purpose in helping others.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, your education and early interests, and what that led you to do?
I grew up in Manchester and spent most of my childhood happily drawing and painting by myself. The rest of my spare time I spent swimming! Nothing much has changed, apart from that drawing became photography. I was a very shy, sensitive child who was content to be alone, absorbed in my creativity. The one thing that was pivotal in my life was that my mother always encouraged my creative side. I have no idea where I would be today if this hadn't been the case.
I studied foundation art at Manchester and went on to a Fine Art painting degree in Coventry, which I soon switched for a degree in Photography in the Arts, mostly driven by location. I was unhappy in Coventry and yearned for the coast. So when the opportunity came to go to study at Swansea, I grabbed it. I began surfing within the first few weeks of being in Swansea and felt true alignment with where I was living and creating by the coast. I was often seen running into lectures with wet hair and a surfboard on my car outside the building. My tutors were less than impressed and further had reason to dislike me due to my quietness, lack of confidence, and inability to articulate what the work that I felt so passionate doing was actually about.
Photography came into your life fairly early on, with the sea providing inspiration even then, but the structure of college didn't suit you and you left it behind for a while. When and in what form did it return?
I left my degree in Photography a year early after receiving continuing heavy criticism and a general lack of support and encouragement. I put my cameras down completely for many years after that and started a family and got drawn into the humdrum of life and supporting the family. It was not until 10 years later that I bought a digital camera with the intention of starting a business with it. Quite specifically, a social photography business, which I had identified as being the fastest way to income through Photography.
I have supported my family solely for 16 years now with wedding photography. I have always known that it wasn't my passion, but I did get good at it. It causes me a lot of stress - the sort of pressure when we work in a line of field that is so far out of line with our true passion; it wears us down. I began to shoot landscapes for myself ten years ago after making a conscious decision to start shooting in the landscape again. As my children grew up and life became slightly more stable, I was able to spend more time in the landscape.
But we err in presuming convenience is always good, for it has a complex relationship with other ideals that we hold dear. Though understood and promoted as an instrument of liberation, convenience has a dark side. With its promise of smooth, effortless efficiency, it threatens to erase the sort of struggles and challenges that help give meaning to life. ~ Tim Wu
The ferns spread out before me in shades of burnt orange, gold, and brown. Framing the scene through my viewfinder I realised I would not be able to capture the desired depth of field with one exposure; focus stacking would be required. No problem. I shot three exposures, varying only the focus point. Later, I imported the exposures into Lightroom, opened them as layers in Photoshop and completed the focus stack. Easy. Simple. Clean. If I owned one of the new-fangled mirrorless cameras I could have done the focus stacking completely in-camera. Even easier.
While recently reading a monograph on a Harry Callahan exhibit the writer mentioned the process of making an image with an 8 x 10 view camera. I thought of how much photography has changed over the decades and began to wonder how those changes have impacted the photographs we make today, for better or for worse.
“Landscape Photography and the Meaning of Life”. It’s a bold title, to be sure. And it runs the risk of sounding wildly pretentious. Still, I chose it to catch your attention (it worked, didn’t it?) and inspire you to think more deeply about the relationship between what you photograph and who you are.
Ultimately the title pokes a stick at the pesky question that is – or should be – at the heart of all our image-making: Why?
Why do we choose to make landscape photographs rather than other types of photographs? Why do we prefer some kinds of landscapes over others? Why do certain seasons or weather conditions inspire us to take our camera out, while at other times we prefer to stay home and work at our computer? And, as we’re scrolling through the seemingly endless stream of images on that computer, why do some images make us pause, and an occasional one even stops us, spellbound, in our tracks?
Subscribers to On Landscape are an introspective bunch, so I know I am not alone in pondering these questions. Regular contributors (notably Guy Tal, Alister Benn, Rafael Rojas, David Ward and Joe Cornish) have written extensively and eloquently about the Why of what we do. Yet, each of us brings our own perspective and style to this weighty question, so I hope mine may contribute something of value to our collective search for an answer.
Shattered is characteristic of the Atlantic Coastal Barrens in autumn and gives a sense of the harsh conditions its inhabitants face.
Given the variety of potential subject matter in the world, why do some of us choose almost exclusively to photograph the landscape? The explanation lies, I think, in the interplay between motivation and inspiration.
Motivation can be thought of as the reason or practical purpose for our image-making – what we hope to achieve when we take our camera out into the countryside, what we plan to do with the images we bring home, and who their intended audience is.
Sometimes the source of our motivation is external. For example, we may make landscape images to win a competition, satisfy a commercial client, expand our website portfolio, or gain approval from our photographic peers. While these may seem important goals in the context of our daily social and economic lives, the resulting images are unlikely to be especially meaningful to us because their creation is shaped by other people’s preferences rather than our own.
When, instead, we allow our personal thoughts and feelings about the landscape to guide our image-making, our motivation becomes internal.
Internal motivation often has more to do with the experience of making the photographs than with the photographs themselves. People who become landscape photographers commonly pick up a camera for the first time to record, remember and share these experiences. Perhaps a wilderness adventure or a journey to some exotic location, or, for those with scientific interests, their interactions with the landscape’s flora, fauna or geology. Over time, as we become proficient enough with the technical tools of our craft that we can start looking beyond them, this initial, outward-looking approach to image-making often evolves into one that is more introspective and artistic.
Increasingly in these stressful times, however, our internal motivation for heading out into nature with a camera is for therapeutic purpose; to escape, to cogitate, to restore our sense of perspective.
First Snow came at the end of a nasty, wet, October day when the temperature fell just enough to turn the rain into big flakes of snow – and my gloomy mood into a gleeful one.
The Bog’s Last Fling as the autumn colour fades to winter monochrome, a time of wistfulness for some people, and delight for others.
Landscape photographers are usually – although not universally – introverts, at odds with the unrelenting connectivity and busyness of modern society. The wild outdoors is our refuge. Even without a camera, our ramblings in the countryside help to revive our physical and mental well-being. Here we can exercise our muscles, breathe fresh air, raise our eyeballs up from our navels towards the distant horizon, and feel awed by the natural world. When we add a camera to our ramblings, together with a dash of inspiration, we may become so absorbed in the image-making process that all else is forgotten.
The all-important “dash of inspiration” is the spark we experience in response to something in the landscape. An obvious example is the wow of a fiery sunset that inspires so many people to grab their cameras. Others with more seasoned visual antennae will likely skip the sunset, but maybe fascinated by patterns in a freshly ploughed field, or feel intensely moved by a windblown tree, or amused by quirky road sign juxtaposed against a wilderness vista.
Whatever the external stimulus – the sunset, the field, the tree, the road sign – the important thing about inspiration is the internal response it triggers. It engages not only our senses but also our emotions, our intellect, our imagination, our aesthetic sensibilities. It focuses our attention and it creates – or, more accurately, it reveals – a meaningful connection between ourselves and whatever it was in the landscape that inspired us.
But why does each of us respond differently to different landscapes and to different environmental conditions in those landscapes?
I have a friend who loves the forest. She can walk happily all day on a woodland trail. She feels comforted by the cradling canopy of trees. She stops to admire spring wildflowers, dappled summer sunlight or autumn leaves on the forest floor, birds flitting in the branches, a brook burbling through the ferns. And she makes beautiful photographs of these things; lush, gentle, sometimes dreamily impressionistic portraits of intimate forest scenes. When January comes, she laments the bleakness and settles into her studio for a winter of image processing.
Winter Birch trees shimmer with the colourful promise of spring and bring to mind the cycle of life, death and re-birth.
Whenever my friend and I hike together with our cameras, I enjoy the challenge of mentally disentangling her forest and finding compositions in it that work for me. For about half an hour. Then I hear myself screaming (quietly to myself) for the trail to emerge at a hilltop lookout. I want to see the sky. I long for a sweeping view. I need to escape the forest’s claustrophobic green. Later in the year, as autumn turns the green to brown and my friend wistfully winds down her image-making season, I am busy cleaning my kit, digging out my woolly socks and feeling the stirrings of real photographic enthusiasm again.
I have another friend who, several years ago, traded in his ultra-wide-angle lens, first for a telephoto, then for a macro lens. Within a few months, all the expansive landscapes had disappeared from his portfolio, replaced by exquisitely crafted images of landscape details; bands of colour in rocks, patterns in ice puddles, miniature forests in patches of lichen.
My friend attributed this transformation to photographic maturity. He became dismissive of classic, wide-angle images and scornful of the photographers who make them.
He has a point. The world is awash in this kind of photograph. After all, they’re relatively easy to replicate. All you need are the GPS coordinates for a scenic site, a few standard compositional elements, some flattering light, the right gear and a modicum of technique. It is also true that with photographic maturity we become better able to focus our attention (and lenses) on specific attributes of the landscape that inspire us, which certainly can result in tighter compositions.
But I am reluctant to throw the baby (the wide perspective) out with the bathwater (the over-photographed scene), because I believe it is possible to make expansive landscape photographs that are compelling, distinctive, and meaningful. But only by crafting them with our hearts, and in the right landscapes, not with a formula at some iconic location.
So, what is the “right” landscape? For my forest friend, the answer is obvious and makes sense for her personality, which is embracing and comfortable. For my macro friend, it is the miniature landscapes he comes across almost everywhere, which suits his meticulous character to a tee.
Where I live (in Nova Scotia, Canada) we call it the Atlantic Coastal Barrens. More generically it will be familiar to many as tundra, heath or moorland that is close to, and dominated by, the sea. The terrain is characterised by exposed bedrock, boggy soil, and stunted trees. The weather is moody, windy, cool and wet. The landscape offers broad views, framed by dramatic skies as storms roll off the ocean, and it comes ablaze every autumn as wild blueberry and other native bushes turn scarlet. At other times the views are obscured by fog, blizzards, or clouds of biting insects. It is a harsh environment, yet paradoxically fragile too, a place where only the toughest plants and creatures can survive, and yet are so easily destroyed.
Entanglement is my answer to a visual puzzle in the forest that challenged me – an organised person – to make order from the chaos of sticks.
Few people live on the barrens or even venture there, except to pick berries. Most see it as a dreary landscape. And often it is. But I have made my home beside Nova Scotia’s largest coastal barrens, and whenever I am away from it for more than a few days, I begin to pine.
It’s not that I refuse to travel. Like most people, I enjoy the excitement of exploring new places, and like most photographers, I find fresh scenery visually stimulating. However, unlike most, I rarely travel more than a day’s drive from home, usually to out-of-the-way places, always in the off-season, and never anywhere hot. The “green and pleasant land” is more appealing to me when it is frozen and snowy. Trees are more interesting when stripped of their leaves; beaches more alluring in the fog, without footprints. And my heart beats faster when the winter’s first snowflakes begin to fall.
So, the right landscape for me, both personally and photographically, is a so-called barren one. However, this still begs the question, why?
The answer seems so simple now. But it took me years (decades, if I am honest) to figure it out, or at least to say it aloud:
I am a loner.
This explains everything! My choice of home (rural, remote), my career (self-employed landscape photographer), my living arrangements (solo, albeit always with a dog and/or cat), where and when I travel (off-season, off the beaten track), my favourite seasons (winter, fall), my preferred photographic process (solitary, slow), and ultimately the photographs I make (moody, spacious, structured, minimalistic).
The details of my story are relevant only to me. You will have your own right landscape and your own story that explains it. My story boils down to a profound need for solitude, space and silence that I’ve learned are as essential to me as air, water and food. Out-of-the-way places, especially in wintertime, are my best hope of finding these things. I have also learned that – contrary to the prevailing opinion in our extrovert-dominated society – being a loner is not an affliction to be cured or a misdemeanour to be apologised for, but rather, a way of life to be lived. Enjoyed! How I wish I had known this all those decades ago.
The Long View encourages us to look farther and be curious about what lies hidden beyond the horizon.
Just Passing Through is all that any of us is doing in this life, and the raven is often seen as an omen of death, so this image is an exhortation to make the most of it before we fly out of the frame.
In popular parlance, the “meaning” of life is synonymous with its “significance” or “value”, but scholars have been squabbling about the details for millennia. Countless volumes have been written on the topic, and still there is no consensus. Only a continuum of answers ranging from absolutist (life is intrinsically meaningful, courtesy of a god or Mother Nature) to relativist (life’s meaning varies with culture and individual experience) to nihilist (life is meaningless).
Certainly, as a lowly landscape photographer, I do not claim to have the answer. (You weren’t actually expecting one, were you?) However, my experience in making landscape photographs has led me to some conclusions about meaning in my own life. Days spent alone with my camera exploring wild places, responding (or not) to the scenery around me, feeling invigorated (or not) by the weather and excited (or not) about the subject matter I was photographing, and then, back at home at my computer, reviewing and evaluating how well (or not) my images express my experiences in the landscape. And, at every step, gnawing away at the question, why?
My conclusions are comforting. To me. For now.
I suppose I might describe myself as a usually-optimistic relativist-borderline-nihilist with respect to the meaning of life (what a wonderful business card that would make!). In plain English; I don’t see my life as inherently either meaningful or meaningless, and I am grateful for this ambiguity because it allows me to organise my daily life productively around projects that are important to me, cheered by the awareness that my life and its projects are, at best, of only minuscule and fleeting significance in the broader scheme of things.
So, in my photographs and writings, I work towards promoting environmental, physical and mental health and creating thoughtful images, at the same time confident that a heart attack or diabetes, an earthquake, climate change or, ahem, a global pandemic, will sooner or later wipe me – and the rest of the human species – from the Earth. And the Earth will breathe a huge sigh of relief.
The Ends of the Earth is where I live, at the remote eastern tip of Nova Scotia, and this is the view from my studio window as shafts of sunlight spar with storm clouds for dominance over the sea. The ever-changing skyscape here is a constant source of inspiration for my work.
Whether my meaning-of-life conclusions leave you nodding your head in agreement, shaking it in opposition or scratching it in bewilderment, is not important. My conclusions don’t matter (except to me). What matters more widely is the process of finding them through photographing landscapes – experiencing, contemplating and visually celebrating scenery that is meaningful to us, and baring our souls, if only to ourselves, as we do so.
This process may be commonplace to more experienced members of our On Landscape community. But for those who are new to landscape photography, or just drifting along without much impetus or direction, it’s helpful to begin with a less daunting objective than “discover and express the meaning of life in my landscape photographs!” Instead, ask yourself some smaller questions – about images, about landscapes, and about yourself – and tease the answers from your subconscious with some simple(ish) exercises.
Look back through issues of On Landscape, or any other landscape photography magazine or book with quality images from multiple contributors, and collect (with scissors or screen captures) 25-50 images that “speak to you.” Try to pretend you are not a photographer as you do this. Just respond to the images personally and intuitively without over-thinking your selections.
Spread the images out in front of you, shuffle them around, and take a closer look. Are your selections mostly expansive landscapes or intimate ones? Is their mood generally bright, ethereal, sunny, or dark, contrasty, brooding? Are they sharply detailed, orderly and realistic, or dreamy, chaotic, impressionistic, abstract? Do any special favourites or trends emerge from the collection? If so, can you explain why (answering as a human, not as a photographer)? What is it about these images that resonates with your personality or your present circumstances and mental state?
Now repeat the exercise, but this time using your own photographs. You will find this more difficult because it’s impossible to avoid becoming side-tracked by the memories and emotions that are attached to your own images. Ask yourself the same questions as before, looking for trends in your images – and in your answers – that hint at their underlying meaning.
Imagine the day (soon, we hope!) when we are all vaccinated against COVID-19 and free to roam the world again with our cameras. Open an atlas or Google Maps and pinpoint a few places you’d like to visit. And, since we are daydreaming, let’s assume an unlimited budget, lots of time, hassle-free logistics, and no purpose for your image-making apart from pleasing yourself.
Now, having plotted a holiday (or two or three), look at your list of destinations. Are they close to home, or far away and exotic? Have you been there before, or are they new to you? Are they tropical, temperate, polar, desert, forest, coastal, mountainous, tundra, grassland, wetland, farmland, urban, rural, pristine wilderness, or a variety of the above? What time of year would you visit? Would you spend the entire time at one destination, or try to see as many places as possible during your holiday? How would you travel: by aeroplane, a cruise ship, your car, a canoe, or backpacking?
This list of questions could go on, and of course, there are no “correct” answers. The point is to unleash your imagination and see where on the planet it takes you – and how and when, and most importantly why. What is it about these particular landscapes and style of travel through them that suits your character?
Take your camera to one of your favourite landscapes (or, if you can’t visit a favourite landscape right now, mine your image archives instead) and create a photograph titled “Self Portrait” – without including yourself (or any other person) in the image. This means you must use features of the landscape itself to represent you.
The most obvious self-portrait for me would be a lone tree in a snowy field. However, at a deeper level, with all my human complexity, any of the images that accompany this essay could be a portrait of me. Taken together, they give a well-rounded picture of who I am, moody blues and all.
The same complexity is true of you, so it will be challenging to create a single image that adequately sums you up. Still, the process is worthwhile because it encourages you to point your camera very deliberately in both directions, outward to the landscape and inward into your soul.
This process of looking both ways is at the heart of expressive image-making. All landscape photographs, by definition, portray features of the external, geophysical world, but only meaningful ones enable glimpses into the topography and scenery of our inner worlds as well.
A Dark Horse was my companion during a picnic lunch on a remote hiking trail as a storm rolled in, reminding me of the value of friendship (even for loners) in times of trouble.
Self Portrait, Uprooted is a landscape I created in my studio from the upturned root of a wild rose, positioned on a piece of satin cloth – one of several such manufactured landscapes that reminded me of the wild outdoors and kept me sane during the COVID-19 lockdown. “Uprooted” was especially relevant as I was also moving house during the pandemic.
So, how do we create meaningful landscape photographs? It is as simple – and as difficult – as adapting the process described in Exercise #3 above for every image we make.
When you set out to explore the landscape, turn off all your devices. No car radio, no podcasts on headphones, no cell phone. This frees you from the tempting distractions and notifications that bombard your life, and allows you to pay attention to the world around you.
A significant distraction for most people is other people. So, ideally, explore the landscape on your own, or, if solitude is too stressful for you, be sure to go with a kindred spirit who shares your approach and appreciates the benefits of companionable silence.
Also leave your camera in your bag – at the bottom of your bag – at least for now. Resist the pull of photographic expectations and practical motivations (getting a winning shot), and banish hyperfocal distance calculations from your head. If it helps, practice mindfulness meditation, focus on breathing, count your footsteps, whatever method you find most comfortable to silence your “chattering monkeys” so you can focus on the here and now, in readiness for Step 2.
Immerse yourself in the landscape wholeheartedly, paying attention to everything around you, not just with your eyes but with all your senses. Spend time, go for a walk, sit on a rock, have a picnic lunch, listen to bird song, feel the wind, taste the salty spray, smell the roses (literally as well as metaphorically), allow yourself to be mesmerised by the colours of periwinkle shells in a tide pool.
Once you have relaxed in the environment and taken it all in, make a (mental or paper) list of the elements you see – a “visual inventory” of the landscape.
At the same time pay attention to your thoughts and feelings about these elements. Perhaps you find yourself brooding on your mortality under the weight of a stormy sky. Or dancing with delight as the snow begins to fall. You might feel kinship with a straggly old tree or a croaking raven. You may be overwhelmed with vertigo as you peer over a cliff edge. Delve into your responses and the connection they reveal between yourself and the landscape by asking the perennial question, why?
Now, at last, pick up your camera and use your craft – working with light, colour and visual design – to translate your responses into photographs that are truly worthy of the experience you had in the landscape. That is, meaningful photographs. (Keeping in mind that if you show your photographs to me, they may mean something completely different, or nothing at all, unless my response to “your” landscape is similar – something to be wary of when releasing your images into the world!)
On the Way OutIt is my memorial to a beautiful old hay barn that, a year after I made this photograph, toppled over during a winter storm.
How effective we are at making meaningful landscape photographs is determined by our ability to forge, recognise and express meaningful connections between our lives and the landscapes we travel through. And this depends less on how well we know the landscape or the buttons and dials on our cameras, and more on how well we know ourselves. Enjoy the exploration!
I would recommend everyone to go through the process of choosing a single 'end frame' image. It turns out to be an excellent, almost cathartic, exercise of reflection. If you are not sure of your photographic direction before you start, then this should help.
Now I love a good grand landscape image, especially the mountains, somewhere wild, preferably Bierstadt moody (a throwback to growing up in the Highlands of Scotland no doubt). I am also very fond of smaller, quieter scenes. The woodland perhaps, where the photographer has to work really hard to make sense of the chaos. A difficult art to achieve, but when done well, it is oh so fine. I am likewise inspired by the unique work that is created by those who have mastered ICM and multiple exposure.
After my journey of reflection, however, I ended up with intimate detail as the genre I wanted to choose from. Devoid of any location reference, instead these images rely on texture, balance, pattern, light and colour, even ambiguity. Often there is an initial wonder, or perhaps puzzlement, followed by a revealing process as the image unfolds its layers. Add in an emotional connection and you have a winning formula. These are not images of the obvious. These are images born of acute observation, carefully considered and delicately produced.
So, I had my genre, that was the easy part....
…At this point I'm reminded of my Latin teacher, Mr McArdle, 'O me miserum est'.1
I made a shortlist of photographers and images, rediscovering some of their portfolios. I wish I could illustrate them all here. Each one very deserved. In the end, I decided upon a true master of observation, Theo Bosboom. I would expect he would find something interesting to photograph in 'dishwater'.2
Now my choice of photographer will not surprise many. Theo Bosboom has quietly built himself a strong reputation with his project-based originality. The choice of image may be more unlikely. Clearly, there were many of his images that I could have chosen as the end frame.
Anything from 'The journey of the autumn leaves', or 'Shaped by the sea', would have been very welcome. I have even resisted the 'limpets', and instead, I have chosen an image that has seen less of the limelight. It made a brief appearance on IG in August 2019 and was taken on Schiermonnikoog, a National Park and one of the West Frisian Islands (NL). I have been making a conscious effort to slow down and really study the images that catch my eye on the magic roundabout that is my IG carousel. This image seemed to deserve its chance to shine.
I’d be the first to admit that writing about a (very) recent picture is fraught with danger. I suffer from the fool’s assumption that my latest work is my best…except I know from bitter experience that it isn’t.
Yet in this instance I am willing to risk it, while the memory remains fresh. The story is simply of a local outing, in a location familiar to me. The conditions, however, were anything but.
This winter has been a rare treat. Until the temperature soared about 20ºC a few days back, it had been bitterly cold for a week. Jenny and I have both suffered chilblains, and inside the house it hovered around 4-5º C. We had meals on our knees beside the log burner, used hot water bottles and two duvets on the bed, and it was still barely warm enough.
But outside the photographic days were memorable.
Last Monday was the hardest of the hard core ‘Beast from the East’ days. I had enjoyed some time up on the Moor tops near home four weeks previously with snow, so had an idea of what to expect. But conditions are never the same twice. In January snow had settled politely everywhere, including on trees. There was even some fog to enhance the atmosphere.
This time the wind was powerful. The woods looked stark and brittle while the Moor tops were quite scoured. But where there was shelter from the brutal breeze, great drifts of snow had started to form.
Although I was on the hill before sunrise this was little help photographically because of blanket cloud to the east holding back the sun. However, it gave me time to walk, search, think. All day as it happened. In a pattern quite common on all-day outings I ended up working on around seven or eight picture ideas in total. Last Monday, the best moment came right at the end.
If anybody has been reading On Landscape on and off over the last decade, you’ll know I’ve written about competitions a few times. I have been a little dismissive of the idea of competitions in general, even the good ones (of which there are a few). The idea of competitive art seems anathema somehow but I think we can all understand the desire to see how your work would be judged by your peers, after all this is mostly what social media does, albeit in a very distorted way!
Despite repeatedly thinking about starting a competition, mostly triggered by seeing what was winning other competitions out there, I decided it wasn’t something I wanted to get involved in. I did notice that the Wildlife Photographer of the Year had dropped their main categories for landscape photography and I must admit that this got me thinking. There were really very few if any international competitions left that were rigorous in checking raw files for ‘over editing’ on a par with what the Wildlife Photographer of the Year did.
However, one day I was chatting with Alex Nail about this and he mentioned that Matt Payne and his friend Rajesh Jyothiswaran had been thinking about competitions and so I thought we could have a chat. It turns out that we all shared pretty much the same general opinion on what a competition could be and we all had a very annoying itch that wasn’t going to be satisfied until we ‘did something’ about it. And hence the idea for the Natural Landscape Photography Awards was hatched.
But why another competition? Aren’t there enough? Well, yes - there are loads out there and if you’re amongst the many people who are happy without limits when editing your images and who are primarily interested in the end product then your needs can be well satisfied.
If, however, you’re a photographer who values the effort of capturing the decisive moment, who values the intrinsic connection between the subject matter and the final processed image, who wants to celebrate the landscape and show people what they have seen and experienced it is difficult to find a level playing field for landscape photography.
I’d like to include what we’ve written on our “Why” page here...\
One of photography’s unique features is its ability to clearly represent the visual experience of the world. The deep connection between the photograph and the scene it conveys has shown the world the beauty of nature, helped convince politicians to create our national parks, shown people their effect on natural habitats and broadened the horizons of nearly every human on earth. There are few who have not marvelled at a National Geographic feature about some far-flung habitat or browsed a Sierra Club or National Trust book and had revealed to them their own treasured landscapes.
Historically, there have also been many celebrated artists who have used the camera to create works that diverge from representation in ways that no longer portray the landscape but interpret it. The Pictorialists used all the tools they had available to show just what photography was capable of as an art form.
But we now live in a world where there are blurred lines between these two aspects of photographic art. Our social media feeds show both approaches side by side with little to differentiate them. This current status quo is somewhat inevitable and understandable. However, when competitions do not make any distinction between the two, we are faced with a conundrum; Photographers who try to work within the boundaries of the landscape they actually experienced find it difficult to compete with photographs that depart from these constraints. The competitions we see online sometimes reward the technical skills of post-processing, compositing and graphic design over the challenges of working within the limits of the real world. How rarely can a portrayal of a real scene compete with the deluge of extraordinary juxtapositions of perfected moments?
The founders of this competition want to create a place where the field skills of the photographer are celebrated, where the post-processing and interpretation of images respect the inherent truth of the scene experienced, and photography aware viewers would not feel deceived by the end result if they were to see that original scene themselves.
We realise that there is nothing gained by banning all aspects of image processing, which is after all an integral part of our art. We will be allowing all techniques that respect the visual integrity of the image and subject. As long as that proposed imaginary viewer, who understands how photography works, would not feel deceived if they were able to experience the moment of capture themselves, then the photographer has connected them with the landscape.
To ensure that this is the case, any photographs that get past the first stages of the competition will need to provide RAW files in support of each entry. We will check each image to make sure it does not break any of the post-processing rules we have put forward.
The judges will make the final subjective decisions on whether the post-processing is too much or just right. Undoubtedly there will be grey areas and we look forward to some robust debate!
We have also given considerable thought to the process of judging itself, which can be prone to various problems. It is inevitable that when zipping through so many images, a ‘WOW!’ photo with vibrant colours or a photo from an unusual angle will stand out. This is why so many photographs from iconic locations in extreme conditions, unusual aerial perspectives, astro images, and inventive composites do disproportionately well in competitions. We hope to eliminate these judging problems by doing the following:
Prominently showing the judges individual choices in the results as well as the collective final choices
We believe that all these steps will help give each image a strong chance, whether it be a spectacular aurora over a glacier or a softly lit willow tree.
We’ll be developing and expanding the rules over the coming weeks so feel free to let us know if you have any ideas.
It’s difficult to separate the consideration of landscape photography from consideration for the land itself. If we say we engage in our craft out of love for the land, we really should consider its future in these changing times. As mentioned above, photographers have played a major part in many environmental movements, from the creation of National Parks like Ansel Adams’ work on the "Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail" book which helped save King’s Canyon to the campaigns against industrial developments like Eliott Porter’s work in Glen Canyon or Peter Dombrovskis’ beautiful work that helped save the Gordon River from the Franklin Dam development. We have to ask ourselves whether these images would have been that successful if the opposition could have said “that’s just photoshopped to look beautiful”. For many areas of relative wilderness, we are the eyewitnesses who are bringing back the message “look what you would see and experience if you came to look!”.
Sadly, landscape photography also has the potential to be part of the problem. With little consideration for where we travel and stand, ‘honeypot’ locations can be permanently damaged. Excessive international travel can no longer be seen as impact-free either and we all have to consider how we find a balance between the two extremes of never leaving the house by powered transport and multiple international expeditions every year. There is no perfect answer and each person needs to find their own solution.
We feel our competition should address this in some way and we’d like to have some submissions of work that reflects these personal solutions. This might be from a project taken within walking distance from your home, an important visual story that you found whilst travelling around the country where you live or by using your international travel to show a new way of seeing the world that could inspire people to protect it.
In that light, we are planning an environmental award for both the single image section and the project section. Just as there are is no right answer for how each person should adapt themselves to changing environmental conditions, we don’t profess to know what an inspiring environmental winner would be so we’re looking for you to enter and let us know.
We're only at the start of our journey creating this competition and we're still fine-tuning a few things so please let us know if you have any ideas. Once things have settled down, I'll write another article looking at some of the categories, fees, prizes and processing rules which should give you some idea of what and how you can enter if you wish to. To see where our ideas are at the moment, please visit https://naturallandscapeawards.com and have a look around.
On Landscape found Luke through a shared love of Wild Swimming. We were especially intrigued by his Time and Tide series. The tidal pools that these images depict hark back to an era of home holidays and great confidence towards land and sea. At the limits of the land and at the mercy of the sea, lack of maintenance and health and safety rules now combine to limit their prospects. Luke tells us how they first caught his eye, what he has learned about them, and whether they may have a future.
What came first for you – your love of outdoor activities, Scotland, or photography? What kind of images did you initially want to make?
I have always loved being in nature. Realising this could be combined with photography when borrowing a large format camera from university, I was able to discover a new way of seeing and experiencing the landscape.
Whilst making the tidal pool series I was influenced by the work of the New Topographic movement and The Dusseldorf School of Photography. Much of my inspiration has also been taken from the work of Thomas Joshua Cooper, travelling to all ends of the earth to obtain a single image.
Scotland became a destination to explore through the series ‘Time and Tide’, finding the different pools along the East and North Coast. The series ‘Wooded Heights’ is where I really started to immerse myself in the mountains and pine forests of the Cairngorms.
Landscape photography, particularly in the US, has often focused on magnitude, size, drama. The epic-ness of the American terrain lends itself to this. The Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone, there are so many places in the US that fit quintessentially into our notion of the sublime. No wonder so many photographers, from Carlton E Watkins through Ansel Adams to Peter Lik want to reflect the climactic enormity of such landscapes.
The great tradition of classical US landscape photography is enveloped in cultural associations with America: frontier myths and a sense of destiny. There is almost a sense of domination in these images. The framing of the land is like a taming of the land. Photographic technique emphasises this approach: ‘straight/pure’ photography, pin sharp detail, immense clarity, the f/64 club etc, these images are designed to say ‘this is what is out there, I saw this’. I do not mean this as a criticism – not in the slightest! I love this sort of photography, both viewing it and taking it; the adrenalin rush of being in a place of great drama has no equal.
There is another peculiarly American landscape tradition which is wrapped up in the growth of the automobile and the freeways. Photographers like Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfeld approached the wide-open plains of the US by exploring them through the car – shooting from the dashboard or rear-view mirror, a frame within a frame. This approach intertwined with the more documentary approach of the New Topographics who focused attention on the intermingling of urban with the natural landscape as witnessed in the seminal exhibition “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” at the George Eastman House (Rochester, New York) in 1975, curated by William Jenkins.
Paria 6, 2018
However, Cody Cobbs’ gorgeous images of the American South West work in a very different way to both these traditions. Take the image above, Paria 6, 2018. This is not the ‘beauty of the banal’ often associated with the New Topographics, but nor is it the grandiose statements of the straight photographers. Instead of metaphorically pointing dramatically at what is being seen, Cody’s images reflect on what the photographer has felt in the landscape. The link to this quieter emotional resonance is, to my mind, quite exquisite.
So, what do we feel when we look at an image like Paria 6, 2018? Personally, I get a sense of silence, of gentleness mixed with a slightly unsettling tinge of austerity. It feels very pure, a sort of harmonious simplicity. I think this comes from two basic elements: the colour palette, and the compositional tool that the artist has used: reflection.
The colours don’t feel realistic. The interpretation is pushed into a high key register. The pinky orangeness of the rocks – almost like salmon flesh - has a pastel softness to it which is lovely. The sky is blank – almost white. Certainly, no hint of clouds. (There are echoes here of very early landscape images in which photographers had to choose between a correct exposure for the foreground or for the background, normally the sky, with the result that the sky often bleached out). No deep shadows, definitely no intense blacks. There is very little contrast in the image, no acuity, hard rock becomes soft. The swirl of orange reminds me, quite ridiculously, of ice cream…
Coven, 2018
The composition is even more fascinating. At first glance, this seems to be a simple reflection, but reflections are never quite that simple. For example, it is not symmetrical. This isn’t an ink blot Rorschach image with a mirrored top and bottom. Objects reflected on water can never be quite symmetrical because the object is being seen from two different perspectives simultaneously. So, the small tree and reddish bush on the rock itself have disappeared in the reflection on the surface of the pool. They have disappeared and the eye searches in vain. Similarly, the main sweep of orange does not appear on the glassy water. The result is a form (object plus reflection) that intrigues because of the spatial ambiguity it creates.
Even though I don’t feel the explosive adrenalin rush of the A. Adams’ style grand vista, nor does my eye/mind search for meaning as with the New Topographics, I find great pleasure from such images of the American South West. Composition, form, reflection, tonality, colour. All combine to create a subtle, quiet, intriguing, lovely image.
For more of Cody’s work see https://www.codycobb.com
This is a little overworked version of a posting I made on Facebook this past November. It grew kinda long, I confess, for a relatively simple concern I had and still have. A tiny simple thing, which currently worries me, maybe even scares me a bit. And it had to be fairly long – not only because I needed to practice my English – but because on Social Media everything tends to be ripped apart and turned upside down until the initial point is completely lost. Plus, let’s face it, it was lockdown in Austria – everyone had a lot of time to worry about a lot of things but had a little extra time to checkpoints off the list, that usually get lost in the daily merciless hamster wheel. I was stuck in between working on my Cypress Swamp book, thinking about things, things I need to write in the book, thoughts I wanted to express, stories I would like to tell. Instead, I decided to write this text.
Where to start…maybe here: When in 2015 I managed to win a category in the world’s most prestigious nature photography awards, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year, with one of my cypress swamps images, it did ring a bell in the head of a number of photographers, who run photo tours. In 2016 the first commercial photography tour, purely dedicated to nature photography was taking place in the swamps. Not long after that, there were more.
The cypress swamps are such a fairy-tale forest, yet they were fairly unknown to the wider nature photography community. At the time of revealing the WPY winning images, in autumn 2015, it was just one of many images I had taken during a time span of roughly five years of exploring the swamps on a regular basis. Every year in autumn I would fly over and spend several weeks, paddling in the swamps from before dusk until way past dawn, trying to get some good imagery. By no means an easy task, as I was strictly shooting 4x5” large format in the first few years. Only with the arrival of the Nikon D 800, did I start to mix digital with analogue. Mostly because there were so many great views to be seen but were in such deep water, that setting up a tripod was not an option.
Back in September 2020, I saw on Facebook that Neil had launched his book 'Mystical' and was taking pre-orders. I remembered some of the images of the woods from working on Neil's Featured Photographer interview. back in August 2019. I contacted Neil once the book had arrived and was delighted that he agreed to talk to us about his project at Wistman’s Wood, one of three high altitude oak woods on Dartmoor.
When we interviewed you for our Featured Photographer interview back in August 2019 there are some images that are from Wistman’s Wood. Were you already working on the book at that point in time or was it more in the concept stage?
At this stage, I had already created a series of images from Wistman’s Wood which had had a really good reception and been featured across the web globally. Having said that I was still only really happy with a few of the images and I was still fine-tuning the whole process of shooting Wistman’s. It wasn’t until January 2020 that I started to feel happy with a larger number of images from this unique location. It was always in my mind to create a set of images that could be exhibited, but I honestly didn’t think I’d get to the stage where I felt comfortable releasing a project book.
I started work on the book in the first lockdown this year, I suppose we were all looking for things to do, so I set about laying out a book for Mystical. I was pretty much spending each day choosing and eliminating images and printing them out as I progressed. It took several months of going back and forth until I had a layout I was happy with, I then showed the layout to several photographers that I admire and they suggested a few alterations.
The book was coming together nicely now but there was a long way to go. Having worked in the design & print industry for 20 years I had a good idea of papers I wanted to use and what I wanted the final product to look like.
It’s a strange feeling when you come across a photograph that really echoes your own personal vision as a photographer. Especially so when the picture in question was made before you were even born....
It is only in the last year or two that I have become aware of Josef Sudek and his work. Although he is well known for his works in such books as “The Window of my Studio” and “St Vitus’s Cathedral” along with his still life works, I had never considered him as a Landscape Photographer until a friend suggested I took a look at his work in the book Mionsi Forest.
Before continuing on to the picture, a little about the man himself. Born in 1896 in Bohemia, he trained as a bookbinder, a career that was interrupted by the outbreak of The First World War. While serving he took up amateur photography. In 1917, while serving at the front he was hit by shrapnel in what we would now call a “friendly fire incident”. As a result of his injury, he had to have his right arm amputated.
After recovering from his injuries, he went on to study photography and in 1924, having graduated from the College of Graphic Arts began to photograph the completion of St Vitus’s Cathedral in Prague, where he said “That’s where it began....”
Sudek then went on to produce many fine works throughout his life, along with quite a few books, Mionsi Forest being but one. Mionsi Forest is a collection of photographs made in the forest around the Beskid Mountains in Northeast Moravia between 1950 and 1970, usually in the company of his best friend and assistant Petr Helbich. Even with an assistant to give help, it must have been incredibly difficult to use a large format camera in such a remote location as this, with only one arm. When Sudek died in 1976, Mionsi Forest and Vanished Statues became definitive works as part of his retrospectives.
The picture that I have chosen completely stopped me in my tracks when I first saw it. I was totally transfixed. It has everything that I had been striving for in my own work and looked ever so slightly familiar, perhaps the ghost of Sudek had been in my photographic vision all the time without me knowing it?
Welcome to our 4x4 feature which is a set of four mini landscape photography portfolios submitted from our subscribers. Each portfolios consisting of four images related in some way.
Interested in submitting your work? We're on the lookout for new portfolios for the next few issues, so please do get in touch!
Arizona boasts several picturesque valleys, mountains, and jagged cliffs that are well worth capturing. However, one of the most beautiful vistas I have seen has to be Canyon Lake, just one hour's drive from Phoenix. Although not as well known as some other major landmarks in Arizona, Canyon Lake undoubtedly one of the most beautiful sites in the area.
Besides the clear water and the beams of sunlight that beam through the cracks in the jagged cliffs, there's no shortage of remarkable wildlife on display. From eagles swooping down into the water to grab fish to Big Horn sheep scaling the steep, near-vertical cliffs, my trip to Canyon Lake was filled with plenty of interesting photo opportunities.
Taking an evening barge tour of the lake, I ended up focusing on the Canyon's jagged peaks in the hours leading up to the sunset. As the sunlight beamed on top of the peaks, many of my photos ended up taking on a painting-like quality to them as the light bounced off the red and yellow cliffs.
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 used a Canon 7D Mark2 for this image and as long as I captured this image at a very slow shutter speed in 1/6 seconds. It all depends on How you prepare the composition of the images and framing the shot you are after.
I have had great results using lenses from 16mm.
The important thing is you need to focus on getting the shutter speed that you are after. I always shoot in the manual exposure mode as this gives me complete control over my camera.
Since my return to the north of the Netherlands, I have started to wonder what home actually means to me and how that manifests itself in my photography. I found myself starting to see "home" in a different context. The abundance of water and the open and wide character of Friesland make it a place for me, a landscape in which I feel at home. At the same time, I also see 'home' in the sense of being at home with myself. When I am home with myself I live more in harmony with my environment.
In a broader context, I believe that when we are more at home with ourselves, there will be less fear and aggression in the world, and the world can live more in harmony. We currently live in hectic, troubled and uncertain times. It is precisely this time that is the source of inspiration for me to depict the theme 'home' as a counterpart to these troubled and uncertain times.
'Home' evokes all kinds of images and words in me: emotion, awakening, intuition, dreams, intimacy, life, your own voice. I take those words with me when I go out with my camera, because when I connect with the words and emotions that evoke "home", the images follow automatically. Soon I saw landscapes of the soul appear in my first images.
And with those images, I then 'paint' a landscape of the soul and I give it the colours that in my experience belong to that specific image, colours in which I feel at home.
Coming home to myself, in the landscape of my soul. That is not easy and remains a constant challenge to look for it and to step out of there into the world.
These images are all drawn from within 20 minutes of my home. I am slightly amazed by the number of people who walk through woodland looking around, ahead or downwards (presumably to avoid cracking their heads or falling over) and yet so rarely upwards into the glorious canopies.
I have always found them magical, and even in relatively mundane photographic conditions can yield such beauty and mystery. Consequently, I spend a great deal of my time lying on my back gazing up at and photographing the wonders above. Aside from having a soggy back much of the time, I also number many of the images generated, often handheld, as amongst my personal favourites.
TP: We have been trying to get together for some time and after a few things getting in the way, we are now, finally, going to have our chat about your lovely handmade books. Hello and welcome Judy!
JS: Hello Tim and thank you.
TP: I have in front of me a range of 5 of your handmade books and I wanted to chat with you about how you got into making books. Also, the techniques involved and what has inspired you for the content of these books.
Firstly, over what time period were these books produced?
JS: These books have all been produced post “lockdown”. It was something I got inspired to do during lockdown. So they have all been produced since June I believe.
TP: Oh wow, so quite a short period of time. Have you been a landscape photographer for long?
JS: No, I took up landscape photography in 2013 after I had been retired from work for a few years. Though two or three different things came together at the same time to make it happen. Firstly I had been taking a lot of photographs of horses and happened to see an advert in our local post office advertising evening classes in A level photography. I thought it would be a fun thing to do, and it was. At the same time, we were building a house in northwest Scotland, which happened to be next door to Adrian Hollister’s Perfume and Open Studio where he was running a series of workshops. Adrian and I became friends and he gave me a huge amount of help to get started. We did a workshop with Adrian, Eddy Ephraums, Joe Cornish and Paul Sanders. That was life changing for me, that is what kickstarted me into landscape photography.
TP: Quite a useful start there! Also, the beautiful highland landscape to work with as well.
JS: Definitely a good starting point. At home, I live in the new forest so that is not too shabby. However, I find the new forest quite hard to photograph in. Very little of what I have done is down here. Which is something I plan to change, however, I have not done, yet.
TP: So in terms of bookmaking, I know that Mr Hollister has run a few workshops where handmade books have been involved. Have you been on any of those?
JS: I have done one a couple of weeks ago. However, I have not done any before then. I did get involved with Eddy making a book, a very different sort of book. I got very intrigued in the bookmaking process at that time and I planned to, but never got round to doing it. Come lockdown, I saw that Alex Hare and Lizzy Shepherd were running some online bookmaking workshops. At the same time, I had started to try and make the first of the books that you have in front of you. So, I signed up for that which was really helpful and got me going. From there I bought all the kit required and put it into practice.
TP: Tell me which book was your first book out of the five I have. Also, tell me what intrigued you about the bookmaking process and what you learnt on the course?
JS My first one is called “Leaf”. What intrigued me about the process, was the idea of putting images together. Someone on the first course I took said, “One image on its own no longer satisfies”. It’s a new dimension of putting them all together. What I learnt with Alex and Lizzy was the techniques of making “Hard” covers for books. Then the different ways and styles of putting them together; in my time with Eddy I had never put hardcovers on them before.
TP: This is one thing I found quite intriguing and visually compelling about the books is the beautifully wrapped images and the hardcovers. Let’s talk about your first book, “Leaf”. Tell me about the photographs within and then the technique you used to make the book.
JS: This was very much a lockdown book. We had all been plunged into this lockdown and everyone reacted to it in different ways. I didn’t really feel like doing any photography - however, one day I had to get my camera out and just get on with it. I am very lucky that I live in a place with some nice land and a lovely garden. I took a few images and then went to play with some of them. It was in summer, so it was hot with blue skies. I thought that high key images might be fun. I did one image that I really liked and a few others. I went away and thought maybe it was something I could turn into a book. I created this high-key image of cherry blossom, so went round the garden and took images of different trees in the garden. Then I produced the book from that. So this book is composed just of different trees in my garden.
TP: Since you started with a “double page spread”. It is effectively a 3:1, or a 6:17 aspect ratio, did you have the idea of the book and took the photographs to match or did it happen the other way around?
JS: No, it happened the other way around. I had seen a book of Lizzy Shephard’s that she had done with Tulips, which had no frames to them and it ran to the edges of the book. I really liked that idea and I thought it worked quite well with these images. I like the idea of the “slices of the trees”, the fact you can recognise each type of tree from a fairly small section of it.
TP: Down to the bookmaking itself, what is involved in producing these? Is it quite involved or is it something that anyone could do?
JS: Anyone can do it. Once you understand how the process works and the techniques involved, it is down to how you want to construct it. My first attempt at constructing “Leaf” I did before the workshop with Alex and Lizzy. With guidance from them, I refined the techniques. Better paper, constructing the hardcover, sizing and framing. Then you work out how you stick all the pages together and the different types of book you can make.
I like the idea of using an image on the cover as it pulls you into the book. You can buy some beautiful papers to cover the card with if you like, however, I like the cover to become part of the book as well as the pages within the book itself.
TP: With the sequencing, what was the thought behind the order of the pages and the prints within?
JS: There is probably less thought behind this one, however, there is much more thought behind the other such as “Ice Blue”. The sequencing in this book to me is what makes it. There was a lot of cropping involved to make this one work. They were not all just as they were. It is the sequencing and the way the images flow from one to another works for me. How the lines all carry on throughout the book.
TP: This (Ice Blue) is very much about line and form. These striking clear sections through icebergs carrying on from page to page. I am intrigued about this book, most people who think about books of any sort think “how am I going to get so many pictures together to fill a whole book” and yet this is almost a mini portfolio of 5 or 6 images brought together. Most people would have enough of these sort of images in their collection already to try this with.
JS: This is a perfect lockdown project. You can go back through all your images and find sets like this that lend them to bookmaking. As you say it doesn’t have to be a massive book. Somebody referred to little books like this as a “mini and individual works of art” rather than books. They are a different way of displaying your images. This book, “Ice Blue” is a concertina style book. You can pull it out and put it on a table and it is a very nice way of displaying them
TP: They are individual artefacts. They are not mass produced, they are handcrafted and brought together. It would be difficult to mass produce them. I know people who have done a series of them, a series of 4 or 5 rather than a series of 1000s.
Let’s look at another book. I loved some of the images in the Tundra book. It is a different way of producing them. This one is stitched, so tell us how the book is made.
JS: This is called JSB – Japanese Stab Binding. In essence, when you size up each page you could just print them out of lightroom. You could create a blank book this way and then stick them in the book rather than constructing the book by printing all the pages and then binding them together. There are many things you can do using this technique. So in creating this book you have to make sure that all your sizing works. You have to make sure that you have the strip down the edge where you will bind the book. You have to crease it as well to make sure that the pages turn. The actual sewing is very simple and straight forward once you know how to do it. This makes a book that most people are familiar with. It has pages you can turn where other styles don’t. I experimented with the cover with this one. It is two types of paper stuck together but not convinced that this style works for me, but I was willing to give it a try.
TP: Please tell me more about the project surrounding the images in this book. There are some beautiful images in here.
JS: I was very lucky last year to go on a trip to East Greenland organised by Anthony Spencer and Joe Cornish. They took 12 of us on a small ice breaker up to the northeast area of Greenland. This is a very unvisited part of the world. All the ships follow designated shipping routes and the ships crew showed us that we were going back to the old days away from these routes. It was a proper adventure as well, as the crew of the ship had not been to these places before as it is only ice free for a few weeks of the year. We were very lucky to have amazing weather in September that year. At that time, it can be wiped out by the snow and ice. What fascinated me the most, we were there in autumn and you could see this in the ground. The colours were absolutely amazing, in a totally different way compared to back here, I thought it would be a fun way to show Greenland not in the ice and snow. Show off some amazing colours.
TP: We would like to feature some of these images in the article as I think they are very strong images. Was it easy to pick out the images to use for this book from the photographs from this trip?
JS: It was easier than it might have been for other things. It was fun, you could put images in that had polar bears in them! However, the book was about the Tundra. It is about what Greenland looks like in autumn, not only about the astonishing big landscapes, also what is going on at your feet as well. The other folks joked that I spent more of my time with my camera facing the ground than the landscape.
TP: Although I can imagine the most interesting part is what is going on at ground level.
JS: The Tundra is like mini forests that are only a couple of inches high and they grow very little. They are tiny, but the colours and the intricacy of them were amazing.
TP: This is another one of your books that I found interesting, it is very tall and thin. It is a book in a sleeve, it looks like it is from the west coast of Scotland with amazing geology, Eigg or Arran. Lots of folded iron rich ridges and cool blue sands. Whereabouts is the project from and can you describe to me what was involved in making this book?
JS: It was taken on the Isle of Eigg. I made this book on a recent workshop with Eddy and Adrian up at the perfume studio. I like the idea that the images are very similar, and you can put them together with no borders, so they all run into each other. At times it can be difficult to tell if it is one big image or several smaller ones.
TP: I like this one as it is another concertina book so you can hold it out almost into a long strip and it creates a textural, rhythmic image.
JS: It is a good example of what fun you can have with bookmaking. You can almost make it up as you go along. It doesn’t have to conform to a “Standard book”, the sky is the limit in respect to what you can make out of a book.
TP: The fascinating thing about this, is being able to make crops or aspect ratios that you would rarely use or see in a portfolio.
JS: The piece of rock that they are portraying is only 4 or 5 m2 and the tide was coming over it, washing sand on and off them creating different images in the same piece of rock.
TP: Now we will look at an aptly named book called “End of the Summer”. This is a simpler book without the hardback covers. Please tell me about the book.
JS: This is another one that I did at the workshop, it is called a “Layout book”. It’s a type of concertina book. However the pages are stuck together differently so you can open each page out flat, Eddy used the same technique to make Paul Sanders’ book Solace. It’s a nice structure for a more traditional book, very simply made.
TP: I like this technique and the concertina technique as you can open the book fully at an image and see it in its entirety without bending the book. With the JSB you have to almost bend the images to open the book up. Tell me more about the book and project, End of summer.
JS: This was shot in the new forest, I shot it all in one afternoon. I have a love hate relationship with ICM. I did some, one summer’s afternoon, again a hot summer’s day. I have been interested in horses, one of my passions. So I went to see what the ponies were up to, it just came from an afternoon out seeing them and being in the forest. The feel of it for me, captures how it felt that afternoon. Very hot, tired and dusty, very simple.
TP: I went on a workshop with Lizzy Shepherd, but it was a John Blakemore bookmaking workshop a while back. At the time I didn’t have any images that I thought would work together in a book. So I went out and took pictures in an afternoon and it was brilliant, maybe none of them would work on their own, however in a book together they did. The ability to use editing and context in a project to make something coherent is a different way of looking at photography rather than the individual picture.
JS: Definitely totally agree. I have it in the back of my mind now when I go out. I will occasionally look at a picture and think, will this make a sequence, its like having a totally new dimension to photography. Thinking, “can these pictures go together or not?”
TP: Has bookmaking made you think differently about your photography outside?
JS: I think it makes me look at things differently when I start processing them. I might see something that had potential, then go and take more images of it. I am currently working on a book on Lilys. I took maybe more images of that pond as I did think that there could be a book there. It probably translates to more images rather than different images.
TP: Thank you. We will look forward to seeing the Lily book in due course I’m sure.
Photography’s potential as a great image-maker and communicator is really no different from the same potential in the best poetry where familiar, everyday words, placed within a special context, can soar above the intellect and touch subtle reality in a unique way. ~ Paul Caponigro
It’s interesting how often artists, including photographers, refer to poetry when describing their work and philosophy. The correlation is easy to understand when considering that the word “poetry” derives from a Greek word meaning to create or to bring something into being. This definition is close to that of the word “art,” derived from a Latin word referring also to items brought into being by human skill.
The distinction between prose and poetry in writing is analogous to the distinction between representation and artistic expression in photography. In both cases, the difference comes down to how one expresses meaning: literally or metaphorically, objectively or subjectively, decisively or ambiguously, descriptively or implicitly.
One glaring difference between writing and photography, however, is this: in writing, neither poets nor journalists try to assert their own style as the only valid form of writing or to demonise others. In photography, expressing meaning poetically, departing from objective representation when it serves no useful purpose or even distracts, is still often met with ire. In writing, no journalist is concerned that the existence of poetry may diminish the importance or credulity of reportage, and no poet worries about readers feeling deceived if they realise that poetic verses are often not meant as statements of fact. In this sense, the analogy also makes it plain how far photography still has to go as an art form, if only just to catch up to where other media already are.
Pondering the challenge facing photographers aspiring to creative expression, W. Eugene Smith wrote, “I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts.”
I find it unfortunate that any photographer would feel torn between these two intents as both are squarely within the capacities of photography and only in contention because of misinformed assumptions about non-existent limitations inherent in the medium. There is no practical reason—not even in terms of photographic purity, however one chooses to define it—why photographs can’t serve both purposes without diminishing either.
Among other photographers who pondered photography as it relates to poetry, Minor White (who was a poet as well as a photographer) wrote: “My pity for the pure photographer / My pity for the pure poet / Is tempered by the responsibility / I have to three media / Whereas they to only one.” Ernst Haas, former president of Magnum Photos, wrote, “we are on the way to speaking our very own language. With it we will have to create our own literature. You will have to decide for yourself what kind of works you want to create. Reports of facts, essays, poems—do you want to speak or to sing?”. Henri Cartier-Bresson wrote, “I’m not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience.”
Despite such historical figures acknowledging the artistic potential of photography, many photographers today still wish to clip photography’s expressive wings: to renounce its ability to serve as a medium for visual poetry, distinct from but equal in importance to its ability to serve as a medium for factual representation. This is not to say that a photograph can’t be both factually representational and poetic in meaning, only that there is no tenable argument why the former should be a requirement for the latter.
Perhaps a stronger argument in favour of acceptance of photography as a means for (metaphorical, non-representational) creative expression is that, regardless of opinion, poetic photographs—many decidedly not representational—already make a great proportion of photographs one is likely to see in public media. This accords with the general trend in art—away from literal representation and toward greater abstraction, subjectivity, symbolism, and ambiguity.
In considering artistic movements of the past, it takes little knowledge of art history to distinguish based on appearance alone between a realistic painting and an impressionistic one. But art has long moved past impressionism, too. Much of today’s art, loosely referred to as “post-modern,” is no longer about any adherence to recognisable styles or purity of process, and more about the expression of ideas, by whatever means the artist sees fit. It’s inevitable that photography practised as art will follow the same trajectory. (If anything, it’s about time photography stopped playing catch-up with other arts.) Those who tried to derail such progression in other media have often found themselves on what we now consider “the wrong side of history.”
On a recent On Landscape podcast discussing truth to nature David Ward commented, “nobody gives any objection at all to the fact that paintings aren’t real.” This may seem obvious to us today, but it was not always the case. Until the late 19th century, fidelity to nature was considered in many venues (notably in France, which was the hub of western art at the time) as the highest aspiration for art. Works that departed from realistic appearances, such as those by the early impressionists, were shunned, sometimes even ridiculed, and excluded from the most prestigious exhibitions, such as the Paris Salon.
The invention of photography, portending a future in which the photographic medium could surpass painting in its ability to portray natural, realistic appearances, was seen by some critics as potentially ruinous to art. Charles Baudelaire, a distinguished poet and art critic, wrote a scathing rebuke of photography in an essay about the Paris Salon of 1859—just three decades after the invention of photography. In his critique, Baudelaire wrote this:
“In matters of painting and sculpture, the present-day Credo of the sophisticated, above all in France (and I do not think that anyone at all would dare to state the contrary), is this: ‘I believe in Nature, and I believe only in Nature (there are good reasons for that). I believe that Art is, and cannot be other than, the exact reproduction of Nature […] Thus an industry that could give us a result identical to Nature would be the absolute of Art.’ A revengeful God has given ear to the prayers of this multitude. Daguerre was his Messiah. And now the faithful says to himself: ‘Since photography gives us every guarantee of exactitude that we could desire (they really believe that, the mad fools!), then photography and Art are the same thing’ […] this industry [photography], by invading the territories of art, has become art’s most mortal enemy.”
The infamous satirical critic Louis Leroy, upon seeing Claude Monet’s painting, “Impression, soleil levant” (Impression, Sunrise), commented, “I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it ... and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.” Prompted by this critique, the early impressionists adopted the term “impressionism” for their movement, rendering Leroy a historic laughingstock. France’s Académie des Beaux-Arts attempted to squelch impressionism by excluding impressionist work from its Salon. In response, the early impressionists started a salon of their own, and prompted a revolution in the arts. As painter Robert Henri put it, “History proves that juries in art have been generally wrong.”
I mention the impressionists not only as an example of art evolving by revolutionary leaps (rather than gradual transitions)—toward subjective expression and away from objective realism. Impressionism holds another important (if not as widely acknowledged) lesson that is eminently relevant to photographers who care about fidelity to real experiences (which, in the case of poetic expression, does not necessarily imply fidelity to real appearances).
Monet famously credited the success of his works to the emotions he felt when working while out in nature, rather than to his distinctive style. Many other impressionists, despite lumping their work into the same category as Monet’s, produced works of similar effect but without the experience of working in, and from, nature. As Monet himself put it, “My only merit lies in having painted directly in front of nature, seeking to render my impressions of the most fleeting effects, and I still very much regret having caused the naming of a group whose majority had nothing impressionist about it.” This should serve as a warning to those interested in poetic expression in photography. Stylistic departures from realistic appearances are not enough (indeed, it’s not even required) for an image to be poetic, but fidelity to true experience is required if one aspires to live a poetic life.
Of those concerned with truthfulness in photography, I ask this: if you inspire in your viewers an experience you did not actually have, is the fact that your images are not “manipulated” sufficient to make them “true”? Conversely, is a photograph that is “manipulated” as to expresses true qualities of experience any less “truthful” just because it is at “poetic odds” with objective representation?
I first became aware of Hokkaido when I saw an article by Paul Gallagher saying how much he had enjoyed his visit and how different the landscape was to what he was used to. I loved the simplicity of the images in the article, so when some months later I saw that he was arranging a workshop in Hokkaido I jumped at the chance to visit.
I do very little planning for a trip like this beyond arranging flights, clothing etc, partly because with a workshop I expect to be taken to interesting places, but equally because I like to arrive at a location with an open mind and react to the landscape in my own way. If I were to study photographs by other people, I might go with preconceived ideas of what to expect and I don’t like that, I want to make my own images in my own way. If I miss classic views (which I often do) that is fine as I will have found my own interpretation of the place which will mean much more to me.
The workshop was in early February 2019 and I decided to add on a few days in Tokyo first, partly to recover from any jetlag but also to explore a city and country I had not previously visited. This was a good decision and I enjoyed the days wandering around various areas of the city and the bustle of this great city proved to be a huge contrast to the silence of Hokkaido.
Hokkaido is the most Northern island of Japan and is full of flowers in summer and a popular place for Japanese tourists, but in February it is in the grip of winter and usually with deep snow.
The flight from Tokyo to Asahikawa airport in Hokkaido took about 95 minutes and there were warnings that we might not be able to land there due to heavy snow. We landed OK and I was delighted to see lots of snow, quite a change from mild Tokyo. At lunchtime next day I met the rest of the small group plus our guides Paul Gallagher and Michael Pilkington and our local guide Tsuyoshi Kato.
We started our trip in the Biei area and we stopped at the Seven Star Tree. This lone Oak tree became an overnight sensation for its use on a package of Seven Star cigarettes in 1976 and I was very surprised to find several coaches of Japanese tourists there. Fortunately, they alighted from the coaches, took selfies with the tree and left again soon afterwards. I hadn’t expected to see lots of other people on this trip and fortunately, this was a rare exception.
This stop gave me a taste of the weather to come, overcast with regular snowstorms. I loved the snow as it gave a great texture to the trees and landscape, although it made photography difficult when it was blowing straight into the lens.
Having photographed the Oak tree and the adjacent line of trees, I looked around to find something which interested me more and I discovered lots of snow poles and signs in the deep snow which I really enjoyed exploring. Look closely and you will see a lone tripod and camera, but no sign of a photographer! I didn’t spot that until I got home.
Trees were undoubtedly the principal subject of the trip; they were everywhere and the deep snow gave them a simplicity which rendered them very beautiful and special. Although I enjoyed the shots I took of the tree copse, I felt that the foreground grasses added a lot to the composition. The almost horizontal snow in this photograph added to the separation between the foreground and trees.
We stopped at a frozen lake where I was particularly attracted to the view across the lake to trees covered in frost and snow. A long lens made some very abstract images. I particularly liked this elegant tree with the white background and the snow on the branches adding to the image.
On several occasions, we saw Coca-Cola dispensers, deep in the snow. They seemed to be full of cans which was surprising as I would have thought that the cans would all be frozen. The juxtaposition of the dispenser and the sign made the image work.
We travelled to the North West coast and as the sun was going down, we photographed a Torii Gate in the sea near our hotel. The snow was deep by the shore and there was not much room at the water’s edge.
The first photograph was taken just before the big wave and the other exposed as the camera sank in the water A ‘UCM’ - unintentional camera movement.
We travelled to the North East coast, stopping a few times, including some greenhouses with just the structures visible. These were great for picking out patterns and details. We had very little sunshine during the trip, which suited me very well as I like overcast conditions, but here the sun did come out which was fortuitous as the shadows enhanced the patterns.
The snow was immaculate most of the time and I enjoyed making very simple compositions with shadows.
Details of simple plants in the snow kept me occupied in many places, looking for compositions which pleased me.
A 400mm lens was used for these details, I use Sony cameras and took two A7r3 bodies, a 12-24mm, 24-105mm and 100-400mm, all Sony lenses. Lightroom shows that the 100-400mm was my most used lens (56%) followed by the 24-105mm. I also used a Gitzo tripod with a geared head for all the images.
This stop by one of the many frozen lakes was memorable for the rich colours of the grasses which contrasted well with the colours in the sky. The snow was very deep here and I remember struggling across this field in snow which was waist high in order to make the most of the grasses. The trip was very tiring as everything was hard work, from getting dressed in all the layers in the morning to being outside in the cold. Fortunately, we were not out for long periods of time and could relax when back in the minibus.
Photographing on the East coast of Hokkaido we encountered wet snow for the first and only time on the trip. The temperature had obviously risen above freezing and the snow was more like we normally get in the UK and we had to protect our cameras to keep them from getting very wet. The rest of the time we could just brush off the snow with no problem.
In the photograph bottom right, the sea was freezing and had created a slowly moving slush. This was a bitterly cold morning as the wind was very strong and the wind-chill factor made it feel much colder.
As the sea freezes over the fishing boats in this area are raised out of the water onto land for the winter providing a good subject both for a wide-angle lens and also for close up details.
I was fascinated by the wooden blocks which supported the boats, I am sure that they were very secure, but I felt that one push would collapse the whole line of them. I was very careful!
Returning to trees again the distant hills provided the perfect background for this elegant tree. For me, this image encapsulates the feelings I had for Hokkaido, clean lines, elegant trees and simplicity. There were many trees here and many opportunities for different compositions with two, three or more trees in the foreground and that delicate blue line of the hills in the background.
One of my very favourite locations was a hillside with lots of interesting trees; this was a delight. We had many short snowstorms which kept everything fresh and we spent several hours here exploring different compositions of trees, snow and the bamboo which grew close to the ground.
I found the bamboo leaves peeking through the snow quite irresistible. A long lens is a real help here to avoid walking through the snow too much. When the snow covers everything, it is hard to tell where you are walking and most of Hokkaido is private farmland so we were careful not to trespass, well not too much anyway.
These lovely trees were in the shade of a hillside and they looked almost like negatives against the dark background and I loved the colours in this image. Most of the photographs I created in Hokkaido were very simple designs and this is one of the few more complex compositions.
I am very much a colour photographer and rarely create black and white images and throughout my trip to Hokkaido I appreciated the limited colour palette in the landscape.
We visited several frozen lakes where I loved the rich colours of the leaves and grasses which contrasted beautifully with the frozen white background of the lake. There were many subjects to photograph here; the patterns in the lake were lovely as were the distant hills which quite often looked like pencil drawings.
We spent an early morning here to try and capture the sun and mist rising across the lake, but had only cloud, which suited me as I usually prefer the subtle colours of dull weather to a spectacular sunrise.
Looking over another frozen lake the white trunk and branches of these Birch trees were beautiful and quite startling against the darker background. It was snowing when I took this photograph and this added a white layer on the branches and a subtle texture to the background.
There are many Whooper swans that live on this lake throughout the winter and they return to Siberia in Spring to breed. I am not a wildlife photographer, but I took a few shots here and enjoyed the empty lake and the birds in the snow.
Later we also visited the famous Hokkaido Cranes, but I was put off by the large crowd of Japanese photographers who were pushing to get shots of the birds; not my sort of photography.
This is a typical view of Hokkaido, fences and lines of trees which make such great compositions. The beautiful blue hills in the background partially covered with trees together with a plain sky and areas of white snow complete the scene.
My abiding impression of Hokkaido was of simplicity and beauty of line and form, which of course are important elements of Japanese art and this picture perhaps illustrates this very well; nothing special, just farmland with fences and a tree. There is no need for a spectacular view, no need for special lighting, I am happy to create photographs from very simple elements.
This was a memorable trip and I am delighted with the photographs I was able to make there.
You can view more photographs from Hokkaido on my website; there is also an audio-visual sequence from Hokkaido.
Sometimes it’s good to swap sides of the desk and for this issue, we are interviewing Peter Eastway, who among many other things is Editor and Publisher of Better Photography Magazine. When I got in touch with Peter he initially wondered if it was payback for sending Tim some work, but I had quite coincidentally been enjoying Peter’s images. Of the many on his website, we’ve largely narrowed our image selection down to the Polar Regions, a particular passion of Peter’s, and of course his homeland, Australia. While the diversity of locations he has visited might prompt you to think that travel is the key to a successful image you’ll find out that, for Peter, image capture is only the beginning of the story and his ethos can be applied wherever you chose to photograph.
Thunderstorm opposite Neko Harbour, Antarctica
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, your education and early interests, and what that led you to do?
I’m told I was conceived in England and born in Melbourne, but I’ve lived all my knowing life in Sydney, Australia. Most of the time I’ve worked as a professional photographer, including editing and publishing photography magazines, plus a number of other business interests.
When did you first pick up a camera? What prompted this and what kind of images did you want to make?
In school, my first camera was a Ricoh compact in a circular water housing. As a keen surfer, I wanted to photograph my friends from the water. I was infatuated with surfing and couldn’t really understand why people would want to take photos of anything other than surfing! Later in life, I changed this view.
Who (photographers, artists or individuals) or what has most inspired you, or driven you forward in your own development as a photographer?
As a photo magazine editor for over 40 years, it’s hard to pinpoint one or two photographers who have inspired me because there are so many. What’s the difference between plagiarism and inspiration? Plagiarists copy one photographer, but when you’re inspired, you’re copying the work of thousands. Editing a photography magazine has given me an appreciation of every genre of photography (except maybe passport portraits) and I have met and interviewed many of my heroes as well.
However, since we have a polar bent to this article,
After featuring two articles on tripods recently, a review of travel tripods and a short overview of tripod spikes, I thought a general chat with Joe and David about their own experiences with tripods would make interesting listening. We cover a reasonable amount of ground and, once again, we hope you enjoying listening to them as much as we do recording them.
For the seventh iteration of this column, I decided to focus on the artwork of a photographer that recently popped onto my radar as a guest suggestion for my podcast. While Marco and I had already had many interactions on Instagram, I had foolishly not taken the time to look at his body of wonderful artwork. Upon deeper examination, I came to fully appreciate what Marco was trying to communicate through his landscape photography – the idea that if we take the time to slow down in nature and appreciate the small details right under our noses that we can more fully appreciate a place and find a deep connection to it. This connection then facilitates wonder, curiosity, and can instil peace within us to help us recharge our batteries.
For some photographers, discovering these powerful moments in nature comes quite naturally and immediately. For others, including myself, it can take many years and involves countless experiences of feeling let down by preconceived expectations of what the final photographs from a trip should look like. What I admire about Marco’s work is that it is a fresh reminder that expectations can pigeon-hole us as artists to only look for what we had pre-envisioned, whereas an approach like Marco’s can lead to discovering a whole new world of photography that can enrich us and occupy us for a lifetime. Additionally, this approach to landscape photography yields more unique imagery that has the potential to give way to more meaningful and personally expressive artwork.
Normally the early autumn months would find me in France where we’ve long had a little house. It’s been a unique chance to lead a separate life, absorb a different lifestyle and photograph a different landscape. However, in view of the current uncertainties of life, we decided not to go this year. This offered the chance to realise a long-held ambition to visit some of the Western Isles of Scotland.
So, September 2020 found my non-photographer wife and I heading north on our two-day trek from our home in Wiltshire for a 16-day trip through the Hebrides. After an overnight stop in Dumfries our journey took us to Skye, then on to North Uist and Harris before returning to Skye.
I’ve wanted to visit Skye for around 35 years having visited Mull in my 20s. I had a bucket list of places I wanted to see and photograph on Skye, but having seen the queues at the Fairy Pools, The Old Man of Storr, and Quiraing my initial reaction was one of dejection and a feeling I had left it too long. But I had no right to feel like that. The people I saw were simply doing what I was doing. Who am I to expect to have these places to myself? After having a good word with myself I studied my maps more carefully and realised there was an endless list of quieter places to visit where we did indeed find solitude and calm. It was simply a question of making a little effort.
During our first foray on Skye, the weather was simply atrocious. Had I been alone I would have toughed it out and taken to the hills, waiting for those elusive breaks in the sky that would reveal mountain tops and hidden valleys illuminated by shafts of sunlight. But I had to consider the wishes of someone else and grab opportunities where I could. It certainly focused my mind as a photographer and made me work with what I had.
Old Man of Storr – Skye
The classic view of the rock from Loch Fada. With my ever-patient wife handing up pieces of kit as I positioned my tripod, we had to wait a while to get the right patches of sunlight. We were right next to the A855 and as I stood trying to capture the right moment, I became aware that a number of cars had pulled up (one blocking the road) and that there was a little huddle of photographers behind me trying to see the back of my camera. The guys in the little boat fishing on the loch were an added bonus! Nikon D850, 80-200mm lens.
Sound of Raasay - Skye
We were driving up the A855 having passed the car park for the Old Man of Storr, which was jammed to overflowing both with cars and rain! My wife was driving and suddenly screeched to a halt, shouting – “look at that”! This is the image she saw. Nikon D850, 80-200mm lens.
From Skye, we took the ferry to Lochmaddy on North Uist. This wonderful island proved to be exactly what I’d hoped Skye would be. It is remote and some would say bleak. There are few places to stay and even fewer things to do. Unless of course, you love the landscape. If that it is all you need then you could spend a lifetime there. North Uist is an other-worldly place. One of the mountains and countless lochs, the few roads weave in and out of this watery world on their way to stunning beaches and mountains the shape of small volcanoes.
Lochmaddy Harbour – North Uist
Lochmaddy is the main “town” on North Uist, where you will find the ferry terminal, a clutch of hotels and B&Bs, a shop/petrol station, a bank…. and an arts’ centre! The old harbour had a sad, neglected feel about it on a day like this. Fuji X-Pro2, 23mm lens.
North Lee and South Lee Mountains – North Uist
The mountains of North Lee and South Lee dominate the landscape in this watery world. Nikon D850, 50mm lens.
North Uist is connected to the islands of Benbecula to the south and South Uist to the south of that by causeways. The archipelago is completed by Berneray to the north. Each island has its own unique character despite the relatively short distance between them. Benbecula is flat with few hills and seems more water than land. South Uist is more mountainous and has the largest population.
Howmore Chapels – South Uist
We had but one day travelling through South Uist. A day of relentless rain. The perfect day for gritty black and white images. Chapels have occupied this site since AD 300. Fuji X-Pro2, 23mm lens.
Meanwhile back on wonderful North Uist, this is the perfect blend of the two and is sparsely populated, each house a lonely outpost against the elements. The mile upon mile of machair dunes provide a unique backdrop to the spectacular beaches of the west coast.
Tràigh Iar – North Uist
Known by some as the Thai beach. Photographs of this beach were allegedly used by the Thai Tourist Board to advertise holidays in Thailand, although I found no Thai weather during my stay. Nikon D850, 16-35mm lens.
After a few days exploring the Uists and Benbecula, we caught the ferry to Harris for a five day stay in Tarbert. An opportunity to also visit Lewis, the largest of the Outer Hebrides islands. I’d long had this picture in my mind of Harris as a remote and wild place, ringed with some of the most fabulous beaches in the world. Whilst that is true, it was still a lot busier with other tourists than I’d imagined.
Luskentyre has become something of an iconic location for photographers. Without doubt, the seemingly endless white sands are simply stunning. But, on the day we chose to visit, the weather had improved slightly and the single-track road to the little village at the headland was busy with motor homes and cars, so we were forced to abandon and try elsewhere. But not before capturing one image.
Seilebost from Luskentyre – Harris
Caption - The endlessly changing shapes in the sand made up for the fact the tide was a long way out. Nikon D850, 16-35mm lens.
Heading further south we stopped to investigate Scarista but decided to park by the golf course at Sgeir Liath for a more distant view. I watched for a while as a golden eagle circled above Sgarasta Mhόr then headed across the fairway to the beach. A photographer was on the beach photographing a girl throwing poses. Too many footprints. So, I doubled back to the sanctity of the machair where I found a far more pleasing perspective.
Ceapabhal from Sgeir Liath, Scarista– Harris
Caption - What little light there was this late afternoon caught the grasses of the machair with Ceapabhal brooding in the shadows across the water. Nikon D850, 16-35mm lens.
Without doubt, the most spectacular location I found on Harris was a beach about which someone had sworn me to secrecy. An hour’s scramble along an at times ill-defined path across the face of a mountain that dropped steeply to the sea; it’s not for the faint-hearted. But was it worth it! The beach was simply breath-taking. And since my wife doesn’t do heights, I was alone. A place I will never forget and whose location I will never reveal.
My Secret Beach – Harris
Caption - Nikon D850, 16-35mm lens.
Our visit to Harris and a day spent driving through Lewis to Callanish, were far too brief. We only saw Lewis on a Sunday in torrential rain. We never even scratched the surface. I will return.
Finally, we returned to Skye for a couple of days before heading south again, staying in a bed and breakfast in a stunning location on the single-track road between Broadford and Elgol. On our last day in the Hebrides before heading south we walked across the hills to the abandoned village of Boreraig, its inhabitants the victims of the clearances in the 19th century. Its lonely location overlooking Loch Eishort seemed idyllic but life there for the crofters would have been harsh. This was our one rain free, warm and pleasant day so on the return journey, the peaks of the Blà Bheinn ridge just a few miles from our bed and breakfast were finally revealed.
A View of Blà Bheinn – Skye
This view of Blà Bheinn was taken from below the track bed of what was once the Marble Line, a railway taking marble to the harbour at Broadford. Nikon D850, 80-200mm lens.
This brief excursion to the Hebrides simply whetted my appetite. I have unfinished business there and will return, perhaps when it’s a little quieter and when it’s not quite as wet!
When asked to write for On Landscapes’ end frame feature, I jumped at the chance, a fantastic opportunity to share and talk about a favourite image and photographer of mine! Then the reality of the challenge set in, actually narrowing down the choice to one image, hugely difficult.
As I have explored photographers’ work over the years, obvious choices stood out.
Joe Cornish's images have always inspired me. My bookshelf is littered with his amazing work, along with Bruce Percy, David Ward, and Hans Strand.
More recently Neil Burnell and Dylan Nardini have been regular views in my browser. Both of these photographers have a real fresh and original take on photography with images taken in dramatic light, in unique and creative ways.
Viewing and becoming absorbed in other photographers’ work has definitely helped me improve my creative journey. I feel it’s a must to learn and be inspired. Watching others follow their path has eventually led to me finding my own.
In the process of thinking about the article it reminded me of the earlier days of taking landscape pictures.
Back then, the online gallery Flickr was a popular resource. There was a group of photographers that all ventured out into the Peak District who used this platform and it became quite a community sharing and commenting across each other’s pictures.
One of these photographers is called Jeremy Barrett. I had admired his work for a while, his pictures often muted in colour and packed full of brooding moodiness. His woodland images always stood out, organising the chaos into constructive and beautiful ways, capturing fantastic scenes in stunning light.
The image of Jeremy's I've chosen is from a popular spot for walkers and photographers alike. An ancient woodland, full of history. Trees that have stood probably for hundreds of years, intertwined, creating relationships of shapes, patterns and textures.
It's an amazing location but is notoriously difficult to produce balanced and coherent pictures.
Jeremy cleverly captures photographs of this area using a wide field of view whilst maintaining a compressed depth of field. This gives a wonderful perspective to the pictures. You are pulled into the image, giving your eye a magical journey through the photograph
This image called "Dance off" is a great example. It is a photograph that immediately caught my eye. The composition is very dynamic; the wonderful branches on the left lead the eye to the centre of the image, along to the twisted bark of the opposing tree, tying both sides of the view together perfectly. Using the bank of the ravine beyond offers more textures to view and explore. The more you look the more the image reveals itself. You begin to see the mossy boulders and the old stonewall, the history of the place, it is a picture you really want to take time to view.
I admire the way Jeremy uses the contrast and luminosity, such an important element, often overlooked. The picture packs a punch of deep blacks, but still retains subtle tones through the grasses and leaves, it gives the image a real depth from front to back. The toning and subtle hues are very familiar to Jeremy's work and sit perfectly with this photograph giving it a wonderful mood and atmosphere.
Finally, the use of panoramic crop on this picture makes you feel as if you were stood in that exact spot, sharing the view; you can almost hear the woodland sounds and smell the crisp air. It surely is the next best thing to actually being there, and for me that's a sign of a great picture.
