Unlike other National Parks in northern England and Wales, my local patch the Peak District isn’t famed for its dramatic waterfalls. So we must make do. But there is drama to be found in even the smallest of tumbles. Light, curve, reflections; in detail and in their simplicity, there’s more than enough to make an image worth a second glance! Excluding the surroundings, getting in close, can reveal a landscape that might otherwise be passed by unnoticed. Just a few steps either way can make all the difference too; the play of light on the water surface, the interplay of curves and eddies, a reflected landscape to add colour and depth. Thanks to Carol Gregory for the portrait image!
To be truly free one must take on the basic conditions as they are—painful, impermanent, open, imperfect—and then be grateful for impermanence and the freedom it grants us. Gary Snyder
A young photographer wrote to me recently asking if I would consider filming some of my outdoor work and making the videos available publicly. He also inquired about any advice I might have for people aspiring to become professional landscape photographers. As I considered my response, at first it seemed obvious to me that making videos was not something I wanted to do since it would be at odds with my reclusive personality and with the way I photograph. I recognised also that in the minds of many, “landscape photographer” is a profession largely like other professions, with well-established career paths, prescribed milestones, reliable revenue streams, and daily routines. For me, that was never the case. Photography for me has always been, before anything else, something I pursued intending to enrich my life, independent of how I earned a living.
For me, that was never the case. Photography for me has always been, before anything else, something I pursued intending to enrich my life, independent of how I earned a living.
It is by sheer coincidence that photography has become my profession.
Tim and I both spotted James at the same time when he shared a portfolio of work on Twitter during summer 2021; it was a little surprising to learn he’d only been making images since 2018. On his website, calm landscapes and comforting skies sit in contrast to the chaos and disharmony of woodland. On his Instagram feed, this man of science reveals a love of words and writing; here he talks about finding his voice, images that whisper, and the impact this is having on his life. It is clear he has found his passion.
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 have always been excited by our natural world, overly-excited if you ask some of my friends. This most likely stems from a young age, where I would be obsessed with science and nature documentaries. As an only child, these were often some of my best friends.
It was actually while watching an episode of Horizon on the BBC as a teenager that I discovered I had synaesthesia, specifically where I see time (dates, months, years) as having a particular location in space, a particular colour and, weirdly, an emotion attached to them. I also see numbers and letters as colours too. Whether this has any influence on my photography, I don’t know. I do find certain colours and combinations of colours to be very difficult to like, maybe this is linked. So, perhaps my brain is wired for creativity, perhaps it isn’t. Either way, I know I find the pursuit of landscape photography to be both mentally stimulating and emotional.
It was in my teenage years that I truly fell in love with the outdoors, specifically during my Duke of Edinburgh award where a group of unsuspecting 14 year olds were told to plan a route, bring food, and were subsequently deposited in the middle of the Lake District National Park to fend for themselves. One of the best experiences of my life, and I did this all the way to the Gold Award (a 50 mile expedition). Back in the early 2000s, the Lake District wasn’t as busy as it is these days. We would often be walking through the fells for hours or days without seeing another soul. It is during these times that I first tasted independence and fell deeply in love with the landscape.
Also, my grandfather used to be a Peak District National Park ranger, so always had a similar intrepid outlook and I would go on frequent woodland wanders with him as a child, growing a love for the outdoors.
My interest in the natural world continued to flourish when at 18 I was lucky enough to go on a 6th form trip to Malaysia where we learned how to SCUBA dive, about coral and general marine conservation, thus beginning a life-long love of diving and an obsession with the seas and oceans.
Inevitably, these interests led me to study earth sciences at university, focussing on sedimentary geology, geophysics, hydrogeology and hydrogeochemistry, fulfilling a desire to understand the landscape I loved being in so much. I have wonderful memories of international field trips studying the volcanology of Tenerife, hiking up Mount Mulanje in Malawi and creating geological maps of areas of both Malta and the Peak District National Park. I was getting to know the landscape I would subsequently end up photographing - I just regret not owning a camera at the time!
Serendipity: An unplanned fortunate discovery. The first noted use of "serendipity" in the English language was by Horace Walpole on 28 January 1754. In a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann, Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made by reference to a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. The princes, he told his correspondent, were "always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of." The name comes from Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka (Ceylon)1
Landscape photography is often a result of good planning, helped by online tools such as PhotoPills and 3D Google Earth (and just occasionally, perhaps, by pictures taken by others and posted on Instagram or seen in books, though we might be reluctant to admit that…). It is now possible to know where to go to get a promising viewpoint with the sun or moon or Milky Way in just the right position for that key shot. The online weather forecast might also help in knowing what conditions to expect, and whether there might be clouds to light up in the sky as the sun comes up (or goes down), an inversion that will produce a layer of cloud in the valley bottoms, or a clear sky with a new moon to reveal the Milky Way. And all before leaving home.
But we also all know that such planning does not always work out. The sun goes behind a cloud on the horizon just as it looks set to light up those clouds; the weather forecast got it completely wrong; there are too many aeroplane contrails crisscrossing the sky or the sky is totally clear and does not provide any interest; or you arrive to find that there are already 50 photographers taking all the best places, lined up tripod to tripod. I still remember being really shocked the first (and last) time that happened to me, 25 years ago now before sunrise at Mesa Arch2.
But we also all know that such planning does not always work out. The sun goes behind a cloud on the horizon just as it looks set to light up those clouds; the weather forecast got it completely wrong; there are too many aeroplane contrails crisscrossing the sky or the sky is totally clear and does not provide any interest
It was still dark, for goodness sakes! And when the sun did rise, one photographer wanted to have a photo with someone running and jumping on the arch (several times) just at the moment of best light for all the other photographers there! Today tripod to tripod lines happen in more and more places (or did pre-Covid, but surely will again post-Covid). Hence the exhortation these days to avoid geolocating interesting new locations, particularly those that would be vulnerable to many visitors3. Not all Instagram posts and “influencers” respect such good advice, of course.
When things work out, the planning can be highly satisfying, especially if the research involved has revealed some new location that will be worth going back to again and again. But this article is about another approach that allows for the uncertain, the unpredicted, the unexpected, the serendipitous. It is an approach that, for me, was partly instigated by that experience at Mesa Arch. It has some advantages in that the resulting images may be found anywhere and are unlikely to have been seen or posted by others. Even more important, however, is the nature of the process required, the way that the search for the unpredicted requires concentration on the possibilities wherever you are. I would suggest that a fine example of embracing the uncertain is Mark Littlejohn’s winning LPOTY photograph “A beginning and an end, Glencoe” from 2014 (still my favourite of all the LPOTY winners)4. This was a serendipitous opportunity, but clearly, Mark had to be primed and ready to see the potential for such an arresting image. I have also driven through Glencoe when the weather has been down, the light was poor, and the waterfalls were streaming off the hillside. In my case, I was concentrating so much on driving through the lashing rain that any thoughts of possibilities were only a vague feeling that I might be missing something interestingly hydrological!
But I do have some personal examples of unanticipated images. One that was quite important to me is from Yosemite. With an interest in the history of landscape photography, I have been fortunate enough to visit Yosemite several times (though on the last occasion in a December when I had hoped that there might be some snow, the downside of the uncertain raised its head in that we could not get into the park because of snowstorms and drifts). I have some nice shots from earlier visits, though to my regret I have never been able to stay long enough to walk up into the backcountry of the Sierras, where perhaps my favourite image by Ansel Adams was taken5. There is an element of serendipity in that photograph, too. The snow patch at the base of the cliffs, and the way the scree is revealed, as he passed on that day in 1932, are all important to the image.
Ansel Adams Frozen Lake
Those “nice” shots of mine do not begin to compare to some of the classic landscape photographs of Yosemite, not only by Ansel Adams, but also by Carleton Watkins, Charlie Cramer, John Sexton, and many others6. That can, of course, provoke disappointment when the results are not quite as interesting as we had hoped during the limited time that we could be there (more so if that arises after we have had to wait until a film is developed and printed after leaving a location). The result is that the Yosemite shot that I am most happy with was a result of looking a little more closely, and a little differently, on a trip one autumn after the first frosts had started to turn the colours of the vegetation. It is lacking a little in grandeur, perhaps, but evokes some of the granitic essence of being above the valley.
The result is that the Yosemite shot that I am most happy with was a result of looking a little more closely, and a little differently, on a trip one autumn after the first frosts had started to turn the colours of the vegetation.
Yosemite, California, 2002
Uncertainty is much discussed in science and philosophy. Various types of uncertainty are distinguished, from ontological uncertainties (does something exist?) to epistemic uncertainties (arising from a lack of knowledge7) to aleatory uncertainties (appearing as if randomly variable8). We might encounter all of these in our photographic lives, though we generally do not have to worry too much about the first if we are prepared to accept that we exist and that the landscapes we are interested in photographing also exist (at least in the Matrix!!). Epistemic and aleatory uncertainties are often handled these days by the use of Bayesian methods9. Bayes equation is a way of combining prior beliefs in possible outcomes with evidence for those outcomes expressed as some form of likelihood measure. We can draw a qualitative analogy with Bayes when combining the planning that gives rise to our prior expectations, with the uncertainties of actually arriving in a place and updating our expectations on the basis of the evidence we find at the time. Bayes methods are often used adaptively for evaluating risks in such a way, but a fundamental issue is how we formulate our (subjective in this case) likelihoods for potential images as outcomes.
Uncertainty is much discussed in science and philosophy. Various types of uncertainty are distinguished, from ontological uncertainties (does something exist?) to epistemic uncertainties (arising from a lack of knowledge) to aleatory uncertainties (appearing as if randomly variable).
This will be critically affected by our past experience and, in respect of photographs, the way we train our eye (as clearly was the case of Frozen Lake and Cliffs and Mark Littlejohn’s Glencoe image). There will always be uncertainty relative to our prior expectations, the question is how do we react in embracing that uncertainty to reveal possibilities? Are we just disappointed and give up if our prior expectations are not met, or do we update to consider other possibilities? With the right mindset, there can be real pleasure in doing the latter.
The pleasure is in the process because as photographers we can search to make selections of both framing and camera controls to create what we hope might be interesting. It is all about of having the facility with a camera to make choices and selections from all the potential compositions that are encountered. And even if the prior expectation of the grand landscape might not prove to be a suitable composition at a particular place and time, there will certainly be points of detail that might be worth hunting for (as with my Yosemite image) thereby overcoming any potential disappointments relative to our prior expectations. The process then involves looking more intently.
Observing in such a way can also carry over to times when you are not carrying a camera (in the unlikely event that might happen, of course). Dorothea Lange has been cited in various previous articles in On Landscape but her best-known quotation seems particularly apt here:
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera
Dorothea Lange had more to say about planning, uncertainty and the search for images.
To know ahead of time what you're looking for means you're then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false.
The best way to go into an unknown territory is to go in ignorant, ignorant as possible, with your mind wide open, as wide open as possible and not having to meet anyone else's requirement but your own.
Photographers stop photographing a subject too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities.
There are also comments from other photographers about embracing the uncertain and being open to the possibilities:
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that, no matter my location, plans or expectations, I ALWAYS find subjects in nature that thrill me and inspire me to photograph!William Neill
When you are looking to find photographs... open up your mind and be still with yourself. The photographs will find you.Paul Caponigro
Sometimes the most interesting visual phenomena occur when you least expect it. Other times, you think you’re getting something amazing and the photographs turn out to be boring and predictable. So I think that’s why, a long time ago, I consciously tried to let go of artist’s angst, and instead just hope for the best and enjoy it. I love the journey as much as the destination. If I wasn’t a photographer, I’d still be a traveller.Michael Kenna
In thinking about this subject within my own personal experience, I was drawn to some examples that come from a spell I spent in Sweden.
My search for the unexpected resulted in a number of images that I still find satisfying (to me at least). At this time, I was using a Mamiya 6MF medium format (6x6) film camera. All of the images presented here were taken with the Mamiya.
I was based in Uppsala but was able to take some time to travel around the country. Much of Sweden, as many of you will know, is relatively flat and forested. There are many areas where you cannot see the landscape for the trees, so to speak. And when I did get towards the mountains and national parks close to the border with Norway, there was low cloud, rain and hail (it was midsummer, as I had planned, but the weather at these latitudes too can be rather uncertain and it was not the best midsummer in the north of Sweden in 2007).
So again, my eye was attracted by points of detail in the landscape, at the wonderful mosses and lichens and flowers and boulders that can be found almost everywhere but which requires that focused serendipitous search for the framing of an image that works. My search for the unexpected resulted in a number of images that I still find satisfying (to me at least). At this time, I was using a Mamiya 6MF medium format (6x6) film camera. All of the images presented here were taken with the Mamiya. Some other water pictures taken in Sweden at the same time, including on that Midsummer trip to the north, can be found in the recent book “The Still Dynamic”10. These images are examples where to quote Dorothea Lange again:
While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.
We have to deal with uncertainty and risk in many aspects of life. We do so more or less successfully, depending on how we are able to manage our prior expectations and our vulnerability to the unexpected (especially in an age of Covid). In photography, we can at least embrace the process of actively looking for the unexpected. That will give opportunities to expand the range of possibilities that our eyes permit us to see. It can also provide the additional satisfaction of then being able to study the detail in the still image, detail that might otherwise be overlooked. It is a process that is, perhaps, best viewed as a type of lifelong learning; developing the ability to be able to discover a subject to thrill wherever we might be, and to enjoy the journey as much as the final destination of the images that result.
Moss on Rock with Shadows, Hågaskog, Uppsala, Sweden, 2007
It was reading Tim’s interview with G. Dan Mitchell in On Landscape Issue No. 228 (https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2021/04/g-dan-mitchell/) who did get to the lake that prompted this article. I still have a framed reproduction print of Frozen Lake and Cliffs, Sierra Nevada, 1932, on the wall. The story of the image can be found at https://www.anseladams.com/frozen-lake-and-cliffs-sierra-nevada/ . I will have to be satisfied with a reproduction print; reported prices for a silver gelatin print at auction are the same order as a Fuji GFX100S/Hasselblad 907X and lens.
These are named after the Reverend Thomas Bayes (1701-1761), a Fellow of the Royal Society (though he never published much in his lifetime). His paper "An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances” was discovered amongst his effects after his death by his friend Richard Price who arranged for it to be read at the Royal Society. The paper appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society in 1763. The paper presents a particular case of combining prior odds of a particular outcome with degrees of evidence for that outcome. A more general probability formulation of Bayes equation was developed independently by Jean-Pierre Laplace in France in 1774.
“The Still Dynamic” was published by the Mallerstang Magic Press in a limited edition of 100 signed copies that have now almost sold out. A PDF version of the book can be downloaded from https://www.mallerstangmagic.co.uk for £10, all of which will be donated to the charity WaterAid. Paul Kenny has provided a Foreword. The book includes two serendipitous images taken with a small Olympus TG-5 near Ballachulish while on a Large Format workshop with Tim Parkin and Richard Childs (ironic that!!).
One early September morning I open the tent and look out, finding myself surrounded by high mountains in the clear dawn light. Nothing can make me go back to my sleeping bag. Time to go to work! I get dressed and head for the bottom of the valley and its strong red, yellow and orange autumn colours. My grown-up son, who doesn’t see the point of early morning photography, is still sleeping in the tent. I should have gotten up earlier! I walk towards the little river at the bottom of the valley and manage to find some classic compositions framed by burning colours and water in the foreground and high mountains in the background. Quite all right to me! But it isn't exactly what I am looking for, so I set off further into the valley. And here I find my motif: forms shaped by the glacier thousands of years ago. In the rainy, black and polished flat rocks the sun sparkles against the light. Perfect for black and white pictures. Sometime later I am back at our tent, finding that my son has left for the mountain lodge. Time for breakfast!
We spent a week in the Kebnekaise mountains. Here you'll find Sweden's highest and most well-known peak, Giebmegáisi. When people in the early twentieth century realised that this was the highest mountain in the country, tourists started finding their way to the area. An alpine style hut was built, making it a centre for Swedish mountaineers and hikers.
The aim of many Giebmegáisi visitors is to climb the highest peak, the South Summit, today 2097 m above sea level. Being a glacier it varies in height and as a result of global warming it has shrunk so much that it might soon be replaced by the North Summit as number one in height.
Today the hut has been extended to a comfortable lodge, including a big restaurant, shop, sauna, and accommodation wings with rooms and dormitories. In the summertime, during the height of the season, you´ll find hundreds of tents around the main building and all 350 beds occupied, despite the nearest road being some 19 km away.
The aim of many Giebmegáisi visitors is to climb the highest peak, the South Summit, today 2097 m above sea level. Being a glacier it varies in height and as a result of global warming it has shrunk so much that it might soon be replaced by the North Summit as number one in height. There are several suitable routes up to the South Summit but the Western route is the most common. It is a long and physically demanding route passing rocky, variable and steep terrain, offering an ascent of up to about 1 800 m, but without technical sections. There are also guided tours along the Eastern route, which is shorter but much steeper, crossing the Björling Glacier with a Via Ferrata climb to the summit.
My son and I have been to the area many times before and climbing the summit is not our main goal this time. But a windless bluebird morning makes us change our plans and after a long breakfast, we start hiking along the Eastern route. We didn’t bring our harnesses but having climbed the route several times before we feel comfortable without them. Not to recommend for anyone without alpine skills! A thin layer of verglas ice makes our top out more thrilling than necessary and we decide then and there not to take the same route down.
After the climbing, we hike a few hundred meters over scree before the snow clad summit appears. We put on our crampons to climb the glacier and are greeted by sunshine and a fantastic view. Finding yourself at such an altitude is always a nice feeling on a clear and still day, but, alas, the number of remarkable pictures is small.
In the area, there are several other mountains more than 2 000 m high, and one of them, Gaskkasčohkka, has been on our mind for a long time. To get there, we hike out to Tarfala, a narrow mountain valley overlooking four 2 000 m peaks embedded in Sweden’s largest glaciers. A truly wild and spectacular place. At the very bottom of the valley, there is a simple mountain refuge where we spend the night.
We wake up early the next morning and prepare for a long day. The weather is not good, but we have plenty of time and the route is not difficult. After a short hike, we put on our crampons and follow the edge of the South Gaskkasčohkka Glacier up towards a narrow ridge where we are met by a stunning view over the North Gaskkasčohkka Glacier covered with a thick layer of fresh snow.
After a short hike, we put on our crampons and follow the edge of the South Gaskkasčohkka Glacier up towards a narrow ridge where we are met by a stunning view over the North Gaskkasčohkka Glacier covered with a thick layer of fresh snow.
The weather gets worse and worse but the route towards the summit is easy to find as it follows the ridge. A short passage of scrambling over rocks with a thin layer of snow and verglas is the last obstacle before reaching the large top plateau. Total whiteout! We turn around and see nothing but our own footprints in the newly-fallen snow. The altimeter indicates an altitude of 2 006 m, but the pressure changes during the night make the margin of error too big for us to estimate the correct position using the contour map. We decide that we got close enough to the summit and head back down. A few hours later, as we reach the refuge we look up and see the skies clearing. If we had only started a couple of hours later we would have had amazing views from the summit!
The day after we try to reach a mountain ridge with a name that fires our imagination – the Dragon's Ridge. The route to the ridge follows a steep snowfield on the edge of the crevasse filled Kebnepakte Glacier. To an outsider, this is a dangerous place. We carefully kick steps in the soft snow, trying not to look down at the deep crevasses below us. Once up in the pass we are in a different world. A thin layer of ice and snow covers the scree and on our right hand side, the high walls of Gaskkasbákti looms over us like a terrible black fortress. We slowly continue in the difficult terrain towards the ridge, but as we reach the glacier leading up to it we decide to bail. The weather is poor, and fresh snow covers the glacier, making a crossing without a rope too dangerous. But it is beautiful and I rejoice. I have taken exactly the kind of pictures I had hoped for – pictures that capture the mystery and beauty of Giebmigaisi.
My photography on the trip
Some of these images from Kebnekaise have been done quickly during hiking, others are created during a longer process. It all depends on what there was time for. When hiking with a buddy you can’t really do as you like. But by nature, I am very mobile and rather look for the motives than wait for them. I also take a lot of pictures when I'm out. The camera is my sketchbook and I constantly try to find something I am happy with. When I do, I often go further and further into the composition. I watch, simplify, and evaluate. From a day trip, I am usually happy with 4-5 pictures. I use the LCD screen almost exclusively when shooting. It is set to black and white, and it is almost a necessity for me today. Mostly because it’s easier when it’s dark.
Photographically, I am interested in telling something about life. I used to be a commercial landscape photographer that had to take photos that I could sell. But as an amateur, I can do what I want. Without chasing ‘likes’ on social media or income. So that is why nowadays I try to say something about the darkness and the light in my life. About longing and sorrow. About mystery and the spiritual side of mankind.
Nowadays I try to say something about the darkness and the light in my life. About longing and sorrow. About mystery and the spiritual side of mankind.
Therefore, I have chosen to work mostly in monochrome because I think it gives the viewer a greater opportunity for interpretation. Monochrome images are in a way not completely finished. You can see your own colours and the photos are recreated in the viewer's mind. That's why it does not matter so much to me today where I photograph. It is possible to create pictures behind my house if I would like to but going away to interesting places gives an extra dimension.
Technically I prefer to work with wide angles, it gives a stronger sense of presence in the images, unlike telephoto lenses that can be flat. For me, the composition is important. Each image must have its own supporting idea. Preferably with a simplified expression of balancing lines and surfaces. In a mountain environment, great demands are placed on the photographer. The distances are great, and it is often difficult to move around as you like in the landscape. The weather can ruin everything, and the equipment takes a beating. It is also problematic to do solo trips in a roadless country. In the Swedish mountains, there is no coverage for telephones and there is a long way between trails and cottages. Despite that, there is probably no better experience than to be able to hike freely over the mountains without any particular goal other than photographing.
When my friend Alex Nail (whom I regard to be one of the best judges of landscape photography) recommended the work of Luke Tscharke (pronounced Sharkey), I immediately looked at the work with gusto. What I found when I perused Luke’s website was a finely curated set of images from an often-underrepresented part of our world, Australia. I of course had heard of Luke’s work before since he has won quite a few awards over the years with his fine images; however, I have not spent a great deal of time digging deep into his galleries to give his work the justice it deserves. Naturally, having never been to Australia myself, I found myself really intrigued by the variety of scenes, compositions, and climates that Luke has been able to photograph there.
‘Your own photos are never enough.’ Robert Adams’ observation (from his book Why People Photograph) has adorned my profile page on Flickr since I joined in 2006. Community is important for a variety of reasons. Since the death of my wife at the end of 2015 I have spent a lot of time in the woods, often exploring the quite dense woodlands within the suburbs of north Leeds. I know I want to be among the trees. I know that carrying my camera enhances and intensifies the experience. When I am surrounded by the trees I know what I am doing. When I consider the many, many photos I have brought home I sometimes wonder what is the point.
One reason I keep checking the Flickr app (and website) is to see the photos posted by Manfred Geyer. He posts regularly and takes good photos in a variety of genre. But what I welcome most of all are his photos of wild, disorganised foliage.
Manfred’s photos of wild, often bare bush or chaotic, layered foliage always strike me as fresh, stimulating. Week after week, photo after photo I am quietly amazed that Manfred has produced photos I find so satisfying out of the most unpromising material.
I think there is quite a subtle and profound process of experimentation going on in Manfred’s photos of foliage and wild bush. I think he probably started out with an intuitive grasp of tone, pattern and a love of being surrounded by natural growth. The formal and structural experimentation that governs Stephen Shore’s urban photography is probably a model for Manfred in his photos of towns, villages and houses. Lee Friedlander is, perhaps, a more immediate model for Manfred’s nature photographs. Perhaps, like me, he’s been excited by the almost chaotic drip paintings of Jackson Pollock.
Every few days I see new and intriguing photos of nature by Manfred Geyer on my social media feed. Every so often I am stopped in my tracks. Something in that stream of photos takes my breath away and makes me exclaim ‘why didn’t I think of that?!’
That was my reaction when I first saw one of Manfred’s beautiful triptychs.
Water and Fire succeed
The Town, the pasture and the weed.
Little Gidding, from the Four Quartets, TS Eliot.
It certainly won’t have been missed by most On Landscape readers that this summer in the northern hemisphere has brought yet another round of terrifying climate extremes. Admittedly, with the climate crisis a firmly established item in the news agenda, we should always treat hyped-up headlines with caution. But the floods in central Europe, heatwaves in the Mediterranean, and (especially) in Canada and the American West Coast, and continuing wildfires in northern Siberia, the Amazon and elsewhere are clear symptoms of rising global temperatures. That these rising temperatures are anthropogenically caused is no longer a matter of debate among scientists.
It certainly won’t have been missed by most On Landscape readers that this summer in the northern hemisphere has brought yet another round of terrifying climate extremes.
Local knowledge brought me back to this oak tree in a thick fog. No other lighting could simplify the dynamic yet complex forms sufficiently for it to work.
It seems inevitable that this is leading many to feel anxious and even a sense of despair at our apparent inability to do anything to help. I’ve had many worrying conversations which often end with the response (paraphrased), “Why should I do anything when China/India/Russia (name your preferred-industrial-superstate-of-choice) are still building coal-fired power stations…what’s the point?” Apathy, disconnect and a defeatist sense of impotence worries me almost as much as the climate crisis itself.
In part one of this article, Max wrote about the idea and construction of his oak wood camera. In this second article, Max writes about the technical notes, field testing and further modifications.
Fame
The scent of blossom drifted through the iron gate. No one stirred in the twilight forest but between shadowed boughs shone the heady colours of the painted bushes. With miraculous luck, the snows of yester month had delayed the blossom more than ever before seen and at the beginning of May, many of the azaleas were still in bud.
With trepidation and internal bemusement, I set up the oaken camera amid the oaks and got to work. I spent a lot of time focusing and at times felt like nothing was really that close to being in focus. Keen to test every possible configuration I swapped medium and large format lenses frequently and applied camera movements galore. By around 7am the annual swarm of visitors began to pour in from every direction and the Mamiya lens mount was detaching itself from the lens board, adding droop to the residual tilt I couldn’t seem to rid myself of. Photographers began to gather, whispering, peering and speculating. I explained, demonstrated, justified and at times business carded to the crowds, using all the restraint I could manage not to mock the smart phoneys who follow the blossom-lined paths staring at nothing but the end of a selfie stick. I chatted with a busy dad enjoying an hour of freedom, a group of enthusiastic German tourists and had a lengthy discussion with one of the camera operators from 2001, A Space Odyssey. Solitary reflection ceded to lively socialising, of which like many of us I’ve been recently deprived.
I went home and took everything apart. I reattached the lens mount in a more favourable position, reset the rack and pinion mechanism, adjusted the shape of the front and rear standards in a vice and loaded the images, unsure whether I wanted to look at them or just get back out photographing.
Miniskirt
I found myself with little patience for looking through the images. The weather hadn’t been the best and I knew the poorly adjusted components had prevented me obtaining sharp focus in many of the images. I noticed that the skies were dustier than ever, making me wonder whether the exposed sensor was a serious problem in the design. I could redesign the back to incorporate a baffle protecting the sensor at one end of its travel, but also looked at the velvet bellows as a source of dust and contamination. Back to ransacking but this time in a charity shop, I finally found a black, fake leather miniskirt that was not only completely opaque (to the benefit of its intended user I’m sure) but fairly flexible. The inside was lined with thin matt fabric that didn’t look as much of a dust trap as the velvet, and the outside would look as good on a smart photographic tool as it would on a woman’s waist. As a proud Londoner who once entered a portrait of myself dressed as a woman in a grumpy old man camera club competition (“it’s something we’d never, ever do”) I bought the skirt with easy nonchalance.
The new bag bellows did look smarter but seemed a little stiff. With the medium format lenses, there was no problem but I wondered whether I’d be able to rack the front standard out far enough for the Schneider 90mm, or whether using rise would pull the bellows off the frame. I set my alarm for 4am again.
The Best camera
Morning In The Glade, Near Thomson's Pond
This time the overhauled camera met Isabella on one of her good air days, sunbeams pouring through the mist and every leaf and petal glistening with drops of overnight rain. Could I respond to this display of fleeting wonder with the heavy and as yet unproven camera? The desire to capture nature’s gift of light before forever lost can weigh heavily on the artist who unexpectedly gets what they want.
Awakened and focused thanks to my flask of espresso, I began to tackle my challenges with new confidence, knowing that if I could just master the idiosyncrasies of the controls, I would achieve results of unheard-of polish and refinement. I did have exactly the same back and the same lenses mounted on the same tripod as before, but now with the large influx of oak and brass between these elements, I had the true large format experience and the complete toolkit of controls I’d missed for so long. Scenes I would have struggled with using any other camera now became straightforward, more than anything because of the flexibility of having all the necessary movements (especially swing) available on a large mechanical scale and the means to study the entire field of view at once. Focusing and setting these movements on a small ground glass was easier than I’d imagined thanks to the large maximum apertures of the medium format lenses – all f/2.8 in fact, yielding very bright images with thin and precise focal planes, and being of modest angles of view, corner drop-off was minimal.
Pink And Purple Path
I’m currently reviewing the images from the first few trips – weeks later as the challenge of merging 8 or more 42MP frames is enough to break my computer. I still can’t quite believe what’s been born of a place so far removed from the pristine, high-tech factories of Japan, but now have the evidence that it seems to have worked – 150MP resolution, extensive movements, and as for the threat of flare, something yet more amazing – there is none to be seen at all, in any image. Scenes that would have lost contrast in my old Mirex adapter from unused parts of the image circle (despite careful shading with one hand) are now rendered in noticeably richer colours and tones, showing that my miraculously cheap and effective Mamiya lenses are even better than I thought. And finally, let it not be forgotten that as I, like you, aspire more to be an artist and naturalist than a camera enthusiast (or reviewer), the greatest reward is in the instrument responding to the performer in the most natural and unobtrusive way.
Sunlight And Mist, Central Stream
Technical Notes and Further Field Experience
For anyone still following this (and as you can’t buy this in a shop I do wonder whether anyone is) here are the basic specifications of the Rush Oak field camera:
Formats
Area covered by shifted sensor in two alternative patterns): 6x4.8cm=5x4, 80x36mm=6x12
Resolution
140MP for 5x4 ratio, 138MP for single row panoramic, potentially 150MP+ for double panoramic row, though not much used due to aspect ratio.
Back
Sony A7RII mounted on sliding plate assembly. The entire assembly, therefore, benefits from image stabilisation and live view focusing.
Lenses
Any medium format SLR lenses potentially compatible via commercially-made adaptors for Mamiya 645. Currently using Mamiya 55mm f/2.8N, Bronica 80mm f/2.8 PS, Mamiya 150mm f/2.8 A and on a separate lens board, Schneider 90mm f/5.6 Super Angulon. Large format lenses probably focusable to 180mm but current bag bellows considerably shorter to favour the medium format lenses’ close focus position.
In practice, I’ve found the medium format lenses to generally outperform the one large format lens I’ve been able to try, but I’m keen to carry on experimenting. The 90mm Schneider is designed to cover a large image circle, perhaps at the expense of the central region I’m using. Other LF lenses may present greater benefits if central sharpness matches that of medium format equivalents. All three medium format lenses were extensively used on a Mirex tilt/shift adapter, and now moved to the Rush camera they show the following improvements:
55mm N
Still capable of the largest shift before vignetting but now with improved colour and much lower incidence of veiling flare. Compact size and lightweight works very well on the camera and with a wide aperture is far easier to focus than an equivalent wide angle on 5x4. I only paid £60 for this lens and it’s a miracle.
Quiet Sunset, Late May, Brockwell Park
80mm PS
Still the sharpest lens I regularly use but now covers a wider useable field (internal baffles caused vignetting on Mirex adapter with any vertical shift) and has improved colour rendition. Easier to mount and swap with other lenses in the field compared to the 90mm Schneider as no extension of the camera is required.
Azaleas And Bluebells, Acer Glade
150mm f/2.8 A
Just about covers the 5x4 field without use of rise, whereas with the Mirex adapter was far more restricted. Extremely sharp and high contrast when wider apertures are possible, though for a lot of images they’re not. A bit on the heavy side so a challenge to keep the front standard tilt-free. Not as extensively tested in the field but awaiting its moment – perhaps for macro use as well as more conventional landscapes.
Arching Oak And Sunlit Azaleas
Wilderness test
Richmond Park is typical of the kind of environment I usually work in – a bit muddy but never too far from a path. At the end of May I took the camera to mid-Wales to visit some of the wilder spots I’ve photographed in recent years. These included the large, dramatic Elan Valley, and the beautiful hidden woodland waterfall known as Water-Break-Its-Neck at Coed Cwningar, Powys.
View To Hay Bluff, Bradnor Hill
Water Break Its Neck, Early Summer
I also photographed distant border vistas from England’s highest golf course, Bradnor Hill. I didn’t have any concerns about how the camera would stand up to these environments, but it was useful to test it on some very different topography. It was also a welcome return to some old favourite locations, to be transformed I hoped not just by the new tool but by recent studies in atmospheric optics that have opened my eyes to new possibilities.
Sunrise And Hill Fog, Coed Cwningar
I’m still processing the images (bear in mind that I can’t see them until each one has been merged from its constituent frames in Lightroom) but everything seems to have worked well. In the field, the camera was as satisfying to use as it was in London, but it was nice to be able to try the “running up a rocky mountain” challenge with it on the tripod, which is a realistic test of vibration resistance. I aim to be in place calmly making my images as the sun rises, but in reality, sometimes sense an incredible wonder of nature unfolding somewhere quite different and have to resort to the laden sprint. In this case, the potential for some scintillating atmospheric optics led me to mount said mountain in record time, tearing through woodland, moorland and eventually some remote and probably private clear-felled upland plantation, to be greeted by the best fogbow I’ve yet seen.
I should also note that given a very limited window to make a photograph in short-lived conditions the camera can still function without ground glass viewing in the same way as the old tilt-shift adapter. As I still use the separate viewfinder in the field for rough composition (with new masks to account for the changes in format), I can quickly identify the centre point and position this in the Sony’s EVF with the backslider also centred. I try not to do this as it goes against the whole ethos of large format photography, but there have been occasions already where it was this or nothing at all. There have also been times when I’ve simply moved from 5x4 to panoramic format without reframing with the ground glass. Any need to add vertical shift to such a panorama in an already established setup can be achieved using the vertical movement on the back, which has the advantage of not affecting focus or moving tilt in any way.
Mossy Canyon, Coed Cwningar
At the canyon waterfall, I felt like a real nature photographer, boots in the river, icy water washing the mountain mud off battered tripod feet and above me a moss-festooned wonderland reminiscent of temperate rainforest.
Clearing Fog, Craig Goch
In the Elan Valley, I watched fog rise and fall in the early summer dawn, alone on a craggy summit far from the land of Isabella. Maybe I needed a camera made from an old rowan tree? Then later in the day, I found a beautiful bluebell wood where I ended up on my knees, tilting to extremes to photograph a lustrous fallen birch trunk. Absorbed in my equally-prostrate focal plane I failed to notice a large lizard that had emerged from under the bark. The calm and quiet work of a large format photographer was no disturbance to wildlife and it remained for the whole experience.
Fallen Birch And Lizard
Fallen Birch And Lizard, Detail
“What didn’t work?” is what the camera reviewers always ask. What didn’t quite perform up to professional standards was my black t-shirt focusing cloth, which is infuriating. Dry and still it’s a simple and practical solution, but in a breeze it continually glues itself to my face or flips off the camera, or turns itself inside-out. Any recommendations for improved focusing t-shirts would be welcome. I did make a better one for my 5x4 camera but reluctant to admit that I don’t use it anymore (I’ve still got boxes of mouldy film and loaded dark slides) I don’t like to plunder that camera bag too much.
Late refinements
Finally, in summer 2021, I replaced the plastic chopping board back with a more polished oak one. It features a newly-ground glass and fresh Fresnel screen and has provision to adjust the precise distance from the rear standard. There are slot-in masks for 5x4 and panoramic fields of view, which unlike the old version won’t fall out when shaken violently.
The Orchard
I once built a telescope to do some astronomy, but feeling I could improve on the first one I built another one, and then another one, and then some years later again rekindling my former love of astronomy thought I could use another telescope or two, and I still had some spare lenses lying around. Likewise with the microscope, the electrostatic generator and now the view camera. At my family home near Wales (long out-of-bounds after the last two years) I revisited an old stock of hardwoods and thought about how much more I enjoyed working with some of them than I do with oak. The oak camera is far from perfect, with potential for improvements throughout its component parts. The sliding back could be more solidly built with an all-metal construction, allowing for a means to cover the sensor at one end of its travel, and with a minor adjustment of dimensions could also accommodate an even larger format.
The brass standards are just about aligned well enough to work, but with precision in mind, I’d like to redesign them in stainless steel and incorporate clearer stops at neutral positions of shift and swing.
The baseboard was designed to accommodate the draw of 180mm LF lenses and so had to extend far more than required by the MF ones I’ve mostly ended up using. If I decided to use these exclusively, I could design a much shorter, lighter and more compact baseboard, and with all the lenses sitting at the same distance there would be no need for a rack and pinion focusing mechanism – the lenses’ own screw would suffice, or I could incorporate a small amount of geared movement to allow for macro work. I could also dispense with the removable lens board and fit the Mamiya mount directly into a smaller front standard.
I found some good pieces of pear, a beautiful hard, fine-grained wood and also picked up some boxwood for smaller precise parts. Just in case I felt like adding black handles to the sliding back, I chose some pieces of ebony once plundered from a musical instrument supplier’s reject shed. I still like the idea of the camera being made of British trees though so will keep to these for the main body of the camera. I visited a beautiful private orchard during my stay and it occurred to me that this could be a theme for the new, refined camera – all the woods would be from fruit trees. I have some pieces of apple for additional reddish colour inlay, and even the ebony, while not exactly a British wood, is I understand from a tree in the Persimmon family.
I’m sure this will all take some time to materialise, but I feel it’s become a certainty rather than a dream. No inventor would be satisfied at leaving a concept half-explored and when the invention is also a tool of your trade, the incentive is even higher. Will anyone read the review though?
This is a photographic project, which I started during the first lockdown of March 2020. It is a collection of images, born out of the restrictions placed upon us all during those first strange, abnormal changes to our daily lives.
As landscape photographers we were no longer able to return to our usual locations to capture that elusive light and morning mist, we weren’t able to capture cloud covered mountain ranges or those life affirming coastal sunsets. Chasing the light, as we all do, was no longer an option. Unless that light was within the daily allowance of an hours exercise which had started and ended at our front doors, highly unlikely for the majority of us.
Just four weeks prior to the nationwide lockdown I‘d moved to Beaumaris, a small seaside village on the Isle of Anglesey. As a landscape photographer, I was excited to have moved to a new area. With such all year round fantastic light, I’d had plans of exploring the surrounding locations, especially the photographers hotspot of Penmon Point, a lighthouse at the North East tip of the island.
Instead, my only option was to slowly explore the area during my daily exercise, of course always taking my camera with me. And this is where the project began.
On one of the daily walks with my partner, we ventured to the outskirts of Beaumaris. The weather was grey and overcast, the kind of weather we all dread as a landscape photographer. Still, I took my camera with me ‘just in case’, as I always do. We reached a small clifftop, overlooking the water towards the North Wales coast, with slightly overgrown grass and a lone bench. We sat on the bench, taking in the view.
And this is the cliche ‘light bulb’ moment.
It didn’t matter the weather was poor. The bitter cold wind in our faces is an accepted part of living by the coast. But sitting there, it felt incredibly calm and peaceful.
The expectation of landscape photography is to have the best light, the perfect leading line through the image, the immaculate reflection in the still water of a lake, the list of ‘conditions’ required for a landscape goes on.
As landscape photographers we need patience, we need to sit down and wait for the light (which may or may not appear), we need to take time to perfect the composition. This is the aspect of photography I love, being forced to take the time to slow down, retract from our day to day lives and focus on the image.
But this all takes time.
As landscape photographers we need patience, we need to sit down and wait for the light (which may or may not appear), we need to take time to perfect the composition. This is the aspect of photography I love, being forced to take the time to slow down, retract from our day to day lives and focus on the image.
However, my ‘light bulb’ moment got me thinking that we shouldn’t always need to wait for the ‘perfect conditions’. In fact, the ‘perfect conditions’ of an image can often lead to an unrealistic view of a location.
So in stark contrast to the norm of landscape photography, in these images I haven’t waited around for the best light or weather conditions and the compositions are very simple.
My intention is to document the solitude and quite often the beauty of the view which the bench provides at that particular moment in time.
Where possible I've excluded any people in the photographs, in order for the viewer to be able to imagine themselves sat on the bench, deep in their own thoughts or in some cases being witness to some dramatic cloud formations.
I continued to photograph any bench I came across. The relaxation of restrictions in the Summer of 2020 meant I was able to travel further along the North Wales coast and discover more benches and their views. It became apparent that with all the benches which I’ve photographed, there have been seldom any duplicates. All have different designs, different views and different purposes.
There are benches found at rural beaches, flooded landmarks, seemingly random grass covered crossroads, views towards snow covered mountains, town centre allotments, the list is seventy strong (and growing) so I won’t bore you with you them all!
But the common denominator is that they are there to serve a general purpose. They’ve been put in that particular place to provide somewhere for us to sit, for us to take in the view.
And this is the aim of my project. I want the landscape, in which the benches are found, to be viewed as if you were sat on the bench yourself.
If I’ve sat on the bench and it’s been pouring down with rain, I'm afraid that’s the view you’ll get in the photo!
But the common denominator is that they are there to serve a general purpose. They’ve been put in that particular place to provide somewhere for us to sit, for us to take in the view.
My project is ongoing, I can’t see there being an end to my obsession with benches and their locations. Even more so now that we are all in a position to be able to travel.
My project has been exhibited at Found Gallery in Brecon, Wales during May/June of this year. It has also had a feature in this issue six of Offline Journal.
I hope you all enjoy the images and if you’d like to see more of my project my website has an extended section with more benches and locations.
It’s easy for the eye to be caught by the fruits of travel, but it’s especially rewarding to find a body of work that is the result of someone engaging at length with their local landscapes. While you can find both on Gheorghe Popa’s website, we especially wanted to interview him on account of his images of Romania’s Cuejdel and Geamăna lakes. These have brought him notice and recognition in a number of international competitions. By turn, these celebrate nature’s own reshaping of the land and highlight the damage that man can cause.
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?
My name is Gheorghe Popa and I was born in Aiud, a small town in Transylvania, at the foot of the Apuseni Mountains. I studied pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca, the largest town in Transylvania.
My first encounter with photography was in middle school when I entered a photo club in Aiud; I think I was in the 5th or 6th grade. Here I learned everything there is to know about a photo camera, about developing a film, and about printing. I still recall being mesmerised by the camera obscura. In those days, photography was expensive in Romania, and films or even quality photo cameras were hard to find but, fortunately, the photo club had enough photo cameras to lay the foundations of photography. Things started changing in college when digital photo cameras started to pop up. I bought my first digital photo camera in college after working an entire summer; I practically invested all the money I earned that summer on a SLR-like 4mp Fuji camera.
I have been fond of photography and film since I was a child, so I don’t recall a specific time when I said to myself I wanted to become a photographer. Fortunately, I spent the majority of my childhood in nature where I was able to enjoy its wonders, so half-jokingly I can say I have always considered myself a photographer.
In January 2019, whilst on an otherwise highly enjoyable photography trip in the Canadian Rockies, I had the misfortune to break my right arm rather badly.
I was with a small group of friends exploring the stunning scenery of lakes and mountains in and around Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. On the second day of our visit, we drove north from our base at Lake Louise, up the Icefields Parkway, past the Saskatchewan Crossing and east along the David Thompson Highway, through the beautiful Kootenay Plains to the jewel that is Abraham Lake.
Abraham Lake is in fact man-made. It is 20 miles long (32km) and over 2 miles (3.3km) wide at its maximum. It was created by the building of a dam in 1972, thereby flooding the rich plains there. The presence of the organic matter from the submerged plains leads to the production of methane bubbles. During winter the bubbles continue to rise as the lake slowly freezes over, deeper and deeper, resulting in columns of bubbles trapped in the crystal clear blue water. The ice becomes very deep and it is possible to walk out over the ice.
The lake is a few hours’ drive from any significant settlement. Surrounded by dramatic mountains, with no sign of humanity, it has an epic feel. It is a rather unnerving experience being a hundred yards or more out on the ice, in the middle of nowhere, far from the safe refuge of the shore, with the thick ice creaking occasionally beneath you. The ice is so clear, you can see many feet down into it. This adds to the strange floating sensation you feel. The ice isn’t flat at the lake edges, due to the underlying water level varying. I was cautiously exploring a new area of the ice, when I was caught out by the sloping ice slab surface and slipped, breaking my right upper arm.
Abraham Lake is in fact man-made. It is 20 miles long (32km) and over 2 miles (3.3km) wide at its maximum. It was created by the building of a dam in 1972, thereby flooding the rich plains there. The presence of the organic matter from the submerged plains leads to the production of methane bubbles.
Abraham Lake in winter, with Mt Michener. Taken one handed
It was several hours of very painful driving to the nearest hospital. As it had been -17 degrees C outside, I was wearing five layers of thick clothing. Peeling them off, so I could be x-rayed, was excruciatingly painful. Away from photography, I work for the NHS as a GP in my spare time. To my horror when I was shown the x-ray, it appeared to indicate that I had some form of bone cancer - probably spread from elsewhere in my body. The local ER doctors patched me up and advised urgent further investigation once back in the UK.
Whilst I did battle with my airline’s medical line to arrange an early return to the UK, I decided to make the best of the situation. I was in an amazing part of the world at a wonderful time of year. I ended up unable to change my return flight date, so I decided to push myself to carry on with photography as best I could.
I found myself forced to change my approach to photography. Being very right-handed was a problem. For the remainder of the trip, with patience, determination and a lot of help from some wonderful friends, it was surprising how much I could manage - albeit from the side of the road. Putting up a tripod with one arm is near impossible, so it was great to have help.
Trees on the Kootenay Plains, Alberta
Having a geared tripod head was a godsend! The great advantage is that the camera, once mounted, is stable at all times. I could adjust the three planes of rotation one at a time, with no risk of the camera slipping. Though I couldn't stray from the road or path, it was a great relief still to be able to shoot at all.
I found myself with a protracted period of time off work and immensely disabled with my right arm strapped up in a brace/sling contraption. The arm was prone to stabs of painful clunking due to the broken bones changing position when I moved.
The last shot from the trip: A Blizzard blows over the Vermillion Lakes, near Banff.
Back Home
I eventually saw a specialist in the UK and was told that the ‘cancer’ was more likely a very rare but benign bone growth. This lightened my mood considerably, though it was another 6 months before I was given the final all clear. I found myself with a protracted period of time off work and immensely disabled with my right arm strapped up in a brace/sling contraption. The arm was prone to stabs of painful clunking due to the broken bones changing position when I moved.
I had a point of realisation that I never seem to have the time I would like to explore my photography, and with my innate stubbornness, I was determined to use the time well. Away from my helpers, things got complicated. I could not drive. I could not dare walk on uneven ground, I could not carry more than one camera with one lens and certainly not a tripod!
Operating a DSLR with one arm is tricky but not impossible. I often had to hold the camera strap in my teeth, in order to free up my one usable hand so I could change a setting. I found that I could cradle the camera in my left hand from underneath and hold it up against my face for stability. I could then press the shutter by reaching round with my middle finger.
Having a big, heavy DSLR camera didn't help much and camera shake was obviously even more of a potential issue than normal. This made my choice of only shooting infrared easy, as my IR-converted Nikon D700 has a relatively high base ISO of 200. Further raising the ISO for mono infrared shots didn’t seem too much of an issue, as I, along with many other people feel that grain/noise looks more 'natural' in mono. I found that ISO levels of 400 or 800, combined with my Nikon’s ‘VR’ image stabilisation system, enabled fast enough shutter speeds to avoid camera shake. So my usable kit of choice was my infrared converted D700 and a 24-120mm lens.
The clay pit seen from the safety of the footpath
Stability issues meant that I could only shoot standing. I dared not kneel for fear of toppling over or being unable to get up without causing severe pain. I was unable to adjust the focal length of my zoom whilst holding the camera up to my eye. A trial and error approach was needed - I had to lower the camera, adjust the focal length by guess work, check the view and re-adjust until happy. This made precise framing of my shots very tricky and was frustrating when the light was fleeting. I would shoot multiple frames in the hope of capturing at least one decent composition.
Staying Local
I live in a tiny, medieval village in a very rural part of Suffolk. In the days before smartphones and satnav, my area had been described as the ‘Bermuda triangle of lost motorists’. The countryside around the village is an unspoiled, quintessentially English landscape of gently rolling low hills, verdant pastures, rivers and water meadows with small patches of woodland. At one end of the village, there is an abandoned clay pit that dates back many centuries. The clay from it was used to build the timber-framed medieval houses that still form the majority of the village.
I live in a tiny, medieval village in a very rural part of Suffolk. In the days before smartphones and satnav, my area had been described as the ‘Bermuda triangle of lost motorists’.
Tightly packed, slender trees reach towards the light.
My favourite landscape subject has always been the coast. I tend to shoot very low and quite wide (24mm typically), aiming for really quite simple images, often with slightly prolonged shutter speeds to smooth water and further simplify the scene. In terms of composition the copses, water meadows (and the clay pit in particular) near me were a challenging proposition to capture well. I decided to concentrate on the clay pit area, an extremely complex environment, with a mix of uneven ground, very mixed foliage, loads of giant creepers and ivy, and a lot of dead and fallen trees, logs and branches - all in a giant tangle! Compared to the clean, geometrically simple, carefully considered coastal work that I was used to, this was very different.
By chance, however, this was the sort of more challenging work I had been intending to head towards - moving away from mainly coastal, wide angle, tilt-shift lens work, towards monochrome work at longer focal lengths - trying to make sense of the much more complex inland environments. I had become aware that my work was perhaps too ‘samey’ and too restricted in scope. I needed to broaden my horizons and push myself to try other settings.
The transition to monochrome work was part of this. I understood that forcing myself to work in monochrome would help me develop artistically, to look more carefully at the tones and tonal relationships in what I was shooting. I had experimented with Infrared film in the mid-1980s and I had started using an infrared-converted DSLR camera about 18 months before my injury.
This approach to my photographic development had come at the suggestion of Paul Gallagher, who is well known to On Landscape.
Complexity
Paul termed this approach as ‘embracing complexity’, which sums it up nicely. How does one go about coping with the chaotic scene most normal woodland presents? One needs to, in some way, distil down the scene and present it in some coherent manner, conveying the essence or spirit of the place. Like the title of the film ‘Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’ one needs to come to terms with or ‘embrace’ the complexity and work with it rather than become overwhelmed by it.
Adapting To Change
Circumstances had forced this change upon me, as my local area was my only available subject. To start dealing with all this complexity, I found that using longer focal lengths certainly helped. Separation is perhaps one key element of this, with the resulting shallower depth of field and tighter, restricted angle of view assisting.
Circumstances had forced this change upon me, as my local area was my only available subject. To start dealing with all this complexity, I found that using longer focal lengths certainly helped.
Concentrating on details. Ivy stems winding around an oak tree.
I experimented with cropping the composition down to smaller areas, to concentrate on repeating patterns or simpler geometry (e.g. a line of parallel branches or saplings) - separating them from the wider complex setting by removing distractions from the scene. I have learned that paying close attention to the relationships of different elements is important. Finding these compositions in such an intensely crowded environment is hard. Many shots that appeared ‘balanced’ in the visible light of the viewfinder, proved not so when reviewing the infrared raw file later at home. This is because the areas that are darker or lighter to the naked eye may not show the same differences in tone in the infrared part of the spectrum. Some early attempts just had too many compositional elements to work well.
Sometimes taking a step to one side or dropping a little lower can improve the geometric alignment/relationship or two trees or overlapping branches.
Interwoven ball of vines, supporting itself.
I started using wider apertures combined with longer focal lengths to help with ‘focal separation’ - helping distracting elements melt away into a blur and simplify the image taken. Some initial shots had too little depth of field, with the main ‘subject’ of the image not sufficiently in focus, other images had too much depth of field, yielding a view that was too busy and detailed.
Similarly, I took care to employ ‘tonal separation’,
such as using a darker backdrop behind a paler subject (e.g. birch tree trunk in front of darker conifer trees), finding that this helped to clarify the composition and add depth. Often a small adjustment in position to one side would give the subject a darker or plainer backdrop.
Progress
At the start my options were limited. The clay pit had been used over centuries and has several different excavated areas with multiple different levels and some very steep drops. Even the flatter areas away from the footpath are carpeted in ground ivy and a tangle of vines and roots. Sections had huge masses of thick tangled vines, tied into bizarre knots.
Venturing in. A curtain of vines, deep in my local clay pit.
At first, I did not dare wander from the single narrow footpath that runs through the area, peering through at possible subjects that were initially far too dangerous to access. In due course, I tentatively tried to venture off the path into the dense body of the clay pit. Creeping cautiously around, always looking for something to grab to steady myself and closing my eyes at times to avoid scratches, I pushed my way through the heavy growth, trying to find the easiest path but frequently having to retreat. I had the benefit of starting this exploration in February when at least the foliage was relatively bare. I built up a good memory of what routes worked and which didn’t. I found groups of trees and strange clusters of vines that had previously been invisible to me, opening up more and more options for subjects and compositions.
At first, I did not dare wander from the single narrow footpath that runs through the area, peering through at possible subjects that were initially far too dangerous to access. In due course, I tentatively tried to venture off the path into the dense body of the clay pit.
Getting lower and closer into the ‘jungle’
Given my time off work, I had the luxury of being able to return time and again, often revisiting and revising previous compositions I had tried. Over my slow weeks of recovery, I took myself to the clay pit several times each week, each time exploring a little more, refining my efforts with each new visit, further distilling down my interpretation of the local environment.
As my arm began to heal, the instability of the fracture eased off and the fear of inadvertently triggering a painful clunk in the arm faded. My stability and more importantly my confidence improved and I was able to crouch down if necessary.
Tangled complexity. The vines are up to 3” thick in places.
These local spots are very far from being classic honey-pot locations. I had to try harder to achieve images that might prove initially pleasing but also stand the test of time and retain their value to me later. What was once an area that seemed physically repellent to me, became one of familiarity that tempted me back. Something that I had known about for many years and never considered worthy of photographic study became a place I know I will return to and discover more of in the coming years.
My photography has changed. Having been forced to work more slowly, I am more used to a slower, more considered approach to my image-making. I have got into the habit of walking more slowly, of pausing frequently, taking time to look properly and ‘see’ my surroundings. I am happy to sit for a few minutes or lean against a tree and tune in to my environment. I have continued to make a lot more monochrome images (digital and film). My style has changed. I love taking time to spot little features or relationships that might have gone unnoticed in the past. I also think I shoot fewer ‘bad’ photos!
Trees on the Kootenay Plains, Alberta
Interwoven ball of vines, supporting itself.
Venturing in. A curtain of vines, deep in my local clay pit.
The clay pit seen from the safety of the footpath
Concentrating on details. Ivy stems winding around an oak tree.
Tightly packed, slender trees reach towards the light.
Complexity
Getting lower and closer into the ‘jungle’
Tangled complexity. The vines are up to 3” thick in places.
The last shot from the trip: A Blizzard blows over the Vermillion Lakes, near Banff.
Abraham Lake in winter, with Mt Michener. Taken one handed
Each time I read one of the many wonderful End Frame articles I ask myself which image I would choose for this. I don't really have any absolute favourite photographs. I like many different photographers and styles for different reasons. Yet there are some single images that stick with me for a longer time, that I think of again and again, and sometimes I'm not quite certain why that is. Thus, I decided to pick one of these images and try to analyse the attraction and put it down in words.
The title of the photograph is Twin Oaks and the photographer is Wynn Bullock. More about him can also be found in Tim Parkin's article about the book 'The Enchanted Landscape' in edition 20. The image was made in 1956 in Jolon Valley, California, although this is one of those pictures where the time and place are entirely irrelevant. The photograph is framed by two very old oak trees, as the title suggests. However, these two trees do not seem to be the immediate subject to me. They are only partly visible and mostly kept in shadow. Not much detail of their bark and leaves is visible, but I have to admit this may be different from the original print. Between them in the background is a light area that draws the attention of the eye first. There is some shimmering texture, but nothing recognisable. Next, the dome like form of the top of another tree or bush meets the eye. It's the first surprise of the image because that incomplete shape is unexpected in that place. It suggests a drop in height behind the oaks, something unknown that might be discovered later. But its main function is to propel the gaze back to the foreground for now.
Welcome to our 4x4 feature which is a set of four mini landscape photography portfolios submitted from our subscribers. Each portfolio consisting of four images related in some way.
Submit Your 4x4 Portfolio
Interested in submitting your work? We're on the lookout for new portfolios for the next few issues, so please do get in touch!
During the week, I spend my evenings monitoring the weather and doing an online recce on different possible spots. It is clearly sunset season: all the social media sites are saturated ! Instead of putting me off, I took it as a challenge: capturing the sunset in a way that could not be done with a smartphone. What better way to push the creativity and techniques (still very much a learning curve for me).
We had a first attempt on the Saturday evening but the sky stubbornly refused to opened up. Sunday was my last chance as the weather forecast was very dull for the next week...
I decided to leave early enough to take full advantage of the golden hours in Brightlingsea, only a few miles away. I knew that it is very often used by local photographers. Trying to avoid taking the same photo as everyone else was adding to the challenge...
The temperature dropped quickly but I didn't feel it, too busy taking in the scenery and planning the next click. Pushing the f-stop for the sun-star, using the ND filter, getting low, high, left, right... My photoshoot turned almost into a PE session!
The sun was at the rendezvous, setting the sky on fire. That evening, everything seemed to get together. Making a choice between the shots during the post-processing was difficult.
All four photographs give a different view of the same sunset.
This set of images were taken whilst walking around the closed ski resort of Campocatino in Central Italy, on the day before Italy put in further lockdown restrictions for the Christmas holidays 2020. The weather and stillness of the empty resort created an atmosphere and strong emotional response in me that inspired me to write the following poem.
When The Inclement Times Refrain
Someone had parked a caravan by the path for trekkers, in the time of blue skies; of travel brochures.
But today was cold, the air an icy mist, raw with ethereal light. How often I wondered,
did the path become impassable? Have lives become unbearable lost in this harsh white cloak?
In the snow gone blue with cold tyre tracks and footsteps whisper their frosty signs of lonely exploration.
Are the hotels full of ghosts? The rooms filled with the smell of lockdown stillness, of icy spectres and pre-covid hugs.
Had I a window, a portal to christmases past to the joy and laughter, of skiing and clowning companions exhilarated, on ambitious pistes.
But on the raw bleak path, only the caravan freezing promotes the optimism of blue skies and kind when groups of friends will meet,
For the past 18 months, I have been walking and photographing our local trails in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada and call my project Trailings (read her full article here). Trailings are defined as "to mark out, to track, to tread down or make a path through grass or the like". I leave no evidence on the trails I have tread. Instead, the trailings of my walks leave a path through my mind, opening it up to possibilities, creativity, and positivity.
Walking with my camera is my therapy, used as a means of processing and overcoming life's challenges. I use my camera as a tool, and I tell stories through pictures. By observing small details in the world around me, my mind empties of its problems.
I will be exhibiting this project in April 2021, and these four images are part of that exhibit. A solitary leaf plays the lead in these photographs. Put together, they tell different stories...pictorialising the day to day struggles all of us face throughout our lives.
Suspended Animation A sudden drop in temperature froze these leaves and grasses in place....a moment in time suspended. All of us face times like this in our lives. Tragedy strikes when we least expect it, and we are overcome, our lives suspended for a time while we process and find the strength to carry on.
Last Teardrop My biggest hope for my photographs is that they evoke an emotion. Some people prefer to view happy images. But life isn't always happy, is it? I created this image in recognition that not all days are happy days. Standing in the cold December rain, I spotted a lone leaf. I waited, and waited until finally a large drop formed on the branch and I took my photo. I captured the feeling I wanted to convey, and that is true happiness for this photographer.
Balancing Act A simple minimalist photograph...or is it? Defined by a few pine needles, a sole leaf and a solid rock background, in my view, this is a metaphor for life.
Last One Standing A solitary leaf can tell many different stories. This leaf evokes a totally different feeling for me than Last Teardrop (opposite page). In contrast to the seed pods that were hanging down and looking dejected and forlorn, the one remaining leaf was pointed straight up, seemingly standing proud in its achievement. The golden glow of the lone leaf stood out in the otherwise gloomy scene.
For to be aware of reality, of the living present, is to discover that at each moment the experience is all. Alan Watts
Painter Chuck Close passed away recently, which reminded me of his famous quip, “inspiration is for amateurs—the rest of us just show up and get to work … you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today, you know what you’ll do, you could be doing what you were doing yesterday, and tomorrow you are gonna do what you did today.” Not surprisingly, Close’s work, consisting of giant photo-realistic portraits (many of himself) has not changed much over the years. Still, his consistent style has made him a gallery favourite, a sought-after portrait painter and photographer, and a good living. Considered strictly in professional terms, Close was a very successful artist.
My own approach to creative work is in a sense the opposite of Close’s. I am never content doing the same thing day in and day out for too long. When I feel I have tapped out the creative potential of some idea, I become bored with it and it no longer satisfies me.
My own approach to creative work is in a sense the opposite of Close’s. I am never content doing the same thing day in and day out for too long. When I feel I have tapped out the creative potential of some idea, I become bored with it and it no longer satisfies me. I feel most content with my work when I discover new things when I’m excited by a new style or subject matter, when I learn new means of visual expression or some useful bit of new knowledge. “Success” doesn’t fully describe the sense of accomplishment that ensues from such progress. The term seems to measure only material returns on some investment of time and effort. The feeling I’m referring to goes considerably beyond that—it enlarges my sense of the world, excites me to explore further, affirms in my mind that so long as I remain open to possibilities there will always be more to learn, to discover, and to create. Inspiration doesn’t just motivate me to create work, it also drives me to seek more inspiration. The more inspired I feel, the more I wish to sustain my inspiration, to experiment and to tackle new challenges in hope of unravelling yet more novel and satisfying ways of experiencing the world and evolving my work.
I very much agree with Close’s assertion that inspiration is for amateurs—for those who pursue their work primarily out of love, whether or not they also earn a living by it.
To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth not width that counts. Nan Shepherd
It is common in modern societies to order our days according to a set of deadlines or goals. We make lists; we write in calendars; we strive to break the monthly sales target; we ask ourselves where we want to “be” in five years’ time, and how we will actually achieve our appointment as V.P. (or living off-grid in Alaska). Even leisure, our “off” time, is directed according to targets. We want to get to fifty sit-ups, we want to go from couch potato to running 5km, we want to walk the El Camino de Santiago, we want to get to the summit of every Munro in Scotland, and we want to get drunk in Harry’s Bar.
It is common in modern societies to order our days according to a set of deadlines or goals. We make lists; we write in calendars; we strive to break the monthly sales target; we ask ourselves where we want to “be” in five years’ time, and how we will actually achieve our appointment as V.P. (or living off-grid in Alaska).
Of course, human ambition is nothing new. And targets give us something to aim for. In a sense, they simplify messy reality. Once we have reached a target we can cross it off our list and move on to the next. But I think we are often guilty of aiming for the obvious target, our eyes forever on the grand prize. It’s tempting to head for the mountain’s summit, sheer scale makes it stand out more than anything else. But maybe what we need to learn is closer to home. In the words of David Thoreau, “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” An attractive activity can obscure our real needs. So, rather than heading for the hills, we might more productively spend our time really looking, perhaps for the first time, at what lies in our backyard.
As an aside, twenty years of teaching photography has shown me that prescribed targets are largely irrelevant. Sure, you can cross items off a list of technical aims. But being able to produce a perfectly exposed, perfectly sharp image doesn’t make you a photographer, just a competent camera operator. To learn how to be a photographer you need to learn a different way of thinking in conjunction with ways of doing. You’d never know it from reading most articles on photography but “why?” is way more important than “how?”
Where was I? Oh, yes…
In part one of this article, I promised to tell you how to make your images “outstanding”. What did I mean by that? I obviously didn’t mean images with the most hearts or likes next to them.
As I hope I showed in part one, chasing the approval of your peers (on FB, Instagram, 500PX, Twitter or whichever your chosen channel for mainlining dopamine) will not make your mages original. Popularity is more often than not a normative force, nudging creative output towards the middle-of-the-road. That way lie “The Osmonds” or “The Bay City Rollers” or yet another photo of that bloody tree near Queenstown, NZ!
Albeit addictive, aiming for likes is a fool’s errand.
Likes are undeniably tempting because they are quantifiable. Their externality can easily be mistaken for an objective yardstick to one’s photographic ability. But that is just an illusion. One hundred likes, a thousand likes or even a million likes do not necessarily mean that a photograph is good. They don’t even necessarily mean that the image itself is popular. Looking at images made by celebrities, it’s obvious that it’s the poster who is well-liked. There is simply no direct correlation between creativity and popularity.
Sadly, as social animals, we so often see ourselves in relation to others that it can be hard to recognise our own worth. We never seem to be able to truly satiate our hunger for external praise. Of course, when it comes to creativity the only person we really need to please is ourselves.
When I think of my favourite images, either my own or ones made by other photographers, the common thread that makes them outstanding is their authenticity, their originality.
As the American realist painter Chuck Close noted, “The fact that you can have something that's recognisable from fifty feet across the gallery as a Diane Arbus or Irving Penn, the fact that you can have recognisable authorship means that they really have done something because it's a damn hard thing to do.”
Photography is perhaps the hardest medium in which to signify authorship because a photograph is in a sense just a facsimile, devoid of maker’s marks. Yet some photographers do manage to produce images that are recognisably theirs. How do we put our stamp on an image, how do we signify that it is the genuine article?
A photographer can make their image transcend its literalness and become theirs by recognising something that no one else has seen or photographed in that way. This is the alchemy at the heart of any great photograph.
A photographer can make their image transcend its literalness and become theirs by recognising something that no one else has seen or photographed in that way. This is the alchemy at the heart of any great photograph.
Workshop participants sometimes ask me how they might develop a unique style, as if it were a fashion statement. True style in the visual arts is the product of our life experiences, our artistic insights, our emotional responses, and our intellect. In order to develop a unique style we must make images that more fully reflect who we are. All the factors I have mentioned should play a part in how we choose our subjects, how our images are composed and how they are rendered. Style isn’t bolted on, it’s inbuilt. I would argue that even if we don’t recognise the provenance of an authentic image, we still intuitively recognise its originality.
Authentic images are communions between the author and the world. The subject will be one that speaks directly to the photographer and the image is one that they will make in response. That might sound grand but think of it as a private conversation, a cosy chat between the photographer and subject. As the author of the image, the feeling that one gets when viewing these images, no matter how wide the angle of view, will always be intimate.
Simply making a literal image – one that refers strongly to the origin – does not make it original. As Guy Tal has pointed out, a photograph can be an authentic response but not be realistic. What makes an image authentic is the photographer alone has seen it in that way. Someone standing next to you would not have seen the scene in the same way. The particular representation is unique.
Authentic images obviously cannot be pastiches of other photographers’ images. We should not start with a crib sheet printed from a Google image search. Original images are outstanding because they are meaningful to the photographer (and hopefully a wider audience) in a way that yet another image of Maroon Bells, or The Watchman at sunset or the natural firefall in Yosemite can never be. This time it’s personal.
Their authenticity enables these images to rise above the oceans of instants captured by other photographers. But don’t think of a tsunami, think instead of a gentle swell. Outstanding here is about personal fulfilment, but it’s not about being “the greatest”. Being creative isn’t a competitive sport, there are no leader boards and no records to beat. Creativity is a lifelong trek rather than a sprint.
That’s more than enough metaphors for a single paragraph…
The Source
I believe that creativity starts with being inquisitive, with eagerly asking questions, oft times without the hope of an answer.
I believe that creativity starts with being inquisitive, with eagerly asking questions, oft times without the hope of an answer.
When I am working, I try to be open to the possibilities for image-making rather than having a fixed outcome in mind. The great American photographer, Minor White, wrote eloquently about this openness:
The state of mind of a photographer while creating is a blank... For those who would equate "blank" with a kind of static emptiness, I must explain that this is a special kind of blank. It is a very active state of mind really, a very receptive state of mind, ready at an instant to grasp an image, yet with no image pre-formed in it at any time.
We should note that the lack of a pre-formed pattern or preconceived idea of how anything ought to look is essential to this blank condition. Such a state of mind is not unlike a sheet of film itself - seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second's exposure conceives a life in it. (Not just life, but a life).
A decade or more ago, I had a fascinating conversation with a charming man named Ian Biggar. Of the many things we discussed, one anecdote stuck in my mind. He described a conversation he'd overheard on a photographic workshop. The leader had asked a participant ‘What are you trying to say in your image?’ The participant replied, “I’m not sure I am trying to say anything yet. I guess I’m still listening.” This struck me as a very sound basis for photography.
It's important to me that I am making an enquiry about my surroundings in my images, rather than imposing a conclusion. I am not seeking to make definitive statements because I don't know the answers. The questions vary enormously from image to image; I might be asking about the colour of light or what is it that is beautiful about moving water or why I find that arrangement of elements interesting or musing on the ecology of a particular place.
It's important to me that I am making an enquiry about my surroundings in my images, rather than imposing a conclusion. I am not seeking to make definitive statements because I don't know the answers.
These questions are born as personal enquiries and many remain only of interest to the questioner. They achieve full maturity if their final form appeals to a wider audience. The important thing is never to stop questioning. Those who ’know’ all the answers have stagnated. In the words of a Chinese proverb, ’He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever’.
On the rare occasions when I grant an interview (Who am I kidding? I’m happy to blather on about photography to anybody with a pulse and a pen!), I am occasionally asked about my methodology for finding images. Interviewers usually seem nonplussed when I tell them that I basically bimble about until I find something that interests me. The commonest approach to making landscape photographs starts with a location, often a specific view of that place. A goal is set before the photographer even leaves home.
But as J.R.R. Tolkien pointed out, not all who wander are lost. I traverse the landscape like a gold prospector who is searching for a possible strike, turning every rock as I go (not literally, of course!), watching for clues as to where I might find a single, small nugget. My wandering is open-ended but guided by experience. I am acutely aware that on any given day I am unlikely to unearth even a small nugget, let alone the mother lode. My ambition is to make a satisfying/intriguing/enquiring image some time. A few times a year will do. I’m fine with that.
The quest is almost as much fun as the discoveries. Minor White, again, “…a lot of times I photograph with nothing specific in mind. I just play it as it comes. If it's good, fine. I find 'letting it happen' relaxing, a playful vacation. Stimulating pictures almost always result.”
When I’m searching, I enter a hyper-receptive visual state. I often stare at something until it seems to come apart, like a word that you’ve looked at for too long. Ideally, I enter an almost meditative state. But I don’t need to fast or mumble incantations to enter this condition. There’s nothing mystical about it. Psychologists know this as flow state. This is the condition arising from concentrating your whole being on the task at hand. It is a state that we are all capable of through application and concentration.
When making an original image we need to shut out the everyday babble of thoughts unrelated to the task at hand. The preferable state of mind is akin to that of an unexposed piece of film; static and seemingly inert yet pregnant with almost endless possibilities. Whenever we make a photograph, there are a host of alternative ways of photographing the same subject. I try to mentally explore as many of them as I can, searching for the one that best fits my outlook that speaks to me directly.
The image above was made in El Capitan Meadow, Yosemite, yet there’s no sign of that iconic peak; am I perversely ignoring it?
For me this photo encapsulates time. There are clues to interlocking rhythms of life in this environment, each beating with a different frequency. The fallen log shows evidence of a wildfire, a common feature of this environment. The charring is partially obscured by a fallen oak leaf and pine needles.
I would counter that by saying that I am always searching for a subject most appropriate to me, one that addresses my interests and concerns directly. I want to ask my own questions of the landscape and to find my own answers.
For me this photo encapsulates time. There are clues to interlocking rhythms of life in this environment, each beating with a different frequency. The fallen log shows evidence of a wildfire, a common feature of this environment. The charring is partially obscured by a fallen oak leaf and pine needles. Leaves fall every year, wild grass fires sweep through every few years, the tall trees here live for a century or more. All this is lit by the blue sky and white light reflected onto the log and leaves by El Capitan’s 900mtr sheer face of pale granite. It took an ice age or two to sculpt this reflector.
It is critical that I remain open to the possibility that anything I see may become an image. A key aspect of this is my striving to avoid any prior expectations of what I may shoot.
Expectation is a serious inhibitor for creativity because, as American photographer Berenice Abbot noted, “If we travel with expectation, we make expected photographs”.
Long before the internet was peppered with cat videos, in his 1976 bestseller “The Selfish Gene”, Richard Dawkins proposed the notion of the meme. This is an infectious, self-replicating idea that mutates according to creative rather than environmental pressure. Photographs can behave like this. Whenever we set out with an expectation to shoot at a well-known spot we have already been infected by a meme. A single image of Kirkjufell wreathed in aurora can thus spawn a million inferior copies.
Kirkjufell, David Clapp
Expectation is a double-edged sword; it leads us to crave the expected subject and simultaneously makes us less able to see the unexpected. With vast numbers of images of practically anywhere on the planet available on the internet, it has become very hard to travel without expectations.
I am old enough that no internet existed when I first started making landscape images. Back in the dark ages, when working to commission on books and for magazines I was given a typed (!) list and told to go out and see what I could find. At the time I often felt like I had been given too little information. With hindsight, it feels like a wonderful gift to have had very little notion of what to expect. This experience continues to shape the way I make images today.
The Inquisition
For me, every photographic foray is an inquisition, a prospecting expedition. I find the best way to make original images is to simply put down the camera and look, sometimes for an hour or more. I look behind me, above me, at my feet and usually away from the iconic view before eventually raising the camera to my eye.
There are many possible inquisitions but I tend to concentrate on three lines of enquiry.
The Reality Gap
One of my overarching motivations for photographing is to explore the gap between how the combination of my mind and eye apprehend reality and how a camera and lens render that.
Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed. Gary Winogrand
One of my overarching motivations for photographing is to explore the gap between how the combination of my mind and eye apprehend reality and how a camera and lens render that. Incidentally, too many landscape photographers think that a photo of a rock is just about how that rock looks. It’s important to remember that subject and object are rarely congruent.
Except when viewing optical illusions, the visual realm seems straightforward. Most of the time we take it completely for granted. We are unaware of the process of seeing: it just happens. Vision is as clear as mountain air.
But anybody who has spent more than a few minutes using a camera knows that transcribing reality into a pleasing photograph can be fraught with difficulties and frustrations. Some of that is technical, and relatively simple to resolve. However, this still leaves questions about the influence of our physiology on human perception (and also about how cultural differences change the interpretation of the light gathered by our eyes). I find these questions fascinating and a very fruitful line of enquiry.
Looking for Answers
I hunger to solve the puzzle of composition. One of the principle driving forces of humanity’s rapid spread across the globe has been a desire to solve puzzles, be they practical, theological, philosophical, or merely whimsical. We appear to be hard wired with this trait. Recent studies using functional MRI scanning have shown that areas of the brain associated with pleasure become very active during puzzle solving. Scientific enquiry, or any other field of intellectual endeavour, is essentially a long-term form of the same itch that drives our desire to solve a crossword puzzle.
For a very long time it was almost impossible to acquire a David Ward photographic print. There were a number of reasons for this but one of the most important was that I saw prints as superfluous. The creative process was what I craved. I wasn’t interested in producing a product, per se. My fascination and satisfaction came from the act of making the photograph, writing the score in Ansel Adams’ terms, rather than the performance. (I did eventually realise this wasn’t the smartest move as a professional photographer!)
In the days when I shot 4x5, the exposed sheet of film represented a solution to the compositional puzzle that I had faced.
Often a week or two would pass between shooting and receiving the processed sheets. I was invariably nervous as I opened the packet. How good was the solution I had found? Would memory and outcome coincide? Had my technique been equal to my ambition? Would the film be capable of rendering my vision? Had I remembered to shut the lens?!
On a few exceptional occasions, laying the film on the lightbox revealed an object as near to perfection as I could imagine. I felt rapturous. This was the climax. Slowly fading bliss would follow, a pale echo of that moment.
In my mind, the goal was achieved. No need for a print that would, in my opinion, not only be redundant but also inferior.
Whenever we make a photograph we are solving a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional problem. We have to balance exposure, colour, tonality, line/form, movement and a dozen other factors.
Whenever we make a photograph we are solving a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional problem. We have to balance exposure, colour, tonality, line/form, movement and a dozen other factors. The first of these is the simplest, the rest require a way of thinking that is far from linear. Except in controlled situations, the process of making a photo is akin to extemporary jazz. We have an instrument (the camera) but we’re never really sure how the performance will evolve. This is the opposite of having an expected outcome and, especially for the novice, it is often a scary prospect.
For this reason, photographers do a lot of things to make this process slightly less intimidating:
Going to locations where they feel sure there is at least one image to be had (e.g. researching honeypots on the internet)
Visiting places at particular times of day or certain seasons (e.g. the golden hour and autumn)
Using software tools to find out the timing of events (e.g. tides, sunrise/sunset, weather forecast etc.)
As we grow in abilities and confidence the balance tips away from fear towards inspiration.
Once we’re proficient enough (always practice your scales!) we can be reasonably sure there won’t be any bum notes, but we can never be absolutely certain that the piece will become a memorable classic.
Note: I wrote “a solution”. There can never be “the solution”. There is no single correct answer to these puzzles. If that were the case then two photographers in the same place would always make near identical images. If this does occur (e.g. sunrise at Mesa Arch) it is indicative of how simple that particular compositional problem is. I don’t believe that most of the people gathered in such a situation are trying to solve anything. It’s a bit like filling in a crossword when someone has already given you all the answers. I do believe, however, that whilst not everyone is interested in doing the cryptic crossword, most aspire to more than solving the five minute one.
Searching for Mysteries
I want to explore the mystery of the world by really looking at things, as if for the first time.
The British photographer, Bill Brandt, wrote, “The photographer must have, and keep in him, some of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time, or of the traveller who enters a strange country.”
To constantly see the world anew and with a sense of wonder; what a gift to grant ourselves!
Evolution has inclined us to notice the tiger in the long grass but not the way the grass waves in the wind or the beetle that cling to its stalks. To notice these things we need to do more than open our eyes, we need to open our minds too.
He went on to write, “Most of us look at a thing and believe that we have seen it, yet what we see is often only what our prejudices tell us to expect us to see, or what our past experience tells us should be seen, or what our desire wants to see...”
Evolution has inclined us to notice the tiger in the long grass but not the way the grass waves in the wind or the beetle that cling to its stalks. To notice these things we need to do more than open our eyes, we need to open our minds too. Our habit is to only pay attention to those portions of the visual field that help us navigate, avoid threats, to find food or mates. We are constantly bombarded with far more visual information than we are consciously aware of. We discard the ‘excess’ because processing it all requires a lot of effort and is, in evolutionary terms, of little benefit. Except when you are an artist or a scientist making an enquiry of the world.
Surface appearances are often little more than window dressing, hiding deeper truths. The answers to questions about these truths are likely beyond the reach of the photographer and their photographs but I still feel it’s worthwhile making the enquiry. As the American photographer Wynn Bullock wrote, “Mysteries lie all around us, even in the most familiar things, waiting only to be perceived.” For me there is no greater thrill than those rare occasions when I lift the curtain, just for a passing moment, and catch a glimpse of what lies beyond.
The enquiries you make should be driven by your interests, be they political, philosophical, theological or even scatological.
A Bigger Question
Beyond the personal act of inquiry, I proposed in Landscape Beyond that we might usefully think of all photographs as always being either questions or answers. My suggestion was that trying to make images that were “questions” rather than “answers” would give our photographs more depth and meaning. The first step is to define the terms:
Images that are questions…
…invite us to explore what we feel about the image’s subject. They evoke questions without necessarily providing answers and they tend to be open to interpretation, to be ambiguous. Questions can be both aesthetically pleasing and revelatory. Questioning images don’t attempt to tell the whole story, they are content to be merely an enquiry.
Any photograph made with serious intent is a form of enquiry: its author is asking a question or questions of the world. This may be as simple as seeking the answer to the problem of composition but it may well be a deeper question. The crucial point is that sometimes these questions are answered within the frame and sometimes the image just leaves them unanswered. It is important to state that I am not talking here about the question of composition being unresolved. An unresolved image is one that lacks compositional balance and is aesthetically unpleasing: it is such an ill-posed question that the viewers are not only unsure what they are being asked but are unsatisfied with the form of the image that they are being presented with.
The denotative power of the photograph – “It’s just a rock!” – can swamp the photographer’s subtle questions. They need to work at distilling and simplifying in order to concentrate the viewers’ attention. As Shakespeare said, ’Truth hath a quiet breast’. Ask questions, make your images simple, make them quiet and you may, at the very least, reveal some further mysteries to explore.
Images that are answers…
A photograph that is an answer is predominantly viewed passively; we absorb what they show without much conscious effort. But, in the same way that junk food is pleasant to eat – because it gives an intense but short-lived high – these passive photographs rarely leave a permanent impression on us. An hour, or at most a day, after we've looked at a passive image it is lost to our memory.
A photograph that is an answer is predominantly viewed passively; we absorb what they show without much conscious effort. But, in the same way that junk food is pleasant to eat – because it gives an intense but short-lived high – these passive photographs rarely leave a permanent impression on us.
A photograph that is a question is more 'difficult' to view than an answer because viewing it requires the active participation of the viewer. Time must be taken to ask questions like “What am I seeing here?” or “What is the photographer’s intent?”
What we get out of photographs is directly linked to the effort that we put into the viewing and it seems clear to me that the photographer's duty is to try and engage the viewer – not simply by making 'pretty' images but by asking something of them in return for the gift of the image. The viewers should sing for their suppers.
I am by no means the first to propose a duality as a way of classifying images. The most obvious example is the objective/subjective dichotomy, an argument that has been running since the invention of photography.
Photographer and museum curator John Szarkowski proposed another in 1978. He held an exhibition entitled “Mirrors & Windows” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that has greatly influenced subsequent ideas about the interpretation of photographs. The premise for the show was that all photographs are either mirrors reflecting the photographer who made them or windows presenting the photographer’s view of the outside world. The former tell us more about the photographer than about reality. The intent of the latter is to tell us more about reality than about the photographer.
The difference between Szarkowski’s classification and mine becomes more apparent if we look at a diagram.
You’ll notice that the new categories mix the attributes of the old: a ’question’, for example, has one of the attributes of a ’mirror’ and one of a ’window’. I am not suggesting that Szarkowski’s analysis is incorrect, merely pointing out that we might look at photographs in another way.
What benefits might we get from thinking of images in this way? The first is to show that photographs have another level of complexity beyond Szarkowski’s duality. We should know this. I have already discussed at some length subjects such as semiology that have a bearing on this, in my book Landscape Within.
I think that the duality using questions and answers lets us think in a different way about photographs, one that is much more weighted towards thinking about intent than the approach offered by semiology. If we think about images in this way, we must first ask ourselves what might the photographer’s intent have been and have they succeeded? Semiology concentrates more on outcomes rather than intent; it looks at what arises from the image rather than why something was included. There is a good logical reason for this; we can never truly know the photographer’s intent merely by looking at the image. But asking what it might have been is still a useful exercise. It might help us to think about why certain images intrigue us and others don’t. This approach is not intended as a replacement for other approaches; it certainly offers a shallower analysis than semiology may provide. However, one distinct advantage is that it is relatively easy to employ without having to spend years on studying psychology or linguistics.
The questions never end…
I hope I showed in the first part that it is pointless to rail against the massive increase in worldwide tourism and not being able to have well-known places to yourself. My aim with part two was to show that turning your back on the honeypots will improve your photography. According to my proposed definition, most landscape photos on social media are answers. Acquiring these loud proclamations has become the game for many, in a virtual arms race for the spectacular.
I hope I showed in the first part that it is pointless to rail against the massive increase in worldwide tourism and not being able to have well-known places to yourself. My aim with part two was to show that turning your back on the honeypots will improve your photography.
There is another way.
Sure, there’s a cost: You’ll need to put in some more effort, you’ll need to properly connect with your subject, and you’ll need to show more of yourself in the image. That doesn’t mean ego, I’m not advocating images which shout “Look at me! Aren’t I clever?!” On the contrary, they should be subtle, like a whisper, a susurration compared to the howling gale and bombast of “The Big View!”
I started this article with a quote from Nan Shepherd. She was an author and poet who wrote passionately and almost exclusively about the Cairngorms, a small part of Scotland. In her masterpiece, “The Living Mountain”, she describes her walks amidst these ancient hills. Her wanderings were often of the “where the fancy takes me kind”. She normally bypassed the summits in preference for some smaller thing that intrigued her. Her goal was to deepen her understanding. She was constantly asking questions of herself and of the landscape she found herself in. It puts me in mind of that other great wanderer, John Muir. He once wrote
Wander a whole summer if you can... time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will definitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal.
Connection with subject comes from asking questions of yourself and of the world in front of the camera. It springs from uncertainty rather than certainty. Admitting that one doesn’t know the answers can be a frightening thing but, as the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes Laertius noted, “Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions.”
By putting the prescribed views off-limits, the Pandemic has already forced some photographers down the road of discovery rather than rediscovery. This isn’t just about making photos somewhere that you wouldn’t have bothered with before. The novelty of these alternative locations has also forced a degree of introspection. Where do I start? How do I make sense of this place in a photo? Do I need to start by listening?
Authenticity in art arises when we enquire of ourselves what we truly think or feel about something, rather than parroting a received viewpoint.
Creative journeys never start with plagiarism, they start with a question; “What if…?”
My final question to you is what if we make our interior world a more important starting point for our work than the exterior? This might seem counterintuitive for landscape photography, but the landscape of our minds is the well spring of creative genius. This is the origin of all art, no matter how humble.
In this issue, we talk to Ângelo Jesus from Portugal. It’s a country that some of us think we are familiar with from our holidays, but his photography shows a side of the country we may not know so well – its mountains and its woods. The latter have been his focus for the past few years and our image selection shares a little of their atmosphere and the visual puzzles that Ângelo attempts to decipher.
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 born and raised in the city of Porto. There, I completed high school and later specialised in the tech area, something that would become my professional career up to this day. I currently work as a service engineer in a large technology-related company.
In my free time, besides photography, I practice sports, something I've always done since a very young age and I am also regularly active in outdoor activities like mountain climbing and backpacking.
Battlefield
How did you become interested in photography and what kind of images did you initially set out to make? How much time are you now able to devote to your passion for landscape photography?
My relationship with nature started long before I became a nature photographer, so my photographs are mostly a consequence of my experiences. From a very young age, I’ve been fascinated with nature, exploration and adventure. I remember watching every film and documentary that I could about those subjects, and they made me dream that someday I could experience something similar. Part of that dream came true when in the early nineties I started mountain climbing and backpacking with a group of friends. From then on the mountains became a passion and an addiction. Photography came later as a way to document my adventures, but at that time just using a small camera and only in “auto mode” like most people do when they are starting. Over time, I realised that the images that came out of the camera never translated very well to my visions and what fascinated me in the landscape. Therefore, I upgraded to a DSLR and progressively tried to learn how to control the final results instead of the camera.
I first learned about Jerry Greer when he was a guest on my podcast in January of 2020. I was immediately struck by Jerry’s enthusiasm for the craft of photography and his slight yet endearing southern drawl which immediately captivated me. I quickly learned that Jerry’s energy and exuberance in verbal discourse are not easily matched except by his passion and excitement for photography. Jerry’s been involved in photography for many years, and most recently he has returned to his roots by transitioning back to using 4x5 film to capture his subjects. Jerry also has devoted several years mastering the craft of fine art photography bookmaking and has created his own publishing company, Mountain Trail Press, where he has published over 170 books for photographers all over the world.
Copper Creek, Scott County, Virginia
Like many photographers who came of age in the 1990s, he became disillusioned by the state of and the direction of the photography industry.
My wife used to play a guessing game about cocktails – someone names a cocktail and you have to name the ingredients. I think she married me because I was the only one who’d heard of Angostura Bitters. Here’s a variation on that game: name the cocktail from the ingredients:
One offcut of floorboard (oak)
One plastic chopping board – sourced from Lidl clearance bin
One black fake leather mini skirt
Most of the brass section of a steam locomotive builders’ catalogue, coarsely chopped
Stainless steel, sliced
Generous handful of tiny screws
And the answer? A 150MP digital view camera of course.
Conception
Scrutinising an outcrop of Mamiya telephoto lenses in the recesses of one of London’s messiest camera shops, a salesman and I discussed vignetting of the 150mm f/2.8 on a Mirex tilt/shift adapter attached to a Sony A7RII, a conversational possibility of astonishing rarity. For a few years, this hybrid camera has been my primary tool, whose performance has been a constant source of wonder and pride. Not content with the camera’s basic resolution or with the 35mm aspect ratio (a former 6x6 and 5x4 user) I’ve exclusively used the rear shift function to stitch frames, and a separate shift adapter for front rise and fall. What formerly seemed like the clever bit was that to get around the otherwise considerable problem of not being able to view the entire field of view, I built a separate optical viewfinder (lens elements in plastic plumbing fittings) with sliding masks showing the different possible aspect ratios of each lens (3 portrait frames for landscape 5x4 shape and 3 landscape frames for 6x12 panorama) and also to some extent simulating the effect of shift.
“Maybe the vignetting comes from the adapter?” suggested the surprisingly young salesman, twirling a 250mm C like a huge cigar as he reflected. “You should try free-lensing – it’s what lots of people do now”. I bought a small camera bag and left, dashing his hopes of a real sale but leaving me feeling like I’d once again navigated the treacherous “middle of Lidl” without buying anything.
Subsequent research revealed an almost non-existent free-lensing community – perhaps they call it something different, or perhaps it’s not a fad after all. I began thinking about liberating my lenses from their unnaturally cramped environment though – perhaps I could rig something up.
I did a little more research and found an online gallery of homemade technical cameras, featuring odd lenses mounted on plywood or cannibalised Fuji 680s and an incongruous digital camera clinging to the back. I also looked at Sony adapters for 5x4 cameras. Perhaps I could re-use my Shen Hao folding field camera and just use large format lenses.
Autumn
Partially recovered from a bout of wondering if anyone really cared about my photographs, I was enjoying going out again in the brief liberty of late 2020. By way of defiance, I’d resolved to do nothing other than make images for myself, which specifically means trees in fog. I did a little more research and found an online gallery of homemade technical cameras, featuring odd lenses mounted on plywood or cannibalised Fuji 680s and an incongruous digital camera clinging to the back. I also looked at Sony adapters for 5x4 cameras. Perhaps I could re-use my Shen Hao folding field camera and just use large format lenses. This seemed a promising idea, although I didn’t like the need to drastically re-focus, given that the camera would be a long way back from the ground glass.
Also, the widest lenses would have to sit even closer to the rear standard than they would for a film back, ruling out anything that was in fact at all wide. A tabletop test of my Schneider 90mm Super Angulon on the Sony looked good though, with signs that it could perform very well if I could get it anywhere near close enough. Always on the lookout for engineering challenges, I thought about whether I could cobble together something new that would do the job. I quite liked the idea of a custom-made solution, and also of something that didn’t look quite as much like an ordinary dull DSLR from a distance. I was bored of being ignored since I stopped using my 5x4 camera in the field and found the tiny controls on the adapter and minuscule camera to be less than inspiring tools for making big photographs.
Christmas
With my children home for the Christmas holidays, I was left with early weekend mornings to go out photographing and late evenings to think about cameras. I decided that I’d definitely need to build something from scratch, and began sketching some concepts. If I could just improve on the back shift mechanism and put together a basic lens mount, I’d be on to something.
What I’ve always wished I could do with the Mirex adapter was to shift both horizontally and vertically in the sensor plane – this way I could simulate a far larger imaging area but also apply camera movements separately. I do have a shift-only adapter (Canon to Mamiya) attached to the Mirex tilt-shift which enables front rise and fall, but if I use this to create another row of stitched frames I can’t also use tilt without one row being shifted out of the focal plane, and front rise creates imperfect matches for stitching owing to the tiny change in perspective from one row to the next. I also missed ground glass viewing and the ability, some would judge essential, to carefully view the final image before exposure. I decided I’d use a chopping board. I’d always thought these to be a good source of durable plastic for engineering projects, and I knew they could be sawn and drilled easily. There are often packs of discounted ones in the middle of Lidl.
Wardrobe
After a week or two of edging around boxes of clothes, I agreed to build the wardrobe first and put off the camera. It was probably for the best and in any case, I’d probably enjoy the woodwork. Always committed to using hand tools, I invested in a second-hand plough plane to cut grooves for shelves and sharpened my chisels to a highly polished edge. The Christmas holidays were coming to an end and I’d soon have hours every day to get the wardrobe finished and move on to the camera
We’d recently moved house and I’d promised a built-in wardrobe. Bespoke wardrobes can cost thousands of pounds from even fairly low-end joinery firms, but I do like an engineering challenge. On opposite pages in my sketchbook from the camera designs, I quickly put together some concepts and explored configurations of drawers and rails. I opted for a monorail design and planned box-like drawers with a basic sliding focus mechanism to maximise socks per inch. I’d quickly put together the camera and then get to work on the wardrobe.
After a week or two of edging around boxes of clothes, I agreed to build the wardrobe first and put off the camera. It was probably for the best and in any case, I’d probably enjoy the woodwork. Always committed to using hand tools, I invested in a second-hand plough plane to cut grooves for shelves and sharpened my chisels to a highly polished edge. The Christmas holidays were coming to an end and I’d soon have hours every day to get the wardrobe finished and move on to the camera, given that my normal music teaching was clearly going to be on hold for some time.
Home School
Unfortunately, the holidays didn’t come to an end and as some of you may have experienced, homeschooling isn’t always the most rewarding occupation. At times the home pupils lost focus and the resolution to continue. With steamroller-like determination I continued with the wardrobe, picking up chisels in the morning and putting them down seconds later when someone would scream “Papa! My sister’s not sharing”. Nevertheless, a wardrobe emerged from the ruins of the early year and with some satisfaction, I managed to cut accurate rebates in Baltic birch plywood using the plough plane. It’s vital to pre-score the cuts though.
Winter
Winter Dawn, The White House, Norwood Grove
The snows of February blew in with welcome vehemence. My recurring photographic nightmare failing to materialise, I had time both to photograph and to tow excited infants around on a sledge before the meltdown returned. Despite very favourable conditions and what I knew would be at least a few good results, I found the snowtography less satisfying than hoped. I’d already designed a better tool in my mind and the one I had to use in the meantime didn’t seem very elegant anymore. Of course, I couldn’t expect winter to last as long as my camera building would take, so I needed a new target.
This had to be my annual pilgrimage to the Isabella Plantation. I’ll write about this project at greater length if anyone feels they might read it, but briefly, this enclosed woodland in Richmond Park is planted with an extensive collection of azaleas, rhododendrons and exotic trees, and around the beginning of May (depending on the early spring weather) the entire forest is illuminated with multi-coloured blossom. I’ve photographed there every year except 2020 and still feel I haven’t quite done it justice. Perhaps a bigger camera would help though.
Spring
The first cherry blossom emerged in a cool early spring and around the house patches of bright white painted drawers adorned the saw dusted floors. Having opted to forego bearings or metal rails to increase drawer capacity I installed thin strips of a low-friction plastic, acetyl copolymer or Delrin between the drawer bottoms and dividers. This worked well and was a welcome alternative to the often jarring crash of an excessively free-running drawer. I now began to feel a weakening in my motivation to chop up all the chopping boards I’d bought. The newly-sharpened chisels, incredibly useful plough plane and sustained recent practice led me to consider whether a wooden camera might not be more satisfying and elegant.
Then in the euphoria of school re-opening and finally seeing the road clear to start building I began to wonder whether, as I spend the majority of my time in London photographing oak trees, it wouldn’t be poetic to equip myself with a camera made of oak?
Then in the euphoria of school re-opening and finally seeing the road clear to start building I began to wonder whether, as I spend the majority of my time in London photographing oak trees, it wouldn’t be poetic to equip myself with a camera made of oak?
The crippling expense of moving house had brought one bonus – a huge pile of spare oak floorboards hidden under the stairs. The width of the boards seemed fortuitously close to what might work for the bed of a small field camera, and the grain of many pieces was very attractive too. There were to be no half-measures though, and if the base were to be of oak then so too must be the standards and ground glass frame. The rest would have to be brass as this is an attractive metal I had some experience working with, and using a mixture of soft soldering and tapping and screwing, I knew I could fabricate whatever parts were required. As a source of raw materials, I found two or three model engineering suppliers, all of whom sell metal sections for builders of miniature steam locomotives. I did every now and then rifle through a skip, considering whether an old Ikea bracket or fragment of angle-poise might make for a quicker and easier ready-made part, but in the end succumbed to the desire to do the job properly and make everything from scratch. I cannibalised as little as possible, but for the camera mount I used part of an abandoned Kipon tilt-shift adapter and for the lens mount I bought a short Mamiya 645 extension tube.
At the last minute I replaced some parts in the design with stainless steel, conscious of how precisely the sliding back would have to fit, and rapidly learned some basic silver soldering (i.e. silver brazing) technique in order to join the brass components in a more durable way. The chopping board was used for one component, the base of the sliding back assembly, into which the moving parts would be screwed.
Fabrication
Metalwork
I like the word fabrication as for me it evokes a sense of meticulously shaping and assembling carefully-considered components. I fabricated for some weeks, following my carefully-considered agenda of part assembly that would allow dimensions of subsequent parts to be re-assessed as necessary.
I began with the sliding back assembly, whose concept determined much of the camera design. The Sony A7RII may have a short flange distance (sensor to lens mount) but it definitely wasn’t designed as a digital back for a view camera and the large hand grip was a real pain to work around. I could just imagine the Sony engineers thoughtfully pondering the ergonomics of the miniature camera, making sure it fitted comfortably in the palm of one hand as the athletic photographer deftly negotiated his or her emaciated and tattooed subject, craning here, crouching there, leaning out of windows and hanging off trendy cranes. Didn’t it occur to them that we’d all want to screw it to a massive oak plank?
After weighing up the various limitations I opted for a small vertical and large horizontal shift achieved by mounting the camera on a wide steel plate sliding in horizontal rails and a simple set of screws sliding in slots to raise and lower the rear section. The camera would remain in portrait orientation, yielding “virtual” formats of around 36x80mm (a panorama of four or five frames shifted horizontally) and roughly 6x4.8cm (two rows of three shifted by the maximum vertical distance the design allowed before the grip got in the way). As has always been my simple aim with digital stitching, this gives similar proportions to 5x4” and 6x12cm, my favourite film sizes. These rear movements are solely for stitching, and working to similar concepts as used in commercially-made non-folding film cameras I designed straightforward mechanisms for front axis tilt, rise, fall and swing and rear base tilt. Keen to have one of the only cameras able to use both medium and large format lenses, I guessed the amount of shift that might be possible with a 5x4” lens, thinking it best to have too much rather than too little. To the same end, the front standard was designed to accept a standard 5x4 lens board, and then the Mamiya extension tube was attached to a brass plate of the same size so that it effectively became a removable lens board for all my Mamiya and Bronica lenses. I could have made the front standard smaller if only using the medium format lenses but I wanted to be able to at least use the Schneider 90mm f/5.6 as well, which required a much larger opening.
Thoroughly confounding anyone who might have thought they knew what the job of building a camera would entail, I ordered a set of vermiculite firebricks and constructed a makeshift brazing hearth in our barbeque. The silver brazing went well despite my blowtorch being a little under-powered for the weight of some of the brass sections in the back, and suddenly able to join almost any ferrous or non-ferrous engineering metal (other than aluminium) with weld-like strength I felt invincible.
Fire, rain, wood and metal bring a similar sense of connection to the outdoor world that I try to evoke in photography, an earthy mix of growth, decay and rural simplicity. This would be a camera born of gentle fire, trees, and a 17th C level of technology, sawn, filed and polished with such tranquillity that the robin on the garden fence would feel happy to sit and watch.
Fire, rain, wood and metal bring a similar sense of connection to the outdoor world that I try to evoke in photography, an earthy mix of growth, decay and rural simplicity. This would be a camera born of gentle fire, trees, and a 17th C level of technology, sawn, filed and polished with such tranquillity that the robin on the garden fence would feel happy to sit and watch.
Haste
The sun was shining on the workbench and I fabricated in t-shirt conditions, to the continuous background sounds of the woodpecker and blackbird. With this clemency came a new haste though – would the Isabella camera be ready in time for Isabella at her best? With impatience fighting perfectionism, I paused at more than one point, considering whether temporary sections in MDF might not save me enough time to ensure nothing was missed of the precious pilgrimage. All I could dream of was my date with Isabella, and the distant, languid late spring spent photographing at leisure with whatever luxurious refinements time would bring to the camera, was impossibly far off. A kind of hurried perfectionism won and I planed on, thin oak shavings carpeting the garden with sandy hues and pleasant perfume. The rack and pinion focusing mechanism was a little tricky to construct and unable to obtain brass components I ended up used nylon ones for this largely hidden part, which are less durable and precise than I’d like but which I’ll replace later. I cut grooves for the focus mechanism with the narrow cutter on the plough plane.
Curtains
With some disbelief, I finally arrived at the point of tackling the bellows. Everything else seemed to work, albeit in a slightly sticky and recalcitrant way, but it was still difficult to assess photographic performance at this stage. I rummaged through boxes with feverish cannibal eyes, putting numerous perfectly wearable garments in jeopardy – waterproof trousers, a black shirt, a velvet tie. All were held up to the sun, laid out and measured. Then I remembered the black velvet curtains I’d refused to throw away when we moved into our old flat – clearly as vitally useful a photographic backdrop as they were Goth furnishings. The velvet side went on the inside and the bag bellows were made in two halves, hastily joined with superglue and un-hemmed seams. A masterful 17th C tailor would have been aghast. Until the first real test, I was convinced that either some unanticipated internal obstruction would mar performance or impossible levels of flare and internal reflections. I used matt black barbeque paint (as recommended by telescope makers) for inner metal surfaces and the velvet bellows would help as well, and once again experimenting with new techniques I finished the bare oak with Danish oil, giving a slight sheen and water-resistant finish.
I used matt black barbeque paint (as recommended by telescope makers) for inner metal surfaces and the velvet bellows would help as well, and once again experimenting with new techniques I finished the bare oak with Danish oil, giving a slight sheen and water-resistant finish.
Finally in a frenzy of tiny screws and dusty velvet I had everything assembled – everything but the tripod mount. I’d always wondered what the standard size of tripod screw was as it didn’t look metric to my scrutinising eyes. ¼ 20 UNC was the answer, which sounded extremely exotic. In a screw zoo, this one would be hiding behind a log while visitors peered through the glass with disappointment wondering if they could just make out the end of the tail. I picked a nut out of one of my very many boxes of useful things I can’t throw away and tried it on my tripod plate. It spun on perfectly. Quickly, before it dropped between the floorboards or spontaneously metamorphosed into a different kind of nut, I brazed it onto a stainless steel plate and fitted it onto the now-varnished camera base.
Grinding glass
I stand by my collection of moderately sized things that don’t work – from an old security camera I picked up a year ago, I took, in addition to many tiny gem-like achromatic lenses for telescopes, microscopes and hoarding, a flat piece of glass, about 8cm square. I ground it cautiously on some sandpaper – not a scratch. I tried wet-and-dry paper, both dry and wet – still perfectly clear and scratch free. Why are photographers so worried about scratching their lenses? Finally, I rubbed a coarse oilstone on it, reflecting as I did so on all the photographers nervously eyeing up pristine, untouchable cameras in camera shops, things of desire and lust, to pitifully justify having spent impossible sums of money on. The oilstone left a few deep and unsightly scratches in an otherwise clear field.
I ransacked the house again, looking at stationary. I knew I’d seen some plastic document folders that were white and translucent. In the end, I dug out a piece of stage lighting diffuser which I sandwiched between the scratched, non-ground glass and a plastic Fresnel magnifier. Isabella season was probably past its best and if I was going to get there at all I needed to work as fast as possible. I dug out the remaining parts of one of the chopping boards and quickly put together the ground glass back, in the form of a functional prototype. One of the main concepts behind my design was to make the removable ground glass back so deep that it matched the sensor position, set back by the flange distance plus the sliding adapter. This would mean the actual frame of the camera’s rear standard would be about halfway between the lens and the focal plane, which didn’t seem like too much of a problem. In the end, the grey plastic back looked a lot like the very medium format digital backs that this camera is designed to imitate. Keen to maximise their profit margins, I’m sure Phase One and Hasselblad get through a lot of chopping boards.
I ran some tests in the living room to measure the field of view and make masks for the two formats, and other than a little difficulty obtaining focus across the field with the Mamiya lenses (perhaps I should have done without the front swing) the camera did seem to work. It was slow and cumbersome and needed a plethora of hands to operate, but as I told myself, this was what it was meant to do. I’m sure I felt the same way the first time I tried a 5x4 camera. Finally, I took the back apart again and took the glass back to the wet-and-dry paper in the garden. I ground stoically in the rain for half an hour and in the end, little patches of matt glass grew and covered the screen, pristine like a wave-polished pebble, but for the big scratches left by the oilstone. I re-assembled, emptied my camera bag of clean black gadgets and re-packed it with part of an oak tree, a small fraction of a steam locomotive bound to a chopping board and a group of mismatched lenses that cowered in the recesses, unsure why they were suddenly living together. Then I set my alarm clock for 4am.
Today’s end frame photograph was taken in 2010 by Bernhard Fuchs in Laimbach, Austria. The picture is simply called “fruit trees”.
The scene shows approximately fifteen different fruit trees in a snowy morning landscape. The trees stand like dancing black sculptures in the white snow, whilst in the background to the left, we can see a pine forest on a hill gently fading away into the horizon. There in the distance, the sun seems to be rising up, covering the white landscape with an orange light that gets entangled by the countless branches of the trees at the top of the image. Looking closer at the picture you can see little erratic footprints between some of the trees.
This photograph is part of Bernhard Fuchs Farms-Series (published in 2011 by Walther König). In this body of work, the artist took pictures of farms and their surroundings in the rural community of Helfenberg in Upper Austria.
Fuchs (born 1972) grew up in the area but later studied photography at the academy of arts Düsseldorf and later at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. He spends most of the year in Germany, yet his entire artistic activity revolves around the area of his childhood and youth, the Mühlviertel. His photographic engagement with the area dates back to 1994 and is still ongoing. So far he has created 7 distinct bodies of works that were also published.
Kodachrome,
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Paul Simon
Aireyholme Lane Wood At the entrance to a wood I know and love, it is the ivy on the young trees here that always catches my eye. The serpentine stems of ivy slowly strangling its host and slightly menacing, epitomises wildwood for me.
Paul Simon’s immortal lyrics reflect the near-universal cultural positivity around the summer months for (almost) everyone.
For perhaps twenty years I tried to avoid the greens of summer like the proverbial chromatic plague. July in particular was a month when any energy I had left in our eighteen hours or so of daylight was devoted to coastal photography.
Everyone loves the long hot summer days, the short, warm nights, the bright greens of summer…everyone it seems, except grumpy old landscape photographers!
I have always been a big fan of photography books, so it was no surprise that not long after graduating from photography school in 1981, I was asked to work on my first international book on China with the writer Han Su Yin in 1985, this was quickly followed by a book on North and South Korea in 1987 (still the only photography book on the two countries as far as I know), followed by a book on the four seasons of Japan in 1990.
The idea of working in a book form as opposed to just working on photography features with magazines, (which is also something I have done for most of my photographic career), means you can really get your teeth into a subject, sometimes spending months at a time continually working on the one project.
Waitaki Dam Wall This was taken looking towards the top of the Waitaki Dam during a howling nor-westerly wind, which gets funnelled through the valley from the Southern Alps. The curvature of the top of the dam wall created a great graphic curve within the frame. Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS II USM @ 400mm 1/1000 sec, f/8, ISO 200
The result is that you get to produce a body of work that is visually cohesive both in its narrative as well as its visual style. Back before digital, working with Kodachrome 64, we purchased a batch of film that guaranteed every frame used in the book had the same feel to it in terms of colour balance, contrast and grain.
The idea of a visual continuity in the book form has continued right through my career and is still evident in my latest series of smaller self-published books, supporting my desire to create a visual cohesiveness within the context of a book.
It's never just a subject that ties the work together, it's also the visual style you choose to use that does it. The choice to use colour, (either loud or quiet) or monochrome, (either hard or soft), is initially dictated by the subject and how you feel about it.
It is never just that simple either, as the stylistic decisions you need to decide on also involves the graphic design of the book as well script and typeface used. As visual communicators, it's our task to have at least an opinion about these things. If you can't do these things yourself then you need to work with a graphic designer you have empathy with who can listen to you and understand your aesthetic.
New Toilets A late afternoon visit to the end of the Tekapo-Pukaki canal, revealed two spanking new toilets that looked like a couple of alien space craft had just landed. Maybe there was a doctor inside one? It was just a matter of waiting until the angle of the sun reflected off both doors to make the shot take off. Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 IS II USM @ 56mm 1/160sec, f/11, ISO 100
Mt Cook from Ohau B Power Station Having previously photographed Mt Cook from all around the Mackenzie Basin, I found it very refreshing to find and make this photo of it in a way I had never seen. What attracted my eye was the very strong, metallic man-made, black structure of the dam’s gantry, which also acted as a frame around the iconic Mount Cook (New Zealand highest mountain). Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS II USM @ 278mm 1sec, f/22, ISO 100
This series of photographs are a part of a project that was first fully realised during what I refer to as the 'Covid 19 production period' in 2020. With the lockdown here in New Zealand, (brief as it was compared to everywhere else in the world), it gave me time and space to sit down, reflect and more thoroughly analyse my more recent photographs. It didn't take much time to realise that I was now making more photographs than ever of man-made structures in the landscape rather than just the landscape itself.
It didn't take much time to realise that I was now making more photographs than ever of man-made structures in the landscape rather than just the landscape itself.
This resulted in the compilation of this series into a book that I titled 'Southern Manscapes', which has nothing to do with what the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of 'manscape' is, which is: - 'to remove or cut a man's body hair to improve his appearance'. Instead, it is about man's influence on the visual aesthetic of the landscapes in which we were now living.
The decision to shoot in monochrome with high contrast and a red filter in camera for this series was dictated by the subjects, which were distinctly harsh and graphic in form and content.
This was a huge change in thinking from my previous book with my wife & photographic artist Jackie Ranken titled 'Scenes from the Lounge', which was a body of work we had taken from our lounge while living in the picturesque town of Queenstown in the south of the South Island over a period of ten years.
This was taken while driving on the Godley Peaks back road in winter. It's only after a very heavy snow fall like this that the landscape becomes very clean and white. Only the man-made features are left visible, creating patterns and shapes that suggest the landscape beneath. Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS II USM @ 188mm 1/320 sec, f/11, ISO 320
That book was full on in colour and highly emotive in its landscape subjects.
In this part of the country, even though it still contained exceptional natural landscapes, it has been hugely modified to produce hydroelectricity. Man's influence on the landscape here is obvious and almost unavoidable photographically.
With our move two hours further north into the intermountain basin of the Mackenzie near Mt Cook and in the heart of the Southern Alps, the landscape changed as did my response to it.In this part of the country, even though it still contained exceptional natural landscapes, it has been hugely modified to produce hydroelectricity. Man's influence on the landscape here is obvious and almost unavoidable photographically. I decided to embrace this and to make the transformation of the land and man's influence on it the subject of the photographs. Monochrome was the only medium that gave the photographs the feeling I wanted.
At first glance, these man-made objects are totally incongruous to the landscapes in which they sit. Canals have been etched into and onto the valleys that are so obvious that they can be seen from outer space. Power pylons march across the landscape like a revolution, their patterns and shapes are the opposite of the natural landscape in which they stride. They catch and reflect light in a totally different way and are somewhat discordant and alien (being made up of straight lines, harsh edges and highly reflective surfaces) as opposed to the soft curves and subtle textures of the natural landscape around them. Man-made lakes fill the valleys and dams stop their natural flow.
Aircraft Fuselage Looking somewhat alien and totally out of context to any landscape, I found this angry-bird looking fuselage parked on the back of the trailer at the Pukaki airport in the Mackenzie Basin. When I made this image, it was sitting all by itself in the middle of nowhere. Not long after making this image, it was gone forever. Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 IS II USM @ 105mm 1/200 sec, f/11, ISO 100
Through the making of this book, I have come to believe there is a visual aesthetic in here that many photographers try to avoid or totally ignore. Instead, I decided to try and let them sing in places where they have had no voice and to create a visual harmony where they appear to be discordant.
The book is already about to go into its second printing and with this comes a dilemma, as I now have many more 'Manscapes' that I want to include as well. The first printing also contained sub-series that I titled 'Vanishing landscapes', which were about man's influence on the landscape that were somewhat impermanent and were one by one disappearing without anyone really noticing. I have included just a couple of these in this selection to show what I'm talking about.
The first printing also contained a sub-series that I titled 'Vanishing landscapes', which were about man's influence on the landscape that were somewhat impermanent and were one by one disappearing without anyone really noticing.
They are man-made things that you see and say to yourself 'one day I must stop and photograph that' and then one day you drive past and it has disappeared, fallen down or is somehow different. You can't get that moment back and it's assigned just to a memory.
My thinking now is that I will separate this series out from 'Manscapes' and create a second book just about 'Vanishing Landscapes' and leave 'Manscapes' as a growing volume by itself that will become replenished with each new printing. In a way, this would make each printing a limited edition!
I think it's more important to keep producing and sharing than it is to conform to the normal convensions of publishing.
Most of these images, as I indicated earlier, were first realised as monochromes in camera, as I shoot both jpeg and raw. I feel that shooting monochrome in camera helps me visualise the graphic forms better and gives me a sketch pad of what was in my mind at the time of making the image. Consequently, all images have been reprocessed from the raw in Capture One 20 software as Black and White tiff files and then outputted through Photoshop for printing.
Winter Power PylonWhat caught my eye when making this image in the Mackenzie basin, was the over-whelming dominance nature shows over what appears to be a tiny and insignificant power pylon that is none the less at least 30 metres high. It’s the black shapes of the pylon against the white mist behind, that made the image stand out.Canon 5 D Mark III, Canon EF 300mm, f/4 IS USM1/640 sec, f/8, ISO 100
Dunstan Range Vines Nearing the top end of Lake Dunstan, I couldn’t help but stop to photograph these grape vines. It’s only in the early morning, when the protective fences are backlit that the silhouettes of the vines stand out against the white of the fences. The light only lasted a few minutes before disappearing altogether, making the scene a non-photograph once more. Canon 5DS, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS II USM @ 56mm 1/800 sec, f/8, ISO 200
Aircraft Fuselage Looking somewhat alien and totally out of context to any landscape, I found this angry-bird looking fuselage parked on the back of the trailer at the Pukaki airport in the Mackenzie Basin. When I made this image, it was sitting all by itself in the middle of nowhere. Not long after making this image it was gone forever. Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 IS II USM @ 105mm 1/200 sec, f/11, ISO 100
Onslow Fishing Crib What made this shot interesting for me, was that there was no glass in the central window frame at that time of shooting. This made the view outside just a little brighter and obvious than through the other frames. I just waited for the storm on the horizon to reach the centre of the frame to create a visual balance and interest. (The next time I visited there was new glass in the window and everything had changed). Canon 5DS, Canon EF 28-70mm f/2.8 L USM @ 70mm 1/4 sec, f/22, ISO 100
New Toilets A late afternoon visit to the end of the Tekapo-Pukaki canal, revealed two spanking new toilets that looked like a couple of alien space craft had just landed. Maybe there was a doctor inside one? It was just a matter of waiting until the angle of the sun reflected off both doors to make the shot take off. Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 IS II USM @ 56mm 1/160sec, f/11, ISO 100
Mt Cook from Ohau B Power Station
Having previously photographed Mt Cook from all around the Mackenzie Basin, I found it very refreshing to find and make this photo of it in a way I had never seen. What attracted my eye was the very strong, metallic man-made, black structure of the dam’s gantry, which also acted as a frame around the iconic Mount Cook (New Zealand highest mountain).
Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS II USM @ 278mm
1sec, f/22, ISO 100
Fences & Poles This was taken while driving on the Godley Peaks back road in winter. It’s only after a very heavy snow fall like this that the landscape becomes very clean and white. Only the man-made features are left visible, creating patterns and shapes that suggest the landscape beneath. Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS II USM @ 188mm 1/320 sec, f/11, ISO 320
Pukaki Dam Spillway Luckily, I have a good friend in Twizel (the town we now live in) who knows things like when the dam is going to spill.It only does this when the water level in the lake is dangerously high and they need to release water in this manner so the lake doesn’t overflow for safety reasons. The rainbow was a lucky bonus. Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 IS II USM @ 24mm 1/80 sec, f/11, ISO 100
Saint Bathans Blue Lake Every time I have visited this location it has been different, not just because of the light or the weather but more so because of the changes in the landscape. This man-made valley is the result of gold mining, where the quartz rock has been washed away by high-powered sluicing guns revealing a gold seam below. Now that the gold is all gone, the valley has filled with water, forming a lake. The cliffs in the background are slowly eroding away from natural forces and will soon disappear forever. Canon 5DS, Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L USM @ 90mm 1/13 sec, f/16, ISO 100
Waitaki Dam Wall This was taken looking towards the top of the Waitaki Dam during a howling nor-westerly wind, which gets funnelled through the valley from the Southern Alps. The curvature of the top of the dam wall created a great graphic curve within the frame. Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS II USM @ 400mm 1/1000 sec, f/8, ISO 200
We published David's article about his exhibition 'Atlanic' in October 2020, of which some of the images are in this article. Living near the Atlantic ourselves, I share David's passion for the coastline. The words at the end of the interview really resonated with me:
"To hear the waves crash against the sheer walls, to see the gulls swooping down against white-foamed surf, and to feel the ocean spray, wet and cool against your face… that’s The Old Head”
David's background in graphic design and understanding of the tone of voice, detail and composition all play a part in the making of his images.
What sparked your passion for photography?
In all honesty, the answer is more ‘who’ than ‘what’. It was before the internet, before the digital revolution, and certainly before the advent of social media. My very first weekend at Glasgow School of Art in 1982 was spent on a photographic field trip to Culzean Castle, on the Ayrshire coast of Scotland. It was there that I first met Thomas Joshua Cooper, who headed up the Fine Art Photography department. I was immediately captivated by the euphoric intensity of his passion for photography as an art form. To this day I have met few people who are as genuinely dedicated to the art they produce. Prior to this meeting, I had never fully acknowledged photography as a true Art form. Thomas has been without compare - my greatest inspiration.
There is a long tradition of the figure in the landscape. Indeed, the very first landscapes in art were often backdrops to religious foreground scenes: Madonna figures for example, or saints, with a landscape setting for the action in the pictures. The landscape as the subject itself became more prominent during the early 16th century, especially in Dutch painting (‘landscape’ comes from the Dutch landschap, meaning a ‘region or tract of land’).
Classical landscapes, inspired by antiquity and ideals of pastoral beauty, were popular in Italy & France during the 17 and 18th centuries - think of Poussin or Lorrain with their paintings of shepherds in arcadian paradises. The rise of Romanticism, particularly in Northern Europe, emphasised wild landscape. The placing of a figure in the land was used to bring allegorical meaning to an image, to suggest emotion and drama.
Photography, of course, has borrowed from this tradition. Locating a figure in the scene is a common trope of landscape photography. Often this is simply to suggest scale. However, it can do much more, it can bring allegorical meaning to an image, and Mads Peter Iverson’s photograph of a man gazing out over the sea towards the Drangarnir stacks in the Faroe Islands is exactly such an image. This is not just a photo of the landscape, this is an image about the human condition and a desire for transcendence. It is as much about the inner aspirations of man, as it is about the fantastic landscape of the Faroes…
They say familiarity breeds contempt. Although I’m not sure that’s always true, or at least I hope it isn’t when I think about my wife and children…
However in my experience that can sometimes be true in regards to the landscape. The places on our doorstep are often the places where we hone our craft, the places we visit most due to how easy they are to get to (this has probably been truer than ever before, given the last year of restrictions we’ve had here in the UK). But can this regularity sow the seeds of insouciance?
This year marks 16 years since I moved to Newcastle in the North East of England and on my doorstep I’m blessed with many wonderful places to visit with a camera. From that list the Northumberland Coast is probably the most well-known, a place of pilgrimage for photographers across the country, drawn in by its rugged beauty. But during that time I have ebbed and flowed in how much I have shot year to year, the initial buzz of Bamburgh when I first picked up a camera soon waned before it returned as I discovered new places that didn’t involve cloning out other photographers afterwards.
Some of those places involve wonderful outcrops of rock, often quite well-known now as well, such as Howick, Rumbling Kern and Spittal Beach. I first visited them around nine-years-ago and while I still love to visit, there is the nagging thought in the back of my mind that I won’t manage to shoot anything much different to what I have already.
It has been hugely enjoyable to discover a beach on the opposite side of the country where I can take that love of detail and apply it to a fresh subject.
It’s easy to think of the camera as being a box that records what we see, but that is just the beginning. It’s not just what we include, but what we exclude. And we each see differently. The process of making a photograph is akin to a performance, with the photographer as conductor. It’s up to us to decide what we reveal, where we want the emphasis, how loud or quiet the instruments are, and if we want a solo… We lay the ground, we set the scene, but then – commentary, titles, captions, artist statements aside - it’s up to the viewer to make the interpretation (and this can be a function of how long they choose to spend with a piece).
If your intention is to create a fairy tale, rather than reality, how do you go about it? That is the way that Jasper Goodall thinks about his photographs. To transport the viewer into this world, he removes the familiar (light) and limits the effectiveness of the sense that we all rely on the most - our sight. The commonplace becomes newly strange, the unfamiliar a chasm; what we don’t see is part of the story and we fill the spaces with our imagination.
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 was born in Birmingham, UK, in 1973 and then moved south to study illustration at the University of Brighton. My mother was a political artist, photographer and curator, and my father an architect. I was guided by my father into illustration with the idea of there being more of a career at the end of study and after I graduated I began to pick up work as a commercial illustrator. I was young, into fashion and music, and my work back then reflected my interests. My early jobs were in editorial which in those days was all printed paper magazines. My big break came when I started working for The Face magazine which was kind of the font of all that was cool in the UK in terms of fashion and music and contemporary culture.
As I sit here, beginning to type out this essay, I look at the only coffee table photography book of Michael Kenna's which I own: Forms of Japan. This collection of over 300 of Kenna's photographs revolves around his work done throughout the years whilst in Japan. Included within the book are some of his most well-known and respected pieces he has ever created. It also just so happens to be the book that had introduced me to the intimacy, the delicacy, of his moody works. Though I had heard of him beforehand - being a black and white landscape photographer myself, it is rather difficult not to - my appreciation for his work was not as strong as it currently stands until I began flipping through this collection.
Due to the bulk of this book, it had taken me a solid week to flip through each of the pages, reading the introductions to each of the sections and the beautiful haikus which accompanied each photograph. The photographs which captured me the strongest were documented through the use of a sticky note, marking the pages for future reference, for future inspiration. When I arrived at page 166, however, I was taken aback. On the left-hand side of the spread stood a haiku by artist Matsuo Basho.
Look this way - I, too, am lonely Autumn dusk
Wow. Heart strings were tugged at immediately - and they still are. The connection I had with that simple poem was immediate. Never before had I felt what I feel when reading such a piece of writing.
Welcome to our 4x4 feature which is a set of four mini landscape photography portfolios submitted from our subscribers. Each portfolio consisting of four images related in some way.
Submit Your 4x4 Portfolio
Interested in submitting your work? We're on the lookout for new portfolios for the next few issues, so please do get in touch!
This collection of images was taken in a small area on Glen Maye (Glion Muigh in Manx, meaning luxuriant glen) beach, on the rocky western coast of the Isle of Man. I have chosen these four photos because of the positive story they tell of my development as a photographer over the past year. I arrived on the Isle of Man just before lockdown, moving here from London, to stay with my wife's family and we've been here ever since. This has represented an excellent opportunity to develop my craft and invest some real time in thinking about the kind of images I want to take, honing my compositions and generally making the sort of progress that only comes from putting the effort in to improve. Previously I had been largely restricted to occasional trips out of London to Scotland or surrounding coasts when I had the chance.
My experiences at Glen Maye provide a neat encapsulation of the improvements in my photography. Despite its fascinating geology, wonderfully textured and shaped rock and rich potential for creative composition, it is in fact quite a challenging place to photograph (or at least I find it so). Getting the optimal tide time, when waves are interacting most engagingly with the rocks and when somewhat unsightly seaweed is covered up, can only come from experience borne of repeat visits. In many places it is challenging to isolate features of interest and images can become somewhat cluttered.
Prior to this year I probably would have contented myself with taking relatively ill thought through snapshots at this location, but upon first arriving post-lockdown I realised that to really make the most of this area, I would have to work hard. This is an attitude I have tried to adopt consistently throughout these past twelve months and I am a much more satisfied photographer for it. I am also a happier one too, as knowing that I can return over and over again to the same spot much reduces the pressure to get images I am pleased with. I know I still have much to learn and many improvements to make. Perhaps in five years, I will look back on the photos I have submitted here and cringe. But for now, they represent where I am as a landscape photographer.
As a landscape photographer location means everything. And every now and then, you find an amazing spot that offers multiple views and subjects. After looking around on Google Maps I came across Moss Point in Laguna Beach, CA, looked at the forecast and the tides and decided to check it out. Although the beach is very small, I was pleasantly surprised with all the options for shots. Long, layered, sharp rock formations on the south end, tall rocks on the north end and plenty of smooth, weathered boulders in between.
One of my favourite things about finding a new location is watching how the light affects the landscape as it changes. As you can see, Moss Point didn’t disappoint. It had just stopped raining for a couple of days, very rare in Southern California, so I was hoping the clouds would stick around and bless me with a killer sunset. I spent the evening moving up and down the beach looking for compositions, taking several shots as the light dimmed and the sun began to set and then WOW, the sky lit up like it was on fire. Resulting in some of the best landscape photos I’ve ever taken.
I hope you enjoyed a little scenery from Southern California.
I have lived in my current house for over forty years. Many changes have been made over that time but the garden has remained essentially the same. My objective during this long year was to look with fresh eyes on something that had become invisible through familiarity and (weather permitting) create some interesting images.
Alconbury Brook is a tributary to the River Great Ouse that snakes around Huntingdon racecourse and through Hinchinbrooke Park (home to Oliver Cromwell’s family) before meeting the river at Brampton Mill. Given a reasonable amount of rain it regularly floods and creates opportunities for landscape photography in an otherwise rather uninspiring local natural landscape, particularly if the weather is icy or foggy.
It's part of my regular route to walk the dogs over the past 20 years, so assuming their patience – they have been known to jump into the water and then expect help getting out - I can take the opportunity to capture a few images. These images were captured in the winter of 2020/2021 after a lot of rain and they do convey the cold and dampness. The misty weather coincided with weekends for what turned out to be a peak in creative opportunities.
All four images are taken at locations over a stretch of Alconbury Brook each less than a few hundred yards apart over approx. 6 few weeks of winter; so represent a snapshot in time of that area.
The misty conditions helped separate the trees and brook from the background with the vegetation still showing the fast flowing floodwaters that had receded leaving the long dead vegetation.
I have a long term aim to complete a larger body of work focused on a slightly wider area. The lack of any traditional grand landscapes means it feels more of a challenge and often focuses on woodland and rivers. I definitely feel the need to progress from a single image to a project based creative process.
More and more my best work seems to have been monochrome conversions and in the bleakness of winter, of course, nature helps with that pre-visualisation.
Continuing our discussion about the vagaries of reality and truth in photography, Guy Tal and I start to talk a little about the way that it's easy to talk about some of these ideas in the abstract but almost impossible to define rules and criteria. Don't expect any easy answers to arise during our chat but it's only through articulating your ways of thinking that you get to understand the issues a little better. If you want to catch up with where we were, you can read part one below.
Tim Parkin (TP): You know we are organising the Natural Landscape Awards Competition at the moment and we have gone through the idea, this philosophy of the heap if you will. I did the same for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year and there is no boundary, there is no line you draw, it’s contextual. It’s to do with the zeitgeist, it’s to do with how cameras work, it’s to do with what’s possibly new or what’s going to happen in the future. We don’t know at the moment, so it’s all subjective.
For instance, in terms of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year, there were certain things which were on one side of the boundary or the other. A heap isn’t a single grain of sand, 500,000 grains of sand is a heap, absolutely.
Guy Tal (GT) Is twenty a heap?
TP: To an ant, yes. To a builder, certainly not.
GT: It’s a judgement call.
TP: You can make that judgement call and then when you go to the heap experts, they just have an argument about it.
GT: Don’t get me started on experts! That’s another thing in art, people claiming to be experts in some general sense when in fact they may come from a fairly narrow philosophical foundation. Many times, if you dig a little deeper you find that those foundations are entirely subjective and arbitrary. Certainly, you might be an expert on subject A that’s founded on some philosophy, but if my philosophy is different from yours, then it pulls the rug from under your feet. The very thing your expert judgement is founded on, is not relevant to me.
That’s another thing in art, people claiming to be experts in some general sense when in fact they may come from a fairly narrow philosophical foundation. Many times, if you dig a little deeper you find that those foundations are entirely subjective and arbitrary.
It’s OK to disagree in art. In fact, it’s one of the ways art grows: people disagree and argue and find creative ways to depart from the sensibilities of their day, and suddenly you have a new movement. A hundred years later, the new movement and the old movement both seem obvious. For example, nobody today will argue that impressionism is not a valid form of artistic painting. But when impressionism came about most of the art world, including the most powerful art institutions of the time, condemned and ridiculed impressionism. Today we read these old criticisms and laugh at those critics.
I first learned about Brent Doerzman (pronounced Doors Man) in 2010 when I was researching an article I was writing for my old Colorado mountaineering website. I wanted to feature the best Colorado landscape photographers but was very new to photography and needed some advice, so I went looking for it on the now defunct Google Plus site, which was an incredibly active photography platform back then. One of the names that kept getting mentioned repeatedly was Brent Doerzman, so I went to have a look at his website. At first glance, Brent’s website feels a tad outdated; however, once you start digging in you recognise that it contains an absolute gold mine of landscape photography in the form of trip reports.
One thing I quickly learned about Brent when I first started researching his work is that he was at the time strictly using 4”x5” film cameras to produce his work, which was impressive to me at the time, having been so new to photography. Fast forward to 2013 – I was finally ready to start exploring Colorado’s mountains with the sole purpose of photographing fall colour, a rite of passage of sorts for all landscape photographers residing in Colorado.
My work is rooted in the serenity I find in the sinuous elegance of organic forms. I photograph intuitively, guided by what I feel as much as what I see. Informed by a background in painting and art history, my images are layered digitally with colour and texture to manipulate the boundaries between the real and imagined and are often altered within the edition, honouring the variations. Printed on translucent vellum or kozo, these ethereal impressions are illuminated with white gold, moon gold, silver, or 24k gold on the verso, creating a luminosity that varies as the viewer’s position and ambient light transition. My process infuses the artist’s hand and suffuses the treasured subjects with the implied spirituality and sanctity of the precious metals, echoing the moment of capture and ensuring each print is a unique object of reverence.
An Evening With The Moon, 2018
How did the project develop?
I did not start out to create a series — it has evolved organically. I simply make work about what I’m drawn to. I now recognise that art and nature have always provided refuge for me. Thinking back to my childhood in Memphis, I often sought solace and solitude beneath the swaying branches of the venerable weeping willow in the far corner of our yard as the light faded, trying to figure out how I fit into this world.
Some of you may remember David’s name in the context of the campaign against the planning application for run-of-river hydro developments within the designated wildland areas of Glen Etive in 2020. As well as writing, David photographs, teaches and yes, campaigns, on other matters too. It would be easy to think that passionate advocacy for nature stems from early exposure to it, but in David’s case, this was limited. That’s clearly no longer so, and as well as changing his outlook on life, it’s led to a new career and a new home. He talks about photography as a tool for investigation, rather than being about possession.
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?
Hi and thanks for asking me to contribute. I currently live in the Cairngorms with my young family and work across Scotland. I’m lucky to have a mix of work including photographic teaching and guiding, a little commercial work for local businesses, as well as writing and photographing stories for the outdoors press, environmental organisations and newspapers.
None of this was a given and the road has been circuitous! I grew up on a new build estate in Wrexham and then the sub/urban fringes of South London. Horizons were limited in more ways than one. Education was a way out and I was the first of my family to go to university. I was lucky that my mum supported my escape plan despite pressures to the contrary.
I’m not formally trained in the arts, but I’ve always had broad interests, especially where the arts and politics intersect. I studied social sciences at Leeds at the time when the sociology department was co-chaired by a Polish survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and a feminist criminologist and lawyer. Music was my real passion, and over time the mixing desk and sampler became my instruments of choice. After a decade working as a cinema projectionist and audio engineer across arts venues in London in the late 90s and early 2000s, I retrained as a community music practitioner and eventually started my own small charity working in a rehabilitative arts setting with unaccompanied asylum seekers. It was easily the most useful I’d been as a musician. It also gave me new skills in fundraising and third sector organization, which enabled my move to Edinburgh a decade ago. We moved to the Highlands about 4 years ago.
When I was a child, I knew nothing about the concept of creativity. When I was a young adult, I knew nothing about the concept of creativity. I did not think about it; I did not analyse it. I just poured all my emotions – the happiness, the fears, the sadness, the loneliness, the insecurities - into my poems, stories, and fairy tales. It was what it was.
Was I a creative child? Was I a creative young person? I probably was but what does “being a creative person” mean? Is there a creativity gene? Are we born creative – or not creative? For a long time, I had thought I had lost my creativity and was looking to find it again. The harder I looked, the more inaccessible it seemed to become. For a long time, I had identified being creative as producing something beautiful, interesting, unique and beat myself up because I seemed to have lost that ability. I couldn’t “create” anymore, so I had lost my creativity.
After years of work and care for my sick and old parents, I was finally confronted with myself again when my mother died. I had to accept the challenge of being “me” again and not living other people’s lives. That threw me off track for a while.
When I finally took up a camera for the first time, it was not so much for producing something beautiful, inspiring, and unique. It was about engaging with nature that gave me so much solace and peace, and I just wanted to share what I loved.
Create in your mind
During the past years, I have come to realise that the creative process is not necessarily linked to the “creation” of a product.
For me, creativity means engaging with a situation, internalising a sensual experience making it my own. The world we experience is not an objective truth but a perception of reality filtered through emotions, moods, and beliefs. Creativity starts when our mind is open to take in whatever comes through these filters – without thinking, without analysing.
Creativity happens when we don’t rein in our minds with rules and regulations but just let them go and do their own thing. Because our senses are continuously adjusting to our state of mind and our moods, there can never be one “default setting” for triggering a creative process.
Creativity happens when we don’t rein in our minds with rules and regulations but just let them go and do their own thing. Because our senses are continuously adjusting to our state of mind and our moods, there can never be one “default setting” for triggering a creative process. Creativity happens in my mind without the need for a tool like a brush, a pen, or a camera.
This became very clear to me last July. With COVID 19 restrictions being alleviated in summer, a friend and I decided to spend a few days in Venice. We wanted to visit the city without the usual masses of tourists and take some photos. Long story made short, all my gear was stolen on the night train and I ended up in Venice with only my phone. Of course, I was devastated at first, but then I decided to not let this spoil the experience for me. We explored the city, we made photos. I made photos with my phone. And while I was taking in everything that inspired me, I realised that I was no less a photographer, and the creative process was not less intense because I didn’t have a camera. Even without a phone, even without a piece of paper to draw or write on, even without my voice to tell the tale, the creative process would have been the same because it entirely happened in my mind. The very event that had robbed me of my precious tools made it very clear to me that creativity was completely independent of tools and techniques.
Tools only come into play when you become aware of this creative process and you want to externalise what your mind has come up with by processing reality with your emotional filters in place.
If you have never produced any “creative” work of art in your life, this doesn’t mean that there is no creativity. Whenever we engage with our environment, whenever we react to a situation, whenever we try to find a solution for a problem, creativity happens. Some of us find an outlet for how our mind is coping with experiences in the form of writing, painting, making photos, or whatever. For others, it just means deciding how to go on with their lives, how to solve a problem, how to tackle a task. That doesn’t make the creative process less valuable, just less tangible for others.
Make – don’t plan
For me, the outlet I choose is photography, together with the occasional writing of poetry or short prose. My creative process is always triggered by the interplay of a sensual experience and an open mind. This sensual experience can be positive or negative, a situation or an emotion. It can stretch over a longer period or happen in the blink of an eye. For me, these experiences are often strongest when I am out in nature because that’s when I feel most in touch with emotions and sensations. However, the creative process can only happen if I don’t suppress my feelings and keep my mind open and susceptible to their influence.
For me, these experiences are often strongest when I am out in nature because that’s when I feel most in touch with emotions and sensations. However, the creative process can only happen if I don’t suppress my feelings and keep my mind open and susceptible to their influence.
Whenever I plan to produce something “creative” it won’t work. Whenever I try too hard, I get disappointed. Creativity is nothing that can be planned or forced. Going for the ultimate creative photography or post-processing technique just for the sake of producing a creative work of art will, in the long run, kill creativity. When alternative photography and processing techniques become an end in themselves, being used, again and again, the results become predictable and repetitive.
Creative photography for me means: to look, feel, engage, let the photo grow inside of me, let the photo tell me what it wants to be. No preconception, no big plans. The result might be new and surprising even for me.
When I was invited to contribute to End Frame, I immediately knew that my choice would be a Don McCullin image. Now, landscapes are probably not the first thing that comes to mind when recalling the work of Don McCullin, who is generally best known for having spent a lifetime photographing in conflict situations such as Vietnam, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Beirut, Cambodia, and many other countries; not forgetting his portrayals of poverty in the north of England and elsewhere.
McCullin considers it insulting to be called a “war photographer” and has spoken of the distress he has suffered through the frequent exposure to the horrors of conflict. Since many photographers consider their hobby (or for a professional, their “personal work”), a form of therapy, giving relief from whatever stressful situations they experience, perhaps it is not surprising that a portion of landscape work has found its’ way into his published work, most notably in his 2018 book, simply titled “The Landscape”.
However, McCullin’s landscapes are not obviously oases of beauty in a desert of gritty social reality. Shot on black and white film, they are generally low-key, sometimes grainy, often shot in winter, featuring bare trees and muddy fields. One or two of the images invite a comparison, to my mind, between the fields near his Somerset home and a scene of trench warfare.
I took some time to select just one image from this substantial book, but eventually settled on “Dorset, 1986”.
It was a pleasure to host Joe Cornish for a few days at the start of June and he had just come back from a trip with his son Sam and Alex Nail. Alex was at the back end of a couple of weeks leading clients up and down the mountains in Torridon and they all walked into the Fisherfield Forest to spend a few days camping, hoping to get some photographic opportunities. Joe had just done some initial processing of the images and I was keen to see what he'd come back with. I hope you like them as much as I did.
I loved all things creative as a child. Whether I was drawing pictures of whales and ocean scenes or writing fantastical stories about wizards and werewolves, I was always able to entertain myself with the wild musings of my imagination.
As an adult, I envy the abundance of imaginative ideas I had when I was a kid, outlandish and immature as most of them certainly were. Nowadays, a day job and other personal responsibilities demand attention, often leaving little mental energy for creative pursuits, even when I make the time for them. As a result, sometimes it feels like I am stuck in a creative rut — a feeling that I know many artists are familiar with.
Unfortunately, I have not discovered a simple, easy solution for becoming creatively unstuck. Over time, however, as I’m sure many others have done, I have come to realise that some strategies are more effective than others. As a former student of cognitive science, I was primed to ask myself: why is this? I dug into the literature from psychology and neuroscience, believing that a better understanding of how creativity unfolds in our brains might help shed light on this question, and maybe even illuminate ways to improve my strategies for breaking loose when I am creatively stuck.
Nowadays, a day job and other personal responsibilities demand attention, often leaving little mental energy for creative pursuits, even when I make the time for them.
My findings confirmed what I already knew: brains are complicated.
I won’t dwell on the details, but at a very high level, creativity is a process that involves the sophisticated interplay of two mechanisms: idea generation and idea evaluation. Normally, the brain networks that support these mechanisms are complementary in that when one activates, the other tends to deactivate, and vice versa. However, neuroscientists have observed increased communication among the regions associated with these networks when research participants are engaged in creative tasks, suggesting that creativity may arise as a result of employing these networks in a cooperative manner. Thus, we can think of creativity as the result of these two processes working together in harmony: spontaneous generation of ideas in conjunction with the critical evaluation of those ideas.
With this model of creativity in mind, I have found that thinking about which process is faltering, idea generation or idea evaluation, can help explain why some strategies for dealing with creative ruts are more effective than others. It has also helped me formulate new ways to improve upon those strategies in the future.
Jumpstarting the Idea Generator
The first process involved in creativity, idea generation, is related to the ability to come up with new ideas, something that I was incapable of doing during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite my desire and repeated attempts to do so.
By now, we are painfully familiar with the changes to our lives brought about by the pandemic.
By now, we are painfully familiar with the changes to our lives brought about by the pandemic. Back in Spring of 2020, however, those changes were novel, and like many others, I was struggling to cope with increasing uncertainty about the future compounded by a restricted new lifestyle.
Back in Spring of 2020, however, those changes were novel, and like many others, I was struggling to cope with increasing uncertainty about the future compounded by a restricted new lifestyle. Even as winter turned gave way to spring and the world around me came back to life, I had no artistic motivation. Forced outings to my backyard with my camera ended in frustration and ever-deepening ennui.
When an afternoon rain left the backyard foliage fresh and sparkling one day, I decided to embrace the symbolism by wandering out once more. I affixed my little 60 millimetre macro lens to my camera and decided in advance that I wouldn’t even attempt to create anything worth keeping. My goal was far more humble: to open up the aperture on my lens and practise manually focusing with a shallow depth of field and no tripod. I knew that the lingering droplets would serve as excellent targets for this exercise.
I began playfully exploring among the various grasses in my backyard, searching for sparkling beads of water. Upon finding a good candidate, I would peer through the viewfinder, get as close as possible, and hold as steady as I could while I quickly adjusted the focus and made the shot without dwelling on composition or technicalities. Then it was on to the next glimmer that caught my eye.
Shifting my mindset away from the pressure to be creative lowered the mental barriers that had been in my way. Without the internal pressure to produce something, my anxieties were able to take a backseat to my imagination, and before I knew it, I was finding ways to put to pixels the feelings of bleak isolation I had been experiencing.
By embracing a different set of restrictions than I was facing in the outside world — namely, limiting myself to my backyard, using a single prime lens, manually focusing, and shooting without a tripod — I was able to reframe the challenge I was facing: my goal was not to create something original, but simply to make images of dewdrops that were in perfect focus within this set of constraints.
I was suddenly full of ideas about what I wanted to communicate with my images and how I would do it. I returned to the backyard with my macro lens after a few more rainy days during the spring to add to my growing collection. My series Collective Isolation, featuring some of the images you see here, came about organically through this experience.
So how was I able to go from uninspired doom and gloom to motivated resolve? In a way, by tricking myself into generating new ideas. Preoccupation and worry had been consuming my mind, leaving me unmotivated and creatively empty. By embracing a different set of restrictions than I was facing in the outside world — namely, limiting myself to my backyard, using a single prime lens, manually focusing, and shooting without a tripod — I was able to reframe the challenge I was facing: my goal was not to create something original, but simply to make images of dewdrops that were in perfect focus within this set of constraints. It was a modest goal, but one that had the ultimate effect of allowing me to get out of my own way, to explore new ideas by indulging in my curiosities and finding a way to express how I was feeling through them.
Evaluating Ideas on My Own Terms
The second process involved in creativity, idea evaluation, has to do with our ability to identify and advance ideas that have potential, and recognising when an idea is not worth additional mental energy. For me, this process is often tied closely to self-doubt. When I am unable to create something that I believe is representative of my artistic vision, preferences, or capabilities, I characterise the problem as one impacting idea evaluation.
This kind of creative obstacle can be insidious, creeping into our artistic faculties so quietly, so gradually, that it isn’t immediately recognised. And in my experience, idea evaluation is particularly susceptible to external factors like the influence of social media, corrupting our self-expression and leading many photographers, especially newcomers, to doubt their work.
I myself have gone through this, and unsurprisingly, in my early days on social media, I found that my desire for acceptance and affirmation on the platform was detrimental to my art. I was creating for algorithms rather than for myself. If an image didn’t “perform” on social media, I thought of it as a failure, which in turn made me hesitant to share images that were actually meaningful to me. If one of those images didn’t garner enough likes, how would that reflect on me as an artist?
Of course, I wasn’t consciously aware of the trap I had fallen into. And even when I began to see social media for the game that it is, I still found myself hesitant to pursue my own creative path and create work that had meaning to me. If I didn’t believe that an image would do well on social media, I hesitated to even create it. Social media had left a mark on the way I evaluated my own ideas.
Looking back, I can now recognise that I wasn’t evaluating my work on my own terms, but rather, trying to cater to the nebulous preferences of the masses and obscure algorithms. These considerations were distracting from my own intuitions, cluttering my mind and making the idea evaluation phase of the creative process even more difficult. The noise was drowning out the signal of my own voice.
Of course, I wasn’t consciously aware of the trap I had fallen into. And even when I began to see social media for the game that it is, I still found myself hesitant to pursue my own creative path and create work that had meaning to me.
By slowly shifting my attention away from the performance of my work and learning to focus instead on the social aspect of social media — using it to build community and forge new connections with other artists — I was finally able to grant myself the permission I needed to embrace and pursue my own vision. I learned how to be honest with myself when I wasn’t evaluating my work on my own terms and started relying more and more on my own instincts as an artist. While it’s not always easy, I now try to focus on creating for myself, something that I am fortunate enough to have the luxury of doing.
Rediscovering Your Inner Child
So why do certain strategies for overcoming creative ruts work better than others? I’m not sure I’ve provided the answer here, but maybe I have at least started the right conversation.
If science is clear about one thing, it’s that there’s probably not a simple way to rediscover the unbridled imagination that we had when we were children. Even under ideal circumstances, being creative is challenging. Internal and external factors in our busy, stressful adult lives can make it even harder, creating obstacles to creativity that feel impossible to overcome.
But my hope is that the examples provided in this article illustrate how thinking of creativity as a process of idea generation and evaluation might help to form a framework for overcoming future obstacles to creativity.
It’s been forty years since I left college and stepped out into the bright world of employment. When producing photographs to commission for magazines and advertising clients, your job is simply to acquire pleasing likenesses of faces and places to a deadline. All the “arty nonsense” I’d studied for my degree was almost immediately shoved to one side by the urgencies of work. It was exciting but also stressful. Decades later, I still have nightmares about turning up for a job having forgotten my film… or the camera battery… or lights… or arriving late… or going to the wrong address... or all of these things together on a single job!
The imperative to acquire images makes perfect sense in the world of commercial photography. Your livelihood depends upon each image fulfilling the clients’ brief. And if not, well there’s always another photographer (just out of college or a friend of the client’s) who will do it for less money and sometimes better.
I have long been puzzled by the sometimes aggressively acquisitive attitude of non-professional landscape photographers since there’s no client breathing down their necks.
However, I have long been puzzled by the sometimes aggressively acquisitive attitude of non-professional landscape photographers since there’s no client breathing down their necks.
A recent article on fstoppers.com highlighted, once again, the issue of photographers battling to secure images at a honeypot location.
In an excellent, humorous, piece of writing, Brian Christianson tells the fictional tale of a scuffle between photographers, just after dawn at Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park. This resulted in broken bones and $50,000 of broken gear. In the final paragraph he notes that all the ensuing fuss on social media and in the press, far from putting visitors off, resulted in a huge increase of people wanting to see sunrise through the arch.
The jockeying for position at this location is not a particularly new thing, although there are definitely more people visiting now than even twenty years ago.
My one and only visit to Mesa Arch was in 2001 on a photography tour co-led with Joe Cornish. Joe had been at least once before. We rose early for the 45min drive from Moab to the Arch, arriving well before dawn. Joe had warned us to expect other photographers, but we hoped with a 4am departure that we would be the first. A group of Germans, prototypically, had got there before us. Our party wove themselves between their tripod positions and I stood to one side. Clients come first, after all. I set up my Technika and awaited the sunrise. One of the other group came and stood next to my camera position. Just as the sun rose, he moved in front of my camera to make his images. Annoying… but I saw no reason to start a fight next to a thousand foot drop. He eventually finished and I made a couple of exposures which I was quite pleased with. My briefly interrupted view was nothing to get too het up about.
The size of the crowd (then or now) wouldn’t matter if everyone were there just to admire the view, to drink in the moment. (Although, imagine if the audience contained documentary photographers; what an opportunity!) But I challenge any of you to say, hand on heart, that you haven’t felt a frisson of annoyance because someone has got “in your way” or – even worse – walked on your pristine snow, mud, sand.
Many of the people in the recent battle would consider themselves landscape photographers. The rest might not define themselves as Instagrammers or vloggers or bloggers, but they were almost certainly planning to post their images on social media. Perhaps they simply wanted to show how wonderful their lives are or they were incentivised by ‘Likes’, craving a dopamine hit. Just don’t get in the way; Hell hath no fury like an addict denied their fix.
It’s also important to note that some of the participants in the recent ‘battle’ were paying photo tour leaders a considerable amount of money for the privilege of making images in the company of those leaders. This no doubt fed into the leader’s less than charitable response to someone wandering in front of his group to make iPhone panoramas.
All these people were united in wanting to capture a view unspoilt by the presence of fellow humans. Unless, of course, it was a selfie with (or without) their significant other. They might have been unable to verbalise their desire but basically they wanted to acquire an image of Eden before the fall from grace. They say the camera never lies when in fact it almost always lies by omission. The most frequently told lie is that you might be able to visit these places on your own. That deception is quite an incentive to travel. This humorous advert from 100% Pure New Zealand is a great example of the likely truth. https://youtu.be/Trs-isdu4eE
This is far from the only example of the acquisitive side of landscape photography. In a 2013 article for On Landscape I mention the regular autumnal dawn scraps at Maroon Bells in Colorado (Tripod Wars). Similar high tension situations also regularly arise in Zion N.P., where photographers cluster to snap The Watchman at sunset, and in Yosemite in February for the “Natural fire fall” at Horsetail Falls. Rangers at the latter location have taken the unprecedented step of closing two of the viewpoints and requiring photographers to walk for a mile-and-a-half in order to thin the crowd.
This isn’t a new phenomenon, although it has become more intense. Even before the digital era there were locations that proved so popular with photographers that access had to be limited.
This isn’t a new phenomenon, although it has become more intense. Even before the digital era there were locations that proved so popular with photographers that access had to be limited. Frederick H Evans’ famous image “A Sea of Steps” inspired an army of copycats. This forced Wells Cathedral to take action to stop countless tripod feet eroding stone at a faster rate than generations of sandaled priests and choristers.
Not all – perhaps not even the majority – but many of these people are consuming these locations rather than communing with them; they are treating places as products. This is perhaps unsurprising given that, in the West, we are trained to become consumers from a very young age. (Sadly, I feel that many landscape photographers treat place as product on all of their photographic expeditions, not just the ones to popular locations.)
In Tripod Wars, I proposed that photography at honeypot locations can bear a similarity to competitive sport. I wonder now if it is not more akin to the mad jostling through the doors of a store on Black Friday. For me, the greatest tragedy in these often stressful circumstances is that there’s no time, in the words of W.H. Davies, to “stand and stare”, no opportunity to commune, certainly no chance to enter flow state.
We tend to think of the very-nearly mandatory act of photographing everywhere we go as an attribute of the digital era, a phenomenon that has arisen due to the unholy alliance of social media, digital “capture” and the ubiquity of mobile phones. After all, everyone – as the well-worn line goes – is a photographer now. In truth, the link between location and the desire to make an image is much older.
Coloured engraving of Lotbinière’s Acropolis
As Peter Osborne points out in Travelling Light, there has been a strong association between tourism and photography ever since its invention. The Acropolis, in Athens, was first photographed in October 1839. Frenchman Pierre-Gustav Joly de Lotbinière used the new method barely eight weeks after the French Academy of Sciences had gifted Louis Daguerre’s invention to the world. (Presumably he was Daguerreotypist since the term photographer had not yet been coined?) Despite not being the only photographer on his expedition, De Lotbinière is credited with being the very first ‘travel photographer’. His image unintentionally became a marketing shot for the nascent tourism industry. This was, however, far from the first time that images of exotic locations had effectively been used to sell trips.
For over 150 years prior to the Napoleonic Wars, The Grand Tour was an almost compulsory multi-year jolly around Europe for the scions of England’s great families. The Tour was undertaken almost exclusively by males. Ostensibly its purpose was to provide the first tourists with an education in history, architecture, music, and other arts. Theory, however, didn’t always align well with practice. In The Meaning of Travel, Emily Thomas describes the travails of the “bears”, those charged with steering the out-of-towners away from gold-diggers and dens of gambling or debauchery. Along with frittering away the family silver on dubious pleasures, the Grand Tourists also commissioned paintings and sketches from well-known artists as mementoes. These in turn inspired others to visit particular locations.
For over 150 years prior to the Napoleonic Wars, The Grand Tour was an almost compulsory multi-year jolly around Europe for the scions of England’s great families. The Tour was undertaken almost exclusively by males. Ostensibly its purpose was to provide the first tourists with an education in history, architecture, music, and other arts.
For a certain class of people, this was the golden age of travel; a time when only a select few (Englishmen!) went to places that are now rammed with the great unwashed. From this viewpoint the rot set in in 1841- just two years after de Lotbinière’s “first travel photo” - when an Englishman named Thomas Cook founded his famous travel agency. We might think that finding too many tourists at a location is a modern phenomenon but the Irish novelist Charles Lever railed against Cook’s early clients, writing that “…the cities of Italy are deluged with droves of these creatures.” He describes Cook’s service as reducing “…the traveller to the level of his trunk” and obliterating “every trace of the individual.” Sound familiar? Lever even went so far as to suggest to Italian friends that, because Australia was fed up with being a penal colony, Great Britain was now sending her convicts to the continent posing as tourists.
This was the very beginning of the tourism pandemic. A century on from the founding of Thomas Cook, the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) estimated that internationally there were just 25 million tourist arrivals in 1950. Sixty-eight years later this number had increased to 1.4 billion international arrivals per year. A 56-fold increase!
When Joe Cornish and I first went to Horseshoe Bend in Arizona there wasn’t a car park, you left your car by the road outside Page and walked across the desert for about a kilometre. Now there’s a “newly enlarged” parking lot for hundreds of vehicles and you must pay a minimum of $10 to park there. From memory, there were half a dozen other people when we visited in 2001. It is now the City of Page’s No. 1 attraction. When we first went to Lower Antelope Canyon you could stay all day to photograph for a flat admission charge. Now you’re only allowed on a tour, and tripods are banned.
Tell the young “togs” today how it used to be and they won’t believe you!
By incontinently sharing location info, photographers – including myself – are certainly partially to blame for some places becoming crowded.
Nature First, an organisation dedicated to helping photographers behave responsibly in the landscape, share my concern.
Somewhat ironically, seventeen years ago I received a lot of flak over the lack of captions in Landscape Within. People thought I was hoarding location info in order to deny others. I was accused of wanting to “pull up the ladder behind me”. My reticence then about naming the locations was simply because I wanted the images to stand on their own, without the mental baggage that goes with knowing where a photo was made.
They have set out a code of ethics, with seven core principles. The golden rule is to prioritise the well-being of nature over photography. Principle number four, of particular relevance to this discussion, states that photographers should use discretion if sharing locations. This is a practice I have followed for many years. Unless a place is instantly recognisable, I am always reluctant to share the exact whereabouts of an image.
Somewhat ironically, seventeen years ago I received a lot of flak over the lack of captions in Landscape Within. People thought I was hoarding location info in order to deny others. I was accused of wanting to “pull up the ladder behind me”. My reticence then about naming the locations was simply because I wanted the images to stand on their own, without the mental baggage that goes with knowing where a photo was made. If I were to publish another book, I would definitely keep the info to myself, this time in order to help protect the places. By-the-by, there’s a delicious irony about photographers liberally sharing GPS coordinates on the one hand whilst wishing to have their special places to themselves on the other. I should, of course, state that people who consider themselves landscape photographers are far from being the only offenders. Even the otherwise right-on Guardian has regular features about “ best kept secrets” and “Top Ten places to visit”.
In a seeming paradox, photographers are even more upset if the majority of visitors are fellow photographers. Are they worried that all the light will be used up?
This paradox springs from the fact that photographers’ peers are seen as both their preferred audience and their competition for the acquisition of images. Photographers want to brag about where they’ve been to people who they think will appreciate it. But simultaneously they don’t want any other photographers to visit that place (at least not on the day they’re there).
For the vast majority this isn’t about commercial competition, no livelihoods are endangered – although try telling Michael Fatali, or “influencers” on Instagram that... So what is it that gets photographers’ tripods all in a tangle? It’s simply fighting over a limited resource.
We could look at motivations, such as the aforementioned desire to get a social media hit, but I don’t think this goes deep enough. Fundamentally I think the frustration (and aggro) derives not from surface motives but from a deeper mindset.
A big clue comes from the words we use to describe the act of photographing; we commonly say ‘take a photograph’. In the digital era, “Good capture!” is now a familiar compliment(?) on social media and forums.
Take and capture are obvious synonyms for acquire.
I argued in Landscape Beyond that the word ‘make’ was more appropriate since photography is a creative act. I was far from the first to take this position, indeed this is a debate as old as photography. Long before I was born Ansel Adams wrote “You don’t take a photograph, you make it!”
“Take” is problematic in many ways, not least because it can infer both a passive and an aggressive act. It can suggest that images are lying around waiting to be picked up by any passing photographer. But there’s also a hint of force, a suggestion that the subject did not surrender easily.
“Great capture” reinforces this interpretation, with a malodorous whiff of the hunt. The wonderful thing about a photo is that you don’t need a taxidermist to preserve your trophy; pixels have a near infinite shelf life and the corpse comes pickled in 2:3 aspect. We need only find a suitable means to display it so that we (and, perhaps, an audience) may feast our eyes upon it at our leisure.
It’s also much more than the prettiness typified by a beauty spot. Beauty in this sense is a combination of aesthetic qualities that also pleases the intellect, that is an expression of a deeper truth.
It is undeniable that in one important sense photography is all about taking, all about acquisition. Photographers, like other artists, are trying to capture beauty. This is not simply something that pleases the eye, not the anodyne quality celebrated in beauty contests. It’s also much more than the prettiness typified by a beauty spot. Beauty in this sense is a combination of aesthetic qualities that also pleases the intellect, that is an expression of a deeper truth.
William Somerset Maugham put it much more eloquently: ‘Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.’ Maugham’s quote suggests there’s an appetite at the base of all art. Yet you don’t see hangry writers (or painters) punching each other in front of a spectacular view. There have, of course, been artistic spats – passionate disagreements over lost commissions or who is taking the “right” approach. Clearly, taking away their pens or brushes might make them fume, but I know of no instances where blows were traded simply because two writers, or painters were creating in the same space.
The question is “What makes photographers different from writers or painters?”
Fundamentally, for the writer or painter the creative act predominantly takes place within their minds. This is only partially true for the photographer. The respective creative acts might seem on a par since the photographer’s mind mediates reality in a similar way to a writer or painter. But there is a crucial difference. What a writer or painter creates might be linked to a place or event, but it is not solely contingent on them.
A photograph, on the other hand, is inextricably determined by what is in front of the camera. It is literally impossible to divorce it from a specific time and place. We might not recognise the location from the photo (or vice versa) but – whatever manipulations are employed post facto – reality is the indispensable resource, the base ore, from which photographers fashion their vision.
Since reality is hardly in short supply, you might think the requirement to have something in front of the lens isn’t much of a constraint. The problem lies in the fact that in any field of photography the majority of practitioners tend to seek a small subset of reality. In the landscape genre that subset would include sunrise/set, golden hour, blue hour, mountains, waterfalls, beaches etc.
Surely that still leaves plenty to go at? Well, sort of...
The selection of a portion of reality is the key skill of a photographer. Reality only appears in relatively short supply because we’re overly selective. It can’t be just any waterfall, any beach, or any mountain: Only an even smaller subset of more desirable ones will do. When we see an image of a place that we like, there’s a natural desire to want to go to that place and photograph it – there is a desire to acquire it. The more alluring locations’ fame builds with every shutter click, every like and every share. This further concentrates the demand for particular variants of reality. And everyday grey skies aren’t enough; the light and/or weather needs to be spectacular or moody (or even extreme). If we imagine a Venn diagram of all these factors it becomes clear that the area of overlap gets smaller in inverse proportion to the increasing number of desirable attributes.
This competition for photo acquisition infamously reaches its peak amongst paparazzi, each elbowing and jostling for a scoop – literally a ladle – of triumph or shame. Many a subject’s life has been ruined to profit a photographer and their press baron masters.
But is it much different when countless landscape photographers’ footfalls damage an environment, crushing plants and eroding the land?
Standing in front of a truly awesome sight it’s quite hard to make an image that will not garner wows on social media. From the audience’s perspective, spectacle might easily be mistaken for artistic vision. There’s a real danger that the urge to acquire ends up extolling “being there” more than creativity. The feedback loop from social media might reinforce this flawed perception for the photographer as well.
Now, obviously, this doesn’t apply to all photographs of sunsets/waves/mountains/aurora… actually, it might apply to all the aurora photographs I’ve ever seen! There is still a skill involved in composing the image in the most powerful way. And the ability to be in the right place at the right time is also part of the skill set of any landscape photographer; reading the weather (forecast), understanding how the light will fall on a landscape at different times of day (and in different seasons), and knowing how the tides will affect what can be seen are important skills.
There’s a real danger that the urge to acquire ends up extolling “being there” more than creativity. The feedback loop from social media might reinforce this flawed perception for the photographer as well.
The examples I gave at the beginning of this article have very limited spaces from which to observe the sight or site: Mesa Arch, for instance, is 90 ft (27m) wide; The preferred view of Maroon Bells takes place along roughly 100 meters of the lake shore; The ‘natural firefall’ can only be viewed from a single designated position; Lower Antelope is narrow enough that you can touch the sides with outstretched arms. There literally isn’t room at these locations for a significant variety of compositional choices. These places are at one extreme of the reality bottleneck but there are plenty of other places that are also oversubscribed.
In these circumstances, you’re not testing your ability as a photographer; you’re simply seeing if you can be the one to grab a bargain. Even if you’re lucky enough to do so you won’t be bagging a unique, handcrafted item. At best you might be getting a personalised mass-produced commodity – you know, the kind where you pay extra to get your initials engraved on a faux silver plaque. Ask yourself how you would feel if you dressed up for a party and found that most of the attendees were wearing very similar outfits to you. Wouldn’t you rather stand out than blend in?
In part two of this article, “Nobody Expects the Inquisition”, I will be exploring how one might go about making your photography outstanding by adopting a different approach. (Clue: it’s not turning the saturation up to 60 in Lightroom…)
Did you ever think that a tree could change your life? A hackberry tree in a park behind my home in Colorado Springs, Colorado, did just that because I chose to photograph it one winter’s day. And six years later, I’m still inspiring people with the photos and lessons that I learned from a project I call “Same Tree, Different Day.”
One of the things I like most about this project is that it wasn’t planned. The idea came to me on January 12, 2015, the day after a snowstorm. I was working from home, and while on my lunch break, I noticed that the tree looked amazing while covered in snow and ice as I viewed it through my patio door. Captivated by the scene, I set up my camera on my tripod in the backyard and took a picture. Later that afternoon, the thought occurred to me to take a photo of the tree every day for a year just to see what would happen. I decided to follow through on that thought, and I had no clue at the time how this simple idea would end up impacting my life.
I first set out to create a unique image of the same subject every day from the same vantage point. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2008, and one of my biggest concerns at the time was whether or not I could still be creative if my body would no longer allow me to go on the long hikes in the Colorado Mountains that I enjoyed. I wanted to prove that I could be creative in a confined area. I also wanted to prove that anyone can get amazing photos without travelling hundreds or thousands of miles. Working from home allowed me the opportunity to monitor what was going on outside so I could take advantage of unique situations when they occurred. I also used props and cameo appearances to create my own unique situations to photograph.
I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2008, and one of my biggest concerns at the time was whether or not I could still be creative if my body would no longer allow me to go on the long hikes in the Colorado Mountains that I enjoyed.
Once I got started, I realised that it would be helpful to set some ground rules, guidelines and goals. I knew for a variety of reasons that it would be difficult to have the camera set up in the exact same spot every day, so I devised a method for getting close enough with each shot. I also decided that I would rather have some slight variation in the position of the tree within the frame. I placed two rectangular pavers in my yard for me to stand on. Since I knew where to put my feet, I could then set up my tripod in almost the same place each time I photographed the tree. For each photo, I made sure my camera was level horizontally, and I lined up the right edge of the frame with the trunk of the smaller tree to the right of the main tree. This method provided some consistency while allowing for minor variations.
Another one of my goals was to get up for sunrise every day with the hope of capturing amazing colours in the sky. This was a big challenge because I’m not a morning person. I deal with three medical conditions that are each considered disabilities, and this combination makes it difficult for me to get out of bed on most days. I developed a routine where I would set my alarm for 15-30 minutes prior to sunrise. Upon awakening, I would get up and look out my bedroom window, which faced the tree. If there were clouds in the sky, it meant there was a good chance the sunrise would be colourful. I would then get dressed, set up my camera in the yard and wait for the sun to come up. If there were no clouds in the sky, I would go back to bed and hope for interesting conditions later in the day or for a good sunset.
Staying motivated to capture a photo every day was difficult at first, but I incorporated a method into my routine that utilises a yearly wall calendar to track one’s progress. I placed an X on the calendar each day when I reached my goal of creating an image and posting it to my blog. It’s best to place the calendar in a highly visible location, and for me, that was the wall I faced when working at my computer. Seeing the string of Xs grow gave me a real sense of accomplishment and the motivation I needed to keep going.
I learned many things as a result of working on this project. The most profound thing I learned is that I was provided with everything I needed to make a great photo every day. Basically, all I needed to do was just show up and be patient.
I faced another challenge that I never talked about before in public. I am sensitive to chemicals and smells, including cigarette smoke, laundry products and car fumes. Living in a condo complex meant that on many occasions, someone would be running their dryer or smoking outside while I was in my yard. I would have to wear a mask if I wanted to take a picture of the tree while being exposed to bothersome chemicals, or I would have to try to capture a photo at a time when it was safer for me to do so.
I learned many things as a result of working on this project. The most profound thing I learned is that I was provided with everything I needed to make a great photo every day. Basically, all I needed to do was just show up and be patient.
This project changed my perspective on photography. I realised that making a connection with your subject and practising mindfulness results in better photos, and I’ve started teaching this concept to my students. I have many stories that I share of instances where a series of events lead me to believe that I was intentionally placed in a position to get an amazing photograph at exactly the right time. I call these happenings “signs from the Universe.” Each occurrence reinforced the feeling that I was doing something I was meant to do, which gave the project a deeper meaning for me.
I learned that I could reach any goal I set my mind to with the help of the yearly wall calendar. The use of this simple tool is a great source of motivation because you can easily see how much progress you’re making when you’re working on a monumental task. This tracking method illustrates how seemingly impossible things can be accomplished by tackling them one step at a time. I teach people how to use this method to reach their own goals, and I’ve also created my own calendars with photos from this series.
The most important thing that I learned is how having a daily goal is beneficial to managing your mental health. I have lived with depression and anxiety since high school, and there were difficult times during this year-long period when all I could do or all I wanted to do was take my photo of the tree and post it to my blog. I spent the previous year questioning my existence, and this daily routine gave my life purpose and provided a good reason for me to get out of bed every day. This project is an excellent example of what one can do to bring meaning to the instances of isolation and loneliness like those that many people faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mental health issues and cases of suicide have increased dramatically in recent months, and I feel that sharing my lived experience can help others who are struggling. I want to share what I’ve learned with as many people as possible because those lessons have the power to save lives.
We all have brilliant ideas for projects. The problem is that most of us never follow through on those ideas, or what I call “brainstorms,” because we think we won’t have the time or end up convincing ourselves that whatever we thought of is not worthwhile. You never know what is going to come out of completing a project and where it will lead you, so my biggest piece of advice is to just do it because getting started is probably the hardest part.
Besides using a calendar to track your progress, it’s helpful to set your goals and expectations for your project early on, but it’s also important to be open to considering other ideas as they come along that may make things more interesting or make your goals easier to achieve. Also, make sure that your goals are attainable. If you tie yourself down with too many restrictions, that will only make a difficult project even more difficult to complete, which could deplete your interest and your motivation.
I’ve now lectured about Same Tree, Different Day, dozens of times and have had this work featured in several publications. My biggest highlight so far has been speaking at the Canadian Mental Health Association Conference in Toronto in September of 2019.
I’ve now lectured about Same Tree, Different Day, dozens of times and have had this work featured in several publications. My biggest highlight so far has been speaking at the Canadian Mental Health Association Conference in Toronto in September of 2019. While I was there, I was filled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and experienced many signs from the Universe that I was in the right place. During the entire conference, I repeatedly thought to myself, “Just because you chose to take a photo of the tree one day, you’re now in Toronto talking about this experience!” This project turned into so much more than just a series of photos. I’ve become a mental health advocate, and I hope my talk in Toronto is the first of many presentations at national-level conferences.
We had a really good response to Matt Payne’s Portrait of Joel; some of you were pleased to hear from him again, and others delighted to be introduced to his work. New website aside, you won’t find out a lot about Joel through a web search, so we’re fortunate that the timing has been right for him to agree to a full interview.
In preparing this, it’s been a pleasure to spend time looking through Joel’s website on a large monitor. A very immersive experience, and one that really highlights the shortcomings of viewing photography on social media. Do look at his work on the biggest screen you have.
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?
Absolutely. I was born, raised and currently reside in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area of the state of Minnesota, located along the north-central border of the United States. It’s an understated landscape, where farmland transitions to deciduous forest and then to boreal forest, as you progress north. As a place, it tends to be a bit topographically challenged (i.e. flat), but has a wealth of lakes, rivers and waterways.
My early interests have included the visual arts in various forms - mostly gravitating toward 2D art, such as drawing and painting. I’ve always been compelled to create, even from a young age. Beyond that, spending time outdoors and exploring the natural world have been important to me. Some of my fondest early memories are of biking late into the evening on summer nights, near my childhood home.
How did photography come to take a grip on you beyond that of your studies in art? I’ve read about a camping trip with a friend who told you to bring a camera being important, but I’m not sure if the transition had already begun?
The camera is a recording tool: mechanical, technical, objectifying. The photographer is a subjective cypher: selecting, emphasising, interpreting. The bringing together of these antithetical poles can lead to an artistic fusion that is evocative and profound. Even more so when the photographs that result move from the literal to metaphor. The history of photography in the 20th Century increasingly evolved away from the representation of an objective reality (think of Weston, Steichen and Ansel Adams, straight photography and the f64 group) towards the expression of subjective states of feeling (Sugimoto, Burtynsky, Kenna). And that focus on emotion is what we see when we look at Sally Mann’s photographs from the southern states of the US in the 1990s.
What do we see when we look at this picture? A vertical tree trunk placed centrally in the frame. At roughly chest height is a scar, a scorch mark in the bark of the tree. The foreground is dark, gloomy. The background is lighter, but is blurry, out of focus. It is misty, opaque, and difficult to penetrate visually. We sense a field behind a fence with more trees in the background. Pinned on the fence is a dark patch, it looks faintly human in form, a body, two arms, but it is too small to be a real figure…, an article of clothing perhaps? Or is the figure behind the fence, a scarecrow?
The power of this photograph, however, comes to us when we consider the image metaphorically. Trees themselves are of course redolent with meaning. They are archetypes with (real and allegorical) roots deep in local cultures. In Germany for example, the linden tree symbolises peace, truth and justice. In mythology it is associated with Freya, motherly goddess of truth and love. Consequently, Germans often met under the tree to hold their justice cases and marriage ceremonies. The cherry tree and its blossom are symbolic of the fleetingness of life and a sense of renewal. The Japanese like to remind themselves of this and party with colleagues, friends and families under the falling cherry blossom in May. In the UK we have the oak, symbol of strength and survival, it has become our national tree.
Sally Mann Deep South, Untitled (Scarred Tree), 1998 Tea-toned gelatin silver print 40 x 50 inches 101.6 x 127 cm @ Sally Mann. Courtesy Gagosian
The tree in Mann’s photograph is also geographically located in the deep southern states of the US. Here, trees perhaps have a unique, historical resonance, wrapped up with the difficult history of slavery that casts its shadow through the centuries to the modern day. “Southern trees bear a strange fruit/ Blood on the leaves and blood at the root” sang Billie Holiday. And Mann’s tree is scarred, torn, violated. The rupture in the bark is a wound. It has festered, calcified into the tree. The tree grows on, the wound remains, visible and not yet truly healed. It represents a terrible history of this locality which has yet to be fully absorbed and absolved.
The rupture in the bark is a wound. It has festered, calcified into the tree. The tree grows on, the wound remains, visible and not yet truly healed. It represents a terrible history of this locality which has yet to be fully absorbed and absolved.
That physical scar is the most obvious element that demands interpretation from the viewer. However, the whole mood of the image is imbued with a darkness, brooding and menace that back it up. Mann uses a large format camera with an antique lens, hence the fogginess and the heavy vignetting. The result becomes hugely evocative. In this case a dreamlike, or perhaps it might be better to say a ‘nightmare-like’, state. Certainly, there is a melancholy to the image, a sadness, regret, even a sense of guilt. But there, right with that last phrase, I have, of course, jumped from literal reading of the image, to metaphorical interpretation. Is that fair? How do I know that this is what is meant by the photographer? The viewer can never know of course, only wonder. Having said that, I must admit I’ve just finished reading Mann’s memoir with photographs, Hold Still, which, in part, deals with her own realisation and exploration of the history of slavery in the land in which she grew up and lives. Mann quotes from Faulkner’s The Bear: “Don’t you see? This whole land, the whole South is cursed, and all of us who derive from it, whom it ever suckled, white and black both, lie under the curse”.
It’s a truism to state that art inevitably always circles back to deal with the personal sensibility of the artist. But for the viewer that’s what makes it so fascinating; to see, and feel, through another’s eyes. From a UK point of view, to peer through the vision of an artist from the southern states of America, takes us on an unsettling, intuitive and hugely moving journey through a storied landscape.
I highly recommend Hold Still. A memoir with photographs, by Sally Mann, pub: Bay Back Books, 2015. A fascinating read full of insight into the creative process of a wonderful photographic artist combined with an honest, candid investigation into her family past.
Welcome to our 4x4 feature which is a set of four mini landscape photography portfolios submitted from our subscribers. Each portfolio consisting of four images related in some way.
Submit Your 4x4 Portfolio
Interested in submitting your work? We're on the lookout for new portfolios for the next few issues, so please do get in touch!
Walla Walla, tucked away in the south-eastern corner of Washington State, is surrounded by some truly iconic landscapes: The Palouse Hills, Cascade Mountains, Snake River canyon and the waterfalls along the Columbia River gorge. All are just a few hours drive away. But if I want to eschew the driving and be a little more environmentally responsible, I head to our local woodlands in the foothills of the Blue Mountains. I can wander there year-round, just a few minutes from home. No grand vistas here, but an opportunity to experience the intimacies of nature. It is characterized by dense, chaotic woods and brush, interspersed with wide open wheat fields and rolling prairie. Perhaps counter-intuitively, I feel that winter presents the best opportunity to capture a variety of colors and mood (summer here tends towards a palette of ubiquitous and monochromatic greens or browns).
The lack of foliage in the winter reveals the hidden colours and shapes of branches that would otherwise be concealed. Skeletons of the woods. This portfolio tries to describe the essence of the winter woodland landscape here: The quiet, melancholic dormancy, with snow-muffled sounds. Searching for subjects against background chaos, or subtle color and texture within that same background, winter promises to bring fog and snow which helps to better delineate and isolate the individual elements in an environment where light is often a sparse and subdued entity.
While there is no shortage of beautiful sites here in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, few mountains are as distinct as Mount Putnik. Named after the famous Serbian Field Marshal Radomir Putnik, who led the army in WWI, this unusually flat mountain located in the heart of Peter Lougheed Provincial Park has become a favourite among visitors.
While I’ve taken pictures of Mount Putnik before, I’ve never had the opportunity to do so with this kind of lightning. Cloudy skies aren’t always a photographer’s best friend, but once in a while, they can add a degree of drama and character to your shots that otherwise would never be possible. In these particular photos, I had the good fortune of several convenient rays of light that bounced off Mount Putnik right when I arrived on the scene.
While I haven’t personally climbed to the top, one good friend of mine has done so several times. His stories of the view up there, as well as his experience climbing up Mount Putnik, were what inspired me to take these pictures in the first place.
While visiting a dear friend in San Jose, California, we decided to visit Monterey Bay Aquarium. On the way back my friend told me that we should visit the "17-Mile Drive" on the cost. 17-Mile Drive is a scenic coastal road through Pebble Beach and Pacific Grove on the Monterey Peninsula in California, much of which hugs the Pacific coastline. It was a cloudy, damp, and windy day with some visible fog already settling in by late afternoon.
Before going for the 17-Miles Drive, we visited the Lone Cyprus tree that is a classic location. Most of you probably have looked for and photographed a “lone tree” at many locations during your travel. After seeing the Lone Cypress I thought that was all I would be able to make a picture of that day. I was wrong. I live inland. Coastal landscape is a departure from my everyday experience of landscape. Strong and near constant wind on the coastal 17-Mile Drive rendered the Cypress trees near the road with a distinctive directional curve, which gave the trees character. The cloud, the light, the fog, and the wind made a mysterious but simple scene that I thought would render in monochrome well. Since the "Lone Cypress" is such an iconic location, I am sharing some of the other photos that I was able to make that day.
20 years ago I moved to Leek in Staffordshire. A city-dweller up to that point, I quickly discovered the nearby Roaches and its simple yet rewarding walks. This is surely the area of the Peak District with the optimal effort-reward ratio for ramblers, climbers and photographers alike.
But the Roaches has personality too: the steep, gritstone cliffs, wide vistas and otherworldly rock formations create a landscape with drama, romance and mystery. No wonder the locals associate the area with legends and folklore. These photographs are taken from a panel of images that aim to evoke the drama, romance and mystery of the Roaches. The photographs were taken exclusively at dawn and dusk for the saturated colour and interesting shadows. I used wide angle lenses to emphasise the sweeping views and otherworldly rock formations. And I chose vertical compositions with foreground detail to create a sense of drama.
I love this photograph because it is so mysterious. What is happening? Is it real? Is the water falling or rising, magically suspended or turned to ice?
In the middle of a bare moor, under a blank sky, something elemental, primaeval, potentially menacing seems to be emerging from the earth’s depths. From the world’s navel.
"Is photography truth?" is the opening question. Before you shout out like we're a pair of pantomime dames goading the audience, yes we know it isn't but it's as good a place to start as any. Despite the ever-louder cries of "fake news" at every barely processed photograph, the ideas around photography and truth are far from new. I wanted to chat about some of the thoughts I had had whilst thinking about the Natural Photography Awards competition and the way that we have considered photography since its invention in the Victorian era and who better to grapple with some of these ideas than Guy Tal. I hope you'll forgive us for the length of the article, we seem to get a little carried away at times, but I think most of the discussion of interest and to help in your consumption, I've split it into two parts; the second part to follow in the next issue.
The History of Straight Photography
Tim Parkin (TP): Is photography truth? Let’s start off with the very basics of the origins of photography. Was it considered truth at the start?
Guy Tal (GT): I think it was considered truth at the start because truth was the goal. At the time, realism—especially realism in appearances of natural scenes—was considered the highest aesthetic goal for artists to aspire to. But really the process of using optics and mechanics to reproduce natural appearances wasn’t new. What was new at the time photography was invented, was a way to fix those appearances so you could have something tangible that you could hand off to someone—something that would last.
Before photography, many painters had used Camera Obscura technology to reproduce realistic appearances. That was, and probably still is the goal for the technology of photography. But artists often find ways to use media, materials, and technologies in novel ways, and not just in the ways the inventors of these technologies had intended originally.
TP: Art historians are fairly certain that artists used Camera Obscura techniques to produce reference projections and possibly even some of the origins of perspectives in the renaissance may have come from photographic terms.
GT: Yes certainly. We like to think about former artists as people who could draw mimetically but really there’s a very distinctive evolution in how artists rendered appearances. For a long time, they didn’t know how to create shading, the illusion of three-dimensional depth, and things of that nature.
TP: So the ideas of truth and representation at the dawn of photography were quite interesting as it could be said that photography helped art in many ways to escape from its commitment to a truth.
GT: I don’t know if it helped art escape as much as it scared art away from these things because painters realised that soon photographic technology will be able to do what they did, and likely do so much better. That prompted them to start looking into other things that were more abstract, more subjective, more expressive, rather than reproduction of appearances.
Quality in art used to be measured by an artist’s manual technical skills—how well you could render something. How well you could reproduce qualities of light and perspective, shading and depth. In the beginning, photography couldn’t do that. It certainly wasn’t able to reproduce colours. But the writing was on the wall. Critics and painters believed that for art to continue to matter, to be important, it had to separate itself from realism, and that caused an amazing shift in the arts, starting with impressionism, which was a rebellion against realism.
Quality in art used to be measured by an artist’s manual technical skills—how well you could render something. How well you could reproduce qualities of light and perspective, shading and depth.
TP: And yet impressionists stole from photography in many ways as well (as well as East Asian art).
GT: All art movements steal from each other. This is the whole reason why the idea of “photographic celibacy” doesn’t make sense to me in terms of artistic expression because art evolves relative to what came before it and what is contemporary to it. If you look at any major advancement in art, it always builds on something that happened before it, or repudiates something that happened before it, or departs from what’s popular. All art movements are relative to what happened before them. If you’re just starting from a standpoint of not relating your art to other art or treat it as just something you do for enjoyment, that’s fine, but in that case, it’s unlikely your work will contribute anything to the evolution of art.
The invention of photography gave a huge rattle to the art world because it essentially offered a way of reproducing appearances without any artistic training. For a while the realistic aesthetic still dominated.
The invention of photography gave a huge rattle to the art world because it essentially offered a way of reproducing appearances without any artistic training. For a while the realistic aesthetic still dominated. The first impressionists were excluded from salons and competitions of their time because their work was not realistic. But finally, the art world came to accept that the highest purpose of art is to express ideas and to create impressions, not to reproduce appearances. Up to that point, all these factors were bundled up together in realistic paintings. Photography separated them and forced artists to prioritise expression over realistic renditions.
The exhibition Silver Light at Taunus Foto Galerie in Bad Homburg, Germany, shows the work of four photographers, who have in common their dedication to old-fashioned, handmade, non-digital, monochrome photography and prints. Their serene, captivating images continue a long line and are among the best in black and white fine art photography. Why do they use film in the digital age?
Well, Roman Loranc grew up in another era and learned how to develop and print everything himself in a small village in eastern Poland, because there was no money to pay others to do that. He knows it well and has stuck to what he knows. With Birgit, it is the tactile sensations; she loves to load physical film, to feel the shutter release, to load the film into a developing tank, to mix her own chemicals for toning, to hang up prints to dry – it’s all part of her physical process.
There is no substitute for standing in front of the prints on the wall in the gallery – it’s the best way to appreciate the many shades and details, and to understand the stories behind the images.
Roman Loranc
Roman Loranc comes from Poland, has lived in California since 1982, exhibited in the US and China, and museums have added his images to their own collections. He is known around the world for his serene, landscape images of the vanishing wetlands and forests in central and northern California, as well as his roots in Poland and Lithuania.
Roman uses a 4x5 field camera and develops and prints all his images himself at home. He is one of the few artists who does not try to be consistent in the darkroom. You can’t make the exact same silver gelatin print twice from the same negative, and Roman intentionally tones them differently (sepia and/or selenium), may crop them differently, and dodges and burns each one individually. “If you see a Loranc print you like in a gallery, buy that particular piece, because it’s a one-of-a-kind work and he won’t make another one exactly the same.” His contribution to the history of photography is to include California’s Central Valley, which no one had extensively photographed before.
Tule dancer
Lily Pads and Tules
Homeward bound
Boat
Angus Haywood
Angus Haywood has photographed around the lakes in northern Italy – peaceful, elegant villas, gardens and terraces, landscapes in southern England and Germany. He uses his trusty old Hasselblad – all manual – and develops and makes his silver gelatin prints in his own darkroom. “If watercolour painters only used shades of grey, their pictures would resemble Angus’ work. His images have such a calming, meditative effect through his careful use of gentle early morning or evening light”. Angus has worked together with Michael Kenna and Charlie Waite and numbers Bill Brandt and Cartier-Bresson among his influences.
Cupola, Villa Monastero
Cupola, Villa Monastero
Isola Bella Study 1, Stresa
Oliver Miller
Oliver Miller did an old-fashioned photography apprenticeship in Frankfurt in the early 1980s, where he spent time working with Helmut Newton, Barbara Klemm and others. He is guided by Ansel Adams’ zone system and is one of the few people who actually sees the world in a dynamic range of shades of grey. He has visited the Dutch and German Friesian islands over many years, capturing coastal landscapes – dunes, waves, wind and storms constantly reshape the coastlines and those places built and later abandoned by people, like the wooden pile remains of a harbour and railway station. The power of water movement and heavy storms create iconic scenes from one moment to the next and show us unique perspectives.
Ameland
St Peter-Ording
Vlieland
Wangerooge
Birgit Maddox
Birgit Maddox was born in the Black Forest and has lived in California for many years. She returns to Europe every summer, working on her project “Endangered”, which captures the ways of old – simplicity, raw and pristine land and what is in danger of being lost. Other projects are “Moments”, where she captures decisive, lucid, and passing moments, and “Mystery” – the lines between art and life blur, and the expression of mystery meets the mystery of expression. Also, a Hasselblad user, Birgit’s landscapes combine the visually immediate with a journey into the subconscious. Her images have an element of impressionist painting. Birgit develops and prints all her own work and mixes her own chemicals to achieve her desired toning effects.
As Above So Below
Passing Strangers
Stairway to the Nephilim
Blurring the Lines
Exhibition Details
The exhibition Silver Light at Taunus Foto Galerie will remain in place for a few months while we all get over Covid. Come along – we’re open.
For the twelfth iteration of this column, I wanted to showcase the work of a photographer who I have been admiring for quite a long time and whose work has been completely overshadowed within the realm of social media – Tara Workman. I first learned about Tara’s work on Instagram where she would consistently interact with my posts in a very thoughtful and kind fashion. After a few weeks of enjoyable interaction with “my.bajan.eye” (that’s her handle there), I decided to go look at her work to see what she was up to, and I was immediately blown away by the uniqueness, the quality, and the personal expression I found in her images. I also was intrigued by the person I was talking to via direct message and my very first question was to ask what “Bajan” meant. “Bajan” is a term that simply means “a person from Barbados,” which immediately intrigued me even further. Tara seemed to have so many unique qualities that I had never encountered before, and I really wanted to dig in to learn more. I immediately knew that this was someone who I wanted to talk to on my podcast to learn more about the person behind these interesting photographs. Through my podcast, I learned so many things about Tara, her motivation for making images, and how photography started out as a simple hobby for her and now plays a vital role in her ability to maintain her sanity as a family practice physician.
Coincidentally as this interview was underway, Matt Payne’s Portrait of Jennifer Renwick was published in On Landscape. Hopefully, you enjoyed the introduction, as in this issue Jennifer is our Featured Photographer.
In a relatively short time, Jennifer has created a strong portfolio of images, and while it is broader than our selection, it is clear that her forte is intimate, abstract and on occasion atmospheric. It’s interesting to note that she talks about the influence of painting on her interpretations of the landscape; of her broader views it was the vapour-heavy scenes that I was most drawn to.
In a time when circumstances have kept many of us in and around our homes, the thought of a life largely lived on the road is a tantalising prospect. At least the interruption to Jennifer and David’s travels has allowed us to catch up with her.
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 the United States, in the mid-western state of Illinois. Since an early age, I've had an innate curiosity and respect for the natural world around me. I attribute that to my parents, as they both encouraged me to cultivate a relationship with Nature from the start. Because of this, I grew up in a world where I could escape and explore Nature often. I grew up rock-hounding and fossil hunting with my father, as he is a geologist, and together, we explored geologically exciting landscapes. My parents were also involved with arts in college, as my mom had a musical background, and my father had an art background. My father was also an underwater photographer, and I grew up scuba diving with my parents.
I had a point-and-shoot camera as a child and took many photos when we were out on camping trips or underwater. I enjoyed how I could document what I encountered and then share the beauty and nuances of the natural world with others when the photos came back from processing (back in the Kodak film days!). I followed in my father's footsteps and received my degree in geology in college and then switched gears and went into veterinary medicine. I studied for two years, became a certified veterinary technician, and worked in a clinic for almost fourteen years. I picked up a camera again during this time and travelled to the American West for trips and photography every chance I could get. Nature was my mental and physical escape from a hectic and sometimes very stressful career. I fell in love with landscape photography, which led me to break from my career to immerse myself in my photographic passion for photographing landscapes and Nature. I now travel full-time teaching photography workshops with my partner, fellow photographer David Kingham, throughout the American West.
The above is Maxwell Lake on a not atypical spring day in Boulder, Colorado. Here in Boulder, a small city and home to the University of Colorado, we’re only 45 minutes from Denver, one of the US’s fastest growing cities. Even better, we’re only 45 minutes from trails starting at 10,000 feet in the Indian Peaks Wilderness.
However, oddly enough I find myself spending a lot of my photographic time here at Maxwell Lake.
Maxwell Lake is a small lake about a mile from where I live in North Boulder. It’s in a residential neighbourhood, but it’s surrounded by trees and has a little land around it, so it is possible to make photographs without any houses present. And if you’re like me, and looking down most of the time, the houses aren’t a problem.
Unless you want to do some snow-shoeing or cross country skiing, a lot of the Colorado High Country isn’t open for casual hiking till the summer, so I’m always looking for interesting places to photograph closer to home at only 5,000 feet.
I tend to look for more remote places than Maxwell Lake and there are plenty near Boulder, but I keep finding more and more to captivate me at this little lake and It’s not even a quarter of a mile around.
The trees here are always calling me—sometimes on foggy mornings. .
I tend to look for more remote places than Maxwell Lake and there are plenty near Boulder, but I keep finding more and more to captivate me at this little lake and It’s not even a quarter of a mile around.
And sometimes on sunnier ones.
This last fall, I discovered how interesting the surrounding grasses look with reflections of the lake.
When it gets warmer, ducks and Canada geese hang out on the lake leaving feathers everywhere.
When it gets warmer, ducks and Canada geese hang out on the lake leaving feathers everywhere.
And, of course in the winter with its warming trends and cooling trends, the ice always creates interesting compositions.
I sometimes feel guilty. It's so easy to get to Maxwell Lake and I rarely go away disappointed. While I was photographing leaves, some young deer suddenly appeared for a morning drink. I quickly changed lenses to a zoom and grabbed this image. Then I went back to my leaves.
I’m told that mountain lions like to frequent the lake for drinks because it's right up against the foothills. I've never seen a mountain lion here, but I did see one around the block from where I live. But that’s for a different article.
Striving for essence, for the deepest point of our work, is a topic which has always fascinated me, and which has bolstered my commitment and my determination.
I chose this image for various reasons. Among them, what anyone will agree on is the greatness of photographer Dorothea Lange (1865–1965). This photograph was taken in March 1937, and is titled "Toward Los Angeles, CA". The historical context is the end of the Great American Depression, which started in 1929 and was challenged by the great economic plan named New Deal (1933–1938) enacted by the American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Leaving the context aside and focusing on the image, what stands out is its framing, the quest for proportion and the strong leading lines, which lead the viewer to correctly interpret the message which the photographer decided to "write" on the negative.
Back in the autumn, I saw a Facebook post by Jon about his new book 'Whispers' and we ordered a copy. Time got the better of me but I eventually got around to enjoying the book back in spring 2021. It had been a number of years since we interviewed Jon as our featured photographer, so I got in touch and started chatting about what he'd be up to and how the project came about.
We interviewed you back in March 2013, can you give us an overview of what projects you have been working on and how your photography journey has continued since then?
For the five years since the interview, the main priority was the running of our photographic gallery, the Saltmarsh Coast Gallery in Wells next the Sea, North Norfolk. The gallery was co-run with my business partner Gareth (Hacon), unfortunately, we felt it was time to finish in autumn 2018 as sales had taken a downturn in the past couple of years.
From the closure of the gallery onwards the main priority, aside from constantly making new images was workshops and tours which I run both locally and further afield in areas such as Northumberland and the Scottish Highlands.
In 2017 I published my book ‘Canal ‘, a collection of images from the area around the now dis-used North Walsham and Dilham canal in Norfolk. Aside from that, being a photographer of non-fame it has been a case of trying to survive and ‘get by’ in this very busy sector.
Regrettably, like many pro photographers of a certain vintage, I have learned to become wary (euphemism for downright cynical) of those bearing gifts.
“Those” in this case means potential commercial clients – companies, councils, publishers, charities etc – upon whom professional photographers depend for commissions.
The “gifts” in question are usually the wildly ambitious ideas and plans for spectacular and wonderful-sounding projects which, after much enthusiastic talk, often evaporate into the ether. Or more disturbingly, turn out to be real, but with no budget for – you’ve guessed it – photography.
For every animated face-to-face conversation, or enthusiastic phone call, or excitable email about a potential commission, I have learned to expect that perhaps only one in five, or less, will ever see the light of day.
Northern Figure
So when Justin Scully, general manager of the National Trust’s Fountains Abbey and Brimham Rocks properties started chatting to me at the gallery one day in the summer of 2017 I showed polite interest but had little expectation of anything coming from it. In fairness, the National Trust had been a great client over the previous three decades. But for the previous few years photo-library commissions had thinned and then dried up completely. It was pretty clear that the Trust no longer required my kind of photography.
We sometimes use the word awesome to describe landscapes – views – but seldom apply it to woodland. Yet these too are places of awe in all senses – terror or dread, reverence, and wonder too. How we feel about them depends not just on the place, or the prevailing weather conditions which may amplify atmosphere, but on what we bring along in our cultural and personal make-up, and the point in our lives at which we encounter them - looking at Ellen’s images, the love that she has for woodland is clear, yet she hasn’t always felt comfortable in and around them. There is a universal appeal to her work that transcends boundaries, though it provides a wonderful insight into some of the woods and forests of The Netherlands.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, your early interests and education, and what path that led you along?
I grew up in the midst of the forests of the Veluwe, in the east of The Netherlands, very close to the National Park De Hoge Veluwe. I was an introverted and shy girl, who liked nothing more than to read everything that I could get my hands on. I always wanted to know everything and loved writing and photography from as early as I can remember. My dad was an avid amateur photographer with his own darkroom. When he would take pictures I would look closely at what he was aiming the camera at and would try to make an image equally skillfully. My horizons were crooked and I specialised in space cows for the first year or so, because I made a habit of photographing cows and over-exposing them. My mum was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease when I was still in pre-school and so life was worrisome; having a grandmother who made me see the extraordinary in the ordinary offered me an entrance to a more magical side of reality, which is what still drives my work to this day. Even though I was always drawing up some design and always wanted to become a designer or photographer, I did the responsible thing and I went to university in 1990 with the idea of becoming a lawyer. It turned out I did not like Law at all though. In 1997 I found my way into designing very detailed and realistic soft sculpture animals that I made for collectors and museums. After 21 years, amongst which were many unhappy ones, I stopped making my animals. At that time I had been photographing for about 40 years and had spent 25 years learning all about it. This is when I finally decided to go after my dream and become a photographer.
To the pure of heart, lockdown was a chance to grow, be it spiritually, physically, and educationally. Unfortunately, I’m not pure of heart and lockdown continues to be difficult. Rabbit Warren Woods, a small pocket of trees close to home gave me a place to reclaim positivity.
I’m not naturally introverted, and normally my moments of isolation are when I choose to be on my own, usually in the hills, often camping, these are times of reflection and times of simply being somewhere that makes my heart soar. I have spent years trying to take photographs that I am happy with, that capture my emotions of where I am and what I am feeling, and this seldom occurs, mainly because I lose interest and have been incapable of (seemingly) complex post-processing techniques. So in many ways what follows is the way I have found a path through these blocks, and in a big part, this is due to the year that just was.
I’m not naturally introverted, and normally my moments of isolation are when I choose to be on my own, usually in the hills, often camping, these are times of reflection and times of simply being somewhere that makes my heart soar.
I’m optimistic by nature and seek goodness and fun in people and places, but I won’t falsely seek a silver lining because I’m told to; the Woods strangely brought me emotional support, a place of solitude and discovery and imagination, and lockdown would have been harder without them, a lot harder. I can’t say that they are a silver lining, I can say that their discovery was a good thing for me.
With the onset of lockdown, I thought I would try and learn some new skills that combined the things that provide me escape fun and peace.
With the onset of lockdown, I thought I would try and learn some new skills that combined the things that provide me escape fun and peace. Other than family, the main sources of peace and joy are probably Scotland and beer; beer has been easy to source but of course, travelling has been much more difficult. My love of Scotland centres around the Highlands, being able to enjoy its landscape through hiking, camping on summits, and exploring glens, in all seasons. And for me, photography is a way of being part of the landscape, and a calm happy mind. Sometimes the process is more important than the outcome, and sometimes the outcome isn’t important at all.
I am privileged to live in a country that has many spectacular landscapes that entice the photographer to get out their camera, set up a tripod and capture stunning images.
I love open spaces, the mountains and rolling hills, lakes, rivers and coastline. Landscapes are in my DNA. But before I explore the question of why I create the images I do, I want to delve into a question that has been exercising me, what is a landscape. I was given a copy of Masters of Landscape Photography (2017) for Christmas. Robert MacFarlane’s foreword resonated “… For far too long we have been content with an understanding of “landscape” as a passive backdrop to human life: an aesthetic surface that we are “on” but not “in”…. I have argued that we need a vastly more dynamic understanding of “landscape” as a force that shapes us and scrapes us…”
The concept of “landscape”, as far as I can establish, was a cultural import to Aotearoa - New Zealand, from Europe. Colonialists and early settlers viewed the land in different ways depending on their reason for being here. The early scientists recorded natural features, surveyors made maps, settlers saw productive farmland and promoters of tourism the pictorial scene that would entice.
A historian of photography in New Zealand observed that Pictorialism found its most enthusiastic adherents within the camera clubs. A style of landscape photography that became well established, just walk into any bookshop, travel agent or camera club.
And so pictorial representations of the landscape, be it a painting or photograph of the Fiords, the Southern Alps, the thermal regions of central North Island, or Maori as an indigenous people became the subjects used to portray New Zealand to the world.
It was not just tourism marketers and professional photographers who created the stunning landscape photos but also amateur photographers. A historian of photography in New Zealand observed that Pictorialism found its most enthusiastic adherents within the camera clubs. A style of landscape photography that became well established, just walk into any bookshop, travel agent or camera club. Of late I have become increasingly dissatisfied with this style of landscape photography. While some images are absolute masterpieces and draw me in, for some reason many don’t engage me emotionally. Maybe that is part of my journey.
I am coming to realise that when I pick up my camera and engage in the act of creating a landscape image, I bring everything about who I am, my history, culture, values, emotions, world view etc. to the process. Landscape photographs are not to be captured or taken; they are created. As one social theorist nicely puts it
If I have had the time to develop an understanding of the history, culture and significance of a given place it helps. Which raises an interesting question. Can we as landscape photographers take images devoid of an understanding of the history and significance of a given place?
"Landscapes are the symbolic environments created by human acts of conferring meaning to nature and the environment, of giving the environment definition and form from a particular angle of vision and through a special filter of values and beliefs.” Another writer says, 'landscape' is a cultural framework for describing and knowing about and interacting with the environment, rather than a thing we can look at out of our window.”
This raises some interesting questions for me. Am I just an observer with camera in hand who is there to spot, frame and capture what I see through the window of the lens? Or am I a participant who through the act of engaging with what I see creates a landscape photograph and, in the process, says something about the way in which I am experiencing the world?
I am finding that I create some of my better images when I slow down, soak in the environment, feel the atmosphere and slowly explore the landforms. If I have had the time to develop an understanding of the history, culture and significance of a given place it helps. Which raises an interesting question. Can we as landscape photographers take images devoid of an understanding of the history and significance of a given place? Will understanding something of the geology of a mountain range, or the cultural significance of a location to the indigenous people or the belief systems of those who built and worship in a given cathedral or shrine enhance and find expression in the images I create? When I have raised these questions with some photographers, I have encountered a blank look. After all isn’t a good photo all about location, technique, camera settings, the time of day, post processing etc.
In the Maori creation story, it was Tãne the god of the forest who separated Earth and Sky allowing light to shine on the earth so freeing the world from darkness. This whakatoki (proverb) is often used as a metaphor for the attainment of knowledge or enlightenment.
I personally have a discomfort with the pursuit of “trophy” images. It seems everyone with a camera (and that is most people) who visit the South Island of New Zealand has to have a photo of the Church of the Good Shepherd or the Wanaka Tree. The “detached photographer” dropping by to “gaze and capture” and post yet another trophy or maybe if a little more serious take a prize-winning photo. While once this is what drove me, I now want to engage and immerse myself more fully in the environment and play with ideas.
So why my love of landscapes, big wide spaces? And why have I discovered more recently a passion for abstract landscapes? Questions I am still puzzling, with the search no doubt seeping through in my photography.
I was raised on a farm north of Auckland in New Zealand. A farm hewn out of bush by my great grandfather an immigrant who came to New Zealand from Walkern in Hertfordshire as part of the non-conformist Albertland settlement movement. As a child and into adolescence I spent a great deal of time wandering the rolling farmland, climbing the hills and exploring the gully’s and creeks that ran through our farm. Fishing excursions to the east coast sandy beaches and rocky headlands gave me a love of the coastal areas.
I love big wide expanses and have also recognised that I need to live where I can see an edge, be it a view of the hills or a coastline. While I love the deserts of Australia and central Asia, and the big cities, I couldn’t live there, I need an edge.
I love big wide expanses and have also recognised that I need to live where I can see an edge, be it a view of the hills or a coastline. While I love the deserts of Australia and central Asia, and the big cities, I couldn’t live there, I need an edge.
Since childhood, I have sporadically photographed places visited. I recall being given a Box Brownie by my parents at age 10 and carefully saving my pocket money to develop the photos I took when on holiday. Soon after marrying in the early 1970’s, we moved from New Zealand to Sydney for 3 years. I invested in a Kodak Instamatic and produced trays of slides as we explored a new country.
Fast forward and with little photographic interest in the intervening years, it was the late 1990’s before I picked up the camera again. I was running the Continuing Education programme at the University of Canterbury with access to some amazing photography teachers and with my wife made the most of the opportunity to learn. As part of my work, I was invited to the Antarctic, given a crash course in polar photography, loaned a Canon SLR and supplied with heaps of film. Following this trip, I actively pursued landscape photography while my wife started her journey into abstract as an early adopter of Lensbaby.
It was the early 2000’s when I discovered abstract photography. Meeting Ken Ball from Australia was somewhat fortuitous as I discovered from him that by deliberately moving my camera, I could produce impressionistic images. I recall a photoshoot in rural NSW Australia with Ken and a friend from the USA who to this day is no doubt still shaking his head completely mystified as to why we would want to move our cameras about and smear Vaseline on filters to create “blurry photos”.
I put that early foray into the abstract aside as we travelled to exotic locations; Samarkand, Lhasa, Bagan, Xian, Alaska, Hudson Bay, the USA, Japan and the Northern Territory of Australia. Amazing landscapes and cultures all inviting me to document what I was seeing.
Twenty nineteen was the watershed year. My wife, with her ongoing passion for abstract photography, wanted to attend an abstract photography workshop run by Len Metcalf and Shirley Steel in Australia. I went along still wedded to “straight” images of the landscape. I had no choice but to start experimenting with the different techniques taught. I was hooked, and my self-image as a photographer transformed. The seminal moment was when I realised that every time I pressed the shutter button I had the opportunity as an “artist” to create a work of art that I and others could enjoy. Who me an artist?
During 2020 we binged out on learning, not a bad distraction from COVID. We became active members of the recently established Lens School and I did two online programmes with Valda Bailey and Doug Chinnery. I made my first photography book, Close to Home - 20 images taken within 20 kilometres of our home in 2020, all landscapes using intentional camera movement. I upgraded my camera and bought a wide format printer.
I have over the past year experimented with using long, generally 4 second, exposures during which I move the camera, and at times my body. My movements often mirror the contours of the landscape, be it a ridgeline, seashore, a valley or the margins between different components in the landscape. For me, this has become a process of engaging emotionally and intellectually with what is being photographed. It gives me a creative buzz and on occasions produces some satisfying results.
I made my first photography book, Close to Home - 20 images taken within 20 kilometres of our home in 2020, all landscapes using intentional camera movement. I upgraded my camera and bought a wide format printer.
Rather than carefully composing and with the click of the shutter “capturing” the view in front of me, I want to engage with what I am seeing, move with it, play with an idea and immerse myself in the hugely satisfying process of creating a landscape. I also enjoy using multiple exposure techniques to create an image in camera. By the way I still do some “straight” photography.
Mid 2020 as a family we were invited to Government House for an occasion and I was inspired seeing for the first time a painting - Fugue III - created by New Zealand artist Elizabeth Rees in which she “deconstructed” and “reassembled” the landscape. The idea of fugue in musical composition intrigued me, with Rees’ style providing a departure point for my more recent work.
I am currently transitioning from fulltime work and have been giving a lot of thought to the notion of purpose and what it is that gets me up in the morning. I am recognising that one of the things that gives me huge joy and satisfaction is the process of creating, be it writing, problem-solving, designing a workshop or a presentation, throwing a pot as a potter or more recently using a camera as an “artist” to create a work of art.
In the Maori creation story, it was Tãne the god of the forest who separated Earth and Sky allowing light to shine on the earth so freeing the world from darkness. This whakatoki (proverb) is often used as a metaphor for the attainment of knowledge or enlightenment.
When I first became interested in landscape photography, around the end of the last century, I started searching for information about my new hobby anywhere I could find it. I noticed an advertisement in the newspaper for a presentation of landscape prints at a local art centre and was intrigued by the name “Contemplative Photography”.
I didn’t know at the time how much that presentation would shape my photography in the future. The prints that day were by Christopher Brown a local, large format, fine art photographer, printmaker and photography instructor. One print in particular that got my attention was “Raplee Anticline and the San Juan River, Utah.” At the time I didn’t exactly know what attracted me to that image but it really spoke to me. After years of studying photography and art composition, I now realise the reasons why this image grabbed me. The leading S curve of the river and foliage, the multiple layers of eroded rock, the lovely colour palette and the curving diagonal lines of the Raplee Anticline in the background all draw your eye around and through this picture.
The prints presented that day were Cibachromes, also new to me, and it felt as though you could walk right into the photographs. The colour, depth and radiance of the polyester based prints were superb. When asked to write about a photograph that influenced and inspired me, this image came to mind immediately.
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.
Submit Your 4x4 Portfolio
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.
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.
The year 2020 was understandably challenging for most people, but 2019 was a much more difficult year for me. I was anxious, depressed, and alternatively a very angry person, silently struggling to avoid slipping further into the darkness of my own mind, until one day when everything changed.
However, my project focuses on the benefits to the mind and spirit. The year 2020 was understandably challenging for most people, but 2019 was a much more difficult year for me. I was anxious, depressed, and alternatively a very angry person, silently struggling to avoid slipping further into the darkness of my own mind, until one day when everything changed.
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.
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.
My walks were always mid-day but I was not hampered by the harsh light, as I preferred to capture details, sometimes referred to as intimate landscapes. A moment in time with a unique connection, these more intimate images that I took from the landscape helped me relate to something larger than myself. Even the smallest, most dull locations can hold magic, and interesting things were everywhere. The forest can fill us up, in mind and spirit, with a sense of wonder that is a balm for the soul. I saw a mushroom that seemed to be dancing, or the sunlight highlighting a thread of web, and my heart would swell as I lifted my camera to try to capture my response to the surroundings.
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.
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.
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.
Not all of my images were pretty, but then not all of life is pretty either. Immersing myself in nature every day reminded me of the fragility of life. Nature is fragile, nature is vulnerable, and so are we. We must take the time to appreciate nature in order to appreciate life.
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
Wind Dance
Water Dance
Triptych of Water Dance, I’ll Cry if I Want To, Barely There
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.
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.
The beauty of photographing the landscape is not only the direct experience of being better connected to nature but also the chance to connect with ourselves and others. I remember reading an interview from a photographer who expressed this same idea of reconnecting to oneself through photography and it really resonated with me. For most of us, the modern world makes it difficult to have time to reflect and consider the internal landscape of thoughts and emotions. And for a long list of reasons, we’ve become disconnected from one another. But through art, whatever the medium, we can reconnect to self and to others. Beyond the aesthetics of beautiful imagery is where landscape photography has so much to offer.
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.
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.
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.
That sense of completion is powerful. Moving from a photographic adventure through the creative expression around that adventure and ending up with a tangible collection of prints brings a satisfying reward. Even though the body of work might grow in scope over time, there’s really something to be said for a small print project that can be completed so closely to the exciting time in the field.
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.
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
I am passionate about work which interweaves ideas into the images and I have found this here. I am confident you will too.” What was the vision for the collaboration for the photographers? How did you go about choosing the six photographers?
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:
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:
Standard book £15.00
Launch edition print (10 max / photographer) £10.00
Any 3 prints £20.00
All 6 prints £30.00
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.
The Six Photographers
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.
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.
During the COVID crisis, the opportunities I had to get out in the field and continue our research have been real bright spots. Seeing damaged peatlands returned to healthy, vibrant ecosystems gives me real optimism that we can achieve positive change in our landscapes and environment. And restoring our bogs really matters! It struck me as a suitably uplifting example of ‘New Beginnings’, one I wanted to convey in my image making for the book. The thousands of new bog pools created through peatland restoration are particularly fascinating, so that became my focus.
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.
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.
I wanted to capture that feeling of exhilaration and hope represented by the bright spring colours, but also the fleeting nature of these moments which makes them all the more special. The bleak days of winter make us appreciate the spring all the more, similarly our experience of lockdown has made us all realise what’s most important to us.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Those who know me are aware that I am not very interested in photography kit, beyond knowing what I need to know, to take the images I want to take. Consequently I had a bit of a learning curve to understand how to maximise the quality of handheld images, through making the best compromises of aperture and iso to achieve the necessary short exposure time. I learned the joys of auto iso for the first time, never having appreciated it before.
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.
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 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”.
These are icebergs which had moved to the very end of the fjord system where the shallower water grounded them and so they were stuck there until they slowly melted away.
These are icebergs which had moved to the very end of the fjord system where the shallower water grounded them and so they were stuck there until they slowly melted away. There were sharp vertical “Harry Potter” mountains on either side clad in brightly coloured tundra vegetation, mainly red, which was reflected in the still water making it look like blood. The overall effect was like being inside a kaleidoscope. We explored the icebergs from the Zodiacs. They were closely assembled, creating a wonderland of shapes, light and colour. As the sun rose, the mountains on one side turned gold while the other remained in shadow. At the head of the fjord was a single mountain with snow on the top and stripes of red and grey on its flanks. The possibilities for making images were endless.
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.
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. .
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.
The vegetation on Red Island was varied including yellow grasses and red and orange willows. Some of the dying leaves had already turned grey, providing a great neutral contrast colour and there was a huge variety of texture.
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.
References
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.
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.
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 Goals of the Competition
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 are the judges
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.
Judging criteria
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.
Categories
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.
Using scores
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’.
Judging System
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.
Pre-Judging
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.
Nepotism
“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).
In Person vs Remote Judging
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.
Well, it’s not quite as bad as herding cats, but managing a set of independent, professional photographers should not be underestimated.
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.
Managing a Group of Judges
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.
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Wonder is the first of all passions. RENE DESCARTES
Photography has been my passion since the early seventies, and over those years the work of making pictures has sustained and nourished me. Now retired, I've become curious about my inextinguishable desire to continue making pictures and why I look to nature for my raw materials.
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.
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.
