Join the conversation
Subcribe to comment rss feedThe taking and the making
Mark Littlejohn
Mark Littlejohn is an outdoor photographer who lives on the edge of a beach in the desolate wastelands of the Highlands of Scotland. He takes photographs of anything unlucky enough to pass in front of his camera.
A gent commented the other day, “It's a lovely picture, but there's been a fair bit of colour tweaking”. You’re fecking right there was! I’m a cynic with a romantic heart. I’ve lived in the real world long enough to realise that reality is overrated. These days, most of us are loath to turn on the news for fear of what we’re going to see.
Why should my pictures be sombre replications of the world around me? In my previous life in the police, it was a case of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But I’m no longer required to be a faithful servant of the truth. I’m free to process these little scenes the way I envisage them in the rose tinted avenues and alleyways of my mind. I’m not a skilled technician; my processing is rudimentary at best. But I know how to achieve what I want to achieve.
I like to look at the end result and sigh happily. To look at a finished image with a smile. Knowing that I’ve managed to replicate what it was that I saw in my mind's eye when I took the original image.
All my alterations are global; I don’t make little selections and work on small areas separately. This obviously limits me slightly and means that I’m very conditions dependent. But that's how it should be. I want to be excited by both ends of the process. The taking and the making.
And if the colouring doesn’t suit some folk then thats absolutely fine. As long as the failed artist that lurks within me likes it then thats fine. We look at the work of painters and allow them artistic licence so why can’t we do the same with photographers.
Anyway. A picture.
Possibly the last from last week's wander down near Garve