We return to the Lockdown Podcasts and in this instalment, Joe Cornish, David Ward and I discuss 'field practice'. By this I mean the way in which we go about finding images, what motivates us to go on a walk, what triggers our interest in a scene and how do we facilitate composing. It's fairly freeform, as usual, although I promise that none of us had been drinking (we're doing a New Year special for that one!) Without further ado...
For more than thirty years I have found inspiration in Paul Wakefield’s photography. Although our work has been published together in National Trust books, and we have met many times I remain in awe of Paul’s uniquely-seen images. Over the course of a long career, his style may have evolved somewhat, but even his earliest pictures still seem fresh and utterly authentic.
…and David and I have also written our own responses to the publication of his wonderful 2014 book, entitled (surprisingly unambiguously) The Landscape.
Paul has no need to seek out recognition or approval, for his success in the commercial world has fulfilled any such need long since. His personal work has genuinely been done for his own gratification and pleasure.
Paul has no need to seek out recognition or approval, for his success in the commercial world has fulfilled any such need long since. His personal work has genuinely been done for his own gratification and pleasure. And yet, intriguingly, he has as strong a sense of sharing his photography as any of us.
And yet, intriguingly, he has as strong a sense of sharing his photography as any of us. Indeed, one can almost say that the role played by the viewer is fundamental to him. He sees the back-turned figure in Caspar David Friedrich’s painting, Wanderer above a Sea of Fog, as a symbol of the viewer’s gaze.
If you were to take a guess at the topic of Colin Prior’s new book project you may be forgiven for thinking it would be documenting a part of the Alps, working on Scottish plateaus or perhaps portraying the sublimity of the Himalayas (actually, I think the Himalayas will be the next one). What you probably wouldn’t guess is that it’s a book on eggs.
Yes, you read that right, this review will be about a Colin Prior book on bird eggs of Scotland. And yet, as surprising as this sounds, it isn’t as random as it first appears. You see, Colin isn’t just passionate about the Scottish landscape, he’s also passionate about the wildlife that lives within it and it is this passion that sparked an idea. What makes the project particularly interesting, and relevant, for us is that for each of the exquisitely captured photographs of bird eggs, there is an associated landscape photograph that represents the habitat in which the egg would be found and has been paired to also give an aesthetic complement.
The result is a series of pairs of images that deliver much more than each would on their own. The book hits a very nice balance between just enough information in its preliminary essays to give scientific and environmental context but letting these pairs of photographs speak for themselves on their artistic merit. The patterns of camouflage on the eggs are constantly intriguing and the photographs of the landscape strike a good balance between representing location, portraying patterns and textures of the environment and bringing Colin’s sense of the aesthetic to each so that they may be enjoyed in isolation and in its pair, neither overwhelming the other.
On returning to this book repeatedly over the last weeks, I have been reminded that the sense of landscape photography producing individual ‘hero’ pictures is one that really only represents a single aspect of its utility. When used as part of a larger project, one that informs, intrigues and entertains the viewer at the same time, it brings a whole new perspective. This book is a great example of this and I would love to see more like it.
We got in touch with Colin to ask him a few questions about the project.
How did you come up with the idea for the project and what were your thoughts on how to present it?
The idea for Fragile began over twelve years ago and was a natural progression of my landscape work. I had spent the last 25 years shooting with the panoramic format and was ready to move on – I felt I had said what I wanted to say with that format and found that it had literally become a creative straitjacket. I wondered if there was a way in which I could fuse my passion for birds with that of the landscape without having to photograph birds themselves and was aware of the innate beauty of birds’ eggs. I was keen to create a body of work that was beyond views and was underpinned with an environmental message. Birds’ eggs offered something new and visually exciting which I felt people would be intrinsically drawn to and which would act as a metaphor to highlight the demise of wild bird populations throughout the UK.
How many of the images in the book were taken specifically for the project rather than accessing your extensive back catalogue?
there are not more than a couple of images used from my archive - they have all been photographed specifically for the book
I was under no illusion as to what it would take to photograph the eggs in the way I envisaged, and initially, I couldn’t see a way of achieving this as it would mean investing around 30K, into a studio stand, a stacking unit and a studio flash set up, which from a business perspective was untenable. However, I wasn’t deterred and for many years before I began photographing the eggs, I concentrated on searching out and photographing birds’ habitats and had generated a collection of these images long before I began the photography of the eggs at the Museums of Scotland.
Previously, when I was predominantly photographing from elevated mountain viewpoints, I had built up a list of undisturbed locations that I had either walked or driven through, en route and it had been my intention to return to these when the time was right – it was in these locations where most of the new images were created. Accordingly, there are not more than a couple of images used from my archive - they have all been photographed specifically for the book. With some locations, I needed to return at a different time of the year to achieve the colours I needed to match a specific egg – the dominant colour of the egg was ultimately my starting point and it wasn’t without challenges to create both a synergy between egg and habitat and diversity at the same time.
What makes eggs so visually fascinating is their shape, their colour and their patterns. In our early design concepts, my designer had chosen to present the eggs in a grey (80% white) box as she felt that the white page made the egg feel like a cut-out, which is not the case. I wasn’t convinced and wanted white space between the egg and the habitat, but it took me some time to realise why I didn’t like the grey box. One evening, I was looking at the PDF and became aware that, instead of my eye exploring the enigmatic shape of the egg, it was following the edges of the grey box, something, I concluded, that was not an attribute, so we lost the grey background and went with pure white.
I liaised with many experts in their fields, often via my contacts at the RSPB and NatureScot and with various stalkers and gillies that I have befriended over the years.
I know you’re very familiar with many of the birds included but did you have to do much extra research into habitat and behaviour in order to complete the project? Did this research change your mind about what images to include?
Research was crucial to the project – it was important that I was photographing habitats that were, in fact, areas where each specific bird bred and to this end I liaised with many experts in their fields, often via my contacts at the RSPB and NatureScot and with various stalkers and gillies that I have befriended over the years. Often their advice refocussed my efforts in a different area – I recall struggling with the greenshank’s habitat at Forsinard in the Flow Country – it’s a largely flat and featureless blanket bog and not easy to create a landscape image that has sufficient interest. Professor Des Thomson, who wrote the opening essay of the book, confirmed that greenshank nest in the Flowerdale Forest in the heart of Torridon which gave me a little bit more to work with. Another species, the nightjar, which nests in Scotland in tiny numbers is found only within a very specific range, so I had to concentrate my efforts in a geographically small area which proved to be very challenging – in the end, it was a change of approach that finally led to success.
The process of photographing the eggs is a strange mix of technical/scientific and aesthetic. What choices were involved in how to portray the eggs beyond mere technical accuracy of colour and focus?
Once the eggs were on the table, the stacking unit would be activated, and we would be shooting anything between 40-80 images depending on the egg size
Photographing the eggs was a fantastic experience and was all carried out, in situ, at the Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh. One of the most time-consuming activities was selecting the eggs to be photographed – there is such choice and with some of the smaller species, such as corn buntings there are typically 36 clutches, each containing 4-5 eggs, within each case – a total of 180 eggs. Corn bunting eggs are exquisite and trying to choose the best examples is frankly impossible – there are so many really beautiful eggs that, with this species in particular, I ended up photographing an entire clutch of 5 plus two others – a couple of hours for one species. With other species I was typically shooting 2 examples and with others, such as eagles and guillemots, as many as 10 eggs.
Once the eggs were on the table, the stacking unit would be activated, and we would be shooting anything between 40-80 images depending on the egg size. The lighting was crucial to the photography and I had already established how I would light the eggs before setting up in the museum. Images were collated and then stacked in Helicon Focus.
One of the biggest historic threats to wild birds was DDT and the book provides an excellent background on this. What do you see as the biggest current threat?
The story of eggs and the crucial role they played in establishing the devastating effects of DDT is well documented. Throughout my lifetime, I have witnessed, first hand, the demise of wild bird species, not only from my former family home where I was brought up, but from many other areas with which I am intimately familiar. The trends over the last 50 years are not encouraging with species such as lapwing, curlew and starling down by around 60% - many others show declines of anything between 20-40% and this is being driven largely by changes of land use and habitat loss. Large scale housing and retail developments can have catastrophic effects of local bird populations, particularly if the green belt has been encroached and increasingly, climate change is beginning to compound problems. It is difficult to see how this situation can improve and as more and more people are using the countryside recreationally, the ramifications for wildlife are not good. Long term, I see this loss of biodiversity accelerating as we continue to encroach and fragment the land areas on which wildlife depends. Despite this, Fragile grew from my sense of wonder of the natural world and it is my hope that you can share in that wonder too.
You can purchase signed copies of Colin Prior's "Fragile" at his website for £35. Click here to access the product page directly.
It’s easy to think that to be noticed these days, you have to be on social media, but for this issue, we’re happy to prove the exception. We have Guest Editor Joe Cornish to thank for pointing us in the direction of Russian photographer Oleg Ershov. If one or two of Oleg’s photos seem familiar, it may be that you saw them in our subscribers’ 4x4 feature in August. They certainly bear looking at again, as does Oleg’s wider portfolio, and he has provided us with a fascinating insight into his personal development as a photographer.
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 in the north of Russia, near the White Sea, in Arkhangelsk, and lived there for 17 years. I devoted all my free time to sports - playing football in the summer and ice hockey in the winter. Then I moved to Moscow to study computers at a technical university.
After graduation, I often changed my place of residence and type of activity. Then the era of capitalism began in the country, and it was necessary to deal with everything, not computers. But the engineering approach to problem-solving acquired during my studies and the mathematical skills I had helped me a lot.
Eventually, in the mid-1990s, I began working for a private company specializing in the import and distribution of food products. Over time, the company became quite large, and I continue to stay there even now.
For 15 years, I was the CEO and did a lot of work every day. And my main desire at that time was to have more vacation days for a photography hobby. Over time, this happened - I already perform more advisory and representative functions and have a lot of free time.
After graduation, I often changed my place of residence and type of activity. Then the era of capitalism began in the country, and it was necessary to deal with everything, not computers. But the engineering approach to problem-solving acquired during my studies and the mathematical skills I had helped me a lot.
What prompted you to buy your first DSLR in 2007 and what kind of images did you want to make at the time?
At first, I used compact cameras for travel photography. Then I became interested in landscapes and looked through the works of other authors on various photo sites. In 2007 I signed up for a two-week photo tour of the Southwestern USA, but did not succeed right away: the offer was oversubscribed several times. Usually, on the first day after the announcement, the number of applications exceeded the number of seats available, and the organizer chose the "right" participants.
Having agreed to write this ‘end-frame’ piece for On Landscape magazine I cast my mind back to my own, early inspirations into landscape photography and recalled admiring Joe Cornish’s images in a variety of National Trust publications from the 1980s if my memory serves me correctly.
I also remember reading his book about Northumberland and a particular 3.30am start on Holy Island which fired my imagination as I wistfully dreamed of pottering around on the beach myself exploring for foreground interest and patiently waiting for the amazing light of sunrise.
Before retiring to my (second) breakfast at 6 that is...!
Later, by several years I imagine, I came across this image by Joe known as 'Gateway to the Moors II, North York Moors'. At once I could see that this is where I wanted to be with my own landscape photography in the years ahead.
But let’s face it - we are not looking at El Capitan here. This is just a simple, fairly unremarkable, but pleasing, English viewpoint.
However, the photograph that Joe managed to create with seemingly modest raw materials is at once immersive, attentively observed, carefully crafted and composed.
A few issues back, Joe Cornish, David Ward and I started a chat about the origins of landscape and composition in art. The goal was to provide a foundation for a series of articles on composition in landscape photography but, as seems usual when I start researching things, I got sucked down the Rabbit Hole and got stuck researching some of the origins of landscape painting. What I found was interesting enough (to me at least) that I thought it worth sharing on our way to the final goal of ‘landscape composition’.
In that first article, I shared some paintings that ranged from the origins of art, cave painting through the Roman period and ending with some ‘World Landscape’ paintings, including one from Albrecht Altdorfer. I want to backtrack to talk about the era that this painting came from as the era represents the origins of ‘independent landscape’, i.e. landscape painting as the subject of the work rather than the ‘by work’ or background.
The Annunciation - Leonardo Da Vinci (1472-1475)
It’s fair to say that the Rennaisance affected art across Europe but its persistence said as much about the environment and dominance of the church as it did about the artistic temperament of the day. The Catholic church, the remains of the Holy Roman Empire, held a strong hold over society and most art, specially commissioned art, was in service to this. The main art of the day was either direct representation of biblical stories or allegorical works about moral rectitude (witness Hieronymous Bosch’s truly disturbing “Garden of Earthly Delights”). If an artist were to include a landscape it would form the background of the work, simply there to provide a foundation. For instance, there is another version of the Mona Lisa, created at the same time but from a slightly different angle. This suggests that the background of both versions was probably a painted backdrop and quite possibly a purchased or commissioned studio accessory. Many artists farmed out their background work to apprentices or, in some cases, completely different artists.
In northern Europe, there began a cultural questioning of the religious status quo, with Luther and Calvin developing Humanist ideas that would play a part in the formation of the Protestant Church. In this environment, artists worked with a little more flexibility and allowed their passion for landscape to reveal itself in their work. This passion for landscape wasn’t necessarily a new thing, but it had been frowned upon as an indulgence, not serious enough to be the prime subject of a painting. Gerard David worked on the cusp of this new era and created fully formed landscapes in the background of his major paintings. In one he case managed to sneak them onto the backs of the wings of an altarpiece triptych.
Before it can ever be a repose for the senses, landscape is a work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.
~ Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory.
Through the months of this year, I have written in On Landscape about some of the different fields of landscape photography. My final theme is the Landscape of Memory. The idea is in part inspired by Simon Schama’s 1995 book, Landscape and Memory. Although potentially controversial, I hope it might be the most interesting – and certainly most embracing – category of all.
Schama’s is the historian’s perspective. He illuminates how landscape – nature – remains a subject of veneration and spiritual renewal in almost all major cultures. This seems to contradict the appearance that, since the industrial revolution, human progress has treated nature merely as a material resource to exploit.
In the course of a life, memories are so numerous they fade, dissolve or change to re-form into narratives that suit our purpose. But, are photographs not in themselves distilled memories?
His book is a monumental work that requires days and days of devoted reading…I wish I could claim I had read it all! But the idea is a starting point for the memory of one individual, yours truly, as well as the cultural and collective memory that Schama invokes.
In the course of a life, memories are so numerous they fade, dissolve or change to re-form into narratives that suit our purpose. But, are photographs not in themselves distilled memories? This is highly debatable. Some might argue (Sally Mann for one) that they may even mask or dilute memory… or that they can change it.
My experience is that photographic endeavour deepens engagement and connection with a place and the moment, binding us more closely to it. Memory may then be stimulated, inferred and extrapolated from the image at a later date. But the actualité is probably less important than the imaginative reconstruction it provokes. The empirical truth can never really be retold; everything passes through the filter of memory, the lens of recollection.
I have made thousands of photographs and could tell hundreds of stories about them. Yet a few have ultimately crystallised into something significant…to me at any rate. Whether it is the lessons learned from the individual photograph, or over the period through which the example was made is not so important. Perhaps it is not even about the landscape in the photograph, but these stories are always about the inner landscape, the landscape of memory.
Shotover Valley
Aged 17 and prior to attending university, I spent 6 months in New Zealand, travelling, and working as a sheep shearer’s roustabout for 3 months.
My father loaned me his Kodak Instamatic for the journey; it was the first time I had ever used a camera. His main reaction to my photographs on returning home was shock at my wanton profligacy. I had shot eighty exposures during those six months. Four rolls of (20 exposure) film would ordinarily have lasted my Dad around eight years.
At such an impressionable age some memories remain, and New Zealand certainly left its mark on me. I travelled widely by car and on foot through the South Island with an old school friend, during and after the work experience. We saw fjords, mountains and glaciers on its west coast, and, in the North Island, thermal wonders and active volcanoes. In many ways this was the epic landscape, still wild in parts, that my youthful imagination would have conjured up as an original Eden. Thirty-five years before The Lord of the Rings film franchise first appeared, there was barely a tourist to be seen.
I returned to the UK in late June 1976, a year of drought. As the train rattled its way from Reading to Exeter through the Wessex countryside, fields and woods already yellowed from lack of rain, I was overcome with emotion. It might have been unusually dry… it was scenically not a patch on New Zealand’s alpine South Island. But it was England; it was home. It must have been the first realisation of my landscape identity.
My brother Nick now lives in Dunedin, and I have visited him a few times since that first journey. The picture here was made in April 2018. Memories of New Zealand are, mainly, happy ones.
But they are not as deep as those of home.
Granite Coast
In a moment of mad extravagance, my great-grandfather had splashed out on a holiday bolt-hole in Polzeath, North Cornwall, in 1933. The wildly overpriced, poorly-built house became much loved by his (large and expanding) family over many decades.
In a moment of mad extravagance, my great-grandfather had splashed out on a holiday bolt-hole in Polzeath, North Cornwall, in 1933. The wildly overpriced, poorly-built house became much loved by his (large and expanding) family over many decades.
Late summer holidays were almost always spent here, often with our cousins. Ten kids and four parents, two families chaotically playing and squabbling outside in the sun, or the waves, or hunting the rock pools at low tide. About as idyllic as could be imagined. Perhaps predictably, when the family eventually sold that house it disappeared, replaced by a shiny modernist villa.
As an art student with my first camera (an Eastern European 35mm film slr), Cornwall was the site of my first photographic ideas and experiments. I looked at familiar places with a new, compositionally-critical eye, found myself thinking – worrying – about light and shadow.
Cornwall remains a home from home for me. On returning I carry my many memories. Sharing a name with the county probably helps preserve that sense of belonging too. These monumental, defensive-looking granite ramparts are a mile or so walk south of Land’s End. Framed on all sides except the east by the sea, Cornwall can seem a land apart, and to epitomise what Simon Schama refers to as Britain’s ‘cliff-girt insularity’. But, for me, these mosses, lichens and spring wildflowers evoke a memory of sunlit, warm, life-affirming abundance.
Toledo
The Greek-born Spanish painter, Doménikos Theotokópoulos, was known as El Greco to the people of his adopted city. He made one of the first pure landscape paintings of the Renaissance; the legendary View of Toledo. This in itself was remarkable, but even more so was his treatment of it. Although based on recognisable topography, El Greco’s trademark brushstrokes made Toledo into a fantastical city, a spiritual domain, dramatised by astonishing effects of light.
Because View of Toledo is such a landmark painting, any art student with a lively interest in art history was/is familiar with it. As a young working photographer I travelled widely in Europe during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s; once I knew Toledo was on my subject list for a book on Castille and Léon, seeking out El Greco’s View of Toledo viewpoint became an obsession.
Whenever we attempt to revisit an older view, everything has inevitably changed. Was this the spot? A cafe owner nearby was keen to reassure me, indeed it was. Having found the place, I returned twice before the light co-operated. Not El Greco’s sky, for his was drawn largely from imagination; but at least one that could evoke depth.
By now the cafe may well have gone, perhaps replaced by a multi-million euro El Greco experience museum. I feel lucky to have found my own perspective on a view El Greco immortalised in the memory of generations of art lovers.
Derwent Water from Kings How
In our loft is a large, faded, painting I made as a 15-year-old, while on an Easter family holiday in the Lake District. It is a detail of a twisted, rough-textured, complex old tree. I cannot recall where the tree was, but I do remember we were based in Keswick.
The first book for which I was the commissioned photographer was about the Founders of the National Trust. Its cover picture was of Brandelhow, the National Trust’s first Lake District property, on Derwent Water.
The first book for which I was the commissioned photographer was about the Founders of the National Trust. Its cover picture was of Brandelhow, the National Trust’s first Lake District property, on Derwent Water. I have continued to return to the northern Lakes, building up my back-catalogue of photographs and memories. For all its popularity I have never tired of the unique synthesis of dramatic fells, sheltered valleys, rivers, lakes and woodlands.
I recall a picture book from my childhood. Straddling two pages, one illustration showed a small girl sitting up in bed, totally absorbed in a picture book of her own. From a patchwork fabric her quilt changed into a patchwork of fields, and the end of her bed was all distant hills and woods, a river system and lake. This was no great work of art, but I love that picture; it proves to me that a feeling for landscape is embedded (no pun intended) in childhood.
The view of Derwent Water from Kings How brings that picture to life in my memory.
Bealach Na Gaoithe
Rarely do I recognise the direct inspiration of another photographer, but inevitably there have been such influences. In my book First Light, there is a chapter entitled, ‘Friends and Heroes’, which highlights those to whom I owe a particular debt. Paul Wakefield is one of those. A hero then, I am happy to also count him a friend now. This composition is a homage to Paul’s dark-yet-sunlit, precisely-seen large format film image from Scotland: A Place of Visions. It remains the iconic original, imprinted in memory.
The great writer Jan Morris collaborated with Paul on this book and others about the British Isles. In the light of her recent passing, and the context of memory, it seems only right to remember and acknowledge her immense contribution to nature and travel writing here.
Scotland’s landscape has been the subject of millions of pages of inspired prose and poetry. As much as any nation can be, Scotland is more than territory. It is also an idea, a land of the imagination, a refuge for the soul. It is a paradox and a contradiction, for although the rain almost always seems to be falling somewhere, the colours are richer, the spaces more sharply defined, and the light more brilliant and elusive than anywhere else I know.
Castleton, Drifting Smoke
When out and about with my camera I hope to be completely receptive, to respond to what I see and put myself “at the mercy of inspiration” as the Zen mantra has it. But at the same time a working photographer has to consider practicalities. The north of England is the territory of a calendar that I co-publish each year with my gallery, so if the opportunity arises, I am happy to make images with that in mind.
In late summer heather blooms widely on the North York Moors, close to our home. Although really only at its best for a few short weeks, it forms a much-loved and defining signature of the landscape. Each August I seek an image that may prove useful for a future calendar. Over time these wanderings have coloured my memory, reflecting a cultural memory of the Moors, shared by many.
Eigg, Boulder Field
The first book of which I was the literary as well as photographic author was First Light, published in 2002. The cover photograph is from the coast at Elgol, Skye, and its composition pivots around a beautiful, apparently spherical boulder. That unfortunate rock has now developed a certain notoriety among photographers. I owe it my apologies.
After many years I returned to Eigg in February of 2018, driven in part by memory and a desire to make an image that remained unfulfilled. The combination of elements there is irresistible.
At the time it seemed an ideal cover image, combining interesting geology and cloud-wreathed distant mountains. It was shot only a year or two after I had started with a 5x4inch film technical camera, full-time. This picture was a confidence booster – technically and creatively it seemed I was finding my way.
My next book was Scotland’s Coast, published a couple of years later. The cover photograph was shot on Eigg; interesting geology and cloud-wreathed distant mountains again. But that - apparently self-referential picture - was much more challenging to shoot. In my mind it remained a work in progress.
After many years I returned to Eigg in February of 2018, driven in part by memory and a desire to make an image that remained unfulfilled. The combination of elements there is irresistible. The charismatic geology may seem immutable, but the scene changes minute by minute with the tidal ebb and flow, and Hebridean weather. The accompanying image is one composition that starts to get close, but my memory will continue to tempt me back.
Aspens, Independence Pass
In 2013, thanks to the promptings of Tony Spencer, I found myself in Colorado, co-leading a tour. Tony and I spent a few days before our group’s arrival location-hunting, based on his considerable research. In spite of epic Rocky Mountain perspectives, and the vivid colours of the Badlands we passed, the most memorable spot was a simple aspen grove beside the road below the Independence Pass.
I might have known the geographic location, but at that time I was lost in terms of creative approach. For the preceding five years I had been preoccupied with the new digital workflow, learning to stitch, improving my raw and Photoshop skills, printing my own work, and struggling with the camera. But I had stopped making pictures that I liked.
Independence Pass gave me a photograph I liked… well, loved. It might not have been a big deal; it wasn’t clever, or original. It just distilled some feeling I needed to rediscover. Nothing technical, or spectacular; just pure form and light.
Subsequently, we have always stopped at the same spot with our groups and spent a happy couple of hours beside the road, admiring and photographing these graceful trees. My gratitude and the memory of their ethereal beauty keeps me returning. The image here was made in 2019, reinterpreting the redemption of six years before.
Lost fjord, Greenland
Another Tony Spencer-inspired and organised tour took me to Greenland last year. This was to prove psychologically demanding and utterly exhilarating in equal measure. Every day was a new adventure. On a small (12 passengers) ship we sailed from Svalbard across the Fram Strait, over two days in a storm, to East Greenland. From here we cruised through fjords for almost two weeks, before finally sailing across the Denmark Strait to Akureyri, in northern Iceland.
Deeply sheltered in one of the world’s biggest fjord systems, this day brought light winds and a gently changing sky. The multitude of icebergs grounded in the shallows had to be seen to be believed.
Deeply sheltered in one of the world’s biggest fjord systems, this day brought light winds and a gently changing sky. The multitude of icebergs grounded in the shallows had to be seen to be believed. Hand-holding the camera in an inflatable boat is usually incredibly challenging, but these conditions made it possible.
Such exceptional memories, shared with a wonderful and convivial group. But the other side to this story is the stark reality of climate change in which fossil fuel-hungry technologies like air and ship travel are implicated. It forces us to question our right to undertake such journeys. Unless carbon emissions reach ‘Net-Zero’ sooner rather than later, coastal environments globally will be subject to an irreversible cycle of flooding and severe erosion.
Eventually, under the onslaught of rising temperatures and sea levels, Greenland’s ice shelves will break up, and her glaciers will no longer reach the sea. And then northern hemisphere icebergs will themselves become mere shadows of memory.
I believe human beings need beauty, and that nature is our source. The ice-filled fjords of Greenland are an inspiration to me, and for now at least I hope I can do more good than harm by making photographs of these fabulous, transient landscapes. To galvanise action, political and personal change, we also need to know – and see – what we may lose.
Abandoned Quarry
My landscape memories of this year have been overwhelmingly connected to a book I’ve been working on about the landscape designer, Humphry Repton. Throughout the summer and autumn and up to the beginning of the November lockdown, in the field and on the essential editing and post-production, it has been this year’s one and only big project.
Working on privately-owned estates I was always socially distanced, staying safe, and doing my job. Every location had extensive woodland providing solitude and the sort of visual challenges I love, including complex visual problem-solving. I have never been more grateful for the opportunity to pursue my chosen profession.
Additionally, this process has strengthened my sense of the vital importance of texture and colour relationships in conveying emotional warmth. The many hours of field work and editing have given me plenty of opportunity to work on that. Finishing in autumn, with its dominant earth tones and colours, was a perfect way to end the process.
This corner of an abandoned quarry, a source of building stone, is now a regenerating woodland. The geological memory that led to its exploitation is mostly concealed, and the workings are barely visible. Nature has reclaimed the present. When sometimes I feel all hope is gone, I try to remember this resilience.
In the end, Landscape of Memory might be called landscape of history; or imagination; or even shadows. In the photographer’s actual experience surrounded by the light, colour, texture and space of reality, there is simply the moment; a living space/time continuum. But there is also the inner landscape, vividly coloured by the landscape of memory. Where the outer world collides, or aligns, with the inner world of the artist, a landscape photograph is born.
Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes.
~ Mathematician and Physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss
It was 2am in the morning. A few days earlier I had downloaded the last thirty issues of On Landscape. And now I was scrolling through them page by page. Separating the images into two categories depending on how much time I spent looking at them. This two-category sorting technique worked brilliantly on my own images. But I wanted to test it out to see if it would also work on images not mine.
In the first “not my style” category were images whose viewing times lasted less than a second or so. In the second “keeper” category were images I viewed much longer. Often going back to view them several times more before moving on to the next issue. Many of these keepers were as fresh on the fifth or tenth view as the original view. Prompting me to dig deeper and find out why these keepers stay so well preserved across so many viewings. Hoping in the process to discover some of the secrets to making meaningful images.
At the beginning, I had no clear idea of what factors were dominant contributors. Potential candidates included camera and lens configurations. Distance from home. Skill in navigating a tangled reductionist-centric maze of compositional rules. Industrial-strength post-processing machismo. And creativity-inspired uniqueness and novelty? But this exponentially expanding list soon became too impractical.
the second “keeper” category were images I viewed much longer. Often going back to view them several times more before moving on to the next issue. Many of these keepers were as fresh on the fifth or tenth view as the original view. Prompting me to dig deeper and find out why these keepers stay so well preserved across so many viewings.
So, I started to work backwards. Studying batches of existing keeper images using a “forest in the trees” mindset. I found many keeper traits anchored in my own eccentricities. Something I had already anticipated. I also encountered a few pet peeve gatekeepers that eliminated potential images. Which was a bit of an awkward surprise. Many traits became obvious only after their discovery. Hindsight working its revealing magic.
And on that introductory note, here are four of my most important keeper image traits: colour; curiosity; details; and title.
Colour
I can still remember in vivid detail, peeling my first colour print off a newly bought Kodak Rapid Colour Processor Model 11. It was around 1972, give or take a year or two. I had strapped it to two wooden slats straddled across the bathtub. The memory of that pivotal moment is the source for the quote at the beginning of this article.
With each additional colour print, I became more convinced that colour is where I want to be. Where I am supposed to be. Where I need to be for the rest of my life. A decision I have never once regretted making.
One of my favourite colour images is "Horizontal Meets Vertical". In this image, the bright surf acts like a highway dividing line. Ensuring two incompatible ecosystems get equal, collision-free billing. On the left, the refreshing cool blues of the ocean. On the right, the warm sun-loving oranges and yellows inhabiting the near-vertical cliffs. A natural for the expressive power inherent in complementary colours.
The "Almost Dinner Time" image is another example where colour plays an essential role. Here we have a late afternoon sun streaming through leafless oak trees still hesitating to enter spring. Paired with green grasses that got a head start at the beginning of the winter rains. A harmonious collaboration only visible when viewed through analogous RGB colour wheel hues.
Horizontal Meets Vertical Big Sur, California
Almost Dinner Time Mount Diablo State Park, California
Curiosity
Many keeper images contain a concoction of intriguing elements worthy of further inspection. Often bordering on the chaotic. Which is the preferred way the natural world presents itself to us anyway. Always a bit rumpled and dishevelled. Like the random musings, our minds like to engage in when we are in a happy and contented state of being.
Many keeper images contain a concoction of intriguing elements worthy of further inspection. Often bordering on the chaotic. Which is the preferred way the natural world presents itself to us anyway. Always a bit rumpled and dishevelled.
These elements have the capacity to expose my innate curiosity. Not the “pixel-peeping” kind only capable of focusing on the craft of photography. But the kind that consistently spawns why, how, where, and what questions. All worth scooping up with the click of a camera shutter.
One of my favourites is the "Forest Oasis" image. A prime example of the complex patterns that permeates much of nature. It did not take long after I arrived at this location, for the questions to start flowing. Do the self-similar rivulets forming the waterfalls have a well-defined fractal dimension? What kind of geology allows water to seep out across the entire cliff side? How many different plant species live between the rivulets? Questions that elevate my awareness of nature’s tenacious interconnectedness. Making me feel more alive. And in the process enhancing my viewing experience far beyond superficial eye candy.
Once, when viewing the image "Nomadic Pebbles", the following questions arose. Were these pebbles destined to become sand? If so, how much longer would it take? Ten thousand years? More than a million years? During a later viewing, a second set of questions stepped forward. How did these pebbles end up at this location? If not the blue bedrock, then from where? How long ago? Is this their final destination or a temporary stop along the way?
Both images prompted internet searches that spawned more curiosity than answers. A sure-fire guarantee that extra viewings will never decrease the image's net worth. Continuing instead to enrich and deepen my appreciation of nature's inner workings.
Forest Oasis McArthur-Burney Falls State Park, California
Nomadic Pebbles Bean Hollow State Beach, California
Details
I often encounter what I call fireworks images. Images streamlined for a rushed sugar-high fast-food kind of visual experience. Overloading all my senses the instant they appear on my computer screen. Only to reverse direction and immediately rush back into a forgotten oblivion.
But I also encounter keeper images resisting these instant gratification spikes. Urging me to slow down. On many of these occasions, I often take time out to brew a fresh cup of coffee. Augment it with a generous slab of fresh-out-of-the-oven pumpkin or banana nut bread. Before settling down to uncover additional interpretations and insights overlooked during previous viewings.
“Slow photography” should not be confined to the image capture end of the pipeline. But also encompass the visual interactions with the polished image at the other end. Easy to do if the image contains enough engaging details to make it impractical to digest in one viewing.
The image "Next Generation" is a perfect example. One could crop the left and right sides of the image to the point where only a thin sliver of the centre remained. Squeezing out everything except the twins taking centre stage in the image. But in the process, one can lose the structural details that bestow it with a sense of place. Details such as dappled sunlight strolling through the partially shaded forest. Wrinkled tree trunks sporting ages capable of outlasting many generations. A verdant meadow brimming with macro opportunities. Ambitious mountain tops sporting spectacular bird-eye views. And a bluer than blue sky primed and waiting for an unobstructed milky way to circle above the horizon.
The subject of the "Ambition" image has a long history. Before I settled on applied mathematics, I also considered a career in geology. And while it never happened, geology is still a latent force in many of my intimate landscape images. In this image, I was captivated by the diversity of stones inching up steeply inclined layers. Stones sporting brown and blue hues. Rough and smooth surfaces. Round and flat shapes. Some even pocketed with mysterious holes. A pleasing chaos of engaging patterns and textures begging for closer inspection.
I often encounter what I call fireworks images. Images streamlined for a rushed sugar-high fast-food kind of visual experience. Overloading all my senses the instant they appear on my computer screen.
Next Generation Trout Meadow, South Lake Tahoe, California
Ambition Pescadero State Beach, California
A Title
I prefer to launch an image into the public world armed with a title. A small token of appreciation designed to give it a head start as it embarks on a life of its own. When selecting titles, I lean towards expressions reflecting memorable facets of my life. Finding the right title always culminates in an exhilarating feeling of completion. A guaranteed ‘This is as good as it gets - it does not get better than this!’ moment every time.
The image "Curiosity" had another contender. "I Dare You to Get Closer". Both capable of influencing the mindset of the viewer when they first enter the image. Both had equal quantities of pluses and minuses. Requiring the flip of a coin to finalise the decision. Both titles gave me the freedom to strengthen the visual weight of the lichens. Increasing their area to better balance it with the much brighter waterfall.
The title "Thrashing About" has an interesting etymology. It was how one of my mathematics professors characterised students during final examinations. During my life, I found many other applications for these versatile words. Including the title to this image and the revision process used to clean up this article.
Curiosity Latourell Falls, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon
Thrashing About Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, California
Summary
There you have it. Four personal traits which consistently find themselves embedded in my keeper images. I’m confident the future still holds more traits worthy of discovery. But for now, they are more than adequate to help evolve my photography in the right direction.
Acknowledgements
The idea for this article sprouted from Allister Benn’s YouTube video, “Landscape Photography | Composition | Why, NOT HOW...” It's well worth watching.
Colour management as we know it in digital photography is often more about strange terminology than anything else, presenting itself in the form of profiles, gamut’s and unusual numbers. But colour management goes deeper than that, it centres around human vision which is a fundamental part of the visual arts, including photography. So I believe a deeper understanding of human vision, and the way it interacts with colour management can help us unlock the potential in our images, as we edit, view and print.
A fundamental principle of vision is seen in the interaction of colour. Leonardo Da Vinci wrote of these effects in his notebooks 500 years ago, and his observations are just as relevant today. “Of several colours, all equally white, that will look whitest which is against the darkest background. And black will look intensest against the whitest background. And red will look most vivid against the yellowest background, and the same is the case with all colours when surrounded by their strongest contrasts.” In essence, Leonardo noted that the colour perceived is determined by its surround.
“that will look whitest which is against the darkest background”
“And red will look most vivid against the yellowest background” You be the judge, the point here is the effect of different coloured backgrounds on an adjacent colour.
While these examples may seem like a pre-school lesson, I believe they provide an important insight.
While these examples may seem like a pre-school lesson, I believe they provide an important insight. We spend most of our lives observing colour without much conscious thought, yet we find ourselves using these largely unnoticed visual effects artistically and technically in our image making.
We spend most of our lives observing colour without much conscious thought, yet we find ourselves using these largely unnoticed visual effects artistically and technically in our image making.
The effect of a deep black can be counter intuitive. To brighten an image, it would seem more logical to increase the exposure than to lower the blacks, but a deeper black can be exactly what’s needed. In the same way, coated photographic papers with deep blacks, such as satin or baryta papers, appear to have more punch than rag or matte papers, even though the paper itself is just as bright, the blacks do the heavy lifting.
In colour science, a related effect was studied by Bartleson and Breneman. Just as contrast can be increased by using deep blacks within an image, they observed that contrast appears to reduce if the surround is dark, and increase if the surround is light, as shown here with Ansel Adam’s ‘Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico'. I came across this example during a discussion with Mark Fairchild, a Professor of Colour Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Mark had attended an exhibition which displayed Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico as the centrepiece of the show. Unfortunately, it was presented in a way that Adams would not have intended, against a dark background and directly illuminated. The effect created luminous whites, but the all-important black values appeared dark grey and effectively destroyed the centrepiece of the show. In his book The Print, Adams states his preference for a middle grey background. Today, official use of his images is generally not permitted on a dark background.
You could say that including Simon Baxter as a featured photographer is thanks for saving me from a long stay in London when the Beast from the East shut down all travel north of Yorkshire. But then again, he seemed happy with the cup of coffee and a bit of cake, so perhaps it's more likely because his photography has a consistent and creative vision of the world which he explores and shares so well through his YouTube videos (we've talked to him before about his video work here). Fortunately, Simon was happy to spend some time answering our questions and sharing some of his favourite images with us. We hope you enjoy his work and if you do, we can highly recommend exploring some of his videos on his YouTube channel. (Oh, and keep him in mind if you ever need a lift 'up North!')
Can you tell me a little about your education, childhood passions, early exposure to photography etc?
My earliest memory of photography is buying a compact film camera from Argos while on holiday in Cornwall. I must have been younger than 10 at the time. I progressed to a Pentax 35mm fully manual film camera and I recall watching a photography series on TV by Chris Packham. I started out by photographing things in the garden, household objects and then rallycross racing at the Croft race circuit near Darlington. Another hobby when I was young and into my twenties was freshwater angling. We enjoyed fishing at secluded lakes and quiet rivers where I would photograph the mist rising from the still water at dawn or the colourful sky and reflections from the setting sun. My interest in photography and being creative has always been present and my approach to it shares many parallels with my passion for angling and mountain biking.
Mountain biking dominated my spare time while studying for my degrees in Business and then a Masters in IT. It’s a hobby that I, unfortunately, had to give up due to a back injury but it’s an event that slowly led me back to photography, finding solace in nature, and developing a deeper connection with the landscape.
I think pride is something that has slowly developed as a result of an effort to seek a form of photography that offered solitude and therapy for both physical rehabilitation and to control my negative thought processes. In that process, I not only found my voice in photography but discovered a whole new world within my local countryside.
What are you most proud of in your photography?
I think pride is something that has slowly developed as a result of an effort to seek a form of photography that offered solitude and therapy for both physical rehabilitation and to control my negative thought processes. In that process, I not only found my voice in photography but discovered a whole new world within my local countryside. I spent a long time searching for quiet and rarely trodden woodlands where I could feel the peace and enjoy the sense of child-like adventure. Pride was the last thing on my mind, but looking back, I feel a sense of pride in having turned my life around through photography. I am equally proud and thankful to have been able to do so by creating images of the woodlands I’ve discovered and have grown to love.
In prehistory – you know, 20 years ago before a gazillion images were uploaded on to the Net each day – photographers found out about new locations by hearsay, reading about them or (on very rare occasions) seeing an image in a book. In those days we usually had little idea of what we would find before we arrived. At the time it seemed frustrating but in retrospect being free of the burden of expectation actually looks like a wonderful blessing. On the few occasions where I have set out to photograph a famous spot, I have almost always been disappointed with the results. In fact the image that I am perhaps best known for was one that I stumbled upon following a series of unfortunate events.
Starting in the 1980’s and on into the 1990’s, the American photographer Michael Fatali made a number of 10x8 images in a place called Coyote Buttes, in the Paria Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, Arizona. He gave each photo a poetic title, such as Tales of Time, Vertigo or The Wave. He was careful not to say where each photograph had been made. Fatali was not the first to photograph there and others – notably Jack Dykinga – have made equally stunning images. I don’t know if Fatali coined the name The Wave but it has become a landscape icon in the internet era. It has even achieved the ultimate accolade of becoming desktop wallpaper for Microsoft Windows™ computers. (yeah, right…)
Starting in the 1980’s and on into the 1990’s, the American photographer Michael Fatali made a number of 10x8 images in a place called Coyote Buttes, in the Paria Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, Arizona. He gave each photo a poetic title, such as Tales of Time, Vertigo or The Wave. He was careful not to say where each photograph had been made.
In an era where everyone incontinently shares the GPS location of their photos Fatali’s reluctance to say where he made these images seems almost inconceivable. Of course, the interest of every keen photographer who knew of Fatali’s work was piqued. In the mid-nineties, Joe Cornish was travelling through the desert southwest of the USA and met a woman who reluctantly told him where these images were made. Not long afterwards, Joe enlisted me and fellow photographers, Phil Malpas and Clive Minnitt, to accompany him on a pilgrimage.
Nowadays, this region is rightly considered one of the desert southwest’s most amazing locations for landscape photography. Ancient sand dunes, subsumed within the Earth’s crust, have been fossilised by millions of tons of pressure over millions of years. Millions more years of uplift and subsequent erosion by wind (and a little rain) have stripped away the overburden to reveal beautiful swirls of pink, yellow and cream Navajo sandstone. What’s not to like? Well, access isn’t straightforward.
First of all, visiting Coyote Buttes is dependent on acquiring a permit. The Paria Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness is split into a number of permit areas. Coyote Buttes is itself split into north and south. Only twenty are issued for each area per day. In those days, ten were issued for the next day from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Ranger Station nearby. The other half were available over the Internet a year in advance. Whilst researching how to get permits, Phil found out that they normally went within a few minutes of being released so he sat with finger poised over his mouse to claim four permits for Coyote Buttes North (CBN) for three consecutive days. I doubt that would be possible today as the popularity of the area has increased enormously since 2009 (the year when Microsoft used it on millions of machines for Windows 7). In 2018 there were 168,317 applicants for permits, with only 7,300 people allowed access per annum. That’s a 4.3% success rate. The pressure for permits was nowhere near so high in 2001 but we still needed Phil’s diligence. Thank you, Phil!
In this article, Peter tries to understand what it is we are trying to communicate in our photographs.
My Problem
Let me start with an anecdote. I was visiting a local art and craft fair a few years back, held in a nearby village hall. The exhibits on show were mainly paintings by local artists, but there was a small photography display that caught my eye. The images were excellent, I really liked them. There was a set of three in the style of a high key snow scene with a few trees and a fence. From this simple description, you will be able to imagine what they were like. There was a young man hovering nearby who was clearly the photographer, and we started chatting. He told me where the photographs were taken, the efforts he made to get the right composition, how difficult it was to get the correct exposure, and how he considered his photography as art. He just happened to mention that one of the images was accepted into the Landscape Photographer of the Year, and I was duly impressed. But then just as the conversation was coming to a natural end, he added that what he tries to do with his photographs is express his feelings. At this point the conversation stalled. I asked him to explain, but he struggled to find anything more to say. I’m assuming he was serious when he said he used photography to express his feelings, but he just had no more words to flesh out what he meant.
Generations: This is about ageing and is both sad and hopeful at the same time.
I’ve always remembered this conversation and it keeps coming back to me as I read an increasing number of articles or listen to talks, which also say the communication of feelings and emotions is the primary purpose of photography. It’s not always ‘feelings and emotions’; other words or expressions are used, for example, the photographer should convey a message, or provide a personal view, an interpretation of the scene. He or she should add something from within, should ask questions of the subject, and find answers. However expressed, the point being made is the same, the artistic photograph should have that something extra.
There must be something in these sentiments for them to be expressed so strongly, and so frequently. Such views appear in magazines, in talks and frequently in On Landscape articles from regular and occasional contributors. Unlike my conversation at the art fair, the authors of such articles do support their case with much richer arguments to provide extra detail. The authors are very articulate and inspiring, and their photographs are great. But often (nearly always) I find the ideas are hard to pin down in any practical way. None of the articles ever say ‘in this photograph I’m trying to …… ‘. So, we’re left guessing as to what the photographer’s intent actually was. Am I the only one to feel this way? Based on the photographers in my circle, I’m not alone.
So, what is this missing ingredient, this something extra? What does it look like? Can it be opened up and made more accessible? Is this even a sensible question to ask?
Under the pier: I was attracted initially by the light and the colours, but quickly realised this was also about pollution.
The extra ingredient
I’ve thought about this a lot and asked myself how this relates to the way I take photographs. Do I try to express feelings and emotions when I take a shot? The answer is sometimes yes, but often no. When I’m aware that I have something to express, I wouldn’t necessarily talk in terms of ‘feelings and emotions’, but there would be something about the scene I wanted to capture. For me, there are other drivers at play. The photographs I’ve used to illustrate this article have captions which describe what was in my mind when I took the shot.
Do I try to express feelings and emotions when I take a shot? The answer is sometimes yes, but often no. When I’m aware that I have something to express, I wouldn’t necessarily talk in terms of ‘feelings and emotions’, but there would be something about the scene I wanted to capture.
I found a few interesting quotations around this subject. The first goes way back to our favourite landscape photographer, Ansel Adams.
“A great photograph is full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense and is thereby a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.” Clearly, Ansel was very much into expressing feelings.
More recently, Gerry Badger (2010, p166) argues that:
"The real trick - and here photography becomes immensely difficult and complex - is deciding what to photograph. And that, in essence, is a two-level process. The first is deciding on the raw material - trees, nudes, war, raindrops etc – which represents a photographer finding his or her subject matter. It's an important step, but not yet ‘job done’. The second, and much more difficult step, is to say something – something unobvious and personal - about the raw material. The two are very different entities, and a photographer's subject may bear only the most oblique reference to his or her subject matter."
Here Badger isn’t asking for ‘feelings and emotions’ but is asking for some added value from the photographer, something over and above the material reality of the scene itself. Badger, having made this important distinction between stages one and two, goes on to make the damning comment that most photographers “never progress beyond stage one, except in the most trite and obvious ways.” If this is so, maybe photographers grow into expressing feelings and emotions, having mastered the technicalities of photography and sound composition. It’s a higher level of skill that not all will aspire to, achieve, or appreciate.
Pier and boat: This is entirely about producing an attractive image.
Cold and alone: My initial intent was to produce an attractive image of the hut and the aurora, but in post processing I realised the single line of footsteps in the snow and the stars in the sky created story of being cold and alone.
In another quote, Bright (2004, p8) says that what really counts when assessing whether a photograph might be considered as art is that “the work communicates intelligent ideas that are worthy of attention, appreciation and investigation”. This sounds weighty, and puts a bit more flesh on what might be “feelings and emotions”. Cotton (2004) approaches photographic art in a similar way. Her book explores the motivations and working practices of the photographic artists but from the beginning places most importance on the ideas that the photographer is wishes to communicate. This is seeking clarity on the photographer’s intent. I find the word ‘intent’ a more accessible and meaningful term. What is it the photographer is trying to do? For both Bright and Cotton, the ‘idea’ that underpins the work is the distinguishing aspect that qualifies the work as capable of being considered as art. Maybe were getting closer.
I know I get as much enjoyment from the process of photography, the friendship groups, the outings, the continuous learning, as I do from producing the photograph itself.
Where do motivations come from?
I think we need to take a step back and explore the motivations of the enthusiast photographer. Some might be motivated by the need to express their feelings and emotions, but for most I’d argue the motivations are more varied and complex and driven by multiple factors. I know I get as much enjoyment from the process of photography, the friendship groups, the outings, the continuous learning, as I do from producing the photograph itself.
We’re all influenced by everything around us. The images we see, the people we know, the networks we are part of. All shape our way of seeing. These are external drivers that become internalised. This being so, is there scope to be totally original? It is certainly very difficult. Must the underlying idea address the big issues in life, like Salgado or Burtynsky, or the many bits of minutia that captures our eye. I suspect the latter for most of us.
I also wonder if it is it possible for every image to have something new to say? How many new messages are there to be shared? Certainly less than the number of photographs that are produced. What happens when a photographer has a recognisable style, for example, the high contrast architectural image, or the ICM or multiple exposure, or long exposures seascapes, or any one of many more. Can each of these images produced to the same style each have something new to say, or is a point reached where the images become repetitive, technical exercises and the production of a beautiful image becomes the main motivation? And what happens when these styles are copied by others, which happens all the time, even to the point where workshops are held to teach the technique. This surely makes it a technical exercise rather than the communication of something deep and meaningful.
Survival: I saw this tree and the single root stretching out to the shore and immediately thought the tree was hanging on for survival.
This presents a number of challenges for the enthusiasts wanting their work to be considered as art. Evidently, it requires the enthusiast to be thinking in terms of communicating ideas as a core part of their purpose, but I’m not sure that communicating an idea is typically ingrained in the working practices of most enthusiasts. At least not explicitly. So much militates against this - the places where enthusiasts show their work, the competitions, salons, the judging and selection processes, and the focus on the single ‘impactful’ image, do not encourage the presentation of work designed to communicate core ideas. The notable exception to this is the RPS distinctions which require a Statement of Intent to support the work.
However, what does work in the enthusiast’s favour is the pictorial culture that prevails. Robert Adams, in an interview (Di Grappa, 1980, p12) puts great importance on this aspect of an image “… my feeling is that composition is the main tool we have and that a photographer has to use it. Composition is what concentrates the viewer’s attention. A bad picture doesn’t make evil seem any more evil – it just loses your audience.” In his own writings he (Adams, 1981, p27) talks eloquently about the need for beauty in photography, but makes the point that for a picture to be beautiful, “it must in some significant respect be unlike what precedes it”. Adams is arguing for sound composition as an essential starting point, the quality that enthusiast photographers have demonstrated, but in asking for the something different is also calling, like Bright and Cotton, for an underlying core idea to be present.
These arguments about the images having that something extra are expressed from the point of view of the photographer. But it is relevant to ask what the viewer gets from the image and whether the viewer sees the message that the photographer seeks to convey.
Kings Cross station: This is a multiple exposure and part of a panel of images telling the story of visitors to London rushing around all the attractions.
What about the viewer
These arguments about the images having that something extra are expressed from the point of view of the photographer. But it is relevant to ask what the viewer gets from the image and whether the viewer sees the message that the photographer seeks to convey. This again is difficult. Much has been written about the visual image being a language, and how this language is based in our culture. Semiotics, the study of signs and symbols, provides a theory for how this works (a subject worthy of study, and of a separate article). But the visual language is far more imprecise than the written word, so the viewer has a tougher job extracting meaning, and there is every likelihood that that meaning will not coincide with that intended by the photographer. This is more so for landscape images, where the ‘signs and symbols’ are far more generic than in other genres such as say portraiture, sport, wildlife. Is this why so many landscape photographs rely on beauty rather than message for their attraction?
However, the viewer can be given a helping hand to understand the photograph by the provision of a meaningful title. A factual title suggests the image is more of a record of the scene. A more abstract title can point to the real message behind the image.
Stairs: This is a design shot intended solely to produce a beautiful image.
So where does this leave us?
The purpose of this article has been to dig a little deeper into what that something extra is that makes a photograph. I am not questioning that this something extra exists, it clearly does, but I am asking to find a way to understand what it is in a more practical way. I don’t know that I have been successful. I seem to have asked more questions rather than provided answers.
Which brings me to my request. It would be really instructive if the authors of articles in On Landscape and elsewhere gave some insight into the ideas they were trying to express in the photographs illustrating their articles. I have tried to do this with the captions attached to my photographs in this article. But authors never usually do this. There is one exception - Raphael Rojas. Raphael has not only written several articles along these lines but has also written an eBook called ‘The Photographic Message’ which includes a second half where he presents 50 images along with the motivations behind each image. Thank you, Raphael.
If readers are prompted to comment on this article can I invite them also to attach an image plus a few words on their motivations for taking the photograph. Was it beauty or message or both? That way we might get some practical insight into what it is that photographers are trying to achieve.
Tranquillity. The intention was to produce an attractive image capturing the tranquillity of the lake.
References
Adams, R (1981), Beauty in Photography, Essays on defence of traditional values, Aperture
Badger, G (2010) The Pleasures of Good Photographs, Aperture
Bright, D (2011) Art Photography Now, Thames and Hudson
Cotton, C, (2004), The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Thames and Hudson
Di Grappa, Carol (Ed), (1980) Landscape: Theory, Interview with Robert Adam, Lustram Press
Generations: This is about ageing and is both sad and hopeful at the same time.
Under the pier: I was attracted initially by the light and the colours, but quickly realised this was also about pollution.
Pier and boat: This is entirely about producing an attractive image.
Cold and alone: My initial intent was to produce an attractive image of the hut and the aurora, but in post processing I realised the single line of footsteps in the snow and the stars in the sky created story of being cold and alone.
Survival: I saw this tree and the single root stretching out to the shore and immediately thought the tree was hanging on for survival.
Kings Cross station: This is a multiple exposure and part of a panel of images telling the story of visitors to London rushing around all the attractions.
Stairs: This is a design shot intended solely to produce a beautiful image.
Tranquillity. The intention was to produce an attractive image capturing the tranquillity of the lake.
Clevedon Pier. The intention was to produce an attractive image using long exposure
Just over ten years ago whilst sitting around the dinner table on holiday in Northumberland, I announced to my in-laws that I was going to give up my job and start a photography magazine. This came as a bit of a shock to them but also to my wife as I’d forgotten (ahem) to tell her as well! Fortunately, there weren’t any major repercussions (well - in hindsight anyway) and over the next few months Joe Cornish and I chatted about content, design etc and On Landscape was born. Actually, it wasn’t On Landscape at the time, we called it Great British Landscapes but quickly realised that it had an audience beyond Britain. Even from the first few months we had people from as far away as Australia, Brazil and Canada subscribing and now we’re about 50% from Britain and 50% from the rest of the world. From the start, we had an inkling that it should be successful but we didn't think we'd have the level of support we now have.
In celebration of our ten years of publishing our magazine, we thought we'd pick some of our favourite content for you to look back on, particularly if you weren't a subscriber from early days. But, to be honest, I enjoyed going through the older content and rereading some of our articles because, even if the content hasn't changed, I certainly have and am getting different things from them when rereading.
In the beginning
From the start, the first few issues were a bit of a mix of video interviews, reviews and editorial but there was still some great content. In the first couple of months, we had a series on Aspect Ratios from Joe Cornish and one of our most popular articles called “Shooting into the Sun” (a result of search engine optimisation, rather than my writing I imagine).
There were also some really informative and inspiring videos from Joe Cornish about some of his old & new images and also about post-processing. We're currently transferring these to YouTube so apologies if you can't access them all at the moment. Here's a sample of the "Hindsight" series you can view now though.
We also wanted to inspire people with information about some of the pioneers in landscape photography, for instance in an early issue me and Joe looked at the work of Galen Rowell and also reviewed a couple of his books.
We've run a few Master Photogarphers since then, one of my favourites was Josef Sudek who should be more well known to our landscape photographer community.
Some topics keep recurring throughout the history of On Landscape and early on we had a couple of reactions to social media's propagation of the 'Wow!' image. Julian Barkway and Dav Thomas took complementary positions (partly for the sake of argument I imagine!)
From the start, we wanted to make sure we represented more than just the wow and one of the more inspiring articles from a photographer pushing the boundaries was an interview with Michael Jackson on his Poppitt Sands work - Thanks Rob Hudson!
We were often told that one of the best ways to get lots of page views was to include equipment reviews. So we made a bit effort to ensure we were predominantly equipment review free and concentrated instead on the art and science of photography. However, occasionally we did think that some review content was useful but only when there wasn't much coverage elsewhere on the internet. For instance, some of our first reviews including a survey of colour film, which we spread over three different articles. This was a massive undertaking and I hope some people found it useful. Sadly it's also an indication of how film has changed in this short period with only half of he films still in production (3 of the slide films and 3 of the colour negatives films, Velvia 50 and 100 plus Kodak E100G and then Kodak Portra 160 & 400 and Ektar).
The other testing we did was in response to a 'test' on the old Luminous Landscape website. It compared the Phase One IQ180 with 8x10 film, saying the reign of 8x10 was over. Well, we couldn't let that lie and so we applied ourselves to a 'proper' test with the conclusion "oh no it isn't!". The article was just simply a resolution test though, it also looked at differences between resolution and sharpness and did print comparisons (quite revealing) and it prompted Dav Thomas' "Why Size Doesn't Matter" article. We promised not to repeat this for a long time and we mostly stuck to this. However, when the IQ150 came out (150 MAGA Pixies!) we had to give it another go and had to conclude that it's finally pretty close (although the edge still goes to a well-taken 8x10!)
Coming from a scientific background (many years of pointless engineering research toward a PhD) I was very interested in some of the more 'esoteric' (read boring and pointless) studies of aspects of photography. I was particularly interested in how colour is perceived and recorded and a couple of early articles looked at some of the inconsistencies both our vision and our cameras. One of the more interesting aspects (to me) was the differences in how we remember colour. So much so I realised I've actually written two articles with the same title over the last ten years! They cover different ground though so I hope they're interesting enough to at least a few other people.
I've also been interest in the subjects that we photograph and have investigated the science behind autumn and some interesting facts about some of our favourite trees.
And a final pick from me - I loved playing with pinholes and writing this article about how they work was such a good excuse to combine my love of science and photography.
Being a good photographer, having interesting thoughts about photography and having the skills and inclination to write them down in a way that informs and entertains is a rare combination. Fortunately, there are a few photographers out there who can do a great job of all three. My personal favourite writer and someone we're lucky to have produced quite a few articles for us in the past ten years, is David Ward and we would be remiss if we didn't include a couple of my favourite articles from him.
(Un?)Fortunately, there is only one David Ward but on the other side of the Atlantic, there is another excellent photographer who has written many articles for us, covering issues from psychology to history, geography to neuroaesthetics. Guy Tal consistently explores some of the fundamentals behind what we do as photographers and to read many of his articles is to explore our own psyche and perhaps help us realise what it means to live the creative life.
As well as Guy and David, there are a load of people who write less often but have still provided lots of excellent articles for On Landscape such as Richard Childs, Alister Benn, Raphael Rojas, Colin Bell, Andrew Nadolski, Thomas Peck, David Tolcher, Doug Chinnery, Graham Cook, Harvey Lloyd-Thomas, Dav Thomas, Keith Beven, Lizzie Shepherd, Mark Littlejohn, Matt Lethbridge, Paul Gallagher, Paul Moon, Colleen Miniuk, Ted Leeming & Morag Peterson and Theo Bosboom. We're lucky to have such a good pool of writers to draw from.
One of my favourite interview over the past ten years was with Thomas Joshua Cooper. A proper misfit rebel screaming at the world through his camera. If you ever get the chance to meet him, say hello, buy him a bottle of red wine and look forward to a few hours of free form entertainment.
Our favourite regular columns are always worth looking back on. Here's a couple of our favourites from 4x4's (from an International Landscape Photographer of the Year!), Endframes and Featured Photographers
One of the saddest events of the year was to witness one of our contributors and friends pass away during a Zoom interview. Richard White was a truly passionate photographer and a friend to the magazine. In his memory here is his first interview for us and his last.
I hope you'll excuse me indulging myself in a wade through our back issues. It's been great to spend a little time reviewing some of our old content and it's inspired me to find more for the next ten year anniversary. What the world will look like by then is anybody's guess but I wish you all the best in recording it!
When Charlotte asked me to write this article my first thought was had she approached the right person? After all, I am no student of photography and these days rarely shoot natural world landscapes. But reading the brief again and seeing urban images were in scope, doubts were banished.
Photography is not just my passion, it's a way of life. When I jumped off the corporate ladder, I committed to achieving success in the world of photography too. In the early days of learning my craft (do we ever stop?) landscape tours and workshops was the order of the day. I enjoyed the subjects enormously but a few years later my head was turned by two themes: the American Road and Olympic London. They took me in a new direction from which I have seldom looked back. Today I describe myself as an urban / cityscape photographer who makes big prints of London and other world cities for UK and international clients.
We all see hundreds of images every day and most aren’t even worth a second glance. Favourite images don’t easily spring to mind so how would I go about choosing one? My approach would be to firstly identify a photographer who inspires and influences me then delve into their work. In the photographic world, inspirers make me think, and influencers make me do something different. I considered a handful of photographers mainly comprising masters I have had the pleasure of learning from. Nine such photographers fall into a few groups.
Great UK Landscape Photographers: The work of Charlie Waite and David Ward immediately came to mind. Both of these esteemed photographers and their work were important to me in my early days. Had I written this article a decade ago I would probably have referenced one of their images. I discovered the work of Joe Cornish and Tony Spencer much later but also including them in this category is essential. I decided not to select an image from any of these four gentlemen as our contact is less frequent these days and therefore their influence is less than it was.
Visual storytellers: I admire the work of Gregory Crewdston and Julia Fullerton – Batten. Both create amazing portraits, often in landscape settings but their work is outside the scope of this article as it is people led.
Architectural and urban photographers: Julia Anna Gosporodou creates quite brilliant photographic artwork featuring the world’s architecture and urban landscapes. Luca Campigotto makes spectacular images of New York, Shanghai, other world cities and more. Both photographers create wonderful images in styles that influence me today and several could have been chosen here.
But instead, I want to draw your attention to the work of my good friend and sometimes mentor Roger Arnall. Roger is an Australian photographer who will be known personally to many readers. We first crossed paths on a 'light and land' tour twelve years ago, and have travelled together many times since. I have selected his work because more than any other photographer he has the most direct bearing on my image making today. The acid test being the invaluable advice and guidance he gave me during a tricky multi city commission last year.
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!
Straddling the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the Chignecto Isthmus lies at the head of the Bay of Fundy. Much of its southern area is marshland, among which are the Tantramar Marshes. These tidal salt marshes have been dyked since the 17th century and are mainly used to grow hay and as cattle pasture, though recent efforts have reclaimed portions for wildlife, including numerous migratory bird species. As many as 400 hay barns once formed a distinctive feature of the landscape, but most have fallen to age and winter storms.
The Marshes are drained by several streams among which is the tidal Tantramar River. Its waters are reddish-brown with alluvial mud as it meanders towards the Cumberland Basin. The Basin’s wide mud-flats are inundated and exposed twice a day by the Fundy’s famously high tides.
In these summer photos, I’ve tried to project the expansive sky and bright colours of the Tantramar landscape; on a grey winter’s day the Marshes can look a good deal bleaker!
Nature has the last call when the beauty of a landscape unravels. A photographer can thus only develop pure patience after understanding this fact. The outdoors have been calling my soul since I can recall. And in view of these odd Corona days, I came to realise how gifted I was. Taking travelling for granted is rather easy in Europe. However, and thanks to quarantine, I was forced to see my local area with different eyes. This brief body of work expresses my introspection into my close surroundings.
Landscape photography has always been about getting as far as I can from home and scouting for the perfect view. Landscapes exceed the decisive moment, and are the result of a close and pristine relationship with nature. Nonetheless, it is remarkably hard and challenging to shoot the local habitat. This is because the deep connection with our ordinary surroundings bias our gaze so deeply that it becomes nearly impossible to find anything of interest around us. After noticing this, I was reassured that travelling and photography are a match made in heaven. This is because it is a hack – any foreign place or culture provides the opportunity of being easily surprised.
A wise friend once told me that everything had already been photographed. Therefore, I should stop worrying. “Try shooting everything that has already been captured in your own way, and you’ll find that everything is new for your camera and your eyes” he said. To reinterpret the world was his command, and so I followed his advice. Nature was generous to me, and I’m sure that these ordinary places had never been photographed in such a way. The colour palette vibrantly gets along with itself, everything in this venue screams for serenity and compositional balance – a rural East German countryside shaped by light of the magic hour.
I used a telephoto lens with these landscape images on principle. And this is often a preferred decision in contrast to wide angle options. Here, the four photos share something with each other. They all provide instant access, and human presence gets lost in the field. There are no distracting natural elements in the foreground. There is just less emphasis on interrupting features, making the complete image the main subject of the storytelling act. The landscape evolves and is free from obstacles. It flows in front of the viewer. It is an open invitation what the condensed visual impact has to offer. And this is my tribute to the Utopian human life we all shall pursue.
Life is a collection of moments. And a photographer is the agent who has the power to capture these situations. The mechanism and indeed art of photography aims to interrupt the constant progress of change that is life in order to create long-lasting memories. It always involves subjective judgement about the situation at hand. I am simply an ordinary photographer who is in love with natural light.
This is a selection of pictures from those I made during the eight weeks of officially imposed lockdown in the Spring of 2020 as the French nation responded to the threat of Covid-19. All the pictures were taken within 1 kilometre of home - the maximum distance allowed for casual exercise. I arranged them as pairs of images, to give an impression of the shifting and contrasting emotions generated by the experience of confinement. After the end of lockdown I was able to show the full set of eighteen pictures at a private exhibition locally. You can still see them on my website - www.bluehorizons.eu.
My home is in southern France, between the mountains and the sea. I like the wonderful light here, and gathering and sharing impressions of the hills and coastline, the changing seasons, and traditions and events in this region.
I find images that are ambiguous, enigmatic and with a surprise element particularly interesting. My selection approach is simply that they 'catch my eye' and of course the overwhelming majority simply do not work as expected when reviewed later on screen.
These images are a few that have stood the test of time. The locations are Rocky Cape National Park & Cradle Mountain -Tasmania plus Waipu Cove - New Zealand
I was introduced to photography at the School of Architecture in Auckland in the early 70s, then dropped out as one did in those days while my interest in photography continued almost uninterrupted to today, including darkrooms in bathrooms, kitchens, garages etc over many years. I have not missed darkroom work and I have no regrets about switching to digital.
Inspiration- Edward Weston stands out, Paul Caponigro, Ansel Adams and many others.
Published - Australian Photography many years ago and more recently a portfolio in Culture Magazine in Hong Kong.
This question of realism, let it then be clearly understood, regards not in the least degree the fundamental truth, but only the technical method, of a work of art. Be as ideal or as abstract as you please, you will be none the less veracious. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
Two experiences come to my mind when I think about abstract art. The first occurred nearly two decades ago at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. I was there to see an exhibit celebrating what would have been Ansel Adams’s 100th birthday. After getting my fill of photography, while wandering around the museum, I heard muffled giggling from one of the other exhibit halls. A young couple was standing in front of what seemed to be a large purple rectangle hanging on the wall, pointing and snickering. I waited for them to leave and went to take a closer look. I wondered if I had missed something; but no, that’s all it was: a large purple rectangle hanging on a white wall. My next thought was: “This is why so many people think modern art is absurd,” but I soon realised that several seconds had passed and I was still standing there, transfixed, staring at the thing. Its colour mesmerised me: a shade of deep, warm violet I have never seen before and can’t describe. It seemed to penetrate my mind and dominate my attention despite offering no details, or anything else I could associate any coherent meaning with. Something about it was jarring to me and I couldn’t look away. I could feel it in my gut, and I enjoyed it. Hours later, I still thought about it and something in me wanted to go back, just to stand there and stare at it again.
The second experience happened when I was a university student. On my way to meet a friend at the art school, I noticed a poster of stacked white and coloured rectangles hanging in one of the halls. When my friend arrived, I pointed to the poster and made a cynical remark. “It’s a tree,” my friend told me, and at first I thought he was joking. He pointed to another poster—a beautiful painting of a red tree against a blue backdrop hanging further down the hall—and told me it was painted by the same artist: Dutch painter Piet Mondrian.
..our visual system evolved to recognise what we are looking at, decide how to feel about it (or associate some meaning with it), and what to do about it
“Why would someone who could paint like that end up drawing stacked rectangles?” I asked my friend, who tried to explain, but admittedly I didn’t fully appreciate his answer and wrote it off as pretentious artspeak. The true answer and its profound implications in fact didn’t occur to me until years later when I recalled this exchange with a tinge of embarrassment.
Here at On Landscape we're always keeping an eye out for interesting, personal projects, particularly ones that work outside of the usual photogenic subjects. When Andy Holliman got in touch to tell us about his small pond on Blackheath it most definitely perked our interest. We asked if Andy would let us ask him a few general questions and some specific ones about his book, Luminis, and 'the pond'. Thanks to Andy for showing us some of his great work and answering our questions.
Can you tell me a little about your education, childhood passions, early exposure to photography and how your passion for landscape developed over time?
I had a very normal suburban childhood in South London. I went to University in Bristol and stayed there for a few years until work brought me back to London. Like a lot of people, I don’t think I realised the childhood events that would shape me when they were happening but we usually had a summer holiday in Devon or Cornwall; in pre-motorway days this was a seemingly interminable journey – particular with three of us in the back seat. The North Cornish coast is still one of my favourite places in the world, somewhere I’ll always want to return to. My Dad had an Agifold 6x6 camera, he took a lot of slides with it - remarkably he got the exposures spot on most of the time without any metering, Saturday night slide shows were always a bit of a family treat. I had an old plastic Kodak brownie when I was about 5 that produced tiny black and white prints, unfortunately, I don’t have any of them anymore – I’m sure they were all masterpieces! That was replaced with an Instamatic and from then on it was always slide film for me until digital took over.
What are the most memorable moments in your photography or what events changed your approach to photography?
I did a paper round to save up for an OM-1, a camera I still use. Using that was the first time I felt the buzz of seeing an image and thinking that’s not bad! I think that thrill is one of the things that still motivates me today; with digital it’s a more immediate experience but no less exciting for that.
We’ve tried to get out for a walk most days and although I’m based in urban South London there is quite a lot to photograph in the area; Greenwich Park isn’t far away, Brookmill Park is minutes away and Deptford Creek flows past the flat so there’s plenty to see.
I’ve been lucky enough to see quite a lot of the world, but I’m always drawn back to the polar regions. I once flew back from Vancouver over the arctic, the ice was covered in vivid blue pools and seemed an endless wilderness of ice and snow. That led to a trip to Greenland to see it close up and that was it – hooked! The combination of incredible wildlife and beautiful, harsh, rugged landscapes draw me back every time.
How has lockdown been for you and photography?
We’ve tried to get out for a walk most days and although I’m based in urban South London there is quite a lot to photograph in the area; Greenwich Park isn’t far away, Brookmill Park is minutes away and Deptford Creek flows past the flat so there’s plenty to see. The change in the pace of life has made me more attuned to what’s happening around me, it’s been particularly enjoyable to see the daily changes in the plants and wildlife even in such a suburban setting. There are a surprising variety of birds on the creek, herons and egrets are regular visitors and very occasionally even a kingfisher. My macro lens has had a very busy few months, I’ve taken far more images with it this year than all the time I’ve owned put together, discovering auto focus-stacking on my camera was a great discovery. Lilies are my current favourite subject, the curves and shapes are so delicate and so beautiful, each flower seems slightly different. I’ve been working on a series of long exposure images of the shadows and patterns on the surface of the creek and a film-based project on a local street that still has some aspects of old Deptford about it. I also did a series of images of the same leaf photographed in different ways and posted an image on Facebook every day for 100 days; it sounds trivial, but it was an interesting challenge to keep coming up with new ideas.
Whilst lockdown has been a very creative period for me, I should say that I know I’ve been lucky that we’ve both remained healthy so far, but I appreciate this isn’t the case for everyone.
The island of Eigg is the second largest and most populous of the Small Isles located off the west coast of Scotland south of Skye. From the mainland and arriving by sea Eigg is impossible to mistake with its towering rock prow of volcanic origin: An Sgurr. It is somewhere I have been visiting for the last 15 years and over that time, even though most of my annual visits have only been day trips by boat when staying on Knoydart, I have gradually come to have explored much of the island. With the landscape offering a host of photographic opportunities, both geological and of human occupation since the stone age, culminating with the community buyout of the island in recent times.
Galmisdale
Visitors will usually arrive on either the CalMac ferry Lochnevis from Mallaig or the Sheerwater from Arisaig at either the pier or slipway at Galmisdale. Here can be found the island's social hub: The Pier Centre (An Laimhrig) with shop and cafe (and where postcard maps for way-marked trails can be purchased from the craft shop). Galmisdale to the southeast is one of two main centres of population on the island, the other being Cleadale to the northwest, with the road between crossing the notch in the island's profile which may give Eigg its name. A taxi or minibus can be arranged for the journey across the island (bikes can also be hired), but if time and weather permit the hour or so walk is recommended. If walking the detour from the road at the solar farm via the forestry path is recommended. However, forgoing the shortcut across the island I'm going to present a tour roughly circumnavigating the island in a clockwise direction.
I've followed Eliot's work since Steve Coleman interviewed him back in 2015. Eliot's work has been prolific since then, working on different collaborations and projects, whilst exploring different mediums for expressing his work; from handmade books, printed books, and his most challenging project "Country Made of Dirt". His passion for analogue photography is impressive and he has recently set up The Film Photo Award which is to highlight the dedication to the film photographers pushing the medium forward in the 21st century.
Steve Coleman interviewed you back in 2015 and it looks like you've had a prolific creative period since then. What has inspired this? Are you always so productive or has this been an exceptional time for you?
I'm plagued with the gene that makes me constantly try to squeeze 30-minute tasks into 10-minute slots. I suppose we all have that to a certain extent today. I'm not sure if this is an exceptional time for me, but I try to remain productive every day.
Country Made of Dirt
Country Made of Dirt
Tell us about the project Country Made of Dirt. How did it come about, how did it evolve, and how did you go about collaborating with Arielle Greenberg? The final construction is an artefact in its own right - is the method of viewing part of the intended experience from the start?
Country Made of Dirt is certainly my most challenging book construction to date, which is curious because it was born from pure play. I taped a new Carl Zeiss digital lens to my 4x5 to see what would happen. I was mesmerised by the result, especially as it lay upon the ground glass. An attempt at recreating that viewing experience is what ultimately led to the Country Made of Dirt book project.
With this combination of camera and lens, the front and rear standards of the view camera had to remain completely smashed together, so there were no movements available, not even focus. To focus, I had to ask my subject to physically move forward and back to fall into the extremely thin slice of sharp focus the lens was providing. Because the Carl Zeiss digital lens does not have a shutter, and I was using it with the aperture wide open, I made these pictures at dusk, after the sun had dropped below the trees, which would allow me to extend the exposure time to something I could physically control by covering and uncovering the lens by hand.
After a mild obsession with making these images, I decided to print them in platinum and palladium. I printed them over the course of a year, enough of each image to make twenty books.
Country Made of Dirt is certainly my most challenging book construction to date, which is curious because it was born from pure play. I taped a new Carl Zeiss digital lens to my 4x5 to see what would happen. I was mesmerised by the result, especially as it lay upon the ground glass.
Then I began designing the binding of the handmade books to include sheets of letterpress printed poetry on vellum to overlay the platinum/palladium prints. And simultaneously, I designed a custom box with a four-inch convex lens embedded in the lid that transforms into a viewing stand from which to experience the book. The lens magnifies and distorts the images and text as one moves the book. It is the closest I came to replicating the experience of seeing the images projected on the ground glass.
Photographs and video of the book and box can be seen on my website: eliotdudik.com
The book 'Nothing that Falls Away' was a collaboration between you and Meg Griffiths about Highway 50, “The Loneliest Road in America”. How do you find the process of collaboration from a creative viewpoint and how did you go about developing your ideas both visually and conceptually?
This is one of several collaborative projects I've worked on recently, as collaboration has been playing an increasingly important role in my practice over the past five years or so. In collaboration, the process of overturning new rocks and discovering the unexpected seems to happen faster and in even more surprising ways because two or more minds are coming together and not only sharing those experiences but also interweaving past experiences in surprising ways. It goes beyond the collaboration itself; I've felt bits of collaborative practice filter into my solo projects too, shifting the way I work and think, and I find that very exciting.
Between books and exhibitions, what do you think is the most important for your work and why?
I engage with both mediums, although I have been focusing a lot of time lately on book projects as much of my work is made with the structure and sequence of a book in mind from the start. I do like the idea of permanence in a book that once it is out in the world it doesn't disappear. It can be revisited; the viewing experience can change over time; new understandings can emerge with prolonged engagement. I'm an obsessed book and print collector too, so I enjoy adding to the conversation and inventory with which I surround I'm not sure one is more important than the other. They both have their place and purpose.
Paradise Road, Baytown, Texas
The project “And light followed the flight of sound” was focused on one day rather than other projects where you've worked over a period of time. How did you find this different approach?
And light followed the flight of sound is the latest collaborative project I've done with artist Jared Ragland as part of our One Day Projects. He and I began these projects as an experiment and exercise, not unlike an athlete trains for an upcoming season. We wanted each project we did to be different from the last, but each revolves around the idea of a single day in some way or another. Both Jared and I typically work on long-term project spanning many years, so this collaboration was intended to get us both thinking differently from the very basic structure of the project – what can we do with or about a single day?
And light followed the flight of sound is the latest collaborative project I've done with artist Jared Ragland as part of our One Day Projects. He and I began these projects as an experiment and exercise, not unlike an athlete trains for an upcoming season. We wanted each project we did to be different from the last, but each revolves around the idea of a single day in some way or another.
The first two books we created focused on the photographs Jared and I made in a single day, and then came back to make-shift studios we had set up, either in New Orleans or Richmond, Virginia, and edit, sequence, design, print, and bind an edition of books. This latest project was different in that we collaborated with a little over 50 artists from across the United States, all of whom submitted some photographs they made on the day of the total solar eclipse that cut across the entire country on August 21, 2017. While our country was (and still is) extremely polarised politically and culturally, on this one day it is estimated that about 90% of the country came together and stared in wonder at the same sky. Jared and I spent the next 18 months editing, designing, and hand making 150 copies of a 30-foot-long accordion book and tipped in zine to complete this project.
This project was planned over a period of time as opposed to 'Nothing That Falls Away’ which was more spontaneous. Which process did you enjoy and why?
I see One Day Projects in general, and our latest book, And light followed the flight of sound as spontaneous projects as well. The spark of the idea comes quickly and intuitively, and slowly the specifics and materialisation arise through consideration and deliberate choices. Nothing That Falls Away happened this way too, so I'd say they were more similar in how they came to be, than different.
Paradise Road, Eagle Creek, Oregon
The website for the project says "The book’s title references E. M. Forster’s 1909 dystopian novella, The Machine Stops, in which the human species has become completely reliant upon technology to provide sustenance, deliver information, and mediate relationships." How did you go about translating or interpreting a work of art in one medium (novel) into photography?
Similar to our previous books, Bras Coupé and Or Give Me Death, we used references from history, literature, and folklore as points of inspiration from which to begin, or end, our work. Prior to making the photographs for these books, or designing the books, we would read these passages, discuss them, pick them apart, and try to absorb them into our psyche. In so doing, as we go out into the swamps of New Orleans, for instance, the words and images are filtering through our consciousness and sub-consciousness while we work and influencing what we see and choose to photograph whether we realise it or not.
On this project, you edited, designed and produced the project in collaboration with Jared Ragland. How did you find the process of editing and producing? How did you go about conveying your visual idea for the book?
And light followed the flight of sound proved to be the most difficult project Jared or I had ever attempted to edit, sequence, and design because the work was so varied. We collected about 500 photographs from a little over 50 artists. All photographs were made on the day of the solar eclipse, but they were all very different. Some were of the eclipse, many not at all, some were a digital, film, Polaroid, historic process, colour, black & white, etc. Editing to a cohesive set that made sense together and said something larger about our collective experience was very difficult and it took Jared and I many months to complete. We workshopped the editing process with students at several universities that was as helpful to us as it was to them, I'm sure. Ultimately, Jared and I are quite pleased with the result.
One of my favourite and, in my mind, the most important parts of my practice is engaging with the materials in an intimate and hands-on way. Whether it is the film I'm shooting, printing in the darkroom, bookbinding, frame making, etc., I enjoy engaging materialistically in every stage.
The book became a 30-foot-long accordion where the images are designed across the page in a sort of salon style. Some images even cross the folds of the accordion so you have to sometimes open 3 or 4 spreads at a time to see everything, and we enjoyed the way that opening up and closing down changed the relationships of the images. The handmade cloth covers have a gold circle stamped into them, and we made a clear sleeve for each book to slip into. The sleeve has a black circle stamped on it, and as the book is slid into the sleeve an eclipse is created between sleeve and book. That is my favourite part.
What made you decide on the handmade book as the final piece for the project rather than other formats?
This was partly out of necessity ($), partly out of a desire to be in control, and partly because we wanted to. This book is actually a sort of hybrid. We had the pages commercially printed. We managed to secure a small grant from the university I teach at, William & Mary, and that was enough money to cover the commercial printing of the book. But to bind it, have hardcovers made, tuck a zine into a pocket, create the interactive sleeve, this would have cost a lot more money to commercially produce entirely. So, we commercially printed the pages, and then painstakingly sat in an un-air-conditioned art studio in Birmingham, Alabama for weeks and glued individual pages together into 150 copies of 30 foot accordions.
One of my favourite and, in my mind, the most important parts of my practice is engaging with the materials in an intimate and hands-on way. Whether it is the film I'm shooting, printing in the darkroom, bookbinding, frame making, etc., I enjoy engaging materialistically in every stage. It just doesn't excite me to send off a project of any sort, whether a book or photograph and have someone else produce it and send the result back to me in a box. There isn't any reason for Jared and I to do these projects if they aren't exciting us, and for me, I want to physically make the books, that's how I get excited.
Paradise Road, Edgemont, South Dakota
The project 'Paradise Road' you started in 2013 and was focused around 'While mapping, travelling, and photographing Paradise Roads located across the United States, my aim is to build a typology of place that visually articulates how Americans’ sense of identity and inherent optimism can manifest in the landscape and to produce a metaphorical survey of American happiness, security, sanctuary, longing, and unfortunately, defeat in this particular changing and imbalanced time.' Is this a project that you have on the back burner and dip into and do you plan specific time periods to work on this project?
It's not so much that it's on the back burner as it is and I'm working on several things simultaneously. I still have many 8x10 negatives that I've made for this series that I haven't had a chance to get on my drum scanner yet. I tend to visit new or revisit previous roads while I'm travelling for other purposes as well. Lately, I've become deeply fixated on the state of Maine, and I've been obsessively working on an expanding project based there. I've found myself working there every summer and winter for the past 5 years, which has curtailed the time I have to work on other projects outside of my teaching. But I am still working on Paradise Road, our National Public Radio (NPR) Picture Show just featured the series a couple of months ago, and there are some new images included there.
You've run workshops on handmade books - what's the appeal of handmade books for you?
I think I've covered this above. But to continue, I've always seen the book as the ultimate, final realisation of an idea. However, getting published is full of challenges and limitations, which is what brought me to study bookbinding to begin with. It brought a lot of things together for me: control over the process, material, design, and quality, engaging with the materials in meaningful ways, and fully committing the finalising process of bookmaking. It is very freeing to take on book production on your own, building the confidence to layout your own edit, sequence, and design, and bring your work up to that threshold without having to rely on anyone else.
I've always seen the book as the ultimate, final realisation of an idea. However, getting published is full of challenges and limitations, which is what brought me to study bookbinding to begin with. It brought a lot of things together for me: control over the process, material, design, and quality, engaging with the materials in meaningful ways, and fully committing the finalising process of bookmaking.
Do you think that a desire to hand create real world artefacts is driving people back to old processes of capture and printing and also the handmade ethic?
Absolutely. At least for me it is.
Paradise Road, Hermosa, South Dakota
Paradise Road, Lopez Island, Washington
Sequencing is obviously important - how do you manage the flow of the images and visual narrative when you're working on a book. Can you recommend anything you have learned that would help our readers?
I try to start with everything, all possibilities, and slowly narrow the edit down, usually in a give-and-take scenario. Each book sequence evolves differently, but generally, I'll try to start with a beginning and/or end – how do I want the book to start or how do I want it to end? That usually gives me some parameters from which to work – all I have to figure out from there is how do I get from one place to the other. Then I'll try to put together little 2, 3, or 4 picture sequences that I feel have some rhythm to them and address some of the ideas I want to explore in the book. And ultimately, I try to connect those moments and ideas between the beginning, middle, and end.
Does this process differ if it is a handmade book compared to a commercially printed book?
I don't think it does. Although if you're talking about a traditional published, commercially printed book, the publisher is probably going to want to have a say in your sequence and design. That collaboration can be massively helpful, or it could be a nightmare.
Over the various projects you've done in the past few years are there any images that stand out for you for any reason?
There are a number of moments in my new work from Maine that have been new experiences for me, but I haven't yet published any of that work. Soon! From my most recent trip for Paradise Road in 2018 that took me 17,000 miles around the United States, there are several new pictures that I think bring this project to a new level. In general, the pictures from this trip were better than what I had made previously because I forced myself on this trip to be less concerned with efficiency and trying to cover as much ground as possible in as short a time as possible, and instead spend as much time on the Paradise Road as necessary to get to the heart of it. And I did not leave until I felt I had, which wasn't always the case in the past. I often landed on a Paradise Road somewhere, decided too early that there just wasn't anything there, made a picture anyway, and moved on. In 2018, I didn't do that, and the roads that I thought were not fruitful when I arrived, turned out to be some of the most powerful experiences and photographs made on the entire trip.
Paradise Road, Baytown, Texas, Paradise Road, Hermosa, South Dakota, Paradise Road, San Diego, California, and Paradise Road, Lopez Island, Washington are good examples of this. I was lucky to have met these folks, and it was only possible because I forced myself to stay longer, look closer, and dig deeper than what my initial perception of the road was revealing to me.
. Paradise Road, San Diego, California
You have worked on solo and collaborative photographic projects; do you have a preferred approach or do these different styles suit different needs?
I appreciate both approaches. Neither would be what they are without the other.
How do you structure your time? You obvious have creative periods, run workshops alongside your role as Visiting Assistant Professor/Lecturer in Photography: College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. Do you work in bursts or have you developed a consistent work ethic?
I'm pretty much always working. I usually have a list of things that absolutely have to be done that day or that week, and I try to focus on those. There is usually so much to be done in a given day or week, that I rarely get a chance to work on anything that isn't due immediately. Someday I will figure out how to change this. It probably has something to do with doing less.
I use view cameras almost exclusively. I usually have a 6x7 medium format camera with me for less specific things, but my work is usually exposed on large sheets of film. Depending on the project, I work with 4x5 and 8x10 mostly.
Could you tell us a little about the cameras, film and lenses you have used on these projects? Could you tell us a little about the cameras and lenses you typically take on a trip and how their choice affects your photography?
I use view cameras almost exclusively. I usually have a 6x7 medium format camera with me for less specific things, but my work is usually exposed on large sheets of film. Depending on the project, I work with 4x5 and 8x10 mostly. Broken Land was 8x20. Paradise Road is all 8x10. Still Lives is 4x5. The work I'm doing in Maine right now is a mixture of 4x5 and 8x10. I also just picked up an 11x14 camera that I've been using to experiment with paper negatives. All of my colour film projects use Kodak Portra. I carry a variety of lenses with me for 4x5 and 8x10, usually wide, normal, and long, with some variations in between. I'm not sure it's terribly important to get into specifics on that, I don't really pay a lot of attention to these sorts of things. I tend to get attached to one lens for the 4x5 and one for the 8x10 that I use most of the time, and the others are just there for specific occasions. I enjoy experimenting with combinations of lenses, film formats, and cameras that are not intended to work with one another.
You are the founder of the Film Photo Award, tell us where the idea came from and what you wanted to achieve with this award.
The Film Photo Award is intended to get a large pile of Kodak Professional film into the hands of deserving film photographers who show a dedication to pushing the medium forward in the 21st century. I worked on this project for a number of years with Kodak Alaris before we finally got it off the ground in the spring of 2019. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic has put a damper on the award programme in 2020, but we have helped produce a number of outstanding projects thus far with the film we have managed to award. Check out some of the Film Photo Award recipients here: https://www.filmphotoaward.com/alumni
Paradise Road, San Simon, Arizona
Where do you see analogue photography going? Are you seeing more students using film or alternative printing techniques and why do you think this is?
Fortunately, I don't see analogue photography going anywhere any time soon. My students are floored by it. Most of them have never even seen a roll of 35mm film upon entering my classroom. My Introduction to Photography course is completely large format based, which allows them to engage with the practice of seeing, thinking, and composing in hyper deliberate ways. They are forced to make a long series of decisions throughout the process of shooting, developing, and printing, each of which leads them ultimately to an image they had an intimate role in creating. I think they are attracted to that engagement and relationship, the same as I am. When my students ultimately get to my upper level Photography Portfolio courses, where they can choose the medium, materials, tools, processes, etc that make the best sense for the work they want to create, the vast majority of them end up back in the darkroom. I'm teaching a lot of historic processes right now, using the sun, and teaching outside, because of the pandemic. The students love it. None of them would give up their screens, of course, but to have the opportunity to step away from them for a minute and make something with their hands and watch it come to life under the actions of the sun; they're quite thirsty for it.
You studied photography at Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia. How did this experience shape your photography?
I can't explain how powerful this experience was for me. Before entering into something like this, there is no way to fully understand how the experience is going to change you as a human being, and in my case, as an artist. But I know who I was going in and who I was coming out, and those two people are very different from one another. I have the photography faculty there to thank for that, 100%. One of the things I found truly helpful at SCAD was that there were a ton of photography specific faculty. I think there were about 20 photo faculty. This allowed me to get varied feedback from a lot of different types of people and also to gravitate toward certain faculty for certain purposes. I would intentionally take my work to faculty who I thought would hate it and tear it apart. I would also have many options for going to the right person for advice on printing techniques, historic process, view camera techniques, marketing questions, etc. Many colleges and universities have somewhere between 1 and maybe 3 photo faculty, so having this variety at SCAD was super helpful. A number of the faculty I worked closest with remain dear friends of mine today. They also have incredible facilities.
Your work explores the connection between culture, memory, history, and place. Has this always been this way or was this something that has developed over time?
I think it has always been there, but it has been nourished and expanded in various ways. Some play a larger role in some projects more than others. I tend to gravitate toward the landscape. Most of my projects begin as landscape projects and either remain that way or sometimes expand into more. I studied Anthropology and Art History as an undergrad, intentionally to influence my understanding of the world and my photography. I continue to study every day, so my relationship with these things and their influence on my work is certainly evolving.
Paradise Road, Tracy, California
Do you develop and scan the film yourself? Do you enjoy this part of the process?
I usually send my colour film off for processing to Griffin Editions in New York City, but I've always scanned my own work. Of course, I develop my own black & white film and make my own silver prints. I do enjoy this part of the process as much as any other. It's getting a little overwhelming these days with so many things happening at the same time, and I've considered bringing in some help, but I have a hard time imagining someone else doing part of the work that I feel is so integral to process, and ultimately the understanding of the work. I'm not sure, we'll see. It would probably be healthier for me to try and let go a little...
Tell me about the photographers or artists that inspire you most. What books stimulated your interest in photography and who drove you forward, directly or indirectly, as you developed?
Goodness, as I said above, I'm an obsessed book and print collector. Certainly, each one of these 100s of volumes and countless others I don't own have influenced me over the years. I can say that Joel Sternfeld was one of my biggest early influences, first with American Prospects, then Walking the Highline, and then Oxbow Archive. These books just knocked me flat. They had a massive impact on the way I thought about a photographic project and they are what first got me hooked on holding a photography book in my lap. I began collecting with these books, and it has become a huge problem since then.
Another problem I have is that I'm interested in an enormous array of photography types. I don't just collect books by photographers who make work similar to me. I'm looking at all kinds of things that are far from what I do, and in many ways, I often appreciate that work more. Some photographers I can't get enough of lately are Thomas Locke Hobbs, Jordanna Kalman, Barbara Bosworth, Raymond Meeks, Justine Kurland, Deanna Lawson, Sam Contis... this just goes on and on. Chris Killip passed away the other day, and I've been revisiting a bunch of his work. What a massive loss. He was so damn good, and just a massive influence on photography over the past 50 years.
What is next for you? Where do you see your photography going in terms of subject and style?
I wish I knew the answer to that. I'm still really focused on the work I'm doing in Maine and I hope to start releasing some of that soon. I've just begun a new chapter on that work, which has probably another couple of years of work in it. In the meantime, I hope to find some time to get into my book studio as much as possible and see what I can come up with. I haven't made a book since 2018, and I'm itching to get in there.
Returning once again into my local forest has provided new inspiration. I had been preoccupied with cut down trees back in 2016 but aesthetically the range of images seemed finite at that time. However, the mandatary ‘lockdown’ of March/April 2020 enabled me to look again very much closer to home but this time venturing in a different geographical direction, one that followed sandy narrow trails, quite at odds with the rocky greater forest around them. These paths are referred to by locals as the old river, a gathering basin from the shallow slopes either side.
The slightness of a northwards river track, perhaps no more than a metre wide at its core, is a useful source of fire materials for the local villagers. Felled and left to dry for months and years, branches and trees render a two-tone colour palette for a photographer’s eye. The trees species here at variance to the forest just a few metres beyond it. My attraction was drawn to recently cut material which still held some colour.
Shapes and form as always become paramount and photographing in overcast conditions is a necessity to reduce overall contrast. These river paths extending from the village and within the greater forest of 125sq kilometres offer a unique exchange between flora and man’s intervention.
Projects are good, it’s finding a new friend
A relationship which can be great at the start with perhaps a difficult middle period and then a common understanding of limitations and finally acceptance. We often have high hopes for new work at the beginning so what seems initially interesting then becomes less so once we gain some objectivity through time.
Learn to embrace the more mundane and ordinary at first glance. It can sometimes take quite an effort to overcome your instincts but the advantage is you can make it yours.
Returning to a location many times in a short time takes a particular resilience so spacing out visits may be beneficial. Our projects are part of who we are so I always allow time to look back on them with affection. Take time to reflect on your previous work, enjoy looking at the images and learn from them.
I have been a photographer for over 28 years, more than half my life, and during that time, I have made thousands of images and undoubtedly viewed hundreds of thousands more. We are all exposed to a massive amount of photography, growing at an exponential rate, but how many of these images ever really stick with us? How many have the profound effect that the artist probably hoped for? How many times have you viewed an image that changed your life?
Granted many of us can point to images or photographers that inspired us at the beginning, picking up an Ansel Adams book or seeing a spread about a photographer in a magazine. I began my photographic journey in a very different space, well before the dawn of the internet and living in a rural town where the library didn't have a single book on photography. I began making landscape images without anything to reference them to. It was at least a year into it before I was gifted an Ansel Adams book that filled me with awe and wonder but also slightly depressed me as I reckoned, I would never be this good... I was right!
If you ever think “what would Ansel Adam’s work be like if he’d taken up colour photography instead of black and white?” then the answer is, depressingly, pretty bad as his short trial of early colour film goes to show. We shouldn't be critical of Ansel for this, the materials weren't great and as he said quite elegantly, "I can get a far greater sense of ‘colour' through a well-planned and executed black-and-white image than I have ever achieved with colour photography". However, if he’d used colour film from a young age and developed his craft I don’t think he would have been too far from what we see from William Neill.
There are more parallels with Ansel's work, in my opinion. William worked for the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite and as much as he worked in a different medium, the location and associations definitely rubbed off on him. In general, William’s work may be more intimate than most of Ansel’s more famous compositions but he still produces wonderful classic landscapes when the subject presents itself.
Finally, just like Ansel, William is an excellent communicator and it’s the balance of his landscape photography skills and his ability to articulate his working and artistic practices so well that makes this book so special.
Influenced by his father’s career as a writer, William put pen to paper early on in his career (when it really was pen and paper!) and he contributed his first articles to Outdoor Photographer magazine in 1986. His wonderfully named “On Landscape” column has now run for over three decades (hopefully William will believe us when we say we pinched the name from Sontag, not him!). This book, “Light on the Landscape” is a compilation and reworking of some of the best of these essays and alongside them, we are treated to a great range of work from his more famous images to some lesser-known but equally wonderful works.
The articles don’t really try to be a concise instruction manual on the photography or a philosophical treaty on the art of landscape but along the way, they cover a great deal of ground. From Lightroom and focus stacking to how to engage emotionally with nature, from conservation to intentional camera movement, from dealing with different conditions in the field to the challenges of making photographs on family holidays.
This isn’t a book to be read in one sitting (although I nearly did!) but it will be better appreciated as a resource to dip into occasionally and pick out a couple of random essays to ponder at leisure.
I was trying to think of what the book reminded me of and I think it fits on my bookshelf alongside the work of Galen Rowell, Joe Cornish, Guy Tal, John Sexton and obviously Ansel Adams as an example of a great balance of the informative and the inspirational.
Beyond Words have both the softcover and signed hardcover copies of the book available and I highly recommend getting a copy before they sell out. A great addition to any landscape photographers bookshelf.
There's a world of difference between going out and photographing what you love and being commissioned to photograph a location for a job. You might be lucky and the commission is to photograph an area you know well and have lots of insider knowledge about best times and weather conditions and the client has lots of time for you to choose the best day to visit. In reality, you'll be lucky if you have more than a few hours to capture a location and you'll have to live with access during 'poor' light (never mind being asked to work during the summer! Bleurgh!). In this screencast, I talked to Joe about his work on a project photographing various gardens designed by Sir Humphry Repton, a successor to the legendary Capability Brown.
Back in May, during the first lockdown in the UK, Manuel Chicchetti contacted us about a book that he had just finishing called 'Monocrome | Walking through the Ampezzo Dolomites'. Browsing through the images really made me want to get out in the mountains around our home but that was met with the frustration that I couldn't as were we confined to our immediate area, with advice from the Mountain Rescue of not venturing up the mountains. The big vistas and views you get in the Dolomites are like no other and kept me inspired, so I started an email conversation with Manuel and enjoyed hearing about his project and his passion for the mountains.
What sparked your passion for photography?
It all arose from the education that my family chose for me; since before I was a schoolboy, they took me to museums, to art galleries and to visit the most iconic cities both in Italy and abroad. As I grew up, it felt natural for me to enter first the world of painting, and then later the world of photography.
Why did you choose landscape photography as opposed to other genres?
After working for twenty years according to the rhythms of a large metropolis – obviously a very stimulating environment, but also a frenetic one – I felt a need to slow down, to decompress. And therefore, to train my lens on something else; something that would accompany me on a slower journey, and landscapes are the most apt subject for that. I went back to looking at nature and at the environment. The choice is not exclusive, but today landscape photography occupies a very high place in my work.
Baste Lake and Monte Pelmo (p.145)
Line of larch trees in the fog (p.118)
Tell me about the photographers or artists that inspire you most. What books stimulated your interest in photography and who drove you forward, directly or indirectly, as you developed?
One of Ansel Adams’ famous quotes reads: “You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.” I believe that the great American photographer was absolutely right. I have studied a lot, attending exhibitions, buying books, reading and keeping publications: from August Sander, Tina Modotti, Robert Adams, Don Mc Cullin, Josef Kudelca, Richard Avedon, Robert Doisneau, Henri Cartier-Bresson to Luigi Ghirri, but these are just a few of them. I could list dozens, and they are all, in my opinion, among the greats. But it’s not just photography; film was key for me, from John Ford to Fellini to Luchino Visconti, as was theatre, which was the first area in which I gained regular employment as a photographer.
In 1999 the composer Filippo Del Corno asked you to realise the scenography and to be the director of the piece “On the high wire” by Philip Petit, with Marco Baliani and Michele Abbondanza, inside the renowned festival Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte in Montepulciano (SI) – Italy. How did you find that experience and about organising the project?
I have always thought that working with others has as its first consequence an increase in my knowledge and my sensitivity. Therefore, I have always loved and sought the mixing of different art forms. I felt lucky to have been chosen for this project; I would have to reckon with some of the masters, and I wasn’t even thirty years old, I wasn’t much more than a beginner. In the complexity of an event which included a great actor, a formidable dancer, a refined composer, a symphonic orchestra and a scenography made out of images projected onto multiple screens we managed to create a magical alchemy. Three things were key: great serenity, being able to listen to others and the freedom which derived from the first two.
Frozen trees (p.161)
You have a strong background in music, do you think there is a link between the visual medium of photography and the medium of music?
A young photographer just over twenty years old has to find areas to work in, and mine was music, to begin with. Images have always gone together with other art forms, and music is certainly no exception. You only have to think of the spine of many editions of the Divine Comedy, which depict the crooked nose of the greatest poet, Dante. Images have always been part of operas; you only have to think of the set designs. It is and always will be an inseparable union. Photography, which is just over 150 years old, has been and always will be an integral part of the musical medium together with videos.
A young photographer just over twenty years old has to find areas to work in, and mine was music, to begin with. Images have always gone together with other art forms, and music is certainly no exception.
The nice thing about photography, though, is that you disentangle it from music and you observe it for what it is, it can live on its own, whereas this doesn’t always happen with videos.
You say in the book 'My story among these mountains starts early, I was just 3 months old, I moved my first steps right on these paths. I spent my life on these paths for nearly half a century, but I am, and always will be a foreigner, a “foresto” as they luckily call whoever is not from these places, whoever is not from Ampezzo" Have you always had a connection to these mountains? Do you think you saw the area differently as an ‘outsider’?
I am sure that the mountains of Ampezzo were the first place that I visited in my life, and for me, they represented a place of reunion for my family, who were divided between Milan and Bologna. I have always spent long periods in these mountains, weaving relationships with their inhabitants and oftentimes growing with them, but my formation remains urban. The only peaks I would see for the rest of the year were skyscrapers and the roofs of high-rise buildings. I never got used to the mountains to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised when I opened a window in the morning and saw forests of fir or larch trees and the Tofane or the Cristallo. Yes, I think that the term “foresto” is a correct way of describing me, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing; being surprised is a fantastic feeling.
Tell us a bit about the project 'Ampezzo Dolomites’. Where did the idea for the project start?
It seems incredible, but I had never photographed them. Yes, a few shots over the years, but these were largely of moments with family or friends. The theme was neither nature nor the Dolomites. One summer I considered paying back what these places had gifted me over so many years, and I thought about how to do that. It all started from the first frame that I would shoot the following year. That photo matured within me for twelve months. The rest came by itself over four years of work, with no rush.
Limedes Lake(p.165)
How did the project evolve? Did you have to refine the vision of what you wanted to achieve?
I was clear on what story I wanted to tell and I was clear on how I should do it. I worked with “tilt&shift” architectural lenses; for me, these were no longer mountains, but sculptures, or stone architectural structures, or Renaissance paintings. I went back to everything I learned in my formation, especially as a boy, and I started shooting. All the seasons and all the natural elements would have to be present.
Was the choice of black and white photography a way of linking the project with the past?
No, I have always loved black and white photography, it was at the core of my formation. Many of the photographers I mentioned did not shoot in colour, whether because of age or because of choice. I chose to work by subtraction, eliminating colour, and I focused mainly on shapes.
Helping my work along, especially in this case, is nature; in the mountains the clouds change the lighting within a few minutes, altering the scenery at a rate that keeps you alert at all times.
Denis Curti writes in the book "There are three distinctive elements in the photographic project of Manuel Cicchetti: the strong feeling of belonging to a place, the unconditional love for nature and the need to translate his visions and feelings into clear images, full of harmonious development that can give back to the vision and contemplation a true meaning." How do you think you capture these emotions in your images? Is it something that you consciously think about or is it intuitive in your workflow?
At the basis of every shot, unless montaged like you can do in a studio, whether you are shooting a portrait, a building or a landscape, is a reading. For me it is essential to read the shapes that light draws on objects. The majority of the time the photograph is born before you pick up your camera. I think it’s my tendency towards observation that guides me, and that is born out of my curiosity.
Helping my work along, especially in this case, is nature; in the mountains the clouds change the lighting within a few minutes, altering the scenery at a rate that keeps you alert at all times.
How did you go about researching and deciding which mountains and landscapes to include in the book?
A deep knowledge of the land forms the basis of this work. The Ampezzo Dolomites are a very small territory of 370 km2, 24 times smaller than Yellowstone (8.913 km2).
What’s surprising is the concentration of extraordinary mountains, rock complexes, lakes and stretches of water, and forests that are enclosed within this one corner of Italy.
Tell us about how you planned the project, how long it took, how did you decide in which sequence you chose to visit the locations.
My planning process followed a study of the Ampezzo Dolomites National Park and of the seasons. I was in no rush; four years went by since the first shot. In the meantime, I finalised how to bring the project to fruition, I found a publisher, I built a very close team with a photo editor, a printer and a graphic designer, and I formed partnerships with local councils and organisations. Indeed, this book was followed by exhibitions in Milan, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Belluno, Turin, and – upcoming – Venice and Rome.
After I finished shooting, I chose to leave it up to the photo editor to build the sequencing of the book, and I think I made the right choice; I would have been too attached to the individual images to feel free to choose between them.
Were there any of the mountains that you found particularly challenging to photograph or were in interesting locations?
From a photography point of view there are, as always happens, people or places with whom you vibe more, and where everything comes more easily. I often went back to the same places again and again within a few days or months to shoot again in a different light, not because I wasn’t happy with the previous shot but to satisfy my curiosity.
Tell me what your favourite two or three photographs from the book are and a little bit about them (please include these images in the ones you send over)
Tricky question… I’m joking, but I don’t just have three!
Col del Bos (p 34)
Winter light on the Rio Fanes ( p.39 )
Canyon over the river Boite (p.75)
Old pine and Tofana di Rozes (p.101)
Could you tell us a little about the cameras and lenses you typically take on a trip and how their choice affects your photography?
I work with both analogue and digital photography. For what concerns analogue photography I use:
Large Format Camera
Linhof Technikardan and Master Technika both 4x5
With Schneider and Rodenstock optics
Medium Format
Hasselblad 500 CM
With 40, 50, 80 and 150 Carl Zeiss-Hasselblad optics
For digital medium format
Fuji GFX 50 MP
FUJINON GF63mmF2.8
FUJINON GF120mm
As for DSLR
I shoot with a Nikon D5
AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED
AF-S NIKKOR 24mm f/1.8G ED
AF-S NIKKOR 28mm f/1.8G
AF-S NIKKOR 50 mm f/1.8
AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II
PC-E NIKKOR 24mm f/3.5D ED
PC-E NIKKOR 45mm f/2.8 ED
PC-E Micro NIKKOR 85mm f/2.8D
What sort of post processing do you undertake on your pictures? Give me an idea of your workflow...
When working with digital photography the process involves two pieces of software, which I use depending on which camera I chose for the shot. They are Lightroom and CaptureOne. Then if the images are going to be printed a print file is prepared, having chosen Fine Art paper. I usually use Canson® Infinity Baryta Prestige 340g/m² for B&W prints such as those in the book.
For analogue photography I use Kodak or Ilford for the shot, depending on what I want to achieve. Then comes the development phase. But here the question becomes empirical as well as technical…
800 sheep at Passo Giau, transhumance (p.105)
Light and shadow on the Croda Rossa (p.117)
Did you start with the intention of making a book or did that idea follow later?
I knew from the first day that a book would be born out of this.
How did you manage the flow of the book with the images and the narrative?
I chose to work with a very good photo editor: Jacopo Anti.
Did you manage the project yourself or did you work with an editor?
In agreement with TCI Touring Club Italiano, who published the book, I chose to work with a photo editor, whom I picked because I feel that he is close to my own aesthetic.
How did you decide on the format of the book e.g. size and paper, print type?
I chose to work with a graphic designer and a printer. The graphic designer is Massimo Fiameni, who helped me choose the format and the paper. Then I worked with Mario Govino, the printer, who created the prints for the exhibitions, and with whom I adjusted the photographs for use in the offset printing of the book.
What is next for you? Where do you see your photography going in terms of subject and style?
In September, after the end of the Covid pandemic, which slowed down the publication, my second book will be released, which is centred upon VAIA, the cyclone which destroyed 14 million trees in Italy. It is a book born out of an exhibition organised for Belluno Council and for the Festival Oltre le Vette (Beyond the Peaks Festival) in October 2019. This project combines my pictures with short stories written by journalist and writer Angelo Miotto, and it will be translated into both English and Spanish.
Meanwhile, I am working on my third book, in which I change subjects, telling the story of all that man has built in order to sustain globalisation.
You can buy Manuel's book 'Monocrome | Walking through the Ampezzo Dolomites' from Amazon Italy or from LensCulture.
Mondeval and Monte Pelmo (p.93)
Mondeval and Monte Pelmo (p.93)
Storm on Antelao ( p.150 )
Trees in the thaw (p.103)
Windy day and backlight on Averau and Croda Negra (p.83)
Instagram’s thrown up a treat this time, in the form of Jan Gray. It can be hard to fully judge someone’s photography on the platform (others may disagree) and at the time I contacted Jan in August there was no link to a website. Serendipity obviously played a part, as my email found her putting the finishing touches to one, and I had the pleasure of selecting images from it before it went live. I’ve loved putting this together - Jan’s humour permeates her answers. Although you can guess at some of her formative photographic influences, there are many other sources of inspiration and Jan has clearly reached the point of knowing, and going, her own way. Even if you think swooshing a camera around isn’t your thing, I’d encourage you to read on; we are all so much more than just the sum of our pixels.
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?
Right, well, first of all thanks so much for asking me to do this, Michela. I was amazed when I received your invite and it arrived at a time when I finally feel ready to unleash a website, so great timing.
Anyway, my wonderful childhood was spent in North West England - mainly in 70s flares, very long hair and with a well dodgy fringe - about a mile outside the rather gorgeous walled City of Chester. My home was a terraced house in a working class row of three streets that housed lots of kids so we all played and schooled together. My mum worked at the local Playgroup and my Dad was a Milkman. I was good at school, had lots of small rodent pets, resisted eating meat as often as possible and became transfixed by David Bowie. The only photography in my life came in the form of holiday snaps on Agfa or Kodak film and those heinous school shots that make you want to die.
Art, on the other hand, was a different matter. I was never without a sketchbook or a ‘life of an artist’ book from WH Smiths
Art, on the other hand, was a different matter. I was never without a sketchbook or a ‘life of an artist’ book from WH Smiths and I dreamed, in an almost tragically spiritual manner, of becoming the muse of a Lucian Freud or of meeting a like-minded group of painters and going to live in a commune where we would paint, grow vegetables and smoke pot.
Mercifully, I stayed at school instead and became a teenager (and importantly, a lifelong vegetarian). As much as art shaped my thinking, so did political ideology. My Dad was very left wing, a Labour man and Bennite, and I followed his thinking. I joined the Labour Party Young Socialists at 14 and became a very active member. The time was perfect for someone like me: Thatcher’s Britain, CND, The Miners’ Strike, The Troubles, Clause 28, Militant, Apartheid…I was angry, furious actually, but so so happy. Even today, I am never more ragingly delighted than when I am ideologically fuming about something.
My angsty life was also always filled with music as a backdrop: Bowie, Nick Cave, Iggy, Velvet Underground, Bunnymen, Talking Heads, Billy Bragg, John Peel’s seminal radio show in bed under the covers, that sort of necessary thing. And reading, anything and everything: Orwell, Marx, Vasari, Bronte, Tressell…
For the fifth iteration of this column, I decided to focus on the artwork of a photographer who has accomplished a great deal in a short amount of time. His passion and commitment to the natural world consistently inspires me to be a better person, a better photographer, and to try to focus more of my own work on actions and words that inspire others to protect the places we love to photograph. Eric Bennett is a 30-year-old landscape photographer living in the Salt Lake City area who has a deep passion for wild places.
I was first introduced to Eric’s incredible photography when he joined me to discuss his artwork on my podcast in January 2018. Eric and I had a wonderful conversation about his journey into the craft of landscape photography where I learned about his upbringing in a family of performing artists, which heavily informed his pursuit of the creative arts at a young age. I first met Eric in person last fall when he joined my friends and I for a few days of photographing fall colours near where I live in Southwest Colorado. The more I have gotten to know Eric and his photography over the years, the more I am impressed with not only the quality of his work but also the deeper emotional commitment and connection Eric has with the wilderness through his photographic artwork. Truly, it has become quite apparent to me that Eric’s goal with his photography is purely selfless – he wishes to inspire the world to take better care of wild places and hopes to do that by showcasing these places in a way that only he and a small handful of photographers are able to do.
"Quiet", Margaret Soraya’s solo exhibition opens at the Taunus Gallery in Frankfurt on Saturday 31st Oct and runs through until January 2021.
Margaret Soraya is a Scottish landscape photographer, who has been visiting the Hebrides for over ten years in search of solitude, a positive state of aloneness that allows her the creative space to capture the untouched beauty of the islands’ rugged coastline and endless beaches. Margaret's artistic interpretation of stormy seas reminds us that strength may be found in quietness and solitude, allowing creativity to flourish.
Solitude is a positive state which can stimulate self-awareness and creativity. We all need periods of solitude to restore body and mind.
Margaret uses minimalist compositions with a very limited colour palette and tone, only allowing the Hebrides’ distinctive turquoise sea to stand out. A gentle mood and feeling of peacefulness is conveyed by the use of soft, overcast lighting complemented by a softness to the impressionist waves and swash on the beaches created by the use of long exposures.
As a child, my earliest and most significant and happiest memories belong to days spent by the sea. The sound of waves crashing, the smell of sea air, feel of sand bring with them associations of contentment and an affinity with water. This has become the driving force behind much of my landscape photography
~ Margaret Soraya
Opening
Taunus Foto Galerie will be open for all on Saturday 31 Oct and Sunday 1 Nov to show guests around Margaret’s work, along with a glass of sparkling wine. The Covid pandemic means that we cannot hold a normal exhibition opening, but we will show a welcome video from Margaret, as she cannot be here in person. Please see www.taunusfotogalerie.com/en/gallery
His description of the photographer as an artist is alone sufficient to relish this interview with Hal Gage. His creative journey spanning 4 decades, exploring not just the technical elements of the medium but the emotive, results in images of personality, strength and depth that become ever more powerful and relevant when considered as bodies of work. But for me, with project timeframes ranging from 5 to 20 years, it is the focus towards subjects of personal artistic relevance that resonates most strongly (that and rating “This is Spinal Tap” and “Blade Runner” as favourite movies obviously!).
I strongly advise you take a cup of tea or glass of wine, relax with an adequate amount of time, then contemplate for yourself - as Hal suggests - the beauty and the messaging contained within both his words and this beautiful body of work.
Firstly, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about yourself and your photographic practice.
As a child, I was always fascinated with drawing. In high school, my interests turned to music. While working in cover bands as a drummer and lead guitarist, I began composing and recording my own music, all the while continuing making visual art. At university, my painting mentor turned me on to photography (not sure if that was a commentary on my painting skills!). After I bought my first camera, I never looked back. Forty years later, I am still making photographs.
I work in thematic bodies of work that take between 5 and 20 years to complete. Novelty is not my friend. I need to get to know a subject over a long period of time, to listen and hear what it has to tell me. I found my voice kind of late in my career. I started out in the mid-70s following the luminaries of the time like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. I got sidetracked with the technical aspect of photography (developers, sensitometry, optics… you name it, I studied it) before I allowed the intuitive side, I had cultivated in my painting days, to emerge. I think I ultimately benefited from that “techie” period in my life, but because of it, I didn’t really find my voice as an artist until the late 80s.
After a long career working in the “wet” darkroom, I made the switch to digital in 2008. I mention that only to say that I have a long history with the traditional aesthetic of photography. Nothing really changed in the transition, except I just became that much more productive. Because of my background in graphic design and desktop publishing, I was an early adopter of digital printmaking. In the late 80s and early 90s, I worked with laser printers, imagesetters, dye-sublimation printers, digital negatives for the darkroom, and Iris prints to produce my artwork. Once cameras could produce high enough resolution to rival or equal film, the switch was a natural move.
How did you become interested in the Ice series and glaciers in particular? What were your motivations and how did you deliver the project?
In Alaska, winter is a ubiquitous part of life. After decades of trying to ignore it, I decided to embrace it. Back in the darkroom era, I focused on ice as a subject for its unique beauty and for its symbolism for our changing environment. The series developed organically and branched out to several sub-series. Ice is primarily a winter subject, so I started visiting glaciers in the late 1990s. There I found a subject worthy of study and available year-round.
How did that bring you to photograph glacial silt?
After completing the Ice Series, which premiered at Alaska’s largest museum in Anchorage, and travelled around the state and on to the continental US, I continued to work on familiar subjects. After years of looking at the glacier's soaring seracs, wind and water carved caves, and shapes or patterns in the ice, I started looking down at my feet. There I found a microcosm of the ecosystem of our environment. Water goes through its cycles, and ice and water move boulders and fertile soils, transporting them down the deltas. Erosion reshapes the landscape and makes and remakes the world around us.
The shapes and patterns in the images from the Glacial Silt Series seem an obvious subject for photography. However, these patterns exist and are often hidden in a subtle and narrow range of tonality. It takes considerable time to “see” the shapes and patterns in the slow flowing glacial silt. With the use of daft image processing, the patterns emerged. Their beauty belays the circumstances that have created them. As the average Earth temperature continues to raise (doubly so in the Arctic and sub Arctic), glaciers melt and recede leaving behind a moraine of rocks and soils scoured from the mountain tops and valleys. The melting waters from the glacier slowly carry the finely pulverised rock (glacial flour) in minutely shallow rivulets. The Glacial flour, mud, and tiny pebbles accumulate into strange and unexpected patterns. Although barely visible to the naked eye, the subtle patterns of grey on grey can be drawn out of the digital file through a careful use of software processing to make the final image.
What have you learned from the experience?
Each series I create has its own learning curve. Working slowly and being mindful to listen to what the subject has to tell me, brings me closer to nature and the spirit within. Couple that with advances in image-making technology, and I gain a wealth of knowledge and skills. It’s hard gauging what I learned from this project since it transpired (like so many of my projects) over 20 years.
Each series I create has its own learning curve. Working slowly and being mindful to listen to what the subject has to tell me, brings me closer to nature and the spirit within.
Not only is there a vast difference in me today as a photographic artist compared to the person I was in 2000 but, cameras, photographic techniques and computer software have all evolved tremendously. Revealing these silt patterns could not have been done 20 years ago, at least to the degree that I can now. Knowing current capabilities and how to use them allowed me to see in the moment what was possible, visually, in the final print.
When I started out working with ice, I knew little of climate change. But, a few years into it there was a lot of speculation on the subject. I can still remember bantering back and forth with a science journalist (who ended up writing a piece for my exhibition, Ice: a personal meditation, on the physics of ice) about whether climate change was a fact or still just a theory. He was a bit of a sceptic, and I was convinced. That has been a big part of my motivation in working with ice. I feel that ice is the perfect symbol for all of human-caused environmental degradation.
What measures can we all take to be proactive in the discussion?
Photography (like any art mediums) can be something that we hide behind while looking at the world around us. Although photography–almost by definition–is an experiential pursuit, as photographers we often allow the camera to stand between us and the subject as passive viewers of the world. Once made, the image can become a flash point of conversations. I don’t think it’s up to the artist to create or drive the conversation, but it is incumbent on us to look, observe, and see the world in a new and unique way.
Which photographers inspire you and why?
As a young artist, I was first inspired by the surrealists and the impressionists. Max Ernst and Paul Klee were my art heroes. Ernst’s mastery of the grotesque, detail and organic shapes and patterns were an inspiration to me as a painter. Klee’s sense of arrangement and his part in the Bauhaus movement challenged me to concentrate on arrangement in a 2D space. This was all long before I threw myself into the study of photography.
It seems that every day I come across a new photographer who captures my attention. The Internet has made so many voices heard and allowed me to see so much work, this truly is a new golden age for photography. In my mind, the key is to be someone who is adding to the conversation of art, not just repeating what has already been said.
My first photographic inspiration was Edward Weston. That may seem a cliché today, but Weston was a revelation both in his images and in his writings. He truly gave me the “flame of recognition” that photography was about far more than the subject pictured. Calling on my 2D design schooling, I could see a photograph as a 2-dimensional space with a relationship of tones that (like Kandinsky’s “visual music”) could evoke an emotion. Ansel Adams came along soon after and showed me a pragmatic approach to mastering what is a very technical medium. Work of those two and others like Fay Godwin, Bill Brandt, Jay Dusard, and Michael Kenna helped to shape my subject choice and printing style.
Fast forward 40 years: today I find inspiration in many of my contemporaries. My interests in photography range widely. Landscape artists like Robert Adams, Camille Seamen and Mitch Dobrowner are essential parts of the conversation of art. Closer to home, artists like Charles Mason, Dennis Witmer, and the late Barry McWayne continue to inspire me. Street and social commentary photographers like Garry Winogrand, Simon Norfolk, and Martin Parr are all artists I hold in highest esteem. There are many many others. It seems that every day I come across a new photographer who captures my attention. The Internet has made so many voices heard and allowed me to see so much work, this truly is a new golden age for photography. In my mind, the key is to be someone who is adding to the conversation of art, not just repeating what has already been said. A good grasp of art history helps (not just photography, but all mediums). That is what “finding your voice” means to me.
All your work has an environmental or social impact aspect to it. How did you plan the images that you wanted to capture - both in terms of locations and messages that you wanted the stories to tell?
While that may be true, thoughts of environmental and social issues come long after I make the images. I guess I’m old-school. Aesthetics are my first and only thought when out in the field. I suppose there is a subconscious motivation going on in the back of my mind. I am very concerned about the current state of the world. Since I am out in the environment when making art, climate change, pollution, and man’s impact on the land have a great influence on me and my subject of choice (nature). When I make photographs, I look for things that interest me. Nature is beautiful and being in it rejuvenates my spirit, but that’s not always enough to bring me to the epiphany of making art. I look for something new and different in my environment, and that usually is the metaphoric footprint of humans. It’s usually after making photographs for a while, that I start to see a pattern in my catalogue of images and a theme emerges. Maybe it was always there to begin with, but wasn’t a forethought in my mind. Once a theme emerges, I start fleshing out the concept into what, I hope, becomes a cohesive body of work. That requires me to revisit locations over and over again. It’s rare for me to create a body of work from just a few passes at a location and/or subject.
When I teach, I tell my students, when you find a subject that grabs your attention, photograph it from every angle, in every way possible, before moving on. You’ll never be there again, at that place, at that time, take advantage of it. That’s my philosophy: photograph your subject to within an inch of its life! And then come back repeatedly until you feel the subject has nothing more to say to you. It’s that commitment, that thoroughness, that helps make strong bodies of work. When it comes down to it, it’s never really my story. I am there to relay a story that has been told to me while living with my subject.
I think to a certain extent that is true. Anyone who works in nature, basking in the sheer joy it has to offer, becomes an advocate for its protection. I can't hope to say more than Joe Cornish. He is well versed and eloquent on the topic.
Being an artist has meant not steering my creativity to push an agenda. I think Ansel Adams had his internal turmoil about keeping his motives pure: even after becoming a de facto spokesman for the Sierra Club where he lobbied Congress on environmental matters. In the end, I feel he stayed true to his aesthetics and made work because it was meaningful to him without thought to what anyone else wanted or needed from him. I often photograph things that are not necessarily considered “beautiful” in the conventional sense.
I think Ansel Adams had his internal turmoil about keeping his motives pure: even after becoming a de facto spokesman for the Sierra Club where he lobbied Congress on environmental matters. In the end, I feel he stayed true to his aesthetics and made work because it was meaningful to him without thought to what anyone else wanted or needed from him.
I photograph them because they excite my imagination, appeal to my aesthetic disposition, and fit into my journey as an artist. I feel that is my “job.” I personally feel compelled to write to my Congressman from time to time and donate money (and artwork) to worthy causes that mesh with my views—that is my engagement with the body politic. We should all do it. But, as far as my artwork goes, I make images that appeal to my personal aesthetic first and later offer my perspectives on social issues through the presentation of my work in exhibition. I make my opinions and motivations (beyond the making of the work) known in statements and articles. That is the horse to my artistic cart. My aesthetic duty is to make art that adds to the conversation we call art history and not simply repeat what already has been said. I think most artists do that. Adding a political point of view on top of the work after the fact, has a long and storied history, and as political beings it is our responsibility to help save what we most love, however we can.
Living in the far north, I am privy to much of the impacts of global climate change. The summers are hotter, winters milder but more erratic. Wildfires burn huge swathes of the tundra, sending all that carbon back into the atmosphere. The melting of the permafrost creates slumps and wetlands that exposes once-frozen middens which encapsulates more than twice the amount of carbon already in circulation in our atmosphere. I try to live a low impact, small carbon footprint, but I admit that it’s a fraction of what is needed. I rely on science to help make good decisions and understand what to lobby for locally and protest for nationally. Any more than that, I fear I am more a part of the problem than the solution. Still, I don’t lose heart. I continue to look around me and document what I see. If my images please people, that's nice. If people are moved to action in the cause of the environment, even better. But ultimately, making art is a selfish endeavour. Its impact, purpose, and ultimate value is left to the ages…. Let’s just hope there are ages to come!
Could you tell us a little about the cameras and lenses you typically take on a trip and how their choice affects your photography?
Since I was a young photographer, I have made sure that my “kit bag” always had the equipment needed to photograph the kind of subjects of interest to me. I always have a wide angle, telephoto and close-up lens. Every camera system I have owned has met that criteria. I tend to like 24mm (full frame format) wide angles. For the last 20-30 years I have used a 24~70, and chose a fast one if I could. I currently use a Canon 24~70 2.8 L, 100~400 4.5, and a 100mm 2.8 macro on a 1Ds mkIII. All that fits into a Think Tank Accelerate camera backpack. That camera has served me well for the last 12 years. It’s getting long-in-the-tooth and it’s time for an upgrade. Recently I have been trying out a Sony A series camera. I’m not super happy with the way it handles, but you can’t complain about the output nor the quality of the lenses. I am also considering the new mirrorless Canon R series of cameras (like the R5). I am not a video person, so my interests are in the still capabilities of a camera.
Surprisingly, when I travel out of state or overseas (all travel is by jet out of Alaska), I only bring a Sony RX100 with me. I admit it is tricked out with all the accessories: clip-on conversion lenses for telephoto, diopters for close-up, polarising and neutral density filters, remote release, etc., all that and my regular full-size tripod. It’s still just a pocket camera, but I am amazed at the quality of its files. It accounts for almost all of my portfolio work when I travel out of state. At exhibition-size prints (usually around 25cm Sq.) I wouldn’t know the difference if I hadn’t made them. Although pushing it a bit, they hold up well when making large-metre-size prints, too.
The old platitude: there is no photograph that can’t be made better by getting closer, often has some merit. But filling the frame with just one subject can lead to a one note melody. I like to tell my students that a photograph is like a play: there is a lead actor, and there are supporting actors, find your lead and position the others accordingly
My work seems to be made most often with a 24mm focal length lens. I like to get up close and see far away at the same time. The trick with a 2 dimensional medium like photography is to give the feel of depth. Using this technique, I get the feeling of depth by exaggerating near to far relationships. It helps to concentrate a viewer’s attention on a subject, but give the image context by showing the environment.
That said, I often like to explore with a medium to telephoto lens that tends to flatten out space. I play with the frame as a 2D design problem to solve. How shapes overlap, or not; how lines weave and draw one’s eye; how colours and tones relate to one another and the emotions they evoke when placed near or far apart.
The old platitude: there is no photograph that can’t be made better by getting closer, often has some merit. But filling the frame with just one subject can lead to a one note melody. I like to tell my students that a photograph is like a play: there is a lead actor, and there are supporting actors, find your lead and position the others accordingly. A single monologue can be compelling, but multiple voices create more interactions and a richer experience. To keep things intelligible though, there needs to be a focus point that everything revolves around.
I embraced the square format when I started using a Hasselblad in the 80s. I feel it is the most interesting format: it is very formal in presentation, it concentrates the viewer’s attention, it’s more interesting to compose in and deal with 2D design issues, and wide-angle pictures are both wide angled vertically and horizontally (bonus!).
My technique with a digital camera is to make two images for each subject: one slightly above and one slightly below the centre of the composition. I later combine the two images in software to get a square format. I do this for two reasons: 1) to increase the resolution of the file, 2) because I’m a square guy and cropping a rectangle goes against my aesthetic disposition (I’m also exceedingly parsimonious. I hate wasting expensive pixels!).
What is your favourite location?
I photograph everywhere I go. Although novelty plays little in my art, I still love to travel and see new places and be inspired by new lands and cultures. Since I don’t travel all the time (or even most of the time), I enjoy working and exploring in deeper nuance the landscapes of Alaska that I have already been to many times before. Once I find something that interests me, I photograph the bejeezus out of it. I come back over and over again looking for a deeper understanding of that place—to find its voice. Even after “finishing” a series, I continue to haunt those locations for years after.
Living in Anchorage must give you access to some pretty fresh seafood?
I visited and photographed in the Monterey, California area for many years. Friends took me to The Fish House one night and I sampled Cioppino for the first time. It's a seafood stew in a spicy tomato base broth, and it is to die for. Being from Alaska where seafood is king, I try and make a big pot of it once or twice a year.
You also studied broadcasting in college. Do you have any favourite films and do you still have a link with the moving image?
I’m a sci-fi nut. Blade Runner has to rate right up there. A lesser known film, Brain Storm, is still one of my favourites. Although I love all cinema, I enjoy the stimulation that it brings to my imagination. Comedy films with social satire run a close second. Dr. Strangelove and This is Spinal Tap are classics.
I have always thought cinematically and intuitively understood the language of film-making, I still watch movies with the eye of a cinematographer and director, but I never embraced the collaborative part of movie making. Still photography has always appealed to my personal aesthetic.
Is it a style of photography that you look down on? It is associated with a particular period, but we are still influenced by it. I would suggest that your photography follows some of the same principles if you break it down thoughtfully. What do you think of when the style of photography known as Pictorialism is mentioned? It is associated with what the f/64 group referred to as ‘the fuzzy wuzzies’, photography that employed the use of soft-focus optics and diffusion to impart an artistic look. The term is a derogatory one and refers to the tendency of many photographers of the time to create unsharp images in the mistaken belief that it by itself imparted artistic value.
The original intentions of pictorial photographers were to imitate the established arts of etching, charcoal drawing etc. This way, they assumed, photography would be accepted as a legitimate art. Much of the work from that period is still good enough to elicit gasps of awe from the viewer, even though cameras were crude and printing was laborious. Technologically we are capable of a much higher quality these days, but here is the interesting thing: Why is it that with the ease of use and the staggering quality of modern digital cameras, there are not millions of brilliant photographers?
When asked to write for the End Frame section of On Landscape, one artist that sprung to mind among many of my favourites was Paul Kenny and especially the image ‘Iona Sun’.
Born and educated in Salford, in the Northwest of England, Paul completed his Fine Art Degree at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1975. His own words probably describe best what he does
Quintin Lake has featured in a couple of articles about his adventures in "From Greenland to the Sahara" and a walking project on the Thames Waters in previous On Landscape issues and at the time he replied to a comment from one of our subscribers saying "it's actually reminded me how much I want to continue the journey". At the time, I'm not sure he thought 'continuing the journey' meant walking around the whole of the coastline of Britain though! We nearly caught up with Quintin as he passed by us on the way to Ardnamurchan but ultimately it's taken until now, just after the journey finished, for us to finally chat. We talked online about a selection of his images and how he ended up on this gigantic journey.
Barmouth Bridge at dusk, Mawddach Estuary, Gwynedd.
Chalk cliffs of the Seven Sisters, Sussex.
Dawn at Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland
The Isles of Great Cumbrae, Bute and Arran from near Largs, Ayrshire, Scotland.
Gourock Outdoor Pool, Inverclyde, Scotland.
Pilgrim’s path to Holy Island under a full moon, Northumberland
Loch Hourn from Knoydart, March 2019
White horizon, Irish Sea, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.
Sunset over the Humber, Yorkshire
Dylan Thomas Boathouse, where the poet lived with his family between 1949 and 1953, Laugharne, Dyfed.
The Wash from Snettisham Beach, Norfolk
Ynys Lochtyn from the coast path, Ceredigion.
Storm off Stoer head, Scotland
Hailbow over Knoydart, Scotland
Heavy Sky over Cardiff Flats, Gwent.
Digging for bait, Gann Beach, Pembrokeshire.
Stout Bay I, Glamorgan.
Cromarty, Scotland
Banded clouds, glimpse of Wales from Somerset.
Drinks on the shore, Ferring, Sussex
If you enjoyed watching this video, we've picked some extra photos from his Perimeter library below.
Extra Images
Severn Bridge shadow, Avon.
M5 Exe Viaduct III, Devon.
Stevenson fish packing plant I, Newlyn Harbour, Cornwall.
Anthorn Radio Station II, Cumbria.
Seascape in gale, Trwyn y Bwa, Pembrokeshire.
Salmon Nets II, Sandyhills Bay, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.
Silken Sea III, Portling Bay, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.
Robin Rigg Wind Farm and the Cumbrian fells from Balcary Point, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.
Clachan Bridge I, which links the mainland to the island of Seil and is also known as the Bridge over the Atlantic, Argyll, Scotland.
Fishing huts II, Arcasaid Bheag, Ardnamurchan, Highland, Scotland.
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!
“This is a man-made facility designed to help control flooding during…”
Within walking distance of my home are two “Stormwater Facilities.” They are landscaped depressions with a pond. Each is surrounded by a green space, which in turn is surrounded by suburban houses, schools and playing fields. Waterfowl and other birds visit and nest once the ice melts in spring.
This year, housebound due to the Coronavirus, I had limited reasons to leave the house. Walking the dog was an approved activity. Once the snow melted, I would slip a small camera into my pocket and visit the ponds on my daily dog walks.
My project was to capture images that gave a feeling of being outside of the city. To this end I wanted images without houses, other man-made structures or their reflections. This meant I could rarely include the sky in an image and had to exclude other compositions due to reflections of among other things, power lines. Though the ponds and their surroundings could not be described as spectacular, I had a chance, if not a bit hurriedly due to the dog, to experiment with different camera and post processing techniques.
Firstly, this portfolio depicts my love of Australian trees in the desert. I love their shapes and forms and the way in which they interact with the landscape. I love their bark, which comes in such a varied range of colours and textures. Foliage too, in its various forms of life and decay, can provide much visual interest.
I’m also interested in the cyclical nature of life and death. Some trees die, and other trees take their place. Some others senesce or go dormant until the next rains arrive. I am endlessly fascinated by their ability to survive prolonged dry periods – and these are the stories I am inspired by. To some extent, the themes of life, death and the struggle for survival are metaphors from my own life.
My images were taken in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia – an area which has been in a severe drought for the past three years. The Flinders Ranges is a semi-arid desert, but rainfall has been very much below average during this time. Even though the plants (and many of the animals) are adapted to the desert climate, many are nonetheless showing signs of severe stress. It is one of my favourite locations, and I regularly visit with the same sense of excitement I had on my first visit. But with so much investment in the story of the landscape, it has been sad to see many plants and animals meet their end recently.
To some, the Flinders Ranges landscape is bleak, barren, and uninviting. But I see the infinite beauty of the natural world. There is beauty in death and there is beauty in the struggle for life. There is much to see for the photographer who is willing to see it.
After having spent 2 days practising landscape photography in Dhanaulti I was lucky enough to witness some amazing scenes.
The weather in Dhanaulti can be unpredictable, but this results in it always being interesting. We could see an enormous amount of rainbows and rain being whipped up into beautiful clouds in the distance. This was quite unusual because Dhanaulti is a very cold place, but it hadn’t rained for 6 weeks. As I tried to select a composition, I found I was distracted by a large hill that was always in my shot.
It was a challenge to try and portray their greatness in a photograph and get the viewer to feel what I was feeling attempted a pano to capture the entire sky. I used a high ISO to achieve a fast shutter speed due to the high winds. The image came out ok, but there is too much going on so I needed to simplify things and break the image down.
I made one more exposure, which was a shot of the entire mountain from a much wider angle. I am still unsure how I feel about this image.
The weather was nice and pleasant when I captured this photo. But the reality of the situation was quite the opposite – it was extremely cold and windy.
Some of the best landscape photographs are taken in very challenging weather – during a storm, after a heavy snowfall, early in the morning at below freezing temperatures, etc
Landscape 2 and 3 I took from Dhanaulti, Uttrakhand, India.
Landscape 1 and 4 I took from Nainital, Uttrakhand, India.
After a decade of self-study in photography, I went back to school and got an MFA. Subsequent to that I struggled to make a living with photography, and then with some major changes in my circumstances, my creative inspiration shifted to writing. So much of sustaining an art practice is about finding inspiration in your own experience. Fortunately, after a period of time, I happened upon John Daido Loori’s The Zen of Creativity1 and got a new perspective on creativity and paying attention.
Upon graduation from college in 2007 my son moved to Beijing and has lived in East Asia ever since. Because of his move to China, my wife and I went to see him in 2008. Certainly, I had to take a camera but I was unprepared for what I experienced, not only the excitement of photographing in a new place but finding a different cultural ethos about nature that resonated strongly with me. My previous reading certainly had informed me about this and I had seen evidence of it in Chinese and Japanese art. However, this was not an afternoon trip to a museum, it was an extended visit with people and places far away. Time after time in different public locations I noticed what seemed to be a reverence for the natural world as a kind of family ancestry. When I visited the scholar gardens of Suzhou, I felt completely at home on the other side of the globe.
Returning home my motivation to use a camera again was considerable. I also experienced a renewed interest in learning more about the themes of art and nature in Chinese culture, especially as it related to Zen. A subsequent book by Loori, Hearing With The Eye2, soon came to my attention as his photographs of Point Lobos accompany an extensive discussion of a famous Chan (Chinese precursor of Zen) teacher’s thinking about perception and how the insentient natural world can speak to us directly.
In Zen, this experience is often referred to as intimate knowledge, sensory experience that has an immediacy and an ineffable quality that is not reducible to words. Loori suggests this is made possible through a kind of resonance or accord with what is being perceived – a dynamic interaction..
The book title refers to the cultivation of a whole-body experience of what is before you. This is similar to what is called mindfulness, about having an open or empty mind as opposed to a mind full of silent chatter. One consequence of this awareness is that it allows multiple sensory sources to play an active and collaborative role with each other, informing our experience. Through this interplay, the separateness of what is perceived can dissipate and enable a more direct awareness, or perhaps even some sort of communion. In Zen, this experience is often referred to as intimate knowledge, sensory experience that has an immediacy and an ineffable quality that is not reducible to words. Loori suggests this is made possible through a kind of resonance or accord with what is being perceived – a dynamic interaction.
In his Zen and Photography3 post from last June, Guy Tal mentions the concept of flow, which psychologists have coined to describe a non-distracted open-mindedness. Guy suggests that both mindfulness and the similar flow experience are implicated in creative activity. Many artists have described this phenomenon, as in Paul Cezanne’s statement “The mountain thinks itself in me”. In Cezanne’s poetic framing there is a porous boundary between painter and subject matter - the breakdown of a conventional distinction between two otherwise separate entities and a sense of mutual intertwining – a phenomenon that is neither one thing nor two things but an ongoing process. The nature of creativity is that the result is not pre-determined.
In the case of photographing nature much of the creativity is in framing the exposure with distance, perspective and light but there is also the issue of how to make contact with the subject, as one would in portrait photography. How do we pay attention so that we hear with our eyes? There are always visual elements in the exposure rectangle but how can our contact help us arrange them? The subject is not a person with a voice and yet it can cause us to stop and wonder and can take our breath away in its appearance. When that happens, we seem to forget what separates us from this other manner of life and being. American Transcendentalist Henry Thoreau alluded to this when he wrote in his Walden dairy about the “living poetry of the earth”. It is noteworthy that Thoreau mentions poetry as this is a particular kind of speech, as contrasted with prose. Poetry is more associated with affect and musical qualities than the usual discursive qualities of prose. And so, to experience a rock or a tree as more than an object with a name we must focus on its sensory qualities and its sheer facticity, its inescapable materiality.
We see this generous sense of our relationship to nature in many indigenous cultures, exemplified by Oglala Sioux elder Black Elk’s remark: “… I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all things as they must live together like one being.” Mind and nature are words that conventionally refer to divergent concepts in western thought but can point to a fundamental unity in which many indigenous cultures have placed great value. These cultures have the advantage of being spared the divisive dualisms that are so central to modern complex societies.
It is this kind of open inclusive awareness that allows the insentient natural world to speak to us, to animate us and give us great peace as we recognise not only something beautiful but, something we are part of, another kind of being/existence that we have evolved from and that has sustained us, despite our misguided violations of its integrity.
It is this kind of open inclusive awareness that allows the insentient natural world to speak to us, to animate us and give us great peace as we recognise not only something beautiful but, something we are part of, another kind of being/existence that we have evolved from and that has sustained us, despite our misguided violations of its integrity. To hear this poetry is an experience of immediacy where there is no sharp distinction between subject and object, not unlike what is suggested by flow but here the emphasis is on the relationship between perceiver and perceived. This immediacy is about being in relation to some other in a more encompassing way than the conventional scanning and recognising of discrete entities.
Since I reclaimed my photography many years ago, I have found the natural landscape to be a perennial attraction. This emphasis is inspired in part by Zen but also by other experiences, including a childhood growing up in the rural south and feeling at home in the woods. In any case, the more-than-human world is where I feel most at home in the present when I have a camera in hand. It is an environment where I can easily lose myself in wonder.
These photographs were made on a recent trip to see my far away son, though this time we met him in New Zealand. I had heard much about the diverse natural features and relative geographic isolation of this two-island nation and was excited about the photographic possibilities. This work was an opportunity to investigate my experience of discovery in a new environment. As is often the case, I was drawn to rocks and plants and trees in whose presence I am consistently inspired by amazement at their emphatically different way of being and appearing. I made these photographs during walks on both the north and south islands of New Zealand, mostly in national or municipal parks. My pictures tend to be close views because I am drawn to concrete particulars and I try to move at a pace where I don’t fail to notice what might call out to me. Texture is one way to denote a persistent element in my pictures because it can be a medium of encounter with the intimate physicality of things large and small. As Frederick Sommer once remarked: “In total acceptance, almost everything becomes a revelation”. I try to be open to the element of surprise and to fill the frame with as much as possible of what I find surprising.
I have come to think of my photographic approach as that of losing myself to the experience of seeing, where seeing includes other senses, as well as that of the eyes. Though decisions have to be made in exposure and processing I try to draw on existing skills and intuition so that I can remain in the background as much as possible by letting go of the presumed sharp separation between me and what is other. In the processing phase there is often more time to explore finding accord with the resulting exposure and what I can recall about the camera experience. If I am successful the subject matter expresses its immediacy through my awareness of the details– whether they be serendipities of colour, value, shape, texture, or configuration. If this occurs there may be an evocation of the thisness of things that were before my camera and perhaps a sense of the wholeness that can accompany it, at least for me.
Photography, if practiced with high seriousness, is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. ~ John Szarkowski
In his seminal work, The World as Will and Representation, philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer proposed this thought experiment: “Let us transport ourselves to a very lonely region of boundless horizons, under a perfectly cloudless sky, trees and plants in the perfectly motionless air, no animals, no human beings, no moving masses of water, the profoundest silence. Such surroundings are as it were a summons to seriousness, to contemplation, with complete emancipation from all willing and its cravings.” Being in such a setting, Schopenhauer proposes, has the power to liberate the mind from its default mode of constant striving, and to reach a state of pure contemplation. “Whoever is incapable of this [state of seriousness and pure contemplation without striving],” Schopenhauer wrote, “is abandoned with shameful ignominy to the emptiness of unoccupied will, to the torture and misery of boredom.
Although we may differ in our preference of where and how we feel most at ease and most motivated to photograph, we all have the choice to consider such situations as “summons to seriousness.
Although we may differ in our preference of where and how we feel most at ease and most motivated to photograph, we all have the choice to consider such situations as “summons to seriousness.” Seriousness manifests both in how we pursue our own work and consider the works of others, the importance we give art in the greater scheme of our lives, and the sincerity and courage with which we experience and express our thoughts, views, and feelings. It is likely that most, perhaps all, of those we consider as “the greats” have taken their work as more than just a casual pastime—as something to invest serious thought and effort in. I propose that it is this serious attitude, and not any circumstance or virtuosity of skill, that is the seed of greatness: what Paul Strand described as, “the sharpest kind of self-criticism, courage, and hard work.”
For over 30 years - I have been making photographs outside. My aim is to provide an antidote to the world we now inhabit, a world of excess, over-branding and mass production. My intention is to offer the viewer a point in time to reflect and be drawn into a world of quietude, contemplation and tranquility. To engage the viewer with the experience of being immersed in the landscape and the spirituality of nature.
Earth, Water, Air... are the recurring elements that I work with. It is my relationship with and my interpretation of these elements that forms the basis of my photographs, in whatever form they take, once I am absorbed in the landscape. However, it is the composition and the combination of light, tone and movement and the passage of time used through extended exposures that creates the atmosphere.
The location itself, is totally secondary to the feeling. The feeling is everything.
Title : Natural Mystic Study #1 Date : 20.09.2018 Location : The Long Strand, West Cork, Ireland Medium : Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl 320gsm Edition : In a Limited Edition of 3 with 1 x Artist’s proof
My photographs are emotional experiences involving
a lot of travelling, walking, sitting, waiting, thinking,
re-thinking and finally creating.
It’s the entire process that fascinates and motivates me.
~ David Magee, October 2020
About the works
These images form part of an ongoing study of the Atlantic coast of Ireland. This exhibition presents seven photographs.
ATLANTIC - The second largest of the world's oceans, spanning an area of 106,460,000 square kilometres. It separates the "Old World" from the "New World" and covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface.
At the dawning of a new decade, in an unprecedented world, we bear a collective responsibility to repair the earth and initiate change. We are fighting against time. We live in an era where we have lost control. Where nature is constantly staving off the consequences of humanity’s wanton destruction.
These images aim to engage the viewer with the experience of being immersed in the elements and the spirituality of nature, as well as touching on themes of transcendence and self. They portray the fragility and preciousness of nature on the one hand and exemplify the enduring power and resolve of nature - on the other.
These photographs were created on - The West Coast of Ireland, that has recently become known as “The Wild Atlantic Way” - the longest defined coastal touring route in the world.
It is my home and the source of both my subject matter and the inspiration for my work.
Title : Salt Study #1 Date : 21.12.2016 Location : Cois Farraige, West Cork, Ireland Medium : Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl 320gsm Edition : In a Limited Edition of 3 with 1 x Artist’s proof
Title : Exhydria Date : 03.12.2018 Location : Dunworley, West Cork, Ireland Medium : Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl 320gsm Edition : In a Limited Edition of 3 with 1 x Artist’s proof
My work outside, is based upon an intimate relationship with nature. It’s not about documenting a specific time or place - its about harnessing the feeling. I want to create a picture that resonates with the viewer on a deep emotional level.
I want them to feel touched and affected, to get something from it, to remember it…
~ David Magee, October 2020
Exhibition Details
The exhibition is part of the Start Art Fair at Saatchi Gallery,
Address:
Saatchi Gallery,
Duke Of York's HQ,
King's Road,
London,
SW3 4RY
Dates of Exhibition: 21-25 October 2020
Title : The Pebble Date : 16.08.2018 Location : South Ring, West Cork, Ireland Medium : Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl 320gsm Edition : In a Limited Edition of 3 with 1 x Artist’s proof
Title : Kind of Blue Date : 31.08.2018 Location : Inchydoney Island, West Cork, Ireland Medium : Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl 320gsm Edition : In a Limited Edition of 3 with 1 x Artist’s proof
Title : Stratum Date : 8.09.2018 Location : Mizen Head, West Cork, Ireland Medium : Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl 320gsm Edition : In a Limited Edition of 3 with 1 x Artist’s proof
Title : Salmo Salar Date : 01.12.2018 Location : Dunworley, West Cork, Ireland Medium : Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl 320gsm Edition : In a Limited Edition of 3 with 1 x Artist’s proof
Stuart got in touch with On Landscape about a pdf of images that he had put together titled ‘The Place That We Call Home’. At the time we didn’t know much about him - there are few words on his website - but his photographs offer a tantalising glimpse of parts of the world that few of us know and even fewer will get to see. It’s a fascinating read; we think in our relative comfort with the world at our e-fingertips that we can find out all that we need, but the following offers an insight into personal experiences beyond our imagination, our own smallness, and the disproportionate influence that we exert.
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?
With the exception of my tertiary education, I have spent my life in Africa, having grown up in Kenya. I grew up under big skies and the equatorial sun, with great lungfuls of fresh air and scabs on my knees, surrounded by ant-covered Acacia drepanolobium and the powdery yellow bark of Acacia xanthophloea trees, and getting immovably stuck in black-cotton mud late at night and having to walk back home for miles under a blanket of the darkest clouds and feeling, with each step, gooey mud being squeezed between my toes. Being on safari - in the true sense of the word and in which the journey was the destination - in great wildernesses with an assemblage of extended families, strangers and other eccentric characters was a central part of growing up. (And safari in this context and in KiSwahili means ‘journey’ - and has nothing to do with going on a “game drive” or “wildlife viewing perambulation” in an African protected area, or the web browser associated with Mac computers that have become synonymous with the common, modern use of the word.) Psychologists might say that I have an issue with identity and, true, I have long lost my sense of belonging - including to any nation state (which are, after all, only figments of our imaginations). Consequently, I probably exhibit an eclectic melting pot of cultural traits and characteristics. Along the way, I did receive an education and at some point, I embarked on a career of medicine - but the lure of the wild places of the world, and distress and discomfort at what humanity is doing to those places got the better of me and I ended up with a PhD in Conservation Ecology (on Grevy’s zebras, more of which a little later) and the rest, as they apparently say, is history.
Psychologists might say that I have an issue with identity and, true, I have long lost my sense of belonging - including to any nation state (which are, after all, only figments of our imaginations). Consequently, I probably exhibit an eclectic melting pot of cultural traits and characteristics.
Where are you currently resident, and what (non-photographic) projects are you involved in?
I am currently homeless but in the process of shifting jobs, taking me from working with an organisation in Malawi that is striving to slow as much as possible - if not stop - the illegal trade in wildlife products (mostly ivory from elephants, horns from rhinos, teeth from hippos and pangolins that are traded in many forms from live animals to the scales that are removed from animals that are dropped live into boiling water) to working with another organisation in the heart of the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Lockdown has been pretty tough for many of us. But one of the silver linings for me has been the ability to present to many more camera clubs via social media than would normally have been usual. And it was during one of my recent Zoom presentations (on The Sublime In Landscape Photography) that one of the viewers asked me a question that really stopped me in my tracks. I had been talking about ‘fine art black and white photos’, and the club member asked me exactly what I meant, how did I define ‘fine art’, and why was the link made so often between fine art and black & white?
To be honest, I think I gave a rather waffly and unconvincing answer. The moment passed and the presentation went on. Truth be told, I wasn’t happy with myself, and the question has stayed with me ever since like a tiny itch in the back of my mind. The problem is I trust my vision and my intuition – I think I’m pretty good at recognising an image which I can categorise as ‘fine art’. But to be able to describe why it’s fine art…? That’s much harder. So, I took the viewer’s question, and my little itch, and looked for an image that would allow me to say not only “That’s fine art”, but also to rationalise why I should describe it so. And then I came across this wonderful image by Huibo Hou and my thoughts started to fall into place.
Huibo’s image of the Witch’s Finger (Trølkonufingur) in the Faroe Islands is a great example of emotive feeling exploding out of an image. To say it’s got drama is to do it a disservice. The view here is epic, monumental, awesome in the Burkian sense of the sublime.
I should start by appending the words "to me" to the title of this article. Photography matters to lots of us, as minimum to every reader of this publication but I want to spend a little time talking about how I know how important my photography has been, is, and will continue to be to me. Without it am honestly not sure where I would be now.
I don't trace my photographic heritage to a box brownie that I played with when I was 8. I started much later than that. My parents were very enthusiastic amateur photographers, my father worked exclusively in monochrome and would spend most Sunday mornings at Speakers Corner enjoying all the characters on offer at that time. My mother enjoyed all styles of photography, always working in bright colours on the basis of an implicit 'no compete' clause. They tried their damnedest to get either my sister or I to show some (any!) enthusiasm for taking a photograph but we managed to resist for many, many years. My sister still to this day.
When digital cameras were starting to become affordable, around 15 years ago now,
I don't trace my photographic heritage to a box brownie that I played with when I was 8. I started much later than that.
I had a significant birthday so my parents made a last-ditch attempt at trying to get one of us at least to show some interest. I was lucky enough to be the proud recipient of a Nikon D50 with its kit lens. I thought… ok, why not, let’s give this a go!
After a couple of months of trying to work out what on earth I was doing something started to click (literally!) and I began to think that there might be something to this whole photography lark. I continued to play, to try out different settings and scenes to see what worked and (shock horror!) to read the dreaded manual which was admittedly much thinner in those days.
A year or two later I could feel the bug starting to bite quite seriously and I realised that if I was going to make any progress in terms of my own learning and ability to take a half-decent image I needed to start looking for some outside influences that I could use to develop my still very limited skills and hopefully establish some direction.
I joined a local Camera Club and started to get involved in that scene. At the time this was a good decision, it allowed me to learn from those around me, talk to people about photography stuff and, most importantly at the time, to gain some sort of feedback as to where I was in my photographic journey. I also joined an organisation called United Photographic Postfolios (UPP). UPP is a series of Postal or Digital Circles, each with different themes. I was lucky enough to join a print circle which focused on producing small mounted prints; the prints could be no bigger than 12 square inches (any aspect ratio) in mounts measuring 7x5 inches. To this day I still think there is something quite beautiful about very small prints regardless of their subject.
The years rolled by and I continued to develop my style. Landscape was my primary focus with a developing interest in abstracting that landscape in as many ways as I could as my skills developed. This was very much my happy space and somewhere I retreated into when I was left to my own devices.
My home life was changing over that period too. My career which centred around financial software within a highly regulated industry was getting busier and busier but my home life was crumbling at the same time. A marriage which was falling apart coupled with supporting close family through some incredibly challenging illnesses meant that stress levels were sky high most of the time and in every direction. Photography was a refuge for me during these years and I immersed myself in the various challenges presented by the RPS and FIAP. This gave me a much-needed focus while I tried to keep every else together.
As with all things of this nature, time rolls on and some things resolve themselves and some break. My marriage fell apart and I returned to being a single woman the same week that I achieved my Fellowship from the RPS. The family illnesses continue but in a steady and much more manageable state than before.
The years rolled by and I continued to develop my style. Landscape was my primary focus with a developing interest in abstracting that landscape in as many ways as I could as my skills developed.
Work however continued to ramp up and I allowed it to gradually take whatever of me there was left to take. I also needed to recover financially from my divorce so it ticked a few boxes at the time too. In an effort to keep the photography going and with the need to find new challenges and goals I decided that wildlife photography was going to be the next big thing for me. I bought a big lens and started to go out 'shooting' wildlife, highly unsuccessfully I might add. I continued to push this new obsession until I found myself one day on a beach in South Georgia surrounded by penguins in freezing, driving rain with the very real risk that the turn the weather had taken made the necessary zodiac trip back to ship extremely dangerous. I very quietly just sobbed. That was the moment I decided I was done with photography. When I arrived back home the big wildlife lens was sold and the rest of my photographic equipment went into the loft still dirty and still in its camera bag. It stayed there for 4 years while work took over my life.
In the summer of 2018, I was as close to career burnout as it was possible to get without actually tipping over the edge. I was however self-aware enough to know that I couldn’t carry on and needed something to start to provide a counterbalance. I very clearly remember being at a music event in the July of that year. I was walking across a field with a friend checking my emails (my default mode while not actually working) and seeing a newsletter from a mailing list which had as its header an image by Valda Bailey. I stopped in my tracks. I had never seen an image like it! The fact that this sort of work could be produced using a camera as it's starting point was something I just couldn’t take in at the time, it was a complete revelation to me. That moment in time I can still visualise, I can see exactly where I was standing in that field, remember what my friend was saying and how far I was through the cup of tea that I held in my other hand, that tiny little trigger was the start of my very embryonic (second) photographic journey.
When I got home, I dug out my camera bag, which due to my not having cleaned anything I needed to cut open with strong scissors, and started to assess the situation. I very quickly established that my camera was too old to do any of the fancy stuff that I now needed it to do if I was to attempt any of the artistic photography that I now wanted to try (mainly multiple exposures). I also had heavy lenses which were great for landscapes and pin sharp when I needed them to be but I couldn’t face carrying all this kit again so I decided to trade absolutely everything in for one new camera body and one zoom lens (28-300). I remember lugging everything up to a camera shop in London for the trade-in on one of the hottest days of that summer, not one of my best decisions! I took my new camera and lens home and put them, still in their boxes back in the loft. I still hadn't resolved the issue of time.
I was lucky enough to grab a cancellation space onto a 5-day photographic workshop in February 2019 to Morocco with Valda Bailey and Doug Chinnery. This would be the first holiday I had taken from my work in more years than I care to admit and I still had no idea whether I wanted to take a photograph. I did know that I needed something to start to provide some sort of balance in my life otherwise I am not sure where I would've ended up. Whether that something was photography though, well I didn't have a backup plan so I was a bit stuffed.
By the end of the 5 days I was excited about photography again, hurrah!! I knew that taking photographs was going to be my route to introducing some sort of balance into my life. Given that I didn't have a Plan B this was a bit of a relief.
I took my new toys out of their boxes a few days before the trip and started to familiarise myself with them, then we were off! It was a real struggle being away from work, it was probably killing me slowly but it was also a powerful drug which would prove difficult to wean myself away from. I realised very quickly how much I had forgotten about the craft of taking a photograph before even thinking about trying to learn anything new so I needed to hit the ground running if I was going to make any use of the tuition on the trip. By the end of the 5 days I was excited about photography again, hurrah!! I knew that taking photographs was going to be my route to introducing some sort of balance into my life. Given that I didn't have a Plan B this was a bit of a relief.
As 2019 progressed I concentrated on carving out small periods of time to get my camera out. I also started to see a life-coach who was incredibly good at helping me to work out strategies to put work pressures into perspective. She helped me make time for me and to recognise and stop the feelings of guilt I had when I did put photography ahead of my work. I gradually started to learn my way around a camera again and to take/make some images that gave me some satisfaction. This was the catalyst I needed to start to redress the work-life balance and I switched to part-time work at the start of 2020. It quickly became clear that part-time wasn't going to work at all for anyone involved, I just didn’t have that sort of job, so I decided to stop completely at the end of February, I couldn’t go back to how things used to be. Given how much the world has changed since then I probably would've lost my job anyway so I am pleased that it was my decision and on my terms.
I am not sure what the future holds for me both in terms of whether I will work again or where my photography will take me but I know that my work/life balance was probably going to finish me off if I didn't do something about it. Getting back into photography again has been that catalyst for change that I so badly needed. Seeing that image from Valda was enough to start a process which I think probably saved me from goodness only knows what. I certainly know that I am happier now than I've been for a long time. As they say, it's been a journey!
I have come to believe that there are two broad tribes of landscape photographers. Those who (whether consciously or not) view the landscape as a resource that may be consumed or even exploited in order to generate money and perhaps a measure of fame or notoriety.
The other tribe are those who exhibit an immense reverence for the landscape and develop a much deeper, personal relationship. They may generate some wealth but this is essentially a bonus rather than the core.
Broad brushstrokes of course but when you see a photographer break off a branch to improve a composition, you know in which tribe they fit.
William Neill grew up in the San Francisco area and visited the National Parks as a child. By adulthood, he was already familiar with Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Sequoia and Yosemite. He moved to Yosemite in 1977 and never left. A few years after arriving he was hired to be the photographer in residence at the Ansel Adams gallery. He is wrapped entirely within the legacy of Adams. His tribe, I would suggest, is the latter.
He says of himself that he is a photographer who is,“concerned with conveying the deep, spiritual beauty he sees and feels in Nature.”
Perhaps the main point of this article is to assert that the landscape is capable of metaphor; that landscape can be said to have characteristics that are similar to something completely different. In most cases that ‘completely different’ will be the human condition.
It is difficult, living in sceptical and cynical times, to make this assertion. After all, is not the landscape in a photograph simply the sum of what it represents? Is not the idea that it can stand for something else mere intellectual posturing, or, pretentious nonsense?
If you take that view then probably no amount of argument could persuade you otherwise. Yet the art world generally depends on metaphor, for so much of its power and meaning. It is easy enough to see how music works as an abstraction of the human condition, even if we only vaguely understand how it does this. Perhaps the fact that it is hard to understand all the rich references and connections of music is what makes it so effective, and affecting. Dance, the art of the human body, uses metaphor in a more direct way.
Perhaps the main point of this article is to assert that the landscape is capable of metaphor; that landscape can be said to have characteristics that are similar to something completely different. In most cases that ‘completely different’ will be the human condition.
Those arts that are more descriptive (painting and sculpture) use the idea of metaphor confidently. It is photography, that apparently faithful reproducer of the visual world, that is rarely associated with metaphor. Yet in ways that vary from subtle to overt, even a field as direct and apparently literal as landscape photography still provides a rich seam of metaphoric potential.
It’s fortunate for us that Janet Matthews was tasked to teach photography as part of her duties in art education. In the process of preparing the lessons, she fell in love with the medium. Unsurprisingly, it was the magic of traditional processes that prompted this, and while much of her current output is digital, you can see a legacy of the darkroom in it. She has moved from still life to explore man’s imprint on the landscape and to examine through its detail our own complexities of life and thought. New work interrogates the visual threads within a view and composites these into imaginary landscapes.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, your education and early interests, and what that led you to do?
I grew up in suburban towns in Illinois, Michigan and Missouri in the U.S. My family moved to Maryland, near Washington DC, when I was a teenager, and I have lived here ever since.
Imagination and creative play with siblings and friends was an important part of my childhood. The making of things was often involved, and my mother, an avid crafter and DIYer, provided us with both inspiration and an abundance of craft materials to experiment with. I was particularly interested in learning to draw, and acquired many “How-To-Draw” books and drawing supplies as I grew up. I was also an insatiable reader. I have looked back to those times and explored ideas about memory, creativity and childhood in a few of my early series.
I attended the University of Maryland as a studio art major after graduating from high school. I dropped out freshman year but returned 10 years later to complete my B.A. degree, with a focus on painting and drawing.
How did photography come (back) into your life? What transformation did it effect?
After leaving the structured environment of the university program, I found it difficult to work as an artist independently, particularly in light of family responsibilities. My priorities had changed, and I found myself becoming active as a classroom volunteer at my children’s schools as well as developing an interest in education. When my younger son started first grade, I began to think about combining my interests by becoming an art teacher. I soon returned to the University of Maryland and entered an Art Education program.
After leaving the structured environment of the university program, I found it difficult to work as an artist independently, particularly in light of family responsibilities. My priorities had changed, and I found myself becoming active as a classroom volunteer at my children’s schools as well as developing an interest in education
After earning a degree in Art Education, I was hired to teach at a high school and was assigned a course load that included Photo 1. Although I had taken a few photography classes in college and had very basic darkroom experience, I realised I would need to refresh and extend my skills. I began attending continuing education courses at the Maryland Institute College of Art. That first semester as a teacher, I felt as if I was keeping only a step or two ahead of my students. We started with photograms, then progressed to making and using pinhole cameras and included a lot of photo history along the way. I began to appreciate photography as an image-making process. Later in the semester, we worked with Liquid Light, a hand-applied silver gelatin emulsion. This was an “aha!” moment for me: I found a connection to my own artwork. I began working with Liquid Light and mixed media. Once I became aware of other hand-coated historic photography processes, I started taking workshops to learn more and began developing projects that used these processes. As I continued to learn more about the history and processes of photography, as well as becoming familiar with work by contemporary photographers, I became more motivated and focused on making my own work.
Who (photographers, artists or individuals) or what has most inspired you, or driven you forward in your own development as both an artist and a photographer?
Years ago my mother subscribed to a series of art appreciation books from the Metropolitan Museum. Each month a new book would arrive featuring colour plates of artworks that demonstrated a specific theme: composition, technique, historical styles and so on. I was fascinated by these books. To this day, I still love looking at and am inspired by art and photography by many different artists. That being said, there are a few photographers in particular, whose work I find particularly inspiring. Sally Mann (Read Joe Cornish's book review Hold Still)is fearless in her pursuit and use of concepts and processes and creates exceptionally beautiful images. Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison have created powerful images that incorporate mixed media and performance. Mike and Doug Starn have created conceptual artwork that uses photography in a raw and sculptural way. These photographers have inspired me in the way that they have pushed the boundaries of photography into new areas.
The alternative process photography community has also helped my artistic development. The photographers are supportive of one another and generous in sharing techniques and advice.
The alternative process photography community has also helped my artistic development. The photographers are supportive of one another and generous in sharing techniques and advice.
Your recent series focuses more on the landscape. I know that a health scares accelerated the shift in subject matter, but did anything prompt the change in the first place?
In the past, I had made attempts at working with the landscape, but I didn’t feel a real connection to the subject, which was reflected in my images. I just felt more comfortable working in a studio (which was a table in the dining room for many years) where I had more control over my subject and environment. Later, I came upon the work of Julian Calverley on Instagram, a project that he called iPhone Only. He was posting lovely, dramatic landscape images that he made with his iPhone while on commercial assignments. I enjoy playing with photo apps so I decided to try to imitate the style of his images as an exercise. I started feeling more comfortable and continued shooting outdoor scenes.
The photographers who were going to be sharing the house were all landscape photographers and I thought this would be an opportunity to take myself outside of my comfort zone and learn from them. It was a great learning experience that helped me begin to recognise aspects of the landscape that interested me.
In 2015, a photographer friend and I started planning a month-long trip to Ireland. We wanted to rent a house and invited a few other photographer friends along. I wanted to have some project ideas to work on during this visit. I had been to Ireland previously and knew that the landscape was pretty spectacular and different from the landscape I’m used to seeing at home. The photographers who were going to be sharing the house were all landscape photographers and I thought this would be an opportunity to take myself outside of my comfort zone and learn from them. It was a great learning experience that helped me begin to recognise aspects of the landscape that interested me.
I had been working on a studio-based project prior to the trip, and when I returned home, I resumed working on it and set landscape aside. I exhibited this project early in 2017, but before the opening of the show, I had a heart attack. It was this experience that sent me back to landscape.
What is it about the landscape that now draws you to it?
I started visiting woodlands with my camera at a time when I needed a place to reflect on life. This was at the time when the leaves had already fallen, making visible the underlying structures created by the branches and vines. There seemed to be a sense of controlled chaos in nature that I found very appealing. I was much more observant than I had been in the past. I enjoyed finding interesting forms, which suggested sanctuaries and portals. The anthropomorphic qualities of the trees were on display. The space felt welcoming and intimate and contemplative. I realised that I could go beyond simply representing nature/landscape if I left myself open to it. It was another one of those “aha!” moments.
Where do you most enjoy exploring? You’re clearly drawn to Ireland but presumably, you have developed a connection with places closer to home too?
The Tangled series was photographed at some local wooded parks and wetlands that I have visited and revisited a number of times. There are a variety of natural areas in Maryland, including shorelines, wetlands and forests, which are within an hour or two of home that I am looking forward to exploring in the autumn when the weather is cooler.
There are a variety of natural areas in Maryland, including shorelines, wetlands and forests, which are within an hour or two of home that I am looking forward to exploring in the autumn when the weather is cooler.
While the camera is only a tool, which ones are you currently enjoying playing with? How much of your workflow is digital, and how much analogue?
I mainly use a DSLR (Nikon D610) to make photographs. The cameras that I enjoy playing with are my iPhone and several plastic Holga cameras that I often take with me, plus a couple of cameras in the Lomo/toy camera category. I like to use my iPhone for documenting and for sketching or trying out visual ideas. The Holga is a pretty low-tech film camera. The plastic lens is prone to distortion and vignetting, while there are virtually no controls for exposure or focus. Because there is less control over the outcome, the Holga frees me to photograph in a less analytical, more intuitive manner. And I won’t be able to see what I’ve got until the film is processed. It’s a great tool for loosening up as well as learning how to see.
For my past several projects I have worked with digital processes from start to finish. However, there are a couple of analogue printing processes that I am interested in eventually using if I have an appropriate project for them. In terms of workflow, I currently use a digital camera for image capture, Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop for post-processing, and an Epson pigment printer for making prints. However, I sometimes use film (as with a Holga or toy camera), which I scan and then process and print digitally. If I am planning to use an analogue process to make the print, I will use the digitally processed image to print a digital negative on transparency film to use for contact printing.
Would you like to choose 2-3 favourite photographs from your own portfolio and tell us a little about why they are special to you?
It is difficult to choose favourite single images from past work because I usually consider my newest images to be my favourites. Instead, I have chosen some images that represent ways in which new ideas have presented themselves to me.
Caught in the Middle from the Small Anxieties series
This series is the first (and thus far, only) body of work that I produced in colour. I initially processed these as monochrome images until I realised that colour was an integral part of this work. Small Anxieties was a further development of a previous series, Vignettes, which addressed similar themes of children’s play. Vignettes, however, was printed in monochrome which suited that work better.
Contemplation 1 from the Tangled series
I shot hundreds of images while working on Tangled. I was interested in continuing to engage with some images that had not made the final cut so I experimented with possibilities. This is one from a group of diptychs that I created using cropped portions from the original photos. These diptychs suggested some new ideas regarding part vs. whole that I have explored in some newer work.
Can you give readers an insight into the processes that you’ve used to process and print the images that they see here?
I generally work in monochrome as I see the image in terms of forms and tonalities, lights and darks. I feel that I make stronger images when not distracted by colour. I occasionally add subtle colour to a monochrome image with hand colouring if I feel that it adds to the image. My Small Anxieties project is the one exception to my monochrome approach.
All of the work shown here was captured using a DSLR and post-processed using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. My approach to post-processing involves primarily image cleanup and contrast adjustment. I usually start in Lightroom where I remove sensor dust spots, reduce noise when necessary, and adjust clipping points. I follow that with some global contrast adjustments making sure that I leave enough flexibility to fine tune in Photoshop. When I move the image to Photoshop, I convert the image to black and white and then adjust local contrast using Curves Adjustment Layers with masks. I sometimes soften the image a bit using the Nik Color Efex plugin. Finally, I make the print using an Epson pigment inkjet printer. I usually print on Canson Rives BFK or Edition Etching, both of which have a relatively soft surface.
Small Anxieties: I composited my image of the sky into the background and did not include a black and white conversion.
Tangled: The Tangled series is based on the process of healing. The images were assembled from multiple pieces into a coherent whole to suggest that process. I began to experiment with printing on several Japanese papers. This project was printed on lightweight, unbleached (yellowish tonality) kozo paper as monochrome images. The images were printed in nine separate pieces (or two pieces for the diptychs) that were reassembled and adhered to a sheet of 22x30” Rives BFK paper. I used thinned acrylic paint to add subtle colour to the images and finished with a polymer varnish topcoat. The diptych images did not receive the addition of colour.
Recent Work - Constructed Landscapes: This series is currently in progress. The name Constructed Landscapes serves as a placeholder until I decide on the final title. This work began as a continuation of the diptychs done in Tangled, but using my existing Ireland landscape images.
Having knowledge of working with various art media opens up many possibilities for approaching the printing of my work, and to add another layer of meaning to the image.
Much of the work was made during the continuing Covid-19 quarantine. As the work progressed I expanded the number of pieces that comprised each image from 2 to 4 – 5 and adjusted the aspect ratio to accommodate. I enjoyed seeing a visually cohesive landscape emerge from the disparate collection of imagery. I used Photoshop to digitally composite these images. I printed them on coated Japanese unryu paper that is distributed by Moab. The delicate nature of the paper with its visible fibres added an interesting topographic quality to the prints.
What have you been able to bring to making and printing images from your background in drawing and painting?
Having knowledge of working with various art media opens up many possibilities for approaching the printing of my work, and to add another layer of meaning to the image. Process has always been an important part of my image making practice. By that I mean that my creative process involves a certain amount of dialogue with the image as it is coming into being. The act of post processing digitally involves a sort of back and forth that feels very much like drawing to me. I don’t consider myself a pre-visualiser. I think of the image capture as only the beginning of the making of the image, similar to making the first mark on a blank sheet of paper or canvas. I also like the tangible quality of a handmade print, its presence as an object. It involves leaving a trace of the hand of the artist in the artwork. This is the reason I often include a hands-on component to the making of print.
Do you have any particular projects or ambitions for the future or themes that you would like to explore further? I noticed that you did a papermaking course in May.
The Constructed Landscape project has opened up a lot of ideas to continue to pursue: part vs. whole, Gestalt concepts, historic Chinese landscape painting and scrolls, and raising the question ‘what is landscape?’
The Constructed Landscape project has opened up a lot of ideas to continue to pursue: part vs. whole, Gestalt concepts, historic Chinese landscape painting and scrolls, and raising the question ‘what is landscape?’ I had also experimented with printing these on Japanese hosho paper which comes in pads sold for Sumi-e painting. The prints had an interesting soft quality. As I was already considering the idea of a new landscape emerging from the pieces of various landscape pictures, I thought that having the landscape emerge from the paper itself would be interesting.
I consulted with an artist who makes paper as to whether the paper-making process could support this idea. She offered some advice and invited me to participate in an upcoming online paper-making workshop. I learned some basics about materials and techniques. I plan to continue experimenting with papermaking methods.
If you had to take a break from all things photographic for a week, what would you end up doing? What other hobbies or interests do you have?
I have always had craft projects going on in the background. I’ve gone through many periods of high interest in one type of craft or another: a needlework phase, basket-making phase, beading phase, and so on. Recently I have revived an interest in making dollhouse miniatures. I had started working on a dollhouse in the 1990s, but never brought it to completion. It had been sitting in the basement collecting dust until I retrieved it last winter and began to work on it again.
I am also very interested in making books by hand. Although I sometimes use my photography as content, I am primarily interested in the book as an object. I’m somewhat of a novice in terms of skills, but I enjoy learning how to make the various book structures.
And finally, is there someone whose photography you enjoy – perhaps someone that we may not have come across - and whose work you think we should feature in a future issue? They can be amateur or professional.
I have recently come across two photographers online, who create wonderful images. Saskia Boelsums is a Dutch photographer who creates very painterly landscape images that reference 17th century Dutch landscape painting. Her work has a beautiful sense of light. Nobuyuki Kobayashi is a Japanese photographer who does sensitive, large format landscapes that he prints with platinum/palladium.
Thank you, Janet, for a fascinating insight. We’re very much looking forward to seeing how your ideas develop.
You can see more of Janet’s images on her website and you’ll also find her on Instagram.
I recently chatted with Niall Benvie just as he was finishing an e-book documenting his journey through photography through anecdotes, thoughts and photographs. I asked if it would be possible to ask him a few questions about the project and his experience as a committed environmental photographer and writer. A big thanks for the opportunity and I hope his lucky streak continues!
Thanks for letting us take a look at your Retrospective book Niall. You mention in your introduction that success isn’t guaranteed and you ascribe your continuance in your career to an ongoing lucky streak. Do you think you make your own luck or is there an element of it that is outside your control and if the cards had landed differently you might not be looking back on 30 years?
Luck. We’ve probably both come across lazy photographers who have prospered and hardworking ones who haven’t. I imagine there are a whole number of factors that lead to this - personality; the complexity of the work; birthplace etc. etc. In my case, good things have happened just at the right time often enough to make me think I’ve been lucky. And the older I get, the more I understand how little control I have.
Style informs how you approach different subjects - whether your intention is to tell a story or simply to make an expressive image - and changes in appearance accordingly. It’s the body on which different coats - techniques and looks - are worn depending on the subject matter and intention of the photographer.
You mention that many photographers get hung up on style and you personally have made some quite dramatic stylistic course changes and not suffered too much from it. Could you expand a little on what you think “style” really is?
Style is something endemic rather than acquired or cultivated. It emerges once you’ve worked through all the external influences that inform your work as you’re making your way. Style informs how you approach different subjects - whether your intention is to tell a story or simply to make an expressive image - and changes in appearance accordingly. It’s the body on which different coats - techniques and looks - are worn depending on the subject matter and intention of the photographer, but the coats themselves are not the style. Put more simply, style is your subject framed by your world view. It’s as simple as that; -)
You’ve long had a connection with the written word to go with your images. Do you think that has helped you develop your own personal approach to photography?
I sometimes use words as part of an image because I can’t trust the viewer to “get” the message of the picture without them. It’s not that I’m necessarily a bad photographer, just that most people don’t receive a visual education to allow them even to entertain the possibility that the picture might be about something rather than simply of something. People, generally, don’t read pictures: they look at the surface appearance of them. I’m not interested in mincing around hoping that a sensitive viewer will see what I’m trying to say in a photograph. It’s much better if I simply make some words part of the image to clarify what it’s all about.
International League of Conservation Photographers: I was invited by Cristina Mittermeier, who founded the not-for-profit, to speak at the inaugural conference in Anchorage in 2005 and became a founding fellow. The organisation was conceived as a way to help scientists and conservationists access top quality communications materials and partner with professionals who could help get their stories out to a wider audience. Successful campaigning photography (e.g., by Subhankar Banerjee, Middleton and Liittschwager and Ketchum) in the US gave us some hope. In reality, buy-in by our natural partners in Europe was negligible and I resigned my Fellowship as the organisation’s focus shifted.
Wild Wonders of Europe: Staffan Widstrand and I sailed down the Kennai Fjord on the last day of that conference and shared ideas we’d had independently about a big project on European wildlife. Once home, we recruited others to the team including Rosamund Kidman Cox (formerly BBC Wildlife); Florian Moellers (GDT) and Pete Cairns and got the ball rolling. The objective: to show 740 million Europeans the natural crown jewels of their continent through the work of dozens of the best nature photographers working in Europe. With a budget of around €1m, early efforts focused on fundraising led by Staffan. Things were going well until the financial crash hit. It soon became apparent that many partners wouldn’t commit until after work was produced. So, the photographers went out, did the work and, incredibly, were paid. I could manage to work only so long without a management wage so left the very capable team to it. Incredibly and, it has to be said, largely due to the force of Staffan’s personality, the project came to fruition, with a large touring outdoor exhibition that appeared in several capital cities in Europe and Russia seen by millions and several books.
The book makes sobering reading post-financial crash. However, your work ethic and pragmatic approach seems to have made a success of things. Do you see much hope in general for those who dream of being a professional nature photographer?
I wonder if things had been easier if I would have worked so hard. By nature, I’m an “escalator runner” rather than “rider” (tell me the clocks are going back and I’ll get up an hour earlier than usual so I can have a two-hour advantage...) but after years of doing this, it wears a bit thin. I still do this though because I have ideas I am desperate to execute and expect to have other new ones in future too.
It’s very easy to become a professional nature photographer; the real challenge is to remain one year after year. You need to figure out if what you’re willing to sacrifice at 22 is the same as you’re willing to sacrifice at 40. Or 60. The shine of any profession in which sacrifice is an integral part wears off pretty quickly for most people. You really, really need to make stuff and to have a connection into the ether where ideas come from. I see depressingly few young photographers with that, perhaps because fewer and fewer young people have a meaningful, unmediated experience of the natural world. Please, prove me wrong!
Living up in Glencoe next to a sea loch, you can't help but tune into the tides and the power the moon has over the ocean. As a wild swimmer, I've experienced quite a few different aspects of the sea down the west coast of Scotland and you can't help but be in awe of the energy and beauty of the sea and waves. So when Rachael sent me an email about her forthcoming book I was excited to see what was inside. The images capture the sublime beauty of the sea, which transports me back to various beaches, feeling the gentle surge of the water between my toes as I stand on the edge of the water (not that I'd go swimming if I saw some of these waves offshore!).
We interviewed you back in 2017 as our featured photographer can you give us an overview of what projects you have been working on and how your photographic journey has continued since then?
Things have been a bit mad since then! I mentioned in that interview that I hoped to make a book of my Sirens portfolio and also exhibit it. Sirens was published by Triplekite in early 2018 and I have, since then, exhibited the collection a number of times. The series has won some nice awards and been published all over the world. It’s been a lot of fun, if rather overwhelming at times. I am now represented by some good galleries both here and in the USA and fine art print sales are my main business but it doesn’t matter how many prints I sell, it’s still the best rush every time someone parts with their hard-earned cash to buy one of my photos.
Sirens continues to grow and I’m happy to be able to include several of the newer ones in Tides and Tempests, but I have also moved on. Some of my more recent work is becoming slightly more abstract. The photos aren’t truly abstracts as you can still tell the subject is the ocean but I am enjoying exploring the textures within waves, and on the surface of the sea, and seem to be using ever longer focal lengths to achieve this. I’m also interested in the little details one can find at the tideline. I’ve been slowly accumulating photographs of these for the last 6 years and I’m pleased to be able to include some of them in the new book too.
When you make a business of photography or any artistic endeavour, it’s tempting to put the commercial potential of your work ahead of your own artistic satisfaction. Pushing slightly against that trend, I am enjoying making time for more experimental work, innovating without regard for the reception the new work might receive. For example, I have absolutely no profile in the video industry but am working on some projects that combine video, stills and moving stills. I may never publish the result – it’s just for my own pleasure. I suppose the other big change is that I am no longer motivated by competitions. There are so many of them out there now that it’s all a bit overwhelming. The publicity they can generate is sometimes useful and I won’t say I will never enter another competition but, on the whole, my interests lie elsewhere now
When you make a business of photography or any artistic endeavour, it’s tempting to put the commercial potential of your work ahead of your own artistic satisfaction. Pushing slightly against that trend, I am enjoying making time for more experimental work, innovating without regard for the reception the new work might receive.
Autumn Tide
Painted Water III
Has anyone or anything helped you in realising your photographic ambitions over the past few years?
I mentioned Jonathan Chritchley in my earlier interview. I have continued to enjoy Jonathan’s support and I now lead residential workshops for his business, Ocean Capture. The late and very much missed Steve Watkins of Outdoor Photography Magazine also continued to be supportive and encouraging. I’d also like to mention Finn Hopson who took a risk in giving Sirens its first solo show in his gallery in Brighton and ‘Wired’ magazine for featuring my work, after which everything got so exciting. Finally, not a person but a thing, lots of hard work lies behind everything. It’s not glamorous or interesting to read about, but it’s true.
Tell us about your new book 'Tides and Tempests', how did it start? Was it always intended to be realised as a book?
I first came up with the name in 2016 and I have used it extensively since then, for talks, as my social media hashtag, the name of one of my workshops and my solo show in Massachusetts last year. So, it seemed an obvious choice for the book. The idea of doing another book had been in the back of my mind for a while. Although most people know me for Sirens, that is by no means the sum of my work so I wanted to create a book that would show a wider sample of what I do but without being simply a catalogue of my portfolio. Nonetheless, I don’t think Tides and Tempests would be happening this year if it weren’t for lockdown and a broken shoulder, both of which kept me at home and gave me time to concentrate on the book.
Convergence
How did the project evolve? Did you have to refine the vision of what you wanted to achieve over time?
When I originally put the book idea together, I divided it into two separate sections, one for Tides and one for Tempests, but over time I came to feel that the work should be more intermingled.
When I originally put the book idea together, I divided it into two separate sections, one for Tides and one for Tempests, but over time I came to feel that the work should be more intermingled.
This has allowed us to match pictures based on their tones and colours rather than subject, which has led to some intriguing pairings that I find more satisfying. I have also written some mini-essays for the book. I wasn’t sure initially about this as I quite like the idea of pictures needing no words but I enjoyed the short essays in Alex Nail’s book, ‘Northwest’ so much that I changed my mind!
Tell us more about how you managed the time on the project? What took the longest? What challenges were there?
The biggest challenge, not surprisingly, was choosing which images to include. I take a lot of photos and I also have a bad habit of liking my most recent photos best. A good sequence in a book requires the killing of a few ‘darlings’ and that’s not an easy thing to do when you’re the artist as you can’t always see objectively. Fortunately, it’s a team effort with Greg from Kozu Books, which really helps.
Hans Strand wrote the foreword for the book - Why did you choose him and how did you work together on the narrative?
I asked Hans because I have long admired his work and I am also looking forward to meeting him next year when we will be co-leading a workshop in Iceland, along with Jonathan, Ragnar Axelsson and Sandra Bartocha. I think Hans’s work shows that he has a genuine and passionate appreciation for the natural world as well as a very artistic eye. Basically, he had carte blanche to write whatever he wanted!
Lemon and Lime
Luna
How did you work out the sequencing of the book?
I sent Greg about 350 potential images and an indication of my favourites, plus a draft pdf which was really more of a concept than a finished sequence. Greg then produced a first draft sequence and I amended it. I find it easier to work with physical objects so I printed out at A5 size every potential picture and laid them out on the ground in my studio. You should have seen the mess! (Actually, it’s probably best that you didn’t.)
Hans says in the foreword "The subject itself has a wide span of expressions. Sometimes the sea expresses itself as a powerful storm wave and at others as a quiet and thin surface on a sandy beach." I'm a wild water swimmer and I love swimming in the wild seas, it's so exhilarating and you feel so alive. Equally, I love the serenity of a calm still day. What's your favourite expression of the sea and why?
I like every expression of the ocean and it is the ocean’s changeability that makes it so beguiling for me. Yes, I am thrilled by storms, but I also enjoy paddling in a glassy sea.
This made me smile wryly as I am a terrible swimmer. Efforts to teach me in swimming pools failed dismally. In the end, I taught myself to swim by bodysurfing on waves off Bognor Beach when I was about 11. I can remember some long summers in my teens when I swam almost every day off the beach at the end of our lane. Of course, we didn’t call it wild swimming then – it was just swimming in the sea and everyone did it. I had, and still have, zero technique, but I loved it. I like every expression of the ocean and it is the ocean’s changeability that makes it so beguiling for me. Yes, I am thrilled by storms, but I also enjoy paddling in a glassy sea.
Hans writes "There can be little doubt, on perusing this book, that Rachael is particularly inspired by waves." There are many aspects of the sea - the effect of the weather on the water, the patterns in the sand on the shore, the rock faces and the erosion of the tide, where did this inspiration originate and how does it continue?
I suppose it has to originate in my childhood, first spent at sea on Dad’s yacht and then later, when Dad gave up long distance sailing, spent on the beach at home. I grew up less than 100 metres from the shore and it was easy for me to pop down to the beach and dig sandcastles or investigate rock pools when I got home from school. I remember Mum and Dad sometimes took me and my brother to the promenade to watch storms throwing shingle across the road and, on rough nights, I could hear the sea from my bedroom. I still love to fall asleep to the sound of waves. There’s a rhythm to waves – it’s calming, even on stormy days. I suppose waves particularly appeal to me because of their energy. I am fuelled by that energy – it seems to transfer itself to me when I am out in it. That’s rather fanciful, perhaps, but that’s how I feel.
Rock
You say in the introduction 'The rhythm of the tides, tethered to the waxing and waning of the moon, shapes our very sense of time.' Do you find yourself more connected to the rhythm of the tides and pull of the moon? Do you plan your photography trips around the tides and the waxing and waning of the moon? Or is it more random than that? Are there favourite conditions?
You do, absolutely, have to be tide-aware to be a coastal photographer. It’s obviously partly a question of safety – you only have to watch the water rushing in at Camber Sands on a spring tide to realise how very dangerous it can be not to understand the tide. It’s also about getting the photo – some things can only be photographed at certain points in the tide and you need to understand not only how tide tables work but also the impact of spring and neep tides, wind direction and speed. If pushed to choose, I prefer a spring tide, because everything changes so fast.
"Understanding the tides and how they interact with a location is a logistical and safety necessity." Do you keep a log of how the tides behave at different locations in different seasons and times of the moon cycle? Do you plan trips for specific locations at specific times to capture specific wave patterns?
I use an App called Nautide and I mostly keep the local knowledge in my head. When I go somewhere new, I sometimes keep a notebook with me and jot down observations about the tides and their impact on the landscape. If I have a day set aside for photography, I will choose where to go based on the tides that day. Tides have an impact on my workshop planning too. Some of my workshops require a big spring tide and some of them are better when there’s relatively little difference between high and low tide. I need to get the group to a location at the best moment for the tide as it relates to that specific place. It’s not always easy!
Some of my workshops require a big spring tide and some of them are better when there’s relatively little difference between high and low tide. I need to get the group to a location at the best moment for the tide as it relates to that specific place. It’s not always easy!
Ruffles
'Rather than mindful photography, I’ll call it slow photography. Very few of the photographs in this book were taken on my first visit to a place.' How do you go about scouting out a location and getting a sense of place?
Most of my photographs were made on the UK’s south coast because that’s where I grew up and it remains the closest coast to where I live, but I do visit new places too. For example, although I have been to Oregon several times, there was obviously a first time. I can’t recall what prompted me to choose Oregon but, once I was booked to go, I googled the places I planned to visit to see what other people had photographed there. My aim was not to try to copy those photos but rather to try to do something different. This is fairly typical for me. I also really like maps and will pore over them looking for interesting features at the coast. Once in Oregon, I spent more time exploring than I did making photos, taking in the atmosphere of the place, getting to know it. I enjoy hiking so a lot of the time I will just go for long walks without the camera. I have to enjoy a place first – the photographs come later.
"My relationship with the sea is complicated. I am a poor swimmer and a poorly sailor. I’m definitely happier and safer viewing the ocean from the shore (or a helicopter), but my encounters with the sea number among the most memorable and formative moments of my life." Tell us about some of the more memorable moments you've had. Also, do you think your lack of capability in the sea gives you a more significant sense of awe and fear, i.e. the classic sublime, than those who spend time in the water?
I mention one of those moments in the book but there are plenty of others. Growing up in a yachting family, there were some super days spent playing with other ‘boat-brats’ in various continental marinas. We’d all be in our separate dinghies, ‘playing pirates’ and so forth. The language barrier didn’t seem to be a problem - kids are like that. I also have a strong memory of being at sea during a squall. We were all in our oilskins in the cockpit and just getting drenched by wave after wave yet Dad seemed in control and I remember me, my mum and my brother laughing and whooping like mad things – it was so exhilarating. I also remember being in Beaucette Marina in Guernsey and Dad needed something fixing at the top of the mast. Because I was light, he sent me up in the bosun’s chair. I was 10 or 11, I think, and quite the little feminist so, although I was completely terrified, I was also determined not to show it. I don’t think I stopped shaking through the whole experience, except for a moment, when I was at the top, that I remember very well. It felt still and peaceful up there. I looked out, so far above everyone and everything, and was utterly entranced by the change of perspective. It was very much a case of awe and fear combined. Since then, I have studied the sublime at university. It immediately connected with my experience of maritime life and, without doubt, influences my photography today.
Did you plan the images that you wanted to capture - both in terms of locations and messages that you wanted the stories to tell?
I am a planner but I also think you have to be open to the unexpected. Perhaps, a healthy balance of the two is ideal. Although I often have an idea in mind when I make photos, I have usually come up with that idea in the first place while making other photos. One thing’s for certain, the sea will surprise you and frustrate your best-laid plans. But it usually offers up something else instead. I don’t seek to impose myself on the places I photograph so, ultimately, what I’m offered is what I capture and I prefer to approach my subjects with an open mind. I don’t like to work against the grain of what I’m offered - if the atmosphere is turbulent, I’ll make a turbulent photo and, if it’s calm, my photo will reflect that - but how I respond to a place or a moment will not be the same as how someone else responds. Without distorting reality, I hope to offer work that stimulates the imagination.
There are lots of ways to create kindly vacancies. It can simply be a matter of allowing areas of emptiness within the frame or deliberately leaving out something, for example, anything that might give a sense of scale.
You talk about Ruskin’s concept of "Kindly Vacancies”, the idea that the image should leave space for the viewer to fill. How do you explore these vacancies in your own work?
There are lots of ways to create kindly vacancies. It can simply be a matter of allowing areas of emptiness within the frame or deliberately leaving out something, for example, anything that might give a sense of scale. Sometimes, the weather provides kindly vacancies – in my photograph Clearing Fog, mist obscures the base of the lighthouse, adding a sense of mystery. Kindly vacancies may be conceptual too and this is the case with a lot of abstract art. With abstract textures, whether sand or rust or sea walls, I like to make sure there is no perspective, working with the camera completely parallel to the surface. This conceptual vacancy allows the viewer to start to imagine all sorts of possibilities.
"I am not a documentary photographer. I can’t help being compelled by the natural beauty and power of the coast and we have to be true to what inspires us. [...] Of course, the environmental crisis fills me with despair. I do what I can behind the scenes. " Have you seen changes in the coastline over the years and do you think we can make a positive impact personally?
This is so hard. I usually try to see the positive in most situations but I must admit that the climate crisis is challenging my natural optimism. But what’s the alternative? Give up? Based here, in this mild climate, we aren’t yet confronted by the effects of climate change as urgently as people who live in some other parts of the world so my first-hand experience is mostly limited to observing the increase in plastic debris along our coastlines. I do what I can there. Through my workshops business, I support the work of a charity, Big Blue Ocean Cleanup, by donating £5 for every coastal workshop booking as well as lump sums for specific projects and I also donate to a number of other conservation charities. I had hoped to organise a beach clean-up this Autumn but the coronavirus put paid to that. However, if each of us were to take some litter with us every time we finish at a location, whether at the coast or inland, that would help. There are a lot of us photographers out there! Wouldn’t it be good to feel we were making a difference?
Tell me what your favourite two photographs from the book are and a little bit about them.
I can’t choose favourites, sorry. So, just a random pair
Clearing Fog
Clearing Fog
Fog is quite common at Beachy Head in East Sussex but this is the only time I have been able to photograph it with the top of the lighthouse peeping out. I grabbed about 6 exposures and this one was the ‘keeper’ because of the small flock of gulls. I called the photo ‘Clearing Fog’ but that’s taking a little poetic licence as, in fact, the fog rolled in and completely obscured not only the lighthouse but everything else for the rest of the day! I see faces in things quite a lot and to me, the lighthouse is looking surprised as the birds fly past its ‘nose’.
Etain
Etain is my newest ‘Siren’. In the years since Sirens was created, Newhaven has become a popular beach for people hoping to photograph their own wave-monsters and I like going there less now as it feels rather crowded. However, on this morning, I had the beach to myself, probably because I got there very early and the forecast wasn’t especially exciting. The lovely apricot sunrise allowed me to capture a rather different Siren. I named her after the Celtic goddess of love, transformation and rebirth. I was saving her for a special exhibition that would have raised money for charities working against climate change but it had to be cancelled because of COVID-19 so I published her during lockdown instead. Etain is associated with healing so she seemed the perfect goddess for these times.
Did you manage the project and design yourself or did you work with an editor?
Greg Stewart of Kozu Books worked on the design and editing with me. It’s a team effort.
How did you decide on the format of the book e.g. size and paper, print type?
With size, there are cost constraints based on how many pages can be printed on a single sheet and we went with the biggest size that met Kozu Books’ requirements. I chose the best quality paper they offered and, after some thought, I decided I wanted a picture on the cover rather than Kozu Books’ usual plain cloth cover. When you work with a publisher rather than self-publishing, compromises are required but, on the other hand, you get to work in a team and I think sometimes you can be too close to your own work to make the best decisions if you don’t have someone else involved.
There’s no connection between the two projects really. I chose Kozu Books this time because I also buy a lot of photobooks and have really liked some of their recent publications, not least Adam Gibbs’s ‘Quiet Light’. I was impressed when I ordered a ‘second’ (because I was too slow off the mark to get anything else) of that book. The book arrived and I had to try quite hard to find the small defect that made Greg sell it as a ‘second’. That showed me that he has integrity, a commitment to quality and an eye for detail.
Twist
We interviewed Greg Stewart at Kozu Books back in Oct 19 to learn more about the insights into the production of photo books and he says 'The specification of each book is dependent on the potential audience of each individual photographer and their specific series/project. ' How did you work with Greg to agree the format, layout and design of the book and did you take into account the potential audience?
We did discuss the audience, not least to determine the size of the print run, which is also influenced by my need to have enough copies to supply to the galleries that represent me. I was terrified when Triplekite decided to print 1000 Sirens – I was convinced they’d never sell. They did, so I am trying to be a bit braver this time (I’m still scared though)! We also considered my audience when choosing the different special and collector’s options. As I am represented by galleries and a lot of my photos are mid-way through their editions, it was quite complicated to choose which prints, and how many, to make available for these offers. We got there in the end and I’m glad to say those special and collector’s editions are proving popular. They offer people a way to own a print at a more affordable price without impinging on the prints being sold by the galleries.
Thanks for your time Rachael, and hope the new book is as an equal success as your previous one.
Litho Printed in Bath, UK
Casebound
Thread Sewn
300mm x 240mm Landscape
Printed Cover with Foiling to Front Cover, Back Cover and Spine
Text: 160pp Heaven 42 Fine Matt Coated
End Papers: Colorplan
Images: 120+
Foreword by Hans Strand
A new solo exhibition of forest landscape photography by Dorset-based artist Ellie Davies opens at 10 Gresham Street in London until the end of January 2021.
The exhibition is a collaboration between Vanessa Brady at VJB Arts and Crane Kalman Brighton Gallery who represent Davies’ work in the UK.
Davies works with a Pentax 645Z camera and lenses using predominantly natural light. She prefers to shoot in overcast weather and has recently begun to handhold her camera, preferring a light kit in order to walk the woods more freely.
Ellie has been working in UK forests for the past ten years, making work which explores the complex interrelationship between the landscape and the individual.
Between the Trees 1, 2014
"Our understanding of landscape can be seen as a construction in which layers of meaning that reflect our own cultural preoccupations and anxieties obscure the reality of the land, veiling it, and transforming the natural world into an idealisation.
UK forests have been shaped by human processes over thousands of years and include ancient woodlands, timber forestry, wildlife reserves and protected Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. As such, the forest represents the confluence of nature and culture, of natural landscape and human activity. Forests are potent symbols in folklore, fairy-tale and myth, places of enchantment and magic as well as of danger and mystery. In recent history, they have come to be associated with psychological states relating to the unconscious.
Against this cultural backdrop, my work explores the fabricated nature of landscape by making a variety of temporary and non-invasive interventions in the forest, which place the viewer in the gap between reality and fantasy. Creating this space encourages the viewer to re-evaluate the way in which their relationship with the landscape is formed, and the extent to which it is a product of cultural heritage or personal experience.
Stars 9, 2016
Fires 9, 2018
Throughout my practice small acts of engagement respond to the landscape using a variety of strategies, such as making and building using found materials, creating pools of light on the forest floor, using craft materials such as paint and wool, introducing starscapes taken by the Hubble Telescope or glittering light from the surface of the sea.
The final images are the culmination of these interventions. The forest becomes a studio, forming a backdrop to contextualise the work, so that each piece draws on its location; a golden tree introduced into a thicket shimmers in the darkness, painted paths snake through the undergrowth, and strands of wool are woven between trees mirroring colours and formal elements within the space.
These altered landscapes operate on a number of levels. They are a reflection of my personal relationship with the forest, a meditation on universal themes relating to the psyche and they explore the concept of landscape as a social and cultural construct."
10 Gresham Street, a dazzling Norman Foster designed building in the heart of the City of London, provides an interesting contrast to Davies’ forest images which date from 2010 through to 2020.
Morag Paterson put me in touch with Gina after she came across her work on Instagram. Following on from an article from Joe Cornish back in March 2019 "A question of responsibility - Does being an outdoor photographer inevitably lead to environmentalism?, we have published a series of articles based around this topic and call out from Joe "If any of this resonates for you, if you want to share your ideas or suggestions, or feel you could write or contribute a piece on what we as a community can do collectively to help the causes of landscape, ecosystems and the wild world then please do contact Tim".
Gina's work on 'The Hydrocarbon Forest' project in collaboration with Geof Rayner, resonated with this topic. We got in touch to find out more about this project, the background and impact. Photographs: Gina Glover and text: Dr Geof Rayner
Forests are the ‘lungs’ of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.
~ Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Statement on receipt of the award of the Schlich Forestry Medal, 9 January 1935.1
What we think about forests informs how we see them. The roots of our perception are lodged in culture and laid down in our upbringing. As we develop as adults, our knowledge can be enhanced by practical, scientific, philosophical, even poetic understandings of forest ecology. Added to this, and perhaps best of all, we can experience the forest by the simple and immersive pleasure of merely walking through them. This project investigates the forest, to be more precise, one specific forest, this forming part of an on-going photographic project on energy and the energy transition. In beginning with the above quotation from US President Franklin Roosevelt, we come to see how this positive promise of the forest – acting as the ‘lungs’ of the land - was almost entirely frustrated, even reversed.
Any of us – perhaps all of us – can instantly recall stories and songs of big and bad wolves and woodland picnics involving teddy bears (the ‘teddy’ being derived from bear hunter Theodore (Ted) Theodore Roosevelt, a US president and creator of the first US national parks.) The darker toned forest stories usually have European origins. Grimm’s classic Hansel and Gretel tells of two hungry, abandoned children lost in an entangled forest. Entering a clearing they encounter a sweet – indeed edible - forest cottage. It is not what it seems and they quickly come to realise that it is a honey trap set by a murderous witch.
Most of us at some time fall into something of a photographic rut. In my case this has happened several times, usually resulting in deep thought and a change of direction. Each time this has happened to me I have, through trial and error, come out on the other side perhaps a better but more significantly a happier photographer. The first time this happened, I tried some film instead of digital and this eventually led to me adopting film for all my photography and the selling off of all my digital cameras. The second time led to shooting Large Format, the third to shooting vintage cameras and predominantly black and white film; home processed, of course.
It was along this vein that things were ticking along steadily until the beginning of this year. I couldn't shake off the feeling there was still something missing from the pictures I made. I could not put my finger on it but I was still quietly dissatisfied and growing more so by the month.
Whilst browsing the internet looking for inspiration, I came across some very interesting looking landscapes that seemed to have a vintage "look" to them, even though they were contemporary. On further research, I found that these were made using "J Lane Dry Plates". Now I am familiar with wet plate collodion landscapes by photographers such as Berut Peterlin but had never heard of the dry variety.
Whilst browsing the internet looking for inspiration, I came across some very interesting looking landscapes that seemed to have a vintage "look" to them, even though they were contemporary. On further research, I found that these were made using "J Lane Dry Plates".
The more I looked into dry plate, the more appealing it became. Load under safelight, no need for complete darkness; lasts like commercial film so you can leave them for weeks in the darkslides before use; develop by inspection under safelight... what's not to like?
The more I looked into dry plate, the more appealing it became. Load under safelight, no need for complete darkness; lasts like commercial film so you can leave them for weeks in the darkslides before use; develop by inspection under safelight... what's not to like?
So, I decided to take the plunge and start with some of the cheaper sized quarter plates, "speed plates" no less (asa25), ideal to use in my Houghton-Butcher Klimax. The only place in the UK to stock J Lane Dry Plates that I'm aware of is Analogue Wonderland, so my order was duly placed.
On arrival, these were loaded into the darkslides with eager anticipation. This process is very much simplified by the fact that you can do this in the darkroom under safelight but the plates are also notched just like film if you have to do this in a changing bag or the like. So, darkslides loaded, off I trotted to my nearest local woodland. I wish I could regale you with stories of steep learning curves, multiple issues, seemingly insurmountable hurdles to leap but this is simply not the case. I used incident metering at asa 25 as instructed, added an extra stop for luck (good job I did) and shot several plates.
Back at home, these were tray developed as instructed on the back of the box with Kodak HC-110, dilution "B" for around the recommended time, or until I could see shadow detail appearing. Wash and fix just like film. These were then left on a drying rack for several hours. To say I was pleased with the results is an understatement, they have a look that I have been seeking for a very long time and I love the tactile nature of handling the glass. There is that certain serendipity when shooting, mainly due to the hand made emulsion coating, which I really like. None of the plates came out as I expected and the end results were so much better than I anticipated.
I have since shot 30 of the "Speed Plates" and several of the normal asa2 plates. My results have shown me that they do like a lot of light, especially the "normal" asa2 plates. These are only receptive to UV and blue light, so you have to take into account the time of day and season to really get the most from them. Jason Lane's website Pictoriographica has a handy downloadable chart to assist in calculating the correct asa. The standard plates will also react differently to your normal black and white film, skies will predominantly be devoid of detail such as clouds, foliage tends to be quite dark. This is due to the emulsion formula being pretty close to the original 1880's one. The Speed Plates seem to be somewhat more forgiving and are Orthochromatic, I just usually add an extra stop or so.
This is a new direction and I have to say I'm delighted with the results. The slight variations in the emulsion coating (these are all hand coated) and occasional blemish all add to the pictures in my opinion.
So, in conclusion, have I pulled myself back out of the rut? Definitely. This is a new direction and I have to say I'm delighted with the results. The slight variations in the emulsion coating (these are all hand coated) and occasional blemish all add to the pictures in my opinion. I seem to average 7 good plates from 10, which due to the price, is a very good thing. That brings me nicely along to the cost. These are not cheap, but when you consider that they are individually hand cleaned and coated in the US, before being packaged and shipped, I think that the price is very reasonable indeed, about on par with colour slide film in large format sizes.
If you fancy trying something completely different, perhaps these may be worth a try. Going back in time really has helped me to visually move forward. There is plenty of technical data and experiences on Jason's website if you would like a more technical review.
So, What next for me? Well, I have just ordered several boxes in half-plate for use in my Sanderson Regular for use with some very old brass lenses...........
My formative years were spent in a small coastal town of Eastern Australia. We were fortunate to live in a house that backed onto the bush; an Australian term for a reserve of natural woodland or vegetation. Most of my then free time was spent hopping over the back fence and exploring this wonderland of natural phenomena. All the seasons had their specific personality, but summers were often hot and humid, to the extent, that the bush developed what I called a tiredness; the air so stifling that everything seemed to wilt by the time the afternoon came along. Relief came in the form of thunderstorms, with billowing, dark grey clouds rising from the west, absorbing the heat and swallowing the sun.
I remember these times well. I’d hop the fence and find my favourite place and watch. I never failed to be awestruck by the sound of rumbling thunder, with sheets of lightning peeling across the sky; the wind ripping, gyrating the upper canopy of spindly branched eucalyptus. And then the rain, so thick all before you turned into misty shapes of grey. And yet, all over in half an hour, only for the sun to make a brief appearance, the foliage glistening with drops of gold, before setting over the horizon with the most spectacular cloud shapes resplendent in a rainbow of colours. I’d never felt so alive.
I never failed to be awestruck by the sound of rumbling thunder, with sheets of lightning peeling across the sky; the wind ripping, gyrating the upper canopy of spindly branched eucalyptus. And then the rain, so thick all before you turned into misty shapes of grey.
Such experiences developed into an interest in natural landscapes, and how weather affects not only the aesthetics but also the atmosphere or the mood of the landscape. Something that was to be all the more fascinating, when I eventually picked up a camera, especially so if a storm was brewing.
During late October to December, in North Western Australia, the time is known as the ‘build up’, where the first tentacles of the tropical Monsoon descend upon the top end of Australia. Hard baked earth, sends ever upward, thermals of superheated, humid air, reaching to the heavens to condense into some of the largest supercell thunderstorms on the planet. The lightning show alone, if ever you’re fortunate enough to be there and witness one, will leave you speechless.
I first came across Peter Jarver in a book called The Top End of Down Under, that I found in a second-hand bookshop in Sydney. I’d recently married, and at the time, with our weekend pursuits into the Wilds of Australia, my photographic interests saw a row of bookshelves devoted to Peter Dombrovskis, Chris Bell, David Muench and Galen Rowell to name a few. Peter Jarver was an unknown quantity, to me at least, but one, like those names that sat proudly on that bookshelf, was to change my photography for life.
One of the key aspects of landscape photography has got to be composition. Given our subject matter rarely has a strong internal narrative and the subject rarely has intrinsic emotional value, our arrangement of content within the frame and its emphasis, lighting, etc. are the main thing we have to work with. However, composition is rarely written about well beyond addressing so-called "rules".
I've chatted with David Ward and Joe Cornish about my ideas for a series on composition for quite a few years now but there always seems to be some internal barriers, essentially, a resistance to committing thoughts to paper and making them public where they'll have to stand on their own merits. However, after some recent chats about the subject, we've decided to try to get a proper series off the ground and to gets things started, we thought we'd have a chat about the history of art and landscape in order to build some foundations.
Hence, the following podcast is a relatively short chat about how art and composition built to the age where landscape, and particularly rural and wild landscape, started to become a recognised genre in its own right.
I've tried to find some references for the artworks mentioned including a few important extra ones I found when doing a little research. The next instalment, contrary to what I say in the podcast, will look at the development of landscape from the Dutch and Flemish landscape tradition to Lorraine, Poussin and the Grand Tour, looking at some of the visual themes and aspects of landscape art (such as Repoussir) as we move toward the romantic tradition.
Don't worry that we'll be getting too art history along the way, the primary goal here is to look at landscape composition and keep our eye on how we can use the ideas in our own work. (p.s. I've neglected to mention some excellent non-Western culture art, such as early Chinese paintings! This is on purpose and they will be addressed later in the series).
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!
When the sun shines through the leaves of a flower, I am attracted to it, irresistibly. I wish to capture its beauty, its colours, its delicate forms and share this beauty with others. Wonderful nature.
Many people seem to have this urge, judging from the hundreds of thousands of people who come each spring to North-Holland, province of the Netherlands, to visit the flower fields. Unfortunately not this year due to the Coronavirus. All activities have been cancelled. But photographing is still possible taking the 1,5 m distance to others into account and no groups larger than 2 persons.
Flowerbulbs (tulips, narcissus, etc) have been grown in Holland since 1590. Demand for these living colours increased so much around 1634 that bulbs were sold and resold while still in the ground. Speculation had been forbidden since 1610 at the Amsterdam stock market. But increasingly high prices where paid, even for more than a year salary of a good craftsman. The most famous tulip at that time was the Semper Augusta which sold for 10.000 dutch guilders (Florijnen, Fl), which was even far more than Rembrandt had been paid for his Nightwatch (Fl 1600, about € 725). This tulipomania led to the first financial crisis with the crash of 1637.
We are now again in the midst of a crisis, this time worldwide. I thought to give you some colour in these bleak times. And my best advice is: "Look for the light".
I captured these flowers in the region between Alkmaar and Den Helder with a Canon 5DsR camera and a Zeiss Otus 1.4/85 lens at f 1.4. Loving the beautiful soft cloudy bokeh.
I am fortunate that, through business travel, I often have the chance to stop off to take photographs in the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales or the Peak District where it seems there is a photo to be had anywhere you point your camera. Obviously due to the coronavirus lockdown these trips are not possible so I am limited to a 1 hour roundtrip walk from my home. I am lucky in that within 5 minutes walk from my home in Rochdale, I can be in the countryside or on the moors and during this lockdown, It has proved that, if you go off the beaten track, those photographs can be found. You just have to look a bit harder. All these photos were taken within 30 minutes walk from home.
The theme of this set of images is the curve. They all have a curved line leading the eye through the scene. All of these locations are in Assynt & Coigach and are areas I have revisited many times over recent years.
My approach to photography is increasingly to try and seek out an uncluttered, less obvious and minimalistic landscape. I see the landscape as shapes and graphical lines and much prefer a quieter scene.
This set of images were all made with a Sony A7RIII and processed in Lightroom, Photoshop with a monochrome conversion in Silver Efex.
This 4x4 portfolio was triggered by a recent On Landscape podcast discussion in which David Ward stated that Iceland was his choice for ‘currently-free from tourists’ location images and that he and Joe made their first visits there in 1999.
These photographs ‘from the archive’ were taken on my first visit to south-east Iceland in 1979. I was a student on a month-long expedition to collect data for our physical geography dissertations. Few people had visited Iceland then. It felt a special place, wild and very remote from people. I was excited to be there.
I used a Zenith E plus standard 50mm Helios lens with Kodachrome 64 transparency film, my 18th birthday present. To complement the archival feel I have left the slide mount edges, the dust and converted to black and white.
The images feature the extremely bumpy gravel ring road. After the long drive, in our research vehicle from the US/NATO Keflavik airbase to the campsite in a field near the snout of Svinafellsjökull, I was still shaking hours later from the vibration. Two images are looking west towards this location (note no hotel/service station) and the others towards Breiðamerkurjökull.
I enjoyed my eventual return in 2017 but as expected, with the advent and rapid increase in tourism, as well as ice loss, Iceland had become a completely different world. My visit in 1979 is a very precious memory.
For the fourth iteration of this column, I decided to focus on the artwork of a photographer that mostly flies under the radar here in the Southwest of United States – Cecil Whitt. Cecil and his work exemplify the mysteries of the desert Southwest and conjure up a wide variety of emotions and ideas including solitude, surprise, serenity, rugged individualism, grit, determination, exploration, and optimism. I was first introduced to his work through my podcast when a former guest, David Thompson, recommended I explore Cecil’s artwork in depth. At first, when one visits Cecil’s website, you are greeted by a massive collection of over one-hundred-and-fifty thumbnails which I first thought represented individual photographs. Much to my amazement, excitement, and awe, I soon realised that each thumbnail represented an entire gallery of images, each with their own depth of character, pantheon of feelings, and interesting story arc. Cecil’s website is a literal treasure trove to dig through – each time I visit I find myself exploring and devouring something new that intrigues and inspires me.
I had the pleasure of meeting Cecil when our mutual acquaintance Paul Rojas invited me to join them for a weekend of photographing in New Mexico’s badlands, deep within the desert.
Cecil’s images are immersive, and mostly relies on shapes, subtle colour palettes, patterns, and composition to deliver interest and to engage viewers.
Upon meeting Cecil, I realised that he exemplified his photographic artwork – he carries himself with an air of mystery and excitement, while at the same time he clearly lives a humble and simple existence, and possesses a laissez faire attitude about life and photography. Cecil’s approach to photography is possibly best described as “open to surprises” – he does not have any preconceived notions about what he may or may not find when he embarks into the desert with his camera and tripod. He simply wanders about through the badlands searching for things he is emotionally and spiritually drawn to photographing. I found his approach to the craft intoxicating and quite compelling, which has rubbed off on my own way of making photographs in the desert badlands. Since spending time with Cecil, I have been much more open-minded to finding interesting landscape compositions I would have otherwise walked right by. Cecil’s curiosity and passion for the desert is one of the things that clearly translates across his images and perhaps is one of the root causes for their unique character.
A new solo exhibition of marine landscape photography by Brighton-based photographer John Brockliss opens at The West Pier Centre, Brighton on Saturday 5 September. The free-entry show is open to visitors 11.00am - 4.30pm Saturdays and Sundays only and features over 30 colour and monochrome works, personally printed by the photographer.
John works exclusively with Leica rangefinder cameras and lenses and available light. His photographs are all shot hand-held and prints are exhibited uncropped, exactly as composed in-camera.
As an island nation with an unrivalled seafaring heritage, we share a deep and enduring love of the sea. We are forever drawn to the wild elemental shores of remote locations and the bustling summer beaches of our seaside towns. John uses his cameras to capture those rare moments when the competing natural elements combine for a transitory few seconds and transform the normal into the unforgettable: light, tide, wind and sea in constant flux.
"My passion for marine photography is directly linked to two additional and abiding interests - fishing and boating. I have been active in both most of my adult life and for the past 27 years spend a week each summer fishing off the West Coast of Scotland. These fabulous trips have given me rare photographic access to otherwise inaccessible vantage points (see the Muckle Flugga lighthouse shot) and more importantly have allowed me to be 'at one' with the ever-changing light and weather patterns which are so much more emotionally felt at sea. Despite the potential risk to camera and lens from salt water and accidental damage, because rangefinder cameras are so compact, I find them perfectly suited to the rigours of shooting at sea.
Whether I am photographing at sea or onshore I am always looking for compositions which are defined by unique and often elusive combinations of light, tide, atmosphere and transient weather conditions."
Exhibition details
The Shoreline Exhibition is hosted by The West Pier Centre on Brighton's seafront promenade, next to the British Airways 1360 visitor attraction.Address: West Pier Centre, 103-105 King's Road Arches, Brighton, BN1 2FN.
So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair.
~ Antonin Artaud/cite>
A few weeks ago, I accepted Alister Benn’s offer to “out” me as someone who struggles with depression. It was a bit uncomfortable, but now that it’s out of the way, and given current world events, I hope I can put my trials with depression and the lessons it taught me to some good use. For the sake of this article, assume that when I talk about depression I also talk about anxiety. As recent research suggests, depression and anxiety, despite being different experiences, are interrelated and often comorbid (occurring together).
Depression has been referred to as a “disease of modernity,” with rates rising consistently for some time, and more sharply in the days of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m sure even positively-minded readers will have no problem coming up with many reasons rooted in recent events—political, environmental, professional, personal—leading to increased anxiety, sadness, and perhaps a sense of hopelessness.
In recent weeks I’ve received concerned notes from fellow photographers, and have answered questions publicly for a number of camera clubs, many asking about photography as a means to transcend the anxiety of the times and its demoralising effects..
In recent weeks I’ve received concerned notes from fellow photographers, and have answered questions publicly for a number of camera clubs, many asking about photography as a means to transcend the anxiety of the times and its demoralising effects, about ways to defeat a lack of motivation to pursue creative work and to rekindle joy in formerly rewarding activities in the face of mounting worries and troubling thoughts.
It’s no small irony that being as introverted and reclusive as I am, and having spent much of my adult years distancing myself farther and farther from human populations (my home now is, mile for mile, closer to outer space than to the nearest city), I somehow became a public figure. Likewise, harbouring a psychological disorder that predisposes me to frequent episodes of melancholy and depression, I may be an unlikely source for solace and encouragement. Then again, perhaps my unyielding faith in beauty, and my commitment to pursue experiences that elevate my being and give meaning to my life despite a constant struggle with darker moods, have given me a unique perspective on what it takes. This especially as common remedies and advice have generally not worked for me, forcing me to find my own.
Boats have been in Jack’s blood - and water in his lungs - from a very early age, closely followed by a passion for photography. Some of you will know Jack from his time as a master printer, responsible for bringing Paul Kenny’s creations to life. I still remember the impact of seeing Paul/Jack’s prints in Southwell Cathedral as part of the Masters of Vision exhibition in 2015.
That same year, Jack embarked on a new adventure, and project called The Lifeboat Station Project. What started as an ambition to photograph the view from each lifeboat station around the UK’s coastline became a homage to the volunteers of The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). So far he has made over 2000 glass plates using, to quote Jack, “the highest resolution photographic process ever invented”. Each trip is an exercise in forward planning, as everything he needs has to be taken with him, and every step is an opportunity to mess up. There’s something very heroic about the images, the crews’ poses, and the project itself. Like many others, Jack had to put his plans on hold in March this year but it has meant that we’ve been able to talk to him at length. Jack describes himself as a picture maker and a storyteller, rather than a photographer, and this is quite a story. Jack doesn’t do anything by halves, and that includes interviews, so make sure you’re comfortable before we begin....
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up and what your early interests were? I read that you spent your first few years living on a boat, and you’ve talked about the sea being very much a part of your soul?
I had quite an eclectic and nautical start to my life. My Dad was a deep sea diver in the North Sea, so I was born in Aberdeen. He has a wonderful story about a helicopter collecting him in a 5 metre swell from the Blue Whale — the largest construction ship in the world at the time — and he was able to get to the hospital just in time for my birth!
A few months later, we ended up living on my grandfather’s boat — a 102ft Victorian ex-steam yacht called Amazon — during my baby/toddler years on the River Thames at Teddington. However, in the hot summer of ’76, the river became too dry and she kept resting on the bottom, so we moved round to Ramsgate harbour.
During that time, my Mum worked for Hoverlloyd as a stewardess on the awesome SRN4 cross Channel hovercrafts.
Apparently, when she was at work one day, my Dad took me on an errand across the harbour in the little rubber dubber. I was clipped in but, when he looked astern, I’d fallen overboard with my legs in the air and my head dangerously close to the propeller. He hurriedly picked me out of the drink by my ankles. The salty harbour water drained from my lungs, he sat me up on the sponson, patted me on the back and I gave him a big smile.
When my Mum got back from work, she immediately knew something had gone awry because of the badly-chosen combination of dry clothes that my Dad had dressed me in.
So, yes, the sea has very definitely been in me from an early age!
Fast forward a few years and I got into photography aged 8 (more on that in a moment), lifeboats at around 10 years old, kayaking aged 11 and dinghy sailing shortly after that. All the while, I loved Lego and railways too (big ones and model ones). These are all interests and passions that have stayed with me.
I’ve always been fascinated by how we react to abstract images, and how we seek to impose meaning on them. In a previous article, I noted how my own reaction to Marianthi Lainas’s images was to enjoy the intrigue created by the shapes and colours in the image and to use these as links or metaphors for ‘reality’. I imagined the beaches, trees, horizon lines that were suggested by the photograph. I had the same reaction recently when I came across David Maisel’s book ‘Black Maps. American Landscapes and the Apocalyptic Sublime’.
When Charlotte asked me to write an end frame I knew almost immediately which image I wanted to discuss. Wyoming, Train and Car is more documentary photograph than landscape, but for me, it epitomises the western USA. Erwitt is an American photographer of Russian Jewish descent, born in Paris and raised in Milan and Los Angeles.
When he took this photograph, he was 26 years old, a couple of years older than I was when I first travelled through the area in the winter of 1978. The first thing that draws my attention is the billowing smoke from the locomotive, then the locomotive itself, and the line of freight cars seemingly stretching to the mountains. On the parallel road sits one car whose design places the photograph firmly in mid-century. Some things had plainly changed in the intervening quarter century- freight trains were drawn by multiple diesel units, and the cars were more angular, but the landscape had not changed.
I first came across the phrase ‘Altered landscape’ in conversation with Australian photographer Christian Fletcher. He uses it to describe places changed by mining and quarrying. These range from quarry cliffs, cuttings, embankments, machinery and buildings, to mine workings, slag heaps, tailing ponds, effluent and run-off. Christian’s pictures are often aerials, often quite abstract and beautiful in colour and design. Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky is another whose work addresses this theme in depth; his 2007 book Quarries, is one I have admired often.
So are quarries and mine sites the only altered landscapes, and if not, what other landscapes might be so characterised?
The monumental stones at Avebury date back to the Third Millennium BC. Their function and role in the landscape remain an unresolved mystery
Certainly, humans alter landscapes when they settle. For at least 10,000 years we have settled land having transitioned from hunter-gathering to agriculture. Anthropologists connect the arrival of urbanisation to the food surpluses agriculture provided. Villages, towns and cities clearly alter the landscape. Monumental stone buildings, in particular, require enormous amounts of material and huge human effort to cut, transport and transform them into pyramids, or temples. Altered landscape is by no means only a modern phenomenon.
Certainly, humans alter landscapes when they settle. For at least 10,000 years we have settled land having transitioned from hunter-gathering to agriculture
Under the slopes of Yr Eifl in North Wales are the remains of an ancient township, a site thought to have been occupied for several hundred years, following its settlement in the Iron Age. Composed of many building which were probably once turf-rooved, their walls seem to have been made from the scree slopes of the adjacent hillsides.
Yet modernity imposes itself more ruthlessly. Electricity pylons criss-cross our countryside, an alteration few of us wish to look at, but we could not do without them. Air-conditioned and centrally-heated homes and places of work, roads, railways, water supplies… all the conveniences of modern life amount to an anthropogenic alteration of the land.
In the UK agriculture is the greatest single territorial occupation and alters the land rather obviously when growing crops, especially with modern industrial farming. And perhaps more subtly, with domestic animals controlled by enclosure.
Folly Pond is a small pond, about 100 feet long, situated on the edge of Blackheath, South London. It was believed to have originally been a gravel pit, then was used as a watering place for horses travelling along the main road that passes close by. The road was once the Roman Watling Street, now the A2 from London to Dover. The Pond’s heyday was in the Victorian era when it was developed and turned into a boating lake, with paving around the sides. It has now almost returned to nature; the paving has all gone and the edges are now lined with trees and reeds. It has no natural water supply and is kept topped by rain with a little help from a mains water pipe in the summer.
So why are you reading about this scruffy little body of water?
The pond is aligned roughly East to West, with Blackheath to the South this means that there is interesting light on the water at the beginning and end of most days.
It’s within a mile of where I live, and it’s become a regular photographic subject for me. South East London has some grand vistas across Canary Wharf towards the City but not much for the landscape photographer. The pond can’t offer any large-scale views, but it has lots of interesting details, textures and corners. The pond is aligned roughly East to West, with Blackheath to the South this means that there is interesting light on the water at the beginning and end of most days.
The trees, reeds and other vegetation around the pond change with the seasons; providing a varied backdrop from sparse silhouettes in winter, through spring greens to warm autumnal shades.
For me the pond is a perfect anti-icon – nobody is going to come here to recreate the views, it sits just outside Greenwich Park, apparently too scruffy to be allowed in amongst the manicured lawns and tended flower gardens. The challenge in photographing the pond is that the images have to be created, the views aren’t there waiting for you.
The pond lends itself to experimentation with creative techniques; ICM and multiple exposure work well here. The reflections and shadows of the trees on the opposite bank, the textures of the reeds and grasses, the dark colours of the water itself all lend themselves to trying to create something a bit different. Because it’s near to home I generally only take one camera and one lens; one of the benefits of a local site is no fear of missing out.
The reflections and shadows of the trees on the opposite bank, the textures of the reeds and grasses, the dark colours of the water itself all lend themselves to trying to create something a bit different.
Water is always an inspiration for me; it adds more levels of abstraction whether it’s via reflections and ripples, movement that can be smoothed or highlighted or the way it responds to light and colour. Even a small body of water like this adds so much variety to the potential images.
One further source of interest is the light and shadows from the traffic on the A2; this is only a few yards south of the pond; the shadows of buses and lorries need to be worked around or worked with; as darkness approaches the traffic adds to the light.
The pond is home to a small variety of wildlife; feisty coots always seem to be looking for a fight. Mallard, Moorhen and Egyptian geese have made it their home, and the surrounding trees are often weighed down with murders of crows.
Some photographers are lucky enough to have beautiful grand vistas on their doorsteps, but if you don’t – or even if you do – try finding somewhere small and shabby near to home that you can visit in all lights, moods and seasons and experiment with it.
Being in "lockdown" (or quarantine, whatever you decide to call it), has created lots of time to reflect on the photographic practice of other photographers who inspire me. In particular, I’m going to share with you some of my recent thoughts with a comparison between work by Sebastiao Salgado and Guy Tal. I believe that not only is this kind of reflection, followed by deep introspection, a valuable process for all photographers but that there is a lot to learn from the work of others. I’ll be reflecting on landscape photography and its relationship to what has been termed the Anthropocene (or the current epoch where human activity is the largest impacting force on the planet). I have largely taken this article as a vehicle to explore ideas, almost a thought exercise, so please bear with me as I work through the complex (and inherently political) landscape surrounding photography, philosophy, introspection, and climate change; the following are, quite simply, reflections that I thought might be useful to others.
Sebastiao Salgado, Genesis, page 229
I see a slow polarisation happening within the landscape photography world concerning our interests in portraying human activity within images. The spectrum ranges from boldly including the presence of humanity (I think of Jimmy Chin’s images of climbers on the side of a mountain) to making images of complete wilderness with no human presence in sight (Ben Horne’s images of fallen leaves in the washes of Zion National Park come to mind).
I see a slow polarisation happening within the landscape photography world concerning our interests in portraying human activity within images. The spectrum ranges from boldly including the presence of humanity (I think of Jimmy Chin’s images of climbers on the side of a mountain) to making images of complete wilderness with no human presence in sight (Ben Horne’s images of fallen leaves in the washes of Zion National Park come to mind).
The ends of these ranges are often in reaction to one another; for instance, there is a fair amount of antagonism within the ‘fine art’ world towards the popular Instagram trend of a person in the foreground of a composition surrounded by nature. Social media as a cultural phenomenon has perhaps fuelled the exclusion of people for some photographers in a desire to focus attention on the landscape and vice versa. Landscape photography is primarily a visual medium so I’ve been asking myself how images can go beyond aesthetics to talk about the ideas that really matter.
I don’t think there’s necessarily a right or wrong answer here, merely different approaches to achieve specific artistic visions. No matter your philosophy on photography, most likely if you are out in nature making images you have a deep love for the landscape. Personally, meaningful photography always circles back to this, no matter the path is taken. So, let’s look at some more examples from both ends of the include-exclude spectrum in order to think about and expand these ideas.
Indeed, landscape photographs are often also the vehicle by which we share experiences of nature with others. This takes many forms (print, online, in person, etc.), but at its essence, it has the fantastic capability of storytelling. It can transport viewers into the image or take their imagination to otherworldly fantasies. Rarely (if ever) are images made without the intention of being shared. This is why I believe you cannot ignore the human element in the making of photographs; we participate in every stage of the photographic process, from capture to viewing. An image may not depict a person, but a part of the photographer’s being is held within it. Every viewer likewise brings something as well.
So, to me, the exclusion of people in photos is inherently a paradoxical phenomenon. There is always the photographer behind the camera and more often than not a number of viewers later on. Ansel Adams is often quoted, “the single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!" I understand this to not only mean the camera is just a tool to realise the photographer's vision, but that when I make photographs, I bring with me my personality, ideas, past experiences, and sometimes traumas. Even if I choose to photograph scenes of wilderness with little or no human presence, the very act of photography is a reflection of the photographer’s self. What I notice on a walk or an element I decide to include in a composition, is a translation of the human experience of being - perhaps even consciousness - into an image. An awareness of what we bring of ourselves to the act of making images is vital towards becoming a more intentional photographer and artist. We cannot escape the presence of humanity in our photographs as it is the only reality we know, but this realisation is actually a powerful tool for storytelling. Photography can bring our own story into relation with the story of nature.
Salgado Genesis, Genesis P368
Murray Livingston - Clearing in the Storm
One photographer who seems to practice an artistic self-awareness is Sebastiao Salgado. His long-spanning career has seen many twists and turns. I first encountered his photography some years ago when I watched The Salt of the Earth, a film following Salgado’s journey across the planet to create Genesis. This was his venture into telling nature’s story, an odyssey of the wildest places on earth and the peoples most untouched by modern society. I soon after went to see an exhibition of Genesis in London and was even more enthralled. What caught my attention at first was certainly his graphic black and white style (reminiscent in my mind of chiaroscuro paintings from the Renaissance I had studied in school). I have been excited by the abstract nature of black and white photography ever since, and there is no doubt Salgado has had an influence on this.
what have I learned from revisiting Salgado’s Genesis (7 years after its release)? Looking back, I feel as though my initial experience was quite naive. Nearly 5 years on, my perception of Salgado’s photography has changed dramatically.
So, what have I learned from revisiting Salgado’s Genesis (7 years after its release)? Looking back, I feel as though my initial experience was quite naive. Nearly 5 years on, my perception of Salgado’s photography has changed dramatically. Not only have I changed as a person, but I have been able to spend time with and meditate on his work. It now holds value to me beyond just its aesthetic qualities. Salgado is a master in storytelling, something I think all landscape photographers strive to be better at. He developed this skill through many years of telling the human story. His primary bodies of work prior to Genesis, Migrations & Workers, often focused on the most unpleasant aspects of humanity: war, famine, drought, genocide. Through hindsight, I can now clearly recognise the shift in Salgado’s thinking from his earlier work, solely focused on the human species, to that of Genesis where the entire natural world is taken into account. These reflections have deepened my understanding of his process and photography.
Sebastiao Salgado, Genesis, page 180
Salgado’s interests in recording the plight of humankind didn’t hold value to him anymore - indeed it was a source of great depression and despondency. To photograph only humans was to reinforce the story that we are above and therefore subjugate nature. Rather, the story that needed to be told was one which placed humans as a part of a collective natural order. This is the key philosophical change that I connected with all those years ago, even if I didn’t quite understand it at the time. It is a philosophical understanding I’m still pondering and learning from today; humans are the largest force on nature, but we are only one part of the system. It is within our power to choose the impact of our actions.
Salgado grapples with these complex ideas and the powerful imagery stands its ground aesthetically. Genesis does something extremely clever by not directly showing the impacts of the Anthropocene - the route Salgado’s previous work had taken. Salgado uses this tactic to build a photographic narrative based on nature before human intervention - i.e. places at the time of Genesis - and therefore tells the story of climate change without actually depicting it. The project asks the viewer to take a first step in the right direction: it places protection of our natural world as an imperative action. His photos give hope that we can foster beauty in wilderness (just under half of the planet according to Genesis). Furthermore, his inclusion of peoples relatively untouched by modern society speaks to a harmony rather than a division between people and nature. The 3 selected images here show how Salgado’s compositional and creative prowess is a result of his deep connection to landscape & nature.
Guy Tal - An Unlikely Convergence
Murray Livingston - Sandstone Cliffs Fynbos Tree
Guy Tal’s fantastic article and related images on photographing rocks for On Landscape, to me, sits somewhere on the other end of the spectrum. Simply put, Tal’s working thesis is that photographing the story of nature is of more interest than photographing the story of people. His writing explains that this is because the deep sedimentation of history within rocks puts plainly into view the value of the natural world, and therefore his interest. Rocks have been here for millions of years and will likely subsist for millions more, long after homo sapiens cease to exist. - a concept that Tal focuses his argument for photographing rocks on. A metaphor to illustrate this point might be to compare the length of human history to a single paragraph in a book of a few hundred pages.
More broadly, Tal speaks to the experience of wandering in wilderness surrounded by the history of nature, and therefore the world, and how this is utterly captivating and enthralling
More broadly, Tal speaks to the experience of wandering in wilderness surrounded by the history of nature, and therefore the world, and how this is utterly captivating and enthralling. However, what we cannot ignore, even if we take the approach of focusing on nature in our photography, is the impact that humanity is having on the very wilderness we seek to experience. Tal eloquently expresses his concerns: "I fear that future generations will judge us harshly for our failure to place proper value on wildness, diversity, open space, spirit, solitude, and other treasures of the natural world still available to us today. May they at least know that some of us tried." In a similar manner as Salgado, Tal doesn’t completely ignore the impact of humanity on the planet; he has made the conscious effort to not depict the very thing he is talking about. He relies on forming a deep understanding of place and landscape. His image above, titled “An Unlikely Convergence” perfectly illustrates this. Tal explains that "it is very rare for aspens, which grow at relatively high and cool elevations, to be found in the same area as red sandstone, which usually is found in hot desert areas, at lower elevations. This place is the only one I know where aspens can live among red rocks.” His images inspire awe and wonder for wilderness and thereby speak to the value of nature. To completely ignore the impact of people on the planet would be antithetical to the very experiences we cherish. If nature is something we love so much as landscape photographers, a primary aim of our photography ought to be to promote its protection.
These two photographers have developed very different philosophies and approaches to making images. In Salgado’s work, we can see the expansiveness of nature and its raw untamed beauty. His imagery is coupled to his thinking - telling nature’s story to a big audience. In Tal’s work, we see intimacy and beauty by looking closer and asking of ourselves deep questions about what we value in nature. To me, it is always a worthwhile exercise to critically think about how other photographers go about their work. I hope the appraisal of these two photographers has been insightful.
These two photographers have developed very different philosophies and approaches to making images. In Salgado’s work, we can see the expansiveness of nature and its raw untamed beauty. His imagery is coupled to his thinking - telling nature’s story to a big audience. In Tal’s work, we see intimacy and beauty by looking closer and asking of ourselves deep questions about what we value in nature.
I’ll share some final thoughts before concluding. We all have a desire for the wilderness. Landscape photographers, me included, often purposefully exclude human elements in our photos to evoke a sense of untouched wilderness within an image. Doing this is certainly helpful in evoking emotions in the viewer beyond the aesthetics of a photograph - of adventure, beauty, or primality. Perhaps ideally, we even try to photograph in locations where this sort of intentional cropping is unnecessary. I find that my experience of a place is a direct influence on the outcome of a photograph (one of serenity and peacefulness in nature will create an image evoking these emotions).
To create photographs of wilderness, or more importantly perhaps to experience wilderness and the natural world, is vital in so many ways, however somewhat paradoxical. Many of the actions we take every day - food consumption, energy usage, travel, photographic tools - are causing destruction to the very thing we cherish. Today, we can no longer deny the influence humans have on the natural world. Our actions have impacts on a global scale on the future possibilities of the planet. As photographers, we must deeply consider every action we take in order to preserve the nature that we love most. It must be that the duty of a landscape photographer is to preserve and enhance nature so that generations to come may experience the many wonders of the natural world that we are so privileged to be able to experience and photograph today. I do not mean to insinuate that humans have dominion over nature, rather that, as a part of the world’s ecosystem, the human species has the ability to tip the scales in one direction or another. The solution lies in finding balance with the natural world around us. To me, landscape photography is a meditative practice in searching for this balance.
Pure imitation of nature (even if it were possible) won’t do, the artist must add his intellect, hence his work is an interpretation. …. Never rest satisfied then until these requirements are all fulfilled, and destroy all works in which they are not to be found ~Peter Henry Emerson, 1889
In 1889 Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936) published a book called Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art1. Emerson is now well-known as one of the foremost 19th Century photographers, particularly in his pictures of rural Norfolk and Suffolk2, many of which show people working in the landscape.
Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936), Frontispiece from the book The English Emerson3
The book is in part a technical handbook and glossary, in part a short history of naturalism in art, in part a guide to composition, but mostly a polemic for how to justify photography being considered as an art. It is also great fun to read, both because Emerson cannot resist expressing some pretty strong opinions (with some good quotable quips), but also for the way in which some of his comments relate to modern day mores in photography.
Although born and spending his early life on his American father’s sugar plantation in Cuba, Emerson was educated in England, finishing with a medical degree from Clare College, Cambridge in 1885. It seems that he first bought a camera to pursue his interests in ornithology, but only a short while later he was a founder member of the Camera Club of London, and in 1886 was elected as a Council Member of the Photographic Society (the forerunner of the RPS).
On The River Bure, from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads, 18864
Around this time, he gave up working as a surgeon to become a photographer and writer. His images are often illustrated in histories of photography (especially Gathering Water Lilies, Gunner Working up to Fowl, Setting the Bownet). The illustrations here have been chosen to represent some of his less well-known, more landscape oriented, images from a number of his books5. His last book, often considered his finest, Marsh Leaves, was published in 1895. He was then only 39 but lived for another 41 years, and the whole of his published photographic work was produced in only a decade.
His last book, often considered his finest, Marsh Leaves, was published in 1895. He was then only 39 but lived for another 41 years, and the whole of his published photographic work was produced in only a decade.
The cover of Marsh Leaves, published in 1895
The Snow Garden, from Marsh Leaves, 1895
Emerson’s work is often grouped with the broad movement of Pictorialism in photography. This term was first introduced in the title of the book Pictorial Effect in Photography6 by Henry Peach Robinson, published in 1869. Pictorialism had a period of popularity in both Europe and America at the end of the 19th Century up until the 1920s and included photographers such as Robinson himself, Oscar Rejlander, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Edward Steichen, Gertrude Käsebier, Annie Brigman, Sarah Sears, Clarence H. White, Alfred Stieglitz and even some of early Ansel Adams work. Pictorialism was also popularised by the Linked Ring group in England, the Photo-Club de Paris in France and the Photo-succession in America. Common themes in Pictorialism were the aims of conveying atmosphere and mystery (often by the use of soft focus) and demonstrating evidence that the image had been made by the artist. Underlying the movement was the perceived need for photography to be considered as an Art, rather than as simple mechanical reproduction as it was often represented by artists in other media.
Pictorialism had a period of popularity in both Europe and America at the end of the 19th Century up until the 1920s and included photographers such as Robinson himself, Oscar Rejlander, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Edward Steichen, Gertrude Käsebier, Annie Brigman, Sarah Sears, Clarence H. White, Alfred Stieglitz and even some of early Ansel Adams work.
Rime Crystals, from Marsh Leaves, 1895
Emerson’s early photographs were in sharp focus, but he felt that this did not properly reflect what was seen by the eye. He experimented for a while with soft focus but again found it difficult to properly express a naturalistic style. In Naturalistic Photography, he argues on the basis of the science of vision that the eye sees only a limited depth of field in sharp focus at any one time and that therefore photography should reflect this to be more realistic and artistic. He did not, of course, use the word bokeh (which was only borrowed from the Japanese in this context more than a century later in 1996/7), but does refer to depth of focus in expressing what the eye, and camera lens should see.
In this, he was somewhat in conflict with the prevailing Pictorialist ideas of the time that art photography should show the effect of the hand of the artist. This was done in three main ways: by making prints that made use of multiple negatives (still mostly glass plates at this time); by the use of colour tints in printing; and thirdly by retouching negatives by hand, including the use of drawing and brush strokes. Emerson argued strongly against all these methods: “Retouching is the process by which a good, bad, or indifferent photograph is converted into a bad drawing or painting”, and he only ever published photos based on a single, unretouched negative. It has been suggested that when he found that he could not really change these prevailing views, he stopped publishing his photographs and concentrated on writing. But this time period also coincides with the introduction of film and more portable and affordable cameras by the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company (which became Eastman Kodak in 1892). It is certain that Emerson would not have expected the standards of photography to be raised as a result. Perhaps he despaired of the more widespread use of photography by the uneducated (see below) already in 1895!
Autumn Floods, from Life in Field and Fen, 1887
Naturalistic Photography consists of three “books”, each containing several chapters. Book I is on Terminology and Argument; Book II on Technique and Practice (including a history of naturalism in art); and Book III on Pictorial Art. There is also an appendix on Photographic Libraries and Books7. In the 2nd Edition a written version of a lecture given by Emerson at the Camera Club in 1889, entitled Science and Art is included as an additional appendix. The text is unexpectedly preceded by many pages of adverts (for companies making different types of prints – argentic-bromide, argentic-gelatino-bromide, platinotype - and enlargements, for chemicals and photographic supplies, and for Ross and Dallmeyer lenses.
The book opens with a citation:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. ~ Ode to a Grecian Urn by Keats
and Emerson writes: “We propose in this book to treat photography from the artistic standpoint. We shall give enough science to lead to a comprehension of the principles which we adduce for our arguments for naturalistic photography, and we shall give such little instruction in art as is possible by written matter, for art we hold is to be learned by practice alone.” He stresses this opinion strongly several times; that you need to be a trained artist to appreciate the aims and scope of photography as art. He himself, of course, had trained as a doctor, but from the text was evidently well read in the history of art (it seems he also pursued interests in billiards, rowing and meteorology!).
and Emerson writes: “We propose in this book to treat photography from the artistic standpoint. We shall give enough science to lead to a comprehension of the principles which we adduce for our arguments for naturalistic photography, and we shall give such little instruction in art as is possible by written matter, for art we hold is to be learned by practice alone.”
He also defines art as follows: “Art is the application of knowledge for certain ends. But art is raised to Fine Art when man so applies this knowledge that he affects the emotions through the senses, and so produces æsthetic pleasure in us; and the man so raising an art into a fine art is an artist. Therefore, the real test as to whether the result of any method of expression is a fine art or not, depends upon how much of the intellectual element is required in its production …. For this reason, everyone who writes verse and prose, who sculpts, paints, photographs, etches, engraves, is not necessarily an artist at all, for he does not necessarily have the intellect, or use it in practising his art.” Evidently, he was of the opinion that he passed such a test, but one can imagine how well these opinions went down with some of his fellow photographers. He does seem to have been rather combative by nature.
He also does not seem to have thought much of the work of many photographers. Indeed, he explicitly states that: “Of the thousands who have practised photography since 1839, and who are now dead, how many names stand out as having done work of any artistic value? Only three. One a master, who was at the same time a sculptor, namely, Adam Salomon; one a trained painter, but without first-rate artistic ability, [Oscar] Rejlander; and one, an amateur, —Mrs. [Julia Margaret] Cameron.” In respect of the latter he comments: “Among the few satisfactory portraits we have seen are, as we have already said, those by the late Mrs Cameron. In all of these, that fatal sharpness has been avoided; her focussing was carefully attended to.”
By this, he is not advocating soft focus as a means of making photographs as art. Indeed, he writes: “Some writers who have never taken the trouble to understand even these points, have held that we admitted fuzziness in photography. Such persons are labouring under a great misconception; we have nothing whatever to do with any “fuzzy school.” Fuzziness, to us, means destruction of structure. We do advocate broad suggestions of organic structure, which is a very different thing from destruction, although, there may at times be occasions in which patches of “fuzziness” will help the picture, yet these are rare indeed, and it would be very difficult for anyone to show us many such patches in our published plates. ”
But he equally argues against using extreme depth of field which he suggests should be reserved for the realms of scientific and industrial photography. He allows that these are perfectly good uses of photography in their own right but they cannot be considered art. “Much time and expense would have been saved had the pioneers of photography had good art educations as well as the elementary knowledge of optics and chemistry which many of them possessed, for without art training the practice of photography came to be looked upon purely as a science, and the ideal work of the photographer was to produce an unnatural, inartistic and often unscientific, picture. It is, indeed, a satire on photography, and a blot which can never be entirely removed, that at the very time the so-called scientific photographers were worrying opticians to death, and vying with each other in producing the greatest untruths, they were all the while shouting in the market-place that their object was to produce truthful works …… this “sharp” ideal is the childish view taken of nature by the uneducated in art matters, and they call their productions true, whereas, they are just about as artistically false as can be.”
So, to make the grade as art, Emerson suggests that photographs should not be too fuzzy and they should not be too sharp. They should, indeed, reflect the way the eye sees, focusing on a single plane at any one time. “As we said before, therefore, the principal object in the picture must be fairly sharp, just as sharp as the eye sees it, and no sharper; but everything else, and all other planes of the picture, must be subdued, so that the resulting print shall give an impression to the eye as nearly identical as possible to the impression given by the natural scene.”
to make the grade as art, Emerson suggests that photographs should not be too fuzzy and they should not be too sharp. They should, indeed, reflect the way the eye sees, focusing on a single plane at any one time.
Leafless in March, from Pictures of East Anglian Life, 1887
He goes further to suggest that the choice of lenses should also reflect the angle of view of the eye: “This proportion should be as two to one, that is, the focal length of the lens should be as a rough working rule twice as long as the base of the picture. We arrived at the result by making a series of drawings on the ground glass of the camera, and comparing them with a perspective drawing made upon a glass plate. Opticians have arrived at the same conclusion, for we find this is the rough rule stated by Mr. Dallmeyer in his “Choice Lenses”.” Furthermore: “If it be a commonplace photograph taken with a wide-angle lens, say, of a stretch of scenery of equal value, as are most photographic landscapes, of course the eye will have nothing to settle thoughtfully upon, and will wander about, and finally go away dissatisfied. But such a photograph is no work of art, and not worthy of discussion here. Hence it is obvious that panoramic effects are not suitable for art, and the angle of view included in a picture should never be large.” (Now he has upset me too – I have a goodly collection of 617 panoramas8!)
In terms of exposure, he recommends that these should be quick: “We have advocated quick exposures as absolutely essential to artistic work, and it follows, therefore, that in making quick exposures there is less liability of going wrong; so, the two, work hand in hand. He who exposes slowly misses the very essence of nature, and it is this very power of exposing so quickly that gives us a great advantage over all other arts…. if we see and desire to perpetuate an effect, it is ours in the twinkling of an eye, and thus in a really first-rate photography there will always be a freshness and naturalism never attainable in any other art.” But, on the other hand, not too quick: “And here we would state definitely that the impression of these quick exposures should be as seen by the eye, for nothing is more inartistic than some positions of a galloping horse, such as are never seen by the eye but yet exist in reality, and have been recorded by Mr. Muybridge.”
Broxbourne Church, an illustration from an edition of Izaac Walton’s The Compleat Angler, 1888
These recommendations are effectively a summary of using the science of vision to produce photographs that can attain the level of being considered as art. This is what Emerson considers as Naturalism (he notes that the term Impressionism has also been used: “although we think the work of many of the so-called modern “impressionists” [the painters] but a passing craze”). In his glossary Naturalism is defined as: “the true and natural expression of an impression of nature by an art. Now it will immediately be said that all men see nature differently. Granted. But the artist sees deeper, penetrates more into the beauty and mystery of nature than the commonplace man. The beauty is there in nature. It has been thus from the beginning, so the artist’s work is no idealising of nature; but through quicker sympathies and training the good artist sees the deeper and more fundamental beauties, and he seizes upon them, “tears them out,” as Durer says, and renders them on his canvas, or on his photographic plate, or on his written page.”
He thinks that:” Naturalism has been the watchword of all the best artists, and that, after all, there are but few artists in any age. Many painters and modellers and sculptors there be, but artists are few indeed”, and that: “It is, then, the absolute duty of every picture-buyer, who has any regard for truth, and any interest in the future of art, to learn to study nature carefully, and to buy only that which is true and sincere, and let the pink and white school of dishonesty die of inanition”.
He is also critical of other “art” of the time: “At the present day there is a craze for anything Japanese, but like all crazes it will end in bringing ridicule upon Japanese work; for their work, though fine for an uncivilised nation, is absurd in many points, and this stupid craze by indiscriminate praise will only kill the qualities to be really admired”, while: “Turning to Switzerland, we find no name worth mentioning; and here we would ask those who trace the effects of sublime mountain scenery on the character of men, why there has been no Swiss art worth mentioning? Of course, the explanation is simple—because art has nothing whatever to do with sublime scenery. The best art has always been done with the simplest material.”
Great Yarmouth Harbour, from Wild Life on a Tidal River. The Adventures of a House-boat and her Crew, 1890
One of the essential elements of Emerson’s Naturalism is the choice from Nature and he has some interesting thoughts on composition.
Book III, Chapter III Out-door and In-door Work, there is a section on Landscape. Emerson’s advice is, as usual, rather extreme: “The student who would become a landscape photographer must go to the country and live there for long periods; for in no other way can he get any insight into the mystery of nature.
He notes: “We could easily, as most writers have done, have given a digest of Mr. Burnet’s laws of composition9, but we have no faith in any “laws of composition.” A law, to be logical, must hold good in all cases; now the so-called “laws of composition,” are often broken deliberately by great artists, and yet the result is perfect. This is easily explained, for these so-called laws are mere arbitrary rules, deduced by one man from the works of many artists and writers; and they are no more laws in the true sense than are the laws of Phrenology or Astrology…… It is very specious to say that all compositions are made according to geometrical forms, for nothing can be easier than to take arbitrary points in a picture and draw geometrical figures joining them. The pyramid is a favourite geometrical form of composition. Now take any picture, and take any three points you like, and join them, and you have a pyramid, so does every composition contain a pyramid, as does a donkey’s ear. But enough of this. The student is distinctly warned against paying any serious attention to these rules …… We prefer, then, the word “selection” to composition. The matter really stands thus, a good naturalistic artist selects a composition in nature which he sees to be very fine”.
In Book III, Chapter III Out-door and In-door Work, there is a section on Landscape. Emerson’s advice is, as usual, rather extreme: “The student who would become a landscape photographer must go to the country and live there for long periods; for in no other way can he get any insight into the mystery of nature. All nature near towns is tinged with artificiality, it may not be very patent but the close observer detects it.”
A misty morning at Norwich, from On English Lagoons: being an account of the voyage of 2 amateur wherrymen on the Norfolk and Suffolk rivers and Broads, 1893
He is also very much against the idea of what we would now call photographic workshops: “Here let him be cautioned against taking part in any of those “outings,” organised by well-meaning but mistaken people. It is laughable indeed to read of the doings of these gatherings; of their appointment of a leader (often blind); of the driving in breaks, always a strong feature of these meetings; of the eatings, an even stronger feature; and finally of the bag, 32 Ilford’s, 42 Wrattens', 52 Paget’s, &c.” and against photographers going to well-known locations: “Again let the student avoid imitation. If he knows that an artist has been successful in one place, do not let him, like a feeble imitator, be led thither also, for the chances are, if his predecessor were a strong man, that he will produce commonplaces where the other produced masterpieces, and thereby confess his inferiority. It is far better to be original in a smaller way than another, than to be even a first-rate imitator of another, however great.”
Chapter IV in Book III contains some Hints on Art, many of which are worth quoting. To cite just a few, if only for their resonance with issues being discussed today (and by later commentators on photography).
Remember that the original state of the minds of uneducated men is vulgar, you now know why vulgar and commonplace works please the majority.
Be true to yourself and individuality will show itself in your work.
Do not be caught by the sensational in nature, as a coarse red-faced sunset, a garrulous waterfall, or a fifteen-thousand-foot mountain. Prettiness. Avoid prettiness—the word looks much like pettiness, and there is but little difference between them.
The value of a picture is not proportionate to the trouble and expense it costs to obtain it, but to the poetry that it contains.
It is not the apparatus that does the work, but the man who wields it.
When a critic has nothing to tell you save that your pictures are not sharp, be certain he is not very sharp and knows nothing at all about it.
Art is not to be found by touring to Egypt, China, or Peru; if you cannot find it at your own door, you will never find it.
The Misty River, from Marsh Leaves, 1895
So we can conclude that, according to Emerson, if you really want your work in photography to be considered as Fine Art, you really need to be trained as an artist, you need to be careful about your depth of field and angle of view being as the eye would see it (no focus stacking, no telephoto or wide angle lenses then); you need to live in a landscape for weeks or months to appreciate it fully; you should avoid all rules of composition, all workshops, well-known locations, and retouching (our post-processing). He also suggests that the artist should not take too many pictures: “the student of photography who wishes to produce artistic work must not hurry or over-produce. One picture produced in a month would be well worth the time and trouble spent on it.” Things have evidently changed in photography in the last 130 years, though there is, of course, a modern slow photography movement, some of whom still use essentially the same large format equipment – even if the idea of using camera movements now is to make the images far too sharp!). But to leave the last word with Emerson.
Here, then, we must leave photography at the head of the methods for interpreting nature in monochrome, and we feel sure that anyone who comes to the study of photography with a rational and an unbiassed mind will admit there is no case to be made out against it as a means of artistic expression…..It must not be forgotten that water-colour drawing and etching have both been despised in their time by artists, dealers, and the public, but they have lived to conquer for themselves places of honour. The promising young goddess, photography, is but fifty years old. What prophet will venture to cast her horoscope for the year 2000? ~ Book III, L’Envoi: Photography - A Pictorial Art
Except that in 1891, just one year after the 2nd edition of Naturalistic Photography, during a brief spell in London away from his barge on the Norfolk Broads, Emerson published a short, black bordered, treatise that was titled The Death of Naturalistic Photography10. In this he changed his opinion that photography could be considered an art form. There have been a variety of interpretations of this change, but it seems that the major factors were experimental evidence by Ferdinand Hurter and Vero Charles Driffield that there was a fixed relationship between exposure and density of a negative, changing Emerson’s belief about the value of controlled development to achieve artistic effects on tone; and also his readings in evolutionary psychology and human perception, particularly the books of Herbert Spencer. He also cites an exhibition of the work of Hokusai prints (in London in 1890), and “conversations with a great artist after the Paris Exhibition.” In fact, although his last books of photographs were published well after this, none of the images included appears to have been taken after 1891 and the appearance of The Death of Naturalistic Photography.
References
1P H Emerson, 1890, Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art, 2nd Edition, E&F Spon, New York
2His first book, published in 1885, was called Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads and included 40 platinum prints. Many of his other books and prints were focused on East Anglia subjects. He spent a lot of time there, although based in Chiswick in London at the time Naturalistic Photography was written and published.
6Henry Peach Robinson, 1969, Pictorial Effect in Photography: Being Hints on Composition and Chiaroscuro for Photographers,
7In this Appendix Emerson lists (amongst other books on optics, chemistry, and photo-mechanical reproduction) the Treatise on Photography by Captain Abney (Longman); and the Science and Practice of Photography by Mr. Chapman Jones (Iliffe and Son). There was already a History of Photography by Mr Jerome Harrison (Trübner and Son); and a Traité Encyclopédique de Photographie, par Dr. Charles Fabre. (Gauthier-Villars, Paris).
8Some of which can be seen in On Landscape Issue 162 at https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2018/06/reflective-photography-essence-place/
9J. Burnet, FRS, 1880, A Treatise on Painting in Four Parts, H. Sotheran & Co. London
On The River Bure, from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads, 1886
The cover of Marsh Leaves, published in 1895
The Snow Garden, from Marsh Leaves, 1895
Rime Crystals, from Marsh Leaves, 1895
Autumn Floods, from Life in Field and Fen, 1887
Leafless in March, from Pictures of East Anglian Life, 1887
Broxbourne Church, an illustration from an edition of Izaac Walton’s The Compleat Angler, 1888
Great Yarmouth Harbour, from Wild Life on a Tidal River. The Adventures of a House-boat and her Crew, 1890
A misty morning at Norwich, from On English Lagoons: being an account of the voyage of 2 amateur wherrymen on the Norfolk and Suffolk rivers and Broads, 1893
For most of us, restrictions on movement during the pandemic meant a pause in our photographic endeavours, at least as far as the getting out and about a bit was concerned. Daily fixes on social media have come from the back catalogue, but for a fortunate few it was possible to combine exercise with image making. Benjamin has been sharing a daily dose of backyard stills and videos on Twitter, reminding us just how beguiling the water’s edge can be. Certainly, once we were told we could go to visit a beauty spot, many seemed to head for the beach; I doubt they interrupted Benjamin much, as the ends of the day lengthened. So grab a cup of your favourite brew and settle somewhere comfortable, as he has plenty of images and thoughts to share with you.
What would you like to tell readers about yourself – where you grew up, your education and early interests, and what that led you to do? This sounds to have been quite an unsettled time for you.
Stuff about me? OK. I’m all in favour of getting the least interesting bit out the way first. If I may, I’ll avoid the boredom of the typical curriculum vitae style and expand on the relevant parts. As you’d expect from someone of my advancing years though, it’s a mixed bag of experiences.
Basically, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… I was born. Actually, I was born on the south coast of the UK, in Portsmouth, which, to be fair (back then anyway) was pretty much the same thing as being born in a remote galaxy; it was another freakin’ dimension down there and no mistake. But now, after four decades absence from the south, involvement in several entrepreneurial business activities - with changeable degrees of success - in a couple of places that I’ve variously called home, both here and in the USA, I’m lately back in the ‘hood, in Felpham, West Sussex and I’ll probably be here until I snuff it, which could be at any minute, as it happens; it would not be any statistical surprise if I dropped dead in front of you right now. Don’t want to get prematurely maudlin or anything so early-on in the interview but, you know, just saying… I might not make it to the end.
Never mind all that, Benjamin, you artfully obscure yet fiendishly fascinating fellow, what happened in between going away and coming back as a tog I hear you ask? Well, in a nutshell: I’ve had a couple of kids, a couple of wives, a couple of businesses and a couple of heart attacks. Like I say a mixed bag. Go back a long-enough way and you’ll unearth a mashed-up, buried old jamboree bag of manky family/school-system psychological treasures comprised of the typical childhood issues of ordeal, abandonment and loss that arise out of a dysfunctional family and peripatetic schooling. I’m over it now, thanks for asking (and, you quite rightly exclaim, I should blimmin' well hope you’d be over it at your time of life… geez…) but, you know, it’s all in there somewhere and so it’s had a bearing over time… I’m not playing the victim card or anything so crass, on-trend or risible as that; quite the opposite in fact. I don’t want to get all hippyish about it but there’s a wisdom that comes from unpacking and making peace with trauma… well, with all pain and loss, truthfully, childhood or otherwise. They say if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger and, for years, polemic contrarian that I am, I disagreed, favouring: if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you cynical… but I’ve come around generally to the veracity of aphorisms (like you do) and, you know, if you can purge the cynicism, it does make you stronger. And better. And wiser. Shame it doesn’t make you more handsome… But you’re not cynical any more so that’s a bonus that makes you a bit more beautiful on the inside. Or so they tell me.
Sunset from the summit of Mt Hoffmann, Yosemite National Park, California 1986
In 2006, Philip Hyde passed away at the age of 84. The community of photographers and nature lovers lost a true friend and pioneer. I count myself as being very blessed for having known him.
Many years before meeting Philip back in the early 1980s, I discovered his work in the Sierra Club’s famous Exhibit Format Series of books. His images opened my eyes, along with those of thousands of other photographers and wilderness enthusiasts, to the beautiful and endangered landscapes he had explored. He helped us see the great potential use that landscape photographs could have for environmental protection. Philip’s images spoke to me quietly yet forcefully of wild nature’s value and showed me the impact that hard work, dedication, and selflessness can have.
Hyde was the workhorse for the Sierra Club book series, providing images for nearly every battle of theirs in the 1960s and 1970s. When David Brower, the director of the club and creator of the book series, needed images to help preserve an endangered landscape, Philip and camera went to work.
Philip’s sphere of influence has expanded outward far and wide, quietly and profoundly. Hyde was the workhorse for the Sierra Club book series, providing images for nearly every battle of theirs in the 1960s and 1970s. When David Brower, the director of the club and creator of the book series, needed images to help preserve an endangered landscape, Philip and camera went to work. Books in which his photographs are instrumental to the cause of protecting endangered landscapes include The Last Redwoods, Slickrock, Island in Time: The Point Reyes Peninsula, Time and the River Flowing, Navajo Wildlands, The Wild Cascades: Forgotten Wildlands and This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers.
I recently tackled the arduous task of reorganising the galleries on my website. The most difficult part of the process was deciding what of my earlier work to include if any. It wasn’t so much a question of quality as one of deciding which work best represents the photographer I am today. After much hand wringing and back and forth, I ultimately chose to include some of my earlier work and exclude the rest, but I still feel uneasy about the decision and the question has continued to nag at me.
Like most photographers, there are distinct periods to my work.
There was nothing in my work to differentiate me from the throngs of other photographers. That all changed five years ago when I began to make much more creative, personally expressive work, an evolution that continues to this day. The question I have been wrestling with is, how do I regard the work prior to this shift? Do I ignore it or embrace it?
When I was asked to choose a favourite photograph to write about, I cast my mind back to the various photographers I admire and that have influenced me during my 35 plus years as a keen amateur. Ansel Adams, Joe Cornish, Charlie Waite and Freeman Patterson immediately sprung to my attention. More recently I have enjoyed work by Valda Bailey, Doug Chinnery and Sandra Bartocha amongst others. Each of these is very well known in the photographic community but my choice of Nel Talen may be less so, especially outside of Holland.
I first encountered Nel’s work through the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition. She was a finalist in the creative category with a very delicate, ethereal composition that immediately resonated with me. I took a look at her website and found an amazing body of work that intrigued and delighted. I could have chosen any one of many as a ‘favourite image’ and eventually settled on one titled ‘Fluitenkruid’ which translates as cow parsley.
The title may be simple but the image is full of depth and complexity. For me, it combines two potentially competing but ultimately satisfying aspects of Nel’s work, that of delicacy but also a darker, more mysterious, moodiness. The cow parsley provides the light, inviting aspect of the photograph, while the darker trees add an air of foreboding. Lack of detail in the background adds to the impressionistic feel while the softer tones of the foliage support the airiness of the cow parsley. It takes me back to childhood memories of nearby woodlands that my parents warned me about entering. Of course, natural curiosity overcame any fears and I discovered the joys of wandering amongst the trees and foliage.
Hello and welcome to On Landscape, I’m sitting outside in the sun with Andrew and Grant Bulloch who have driven up from Edinburgh today. They’ve been taking advantage of the recent spell of nice weather to do a little photography and also to be able to sit outside at a Covid safe distance to tell us a little about their photography.
Tim: Our readers may have heard of Andrew Bulloch before as you won the Youth Category of the Landscape Photographer of the Year in 2017. Could you tell me a little bit about how you got into photography and how you ended up entering and winning the category?
Andrew: Well, I got given a camera for my birthday, just a little point and shoot really. And then I went on a camping trip with one of our friends up at Loch Ossian. One morning we woke up, well, I woke up because everyone else was still in bed, and the Loch was completely calm and stunning. So I took out my camera, went down to take a few snaps and it was serene, so calm. That was pretty much when I first thought that it would be good fun taking photographs.
Andrew Bulloch
T: And being able to get up early in the morning is definitely a good asset to have as a landscape photographer. Not one I’m blessed with sadly. I imagine with a good result from your first photography you started to go out regularly?
A: Yes, because after we got back Dad said “Oh they’re quite good”, he was probably a bit jealous, and he entered it into the Scottish Nature Photography Awards and I think it got Commended, which I was surprised by considering it was my first shot at photography. After that we got out all of the time and take a camera everywhere just in case.
T: And your Dad is a photograph as well?
Grant: I’m not a full-time photographer, I’m an architect by profession and I have an architecture practice to run. We really started at the same time though. When I was young I had a camera too and I remember a family friend taking us up North to Skye, up the West coast to Ullapool and places like that. I remember also waking up quite early and going down to the water’s edge overlooking Gruinard Island, and those were the days when it was still contaminated with Anthrax, and it was 4am and I remember taking a photograph as well which I’ve only remembered recently.
T: Did you stop and then take it up again more recently then?
G: Yes, I didn’t take it all that seriously. I was studying architecture and had a young family and it was until really the same time as Andrew took it up that I decided I wanted to do this properly. I got a decent camera and eventually, I gave Andrew my old SLR camera. So we’ve been learning together.
T: So you’ve been out on many trips together I imagine. Is it mostly Scotland?
A: Yes, pretty much all Scotland.
T: When you’ve got it on your doorstep why would you not.
A: Exactly! It’s not far and it’s pretty much one of the best places you can got.
T: So where are some of your favourite places to go?
A: One of my favourite trips is when we went up to Assynt. I’d finished my exams quite early because they were all at the start of term so then I had a few weeks off while the rest of my friends were all still studying so we just took the car up and went for a few days canoeing near Suilven, camping and we walked up to the top to get a kind of sunrise, which never really happened, but it was a really good trip.
G: We ended up on Suilven by 10am in the morning I think and it took us three hours to paddle in against the wind and one hour to paddle back out again because it was so strong.
Andrew Bulloch
T: I’m looking at another picture from an urban environment, tell me about this picture of an Aurora in front of an urban skatepark.
A: Yes, that’s from Musselburgh, just East of Edinburgh and that was in March 2016 when there was a really big Aurora. I was actually in the car on the way back from Church and we could literally see the green in the sky, and that was against all of the city lights in the centre of Edinburgh. At the same time as I was coming back, my Dad was texting saying “Look at the sky! Look at the Sky!” so we both sprinted back to the house, got all of our gear and went back out to Musselburgh harbour to go see it away from the lights. Once we’d got a few basic shots of the Aurora on its own we remembered before that we’d photographed the skate park and it would make a good foreground for a shot and this was the perfect opportunity.
T: It’s worked out with a great alignment against the North sky
G: And that was taken on the old Canon and I remember that if you went up above 400ISO it was like taking a shot through a tea bag. But he got the shot that night with such a bright aurora and mine were just not that good.
T: This was the photograph that won the competition for you?
A: Yes that’s the one that won the landscape photographer of the year.
T: I read in your email that Charlie gave you a personal call?
G: I got the call first. We were Sainsbury’s pushing the shopping trolley and the phone went with an unrecognisable number and the person on the phone said “My name’s Charlie Waite..”. In those days I hadn’t a clue who Charlie Waite was, I had no idea about the photographic scene, I didn’t know all the big names. I can’t remember how he worded it but he said something like “Is your son in the vicinity?”. I’m looking around down in the isles to see if somebody is stalking us or something but eventually, he explained who he was and so I had to leave the trolley and go out the front to discuss it and arrange a call for later when Andrew was at home.
when you submit the photos for Landscape Photographer of the Year you do it in March or something and then you don’t hear about anything until October so he’d forgotten he’d entered it.
T: So you set Andrew up for his own call then?
G: Yes but of course when you’re that age kid’s don’t answer the phone so we had to persuade him to go and answer the phone when it rang.
A: The phone rang and my Dad just said “That’s for you!” and I was like “How do you know?”
G: Of course when you submit the photos for Landscape Photographer of the Year you do it in March or something and then you don’t hear about anything until October so he’d forgotten he’d entered it. So he came through and said “Dad! I think I’ve won something!”
T: So you got to go down to the exhibition at Waterloo
A: Yes and you get to see all the photos and that’s the first time I’d seen it printed. I got to talk to all of the other photographers there too. I’d never really been to anything like that before and we had Ray Mears presenting the award too
Andrew Bulloch
T: We’re looking through a few of your photos here and this is another competition winner from the year after I think. I think this must be of the Beast from the East hitting Edinburgh from Arthur’s Seat. How did you get up there first of all because didn’t everything end up shut down?
A: Well yeah it did but this is only 10 minutes walk from our house. I’d actually been up earlier in the day with my friends. We’d been up sledging in a complete blizzard. But then when I got back it cleared up a little so I thought I’d see if I could get a photo from up there. And just as we got to the top there was just a perfect clearing with a view of the next weather front coming through. You just knew it was going to hit at any second. We met another Edinburgh photographer, Graham Niven up there and his photograph of the same view also won Scottish Landscape Photographer of the Year so obviously it was a winning formula.
G: I quite like the fact that the area of white in the bottom right there is the top of Salisbury Crag and it balances well with the top of the storm which is dark and foreboding. When you see it quite large it looks like the background is out of focus but it just because of the amount of snow billowing around the city. It was incredible.
T: It just down the Central Belt for a while didn’t it?
G: He was off school for a week so he was as happy as Larry! Coming off the summit though there were huge snowdrifts, which is just unhead of in Edinburgh. Andrew was up to his waist and we had to pull him out.
Andrew Bulloch
T: The next picture we’re looking at is a sort of urban wildscape. A football field in the middle of nowhere!
A: Yes, this was on Eriskay. This was a rather wet Summer holiday in North Uist and one of days was just so dismal we thought why not just drive south to see what we find. This was at the point where we turned around and started to go back. We spotted the football pitch to play on it first as we had a football and I’m a keen footballer, so we had a wee two a side match, me and my Mum against my Dad and my Brother, I think they won, unfortunately.
T: Did you know the football field was there before you set off?
A: No, we didn’t have a clue. We just drove past and thought, “Wow! What a spot!”. There were sheep on the pitch and if you kicked the ball too hard it was in the sea.
T: It got picked up by FIFA did it?
G: It had already won an award and they had seen it from there, Scottish Nature Photography Awards, and it subsequently went on to win the Scottish Landscape Photographer of the year too. So they called and said “Hello it’s so and so from FIFA” and I’m thinking who’s FIFA? Is it a construction company? Eventually, it clicked and then after FIFA featured it, the BBC picked it up and then it became an article on the BBC website about the location.
Andrew Bulloch
T: This next picture of the Bowfiddle brings up a question of how you work together when you’re in the same location.
G: It’s inevitable that you’ll be pointing the camera in the same direction for many locations. We were just there two weeks ago where we were based in Findochty. We got up at sunrise hoping to get the sun rising through the hole in the Bow Fiddle. For this picture we were staying for New Year and the weather was terrible, absolutely howling. There’s a lovely little harbour down there and the waves would crash into the coast and explode over the harbour wall. We got some fantastic photos overlooking the harbour but every day we would look at the Bow Fiddle and say “Not today - no good at all” but one morning my wife and I decided to have a lie-in, not more sunrises. But the door slamming shut woke us up which woke my wife who looked out of the window and said “that’s Andrew, he’s heading off to the harbour, you’d better get up and chase him”. “Has he got my camera bag?” “yes!” Well, that was it, he might survive a dunking but my camera wouldn’t. I never did find him even though another photographer had seen him. On that morning Andrew had noticed that the corner of the rock had lit up and we realised it was worth another go. On the final day we went down and we were lucky with the weather. It was one of those moments where you think “this might be a good one” so I gave Andrew my camera so he could get the best possible result. We put a mark on the camera to indicate it was then Andrews photos from there on and this was the result. At the end of that morning we were just about to leave and I saw another photographer, Martin Devlin, was up on the edge of the rocks and he gave the whole thing a sense of scale, so I got down really low to bring some foreground in and it looks very different from Andrew’s shot. I don’t know what age Andrew was at the time, I think he was 14, but somehow he managed to set up my full-frame Nikon on the big tripod, on slippery rocks and get the ND filter in for a long exposure without breaking anything at all. I was quite impressed.
Grant Bulloch
T: So that photograph did quite well in the competitions as well didn’t it?
I think he was 14, but somehow he managed to set up my full-frame Nikon on the big tripod, on slippery rocks and get the ND filter in for a long exposure without breaking anything at all. I was quite impressed
A: Yes that one won the Classic View category
T: So that is really the one that everyone wants to win as well. It’s very competitive and I know a few people who have said they’d be happier winning the Classic View than any other category (apart from the money which makes a difference!).
So when you come up to Scotland are these dedicated photography trips?
A: Most of the time it’s just a family holiday that we try and force as many photographic stops into as possible. Much to the dismay of Mum and my brother so we have to be quick sometimes so we don’t get shouted at.
G: It’s difficult, especially when the kids are younger because you only have so much holiday you can take so we have to make the most of it. I think we’ve done quite well over the years though.
T: So where do you got out locally if you have the time?
G: East Lothian! North Berwick, Dumbar, the East Lothian coast definitely. We do a lot of urban photography in town as well. Just two weekends ago they had a stunning lightshow in Edinburgh.
Grant Bulloch
T: This next photograph we have another from the Islands I think. A yellow runway of flowers
G: Indeed - I don’t know where this came from. It was a school holiday so it must have been the start of July. We went up to Berneray for the day and walked right around the island. There’s a little community centre next to the car park where there was a discarded combine harvester in the field which was just random, sitting there, rusting away. Just behind it was this strip of yellow flowers. I just enjoy it because it’s the texture of the sky and clouds and the textures in the grasses. We’d missed most of the wildflowers so I don’t know how these appeared like this. If anybody knows how this happens I’d love to know.
T: And people can see some of these photographs at your exhibition coming up in Dundee
G: Yes in Dundee at the Dock Street Studios for the whole of September. We were offered the use of the gallery and obviously I just said yes and then thought what on earth have I done. It’s a large gallery and it’s going to take about forty pieces to fill it. Andrew had already had a couple of small exhibitions, one which was a celebration of his first few years.
T: Was this local to Edinburgh?
A: Yes that was at Winton Castle just out of East Lothian. Some very nice friends of ours loaned us the front room and we invited everyone we knew to come and see the images. You see things totally differently when you see them up on the wall, I’d only seen them on computer screens before. Suddenly it’s printed out and sometimes they look a lot better than you had thought.
G: It is interesting because we’ve had one or two that just didn’t work as prints. It’s strange how your perception changes when you see it on paper but some are just great. We sold about a third of the pictures in the exhibition over a weekend which was very good. We had some leftover at the end, as many do, so when the offer for the gallery in Dundee came up we said let’s just go for it and we’ll celebrate both of our photography experiences together.
T: How did you go about choosing which photographs to exhibit then? There are obviously a few obvious ones.
A: Yes there are obviously some that have won the awards and some that we already had prints of. But there were a few that had never been printed before and we wanted to see what they looked like. It’s great to see them.
T: Who is printing them for you?
G: Loxley are printing them but we haven’t got them back yet. I’ve been to sign some of them and some we’re only showing as prints hung from beams with bulldog clips but anything on the wall will be properly framed. All of the ones were showing unframed will be printed on a museum rough paper so it will have a texture to. It’s going to be tough in September as we’ve still got Covid to deal with. How many people will come we don’t know. You have to try though.
Grant Bulloch
T: This next picture of yours Grant is just around the corner. Coire Gabhail, the Lost Valley.
G: Yes, we came up for a weekend before lockdown, this was just the week before, and the idea was that we were going to camp but the weather was absolutely horrific. It poured down. I don’t mind the cold but the rain was relentless. So we managed to find some accommodation for the night and came back the next morning and none of the vistas were going to work. So we thought we’ll just concentrate on the water, the rivers, the waterfalls, whatever we can find. We actually set ourselves a little task of focussing purely on that, which is not something we normally do, we usually go out and just photograph what’s available. We don’t go out trying to work on a theme or a project portfolio.
T: You mentioned that this was inspired by the fact that the Landscape Photographer of the Year had a new Portfolio category, photographs with some connection?
G: That’s right. We don’t normally go out and think about competitions but the idea of a set of pictures was in the back of our minds when we were doing this.
T: So whereabouts was this taken from?
A: This was up the Lost Valley, just before you cross the stream on the top path where you can look across at the other side. I really liked all the little trees growing out of almost nothing and with waterfalls appearing everywhere. There were loads of different compositions you could find.
T: Will this be in the exhibition then?
G: This one will be and Andrew has one in with a different composition. They will work well on the museum rough paper as well. I enjoyed the day, it’s one of those compositions where the image just worked in the viewfinder. The colours just stood out and you could see the water dripping off every single leaf. It’s not my usual thing as a lot of what I do is quite simple but this is quite different.
T: Not many people photograph in the Lost Valley as well because the light can be quite difficult.
G: Andrew’s photograph had some difficulties with the light from the end of the valley where the grass stood out too brightly so we had to wait until it dulled down a little too much.
Grant Bulloch
T: and our final picture from Rothiemurchus
G: We had a weekend with just my wife and I, without any children. We went for a walk towards Lairig Ghru. It was a grey day with nothing much happening but I took all my camera equipment, I always do, and it was just beautiful. We didn’t quite make it as far as Lairig Ghru as it was cold and windy. So we turned back and it was just about half an hour back through the forest and there was just a glimmer of sunlight and I thought ‘this is it’. This was where we stood at the time and I didn’t even have time to get the tripod out, it was just a case of grab the camera. I did a focus stack but did it hand held, focussed on the tree in the distance, took a photograph focussed on the near tree. It was good enough. I like the soft light and although I’m not one for misty, soft tree photos, I like this, the colours, the softness of the forest floor. And again, this is one that should look great on the textured paper because of the pastelly colours.
T: Andrew, I know you’re off to University next year, do you have plans to travel for photography?
A: We did actually have plans to visit the Faroe Islands in May, just before the Coronavirus locked down the country, but obviously that hasn’t happened.
T: Where are you going to University then?
A: I’m going to be in Edinburgh but I’m hoping I’ll still be able to get out and do some photography at the weekends etc. It’s all online so I could do the course from anywhere!
T: You could do it from the Highlands then! Is all of it online now?
A: Most of it is going to be online but tutorials, etc will be face to face.
T: You’ve been very successful with your photography over the past few years, what plans do you have going forwards?
A: I don’t have any concrete plans as such, I’m just concentrating on the exhibition in Dundee.
T: So tell me a bit more about the exhibition
A: It’s running from the 3rd to the 26th of September
G: There’s a kind of private view on Saturday the 5th in the morning but because of COVID we have to have bookings so there’s an Eventbrite page you can book on. Andrew and I will be there on the 5th. The gallery is only open three days a week, Thursday Friday and Saturday but on the 12th we are also holding a couple of events. We’re trying to celebrate the subject of young photographers and families who photograph together so we’re having a family photo walk around Dundee. The idea is that kids will come along with parent or parents and a camera or phone and we’ll talk a bit about the photographs in the gallery and what he’s done and then they’ll go around the city with two or three suggested venues, the V&A, Discovery or Docks area for instance, and we’ll have people at those venues to help if they need any. Then we’ll all come back to the gallery, download their favourite photo from the day and we’ll print it out, put it on the wall and talk about it. I want them to say why they like the photo, we’ll say why we like it etc. We’re hoping it will just encourage young people to take part in photography just like Andrew has been encouraged by Charlie Waite or the Scottish Nature Photography Awards people who were absolutely fantastic.
T: We’ll include all the details in the magazine and hopefully you’ll have some of our readers visiting. Many thanks for coming today!
The exhibition is called Norðurland <Northlands> after the northern landscapes of both Scotland and Iceland. The venue is the Dock Street Studios, 10 Dock Street, Dundee DD1 4BT.
Dates: 3rd to 26th September, open Thursday to Saturday, 10am to 3pm
Private View: Saturday 5th September 10am to 1pm by booking only.
There is also a Family Photowalk on Saturday 12th from 12.30 to 3pm. A chance for kids to join the artists in the gallery, before going out on a photowalk round the city centre. Bring back your favourite photo, tell us why you like it and we’ll tell you why we love it too! Every participant will have their best photo hung in the gallery and can take it home after the exhibition closes. Kids are to bring a camera or mobile and an adult!
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!
Keiss Castle is perched precariously on eroding cliffs just outside the village of Keiss, it is a popular subject and living locally if I just want to go out for a few hours or less it's my goto place. It's constantly changing with it getting light almost all year long and the weather is generally on the stormy side but it can be calm. These are just a selection that cover these conditions and talen within the same 50 yards.
Ribeira da Palha (Straw stream) is a small lagoon just a few miles western from Pateira de Fermentelos, which is the largest natural lagoon in the Iberian Peninsula. It's a beautiful place, ten minutes drive from the town of Aveiro, so is a place I often visit just for a walk or most of the time with my camera bag.
Stokksnes peninsula with Vestrahorn mountains is my favourite photo location in Iceland, probably because my first work noted at the international photo contest in 2013 made here.
Cliffs with snowy peaks, black sand dunes with yellow grass, and stunning lagoon are as if created for landscape photography.
When I travelled with a photo group, I never had enough time in this remote place. During my last visit in February, I specifically chose a hotel nearby and spent three days there. I was lucky – the weather changed several times, and I was even able to take a picture of the northern lights.
For this set, I picked up four vertical shots made according to one scheme. Having a powerful Vestrahorn in the background, the task came down to finding an interesting foreground.
I use to work with Projects, that is to say, working on a theme, a region, a pond, and so on. But as winter had just ended, things weren’t, unfortunately, as usual. We have to stay at home for days. A time suitable for looking for books in our library that we haven‘t read for a long time.
I found a book that seemed appropriate: Winter Trees, of Sylvia Plath. As I read the first stanza of the poem Winter Trees, suddenly, I saw the portfolio.
Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road. ~ Stewart Brand
Thanks to our capacity for creative invention, technological progress has been part of the human experience in any age. It would be foolish to characterise technological progress as all good or all bad. The same kind of creative inventiveness has given us musical instruments and the guillotine, cellular phones and nuclear weapons, great novels and computer viruses. Creativity serves artists and scientists just as well as it serves bank robbers and corrupt politicians.
Just like it would be foolish to consider technological innovation as either good or bad without further qualification, it is also foolish to outright ignore advances in technology—to pretend they are not happening, or that they are of no consequences.
No matter how conservative or traditional we are, or wish to be, in our work, I believe that a proactive and rational approach to assimilating (or rejecting) new technologies is a better strategy than to be in denial of them.
Technology affects us whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we approve of it or not, whether we resist it or not. No matter how conservative or traditional we are, or wish to be, in our work, I believe that a proactive and rational approach to assimilating (or rejecting) new technologies is a better strategy than to be in denial of them.
A common slogan in the digital age in photography is, “you can’t fix it in software (or specifically in Photoshop),” implying that if you didn’t get everything “right” in the camera you have failed utterly to produce a usable or worthwhile photograph, and may as well discard the captured file (or piece of film). Not only is it a demonstrably untrue statement; it also treats as a fixed quantity something that is not—something that in fact evolves rapidly, in leaps and bounds—the capabilities of processing software. The myriad of sliders and checkboxes in most photo processing software in fact make it fairly easy to “fix” (at least to a degree) anything from colour and contrast to sharpness and filter effects, from qualities of light to dust specs on the sensor, from haze to aspect ratio, from exposure problems to optical distortion, and many more. I can’t count the number of times I revisited older images with newer software and was able to overcome and correct various flaws I couldn’t address at the time of capturing these images. As it turns out, there are in fact a great many things you can fix in software, and likely many more you will be able to fix in software in the years ahead.
For the third iteration of this column, I really wanted to feature the work of Anna Morgan, a landscape photographer from the United Kingdom living in British Columbia, Canada. I admire Anna’s photography because of how it can evoke powerful emotion in such quiet presentations of colour and subject. Like most photographer’s work that I find myself admiring, I adore how her photography does not depend upon location nor conditions to portray interest, emotion, and mood. While Anna’s work does occasionally focus on locations that have been photographed a great deal by other photographers, she does so in a way that feels unique to her vision and way of seeing the world. In much of her photography, I get the sense that the subject is much deeper than a collection of simple objects in nature, rather, each image asks the viewer to reflect deeper within oneself to find something more.
Take, for example, her images of the desert, especially those taken in Death Valley National Park – for me they convey a sense of solitude, longing, peace, and silence – all things I greatly crave in my own daily life. Viewing these images instantly relaxes me and forces me to take pause and consider the actual weight of things going on in my life. These images help me put things in perspective and provide solace through photography. This is an example of something that I think that a great landscape photographer can do through their images – produce an emotional reaction beyond the obvious and ordinary postcard photo “oohs and ahhs.”
Another aspect of Anna’s photography that I really enjoy is
Anna seems to take it to the next level in her simple and creative presentations of these natural areas, again, not by relying upon saturated colour, but instead relying on simplified composition, creative presentation, and soft quieter light.
seeing how she is able to photograph smaller details of larger scenes and use colour, lines, shapes, and careful composition to portray simplicity and order in a world filled with complexity and chaos. As someone who enjoys trying to take photographs like this myself, I find it incredibly difficult to find and arrange elements in a smaller scene in these ways and so I am always in admiration of those like Anna who can do it with such ease and success. Each image seems masterfully composed to include and exclude just the right things in order to tell a story or convey an emotional connection to a place or natural scene.
The video that Jane Fulton Alt created of the artist made book ‘The Burn’ still makes quite an impact, and quickly prompted Editor Tim Parkin to buy the published edition which he reviewed in On Landscape in 2014.
Much of Jane’s work evolves around cycles of life; whether we recognise it or not photography is both a response and an antidote for us all to personal circumstances as well as those that impinge upon our existence. This year more than ever seems like a good time to find out a little more about Jane’s photography.
Would you like to start by telling something about yourself – where you grew up, your education and early interests, and what that led you to do as a career?
I grew up in a suburb of Chicago. My parents were art collectors and probably my favourite high school class was art history. I graduated from the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago in the School of Social Service Administration. I worked as a clinical social worker as I raised my three children.
When my youngest child began grammar school, I began taking art classes at a local art centre. I was initially captivated by photography because I had an amazing teacher, Richard Olderman. He was a seeker of the meaning of life and brought his students along with him. The camera soon became a tool for more fully expressing my innermost concerns.
What kind of images did you initially set out to make? You’ve talked about learning the ‘poetry of photography’ which I think is a rather nice way to describe it.
I remember the exact moment in the darkroom when a friend turned to me and said, “I think you finally understand photography.” The content of the image was my daughter walking on a stone pathway in a garden. It was all about light, shadow and mystery. My contact sheets are like a daily diary. They serve as my “stream of consciousness” and guide me to the next body of work. My earliest photographs were of my family.
Who (photographers, artists or individuals) or what has most inspired you, or driven you forward in your own development as a photographer?
I love the pictorial qualities of Julia Margaret Cameron and the minimal, abstract qualities of Edward Weston’s peppers. Sally Mann’s Immediate Family and What Remainsportfolios have been inspirational. Southern photographer Debbie Flemming Caffery’s portraits of the south led to a solo workshop with her in Louisiana, which was life changing.
I have recently turned to the work of many painters, including Kandinsky, Matisse, Miro and Klee. And I love the poetry of Mark Strand, Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver, to name a few.
Metaphor has played an important role in my work and landscapes have been a good subject matter for the life cycles of all living things.
To a casual observer, your focus has shifted from responding to natural and man-made disasters, to an apparently quieter emphasis on the landscape. But even if it is not obvious, our presence is always felt, and the line commonly drawn between genres, what is and what isn’t landscape, is a largely artificial one?
Landscape photography can be widely interpreted. I have never really thought of my work as fitting into any one category. I tend to be drawn toward social issues and the natural world.
Metaphor has played an important role in my work and landscapes have been a good subject matter for the life cycles of all living things. I am currently working on the “landscape” of decomposing food. My eye sees the compost in the same way it sees a sprawling landscape. It is about content, form and light.
Would you like to choose 2-3 favourite photographs from your own portfolio and tell us a little about why they are special to you?
Burn No. 2
The photograph of the monarch butterfly above the fire, Burn No. 2, can be widely interpreted. It can reference any threat, including climate change, the world wide pandemic or the current unrest in the US. It is one of the few images I have deliberately manipulated and still holds a “staying power” for me.
Burn No.91
Burn No. 91, which is the placed in the centre of The Burn book is another important photograph. While immersing myself in the controlled burns, I focused more on the smoke and was, frankly, terrified of the violence of the raging fires. My sister passed away from ovarian cancer on November 18, 2014. The following day I made this photograph, with no reservation what so ever, confronting the acute the pain I was experiencing from the loss.
Burn No.98 Falling Ash
And finally, the falling ash photograph, Burn No. 98, is a favourite. I love this photograph for its pure abstract qualities of the ash falling through the air. The circumstance under which it was created is also significant.
I love this photograph for its pure abstract qualities of the ash falling through the air. The circumstance under which it was created is also significant.
That particular day, before I went out to shoot, I had decided it would be my last day photographing controlled burns…and then this photograph happened. It was a good reminder of impermanence and the infinite possibilities contained in a subject matter. There are often new and unexpected gifts that arrive at our doorstep when we least expect them.
Has it been important to let themes develop, for things and places to get under your skin, rather than to actively chase them?
I just listened to a podcast from the wonderful photographer Cig Harvey and she stated, “You can’t think your way into a body of work.” This has certainly been true for me. The work seems to find me. I have trust and faith in the camera and in my intuition.
Looking at the images in Water Works, it would be easy to think that they are about subject and form. But how much is about the fact that we are of and from water, and that you were in and on it to make them?
Immersing oneself in the environment has always been an important aspect in creating photographs and has helped me to find the essence of the subject. Deep familiarity with the subject is central to making a good photograph.
I was dipping into your archived blog posts. In “Judging ourselves and the Creative Process” you talked about the need to go inward rather than outward. It made me wonder whether in seeking validation, whatever form that may take (social media, competitions, portfolio reviews, etc.), photographers are heading in the wrong direction if they want to create individual work. Do we bring ourselves, and our work, into the light too soon?
I think the idea of “trying to make it” and seeking validation can be an interference, as the focus is pleasing someone else or feeding the ego. The work can get diluted and feel less authentic. It is best to work from the centre and trust your own voice.
I think the idea of “trying to make it” and seeking validation can be an interference, as the focus is pleasing someone else or feeding the ego. The work can get diluted and feel less authentic. It is best to work from the centre and trust your own voice.
I also think that not having gone on for an advanced degree in photography has served me well. I already had a profession and was just using the camera to try to better understand my life. I didn’t have expectations or care about making it…I just wanted to better understand my life through the lens of my camera.
I have thought a lot about what is happening in the world with the pandemic and climate change. I have learned so much about nature by just observing. The Burn has taught me so much about life cycles. Those images of regenerative destruction have a personal significance - I photographed my first burn within the space of a few days when my first grandchild was born and my sister began a course of chemotherapy - yet they constitute a universal metaphor: the moment when life and death are not contradictory but are a single process to be embraced as a whole. With this understanding, I can’t help but wonder if what is happening now is nature trying to self-correct, a cleansing so to speak, just like in the fires. I suppose this opinion necessitates taking a longer view of the very nature of existence.
Have you been moved to respond photographically to the pandemic?
As I mentioned, I photograph every day, wherever I am. My current circumstances are challenging and unexpected.
The act of photographing, searching for the light, always calms my mind. Many of the subjects I have photographed have been demanding, but the camera has been my faithful companion in facing these challenges.
I am surrounded by my grandchildren and am embedded in with daughter’s family without my studio. There is minimal quiet time so I try to go on solo walks when I can. I have found my wild place not far from the house and am finding myself continuing to focus on the primordial muck of life…contained in the swamp of decomposing food.
What has your photography allowed you to do that you haven’t been able to do through your social work?
They are two very different endeavours. My clinical social work profession focused on helping others.The photography was solely for me, addressing my inner life. Early on I began contemplating man’s widespread need for love and connection, which begins the moment we are born and ends the moment we take our last breath. How do we enter and exit the world? This exploration has been ongoing and the camera has been an invaluable tool, serving as a visual manifestation of those concerns.
Many of the situations that you’ve encountered have been challenging. What have you found to quieten the mind and to allow you a degree of simplicity?
While making photographs I often enter into a state of meditation. The act of photographing, searching for the light, always calms my mind. Many of the subjects I have photographed have been demanding, but the camera has been my faithful companion in facing these challenges.
What have you been working on recently? Do you have any particular projects or ambitions for the future or themes that you would like to explore further?
It has been a very bumpy year. My husband passed away last fall, the pandemic arrived and we have had 3½ years of turmoil in the US. I am always looking for the light, and given the challenges of today, it has become even more urgent. We all need more beauty in these times of chaos and darkness. My hope is to continue to focus on the mystery and beauty of life.
If you had to take a break from all things photographic for a week, what would you end up doing? What other hobbies or interests do you have?
I’m currently knitting, quilting, and making cyanotype masks for my family. I would love to delve into making sculptural objects from the natural world. I love to work with my hands.
And finally, is there someone whose photography you enjoy – perhaps someone that we may not have come across - and whose work you think we should feature in a future issue? They can be amateur or professional.
Do you want to create drama in your images? Let dark tones dominate. Are you keen to capture your viewers' attention? Let shadows do the heavy lifting. Do you want to inject mystery into your images? Allow swathes of darkly toned negative space to fire-up your viewers’ imagination.
Forgive me for hammering home my point. It is no accident that dominant shadows in an image encourage the viewer to imagine what might be lurking within them. Dark images can elicit a vicarious emotional response, heightening our senses and engaging us to imagine tension, isolation or a sense of danger.
Sunlight in the darkness Iceland
Unconsciously, we are drawn into the narrative of the image. We become totally engaged in the vision of the photographer. The response to black in an image is not restricted to negative emotions. Black has other connotations that can engage us in a positive way. Excitement, mystery, anticipation and intrigue can compel viewers to actively engage with an image.
Unconsciously, we are drawn into the narrative of the image. We become totally engaged in the vision of the photographer.
It is perhaps no accident that film directors such as Ridley Scott have so successfully used darkness to create uniquely compelling dystopian movies such as Blade Runner. Similarly, Don McCullum’s early landscapes of a post-industrial northern England and more latterly his bleak winter landscapes around his home in Somerset, use dark tones and shadows to create a powerful sense of drama and tension.
As a hillwalker and backpacker who seeks images in wild mountain landscapes, I’ve long believed that these journeys fall into one of two categories – image first, or adventure first. Put another way, what is the main objective? If you’re heading out there looking for specific images, chances are that everything else is secondary to that goal. You’re carrying more photographic gear, and once you have the images you want it’s probably time to head home. Adventure-first trips, by contrast, are all about the experience of being out in the wild, and any images you create are a nice bonus. You’re probably carrying less gear and you might not care if conditions are less than perfect.
For the last few years, I’ve been firmly in the second camp. My trips have been lightweight and ambitious, usually carrying the bare minimum of camera kit; if you put yourself in the path of adventure often enough, and if the adventures are good enough, the images will come. So, the theory goes. Though there’s some truth in it, I’d long been curious to see if there might be room for a middle path. Could I combine slow, thoughtful, previsualised landscape photography with a big winter mountain journey?
The plan
When a gap in my calendar coincided with a stunning forecast in early March 2020, I decided to see if I could have my cake and eat it too.
I wanted to head deep into the Cairngorms to one of the places I’d longed to photograph in winter for many years; the Loch A’an Basin. The route I’d planned was ambitious for winter, at over 30 miles in length and crossing three Munros – doubly ambitious with such deep snow cover.
I wanted to head deep into the Cairngorms to one of the places I’d longed to photograph in winter for many years; the Loch A’an Basin. The route I’d planned was ambitious for winter, at over 30 miles in length and crossing three Munros – doubly ambitious with such deep snow cover. I’d need snowshoes and winter camping gear, which would result in a heavy pack. Additional lenses, tripods, filters and other photographic items would add to my burden.
I knew what I wanted. There were two views in particular: a shot looking directly along the frozen length of Loch A’an to the dramatic Shelter Stone Crag from the slopes of A’ Choinneach, and a dawn image of the Shelter Stone Crag, Hell’s Lum and the Stag Rocks from Beinn Mheadhoin. The first would require a telephoto lens, the second a moderate wide-angle. There were a few other images I was looking for as well, including one in Rothiemurchus forest and – if conditions behaved themselves – an image of the Belt of Venus illuminating Stob Coire Sputan Dearg.
My bag, when packed, looked gigantic. The weight was nothing short of appalling. I felt tempted to abandon plans for intentional landscape photography and stick to the run-and-gun approach I knew best, but another look at the forecast convinced me; this was as good a chance as I’d ever get.
A walk through the woods
It started with a walk up through Rothiemurchus to Glenmore, where I’d arranged to meet my friend Chris Townsend. Although I’d done this walk several times before, there’s always something new to see in the forest and I took my time on the clear paths between the trees, always on the lookout for potential images. Opportunistic snaps aside, my chance for something a bit more studied came at a ford. I took my time setting up the tripod and spent fifteen minutes experimenting with light, form, movement, and composition. It was time well spent. I came away with an image that pleased me – nothing spectacular, but closer to what I was looking for than I’d have managed without those extra minutes of study and contemplation. I resisted the urge to look at my watch and feel bad about my slow progress. This was what I wanted. Above me, a perfect snowline reflected bright sunlight.
A ford in the forest
‘I’ve lived here for thirty years, and I never tire of the place,’ Chris said to me a few hours later as we walked up through regenerating pine forest to Ryvoan Pass. ‘There’s always something new to see.’
The drama of the Cairngorms is a flighty thing; in the right conditions there’s nowhere in Scotland with such presence, such majesty, but in the wrong conditions they can seem almost without scale, lending a flatness to views.
We camped beside the River Nethy, at a flat spot with good views into the Cairngorms where the thin snow cover had partially melted away. I’d originally planned a high camp up on the plateau for that first night. We hadn’t managed to walk as far as I’d hoped that afternoon, but as we wound down from the day’s walk and pitched our tiny backpacking tents beside the river in the deepening evening chill, I didn’t really mind.
A view along Loch A’an
Overnight, the temperature dropped to -2.5 degrees C – enough to firm up the snow outside my tent and add a delicate tracery of frost to the inside as I brewed coffee and warmed up. Dawn painted brushstrokes of extraordinary pastel colours over half the sky.
Our ascent of Bynack More was easier than expected in the deep snow thanks to the snowshoes we both carried. The glare from sunshine soon became strong enough that we needed sunglasses, and I began to worry that the light would be poor for landscape photography as more and more of the wispy high-level cloud seemed to be dissipating. The drama of the Cairngorms is a flighty thing; in the right conditions there’s nowhere in Scotland with such presence, such majesty, but in the wrong conditions they can seem almost without scale, lending a flatness to views. Good light and detail in the sky are needed to bring out the best in the Cairngorms.
I felt more hopeful as we neared the summit ridge. More cloud had started to blow in, but not too much. The sun had melted off some of the snow on the rocks, but deep sculpted drifts filled every hollow and scoop. Above, the mountain’s ridge rose in a bulky crest to the 1,090m summit where I knew there were excellent views into the heart of the Cairngorms. The landscape was coming to life.
Into the heart of the Cairngorms from the summit of Bynack More
I said goodbye to Chris at the base of the summit ridge. He had things to do later that day, and decided to return home via a different route. Meanwhile, I headed on up, soon swapping snowshoes for crampons as the angle steepened and the snow hardened. An ice axe was needed here too. I kept my camera in its bag until I reached the top. The views from the summit were magnificent and far-reaching, and I changed lenses to capture interesting details on distant mountains. Clouds were swirling over the peaks around Loch A’an now – where I was heading next – and I knew that if I were patient, I’d get the images I was looking for.
Spot the distant figures
Snowshoes back on for the descent from the summit, I crossed a broad plateau of unbroken snow and navigated to the subsidiary top of A’ Choinneach where my planned view unfolded in full. Clouds boiled dramatic and dark over the Shelter Stone Crag 5km to the south-west. Loch A’an itself was completely frozen over and covered in deep snow. Everything I’d imagined had all come together: a foreground of exposed rocks, a layered view with depth and grandeur, and a sky to match. Despite being early afternoon, the light – high-key yet with a soft quality over the summits – worked for me. I captured my image and continued on my descent towards the frozen shores of the loch.
Everything I’d imagined had all come together: a foreground of exposed rocks, a layered view with depth and grandeur, and a sky to match. Despite being early afternoon, the light – high-key yet with a soft quality over the summits – worked for me.
One of the images I’d come for, looking along the length of Loch A’an
A night on the plateau
Thanks to the deep snow, the journey around the loch shore took a lot longer than I’d planned. I found myself spellbound by the intricate patterns in the ice at my feet. Wind, precipitation and freeze-thaw cycles had driven the surface of the loch into ridges and bands of entrancing colour and texture. It was an entire landscape on a tiny scale. Although the cliffs of the Shelter Stone Crag ahead were increasingly impossible to ignore, a wild Himalayan scene of cornices and couloirs, it was not the macroscopic that most interested me for now but the microscopic.
A microscopic Loch A’an landscape
Silence, stillness, and frost
I made it to the summit plateau of Beinn Mheadhoin (1,182m) about an hour before sunset. The pull up from Loch Etchachan (also frozen) had been exhausting. Although the temptation was to start scouting for images right away, I attended to priorities first; setting up a safe and comfortable home for the night, starting with finding somewhere flat to camp. With such uniform cover of frozen snow, I had almost limitless opportunities. My only challenge was creating secure anchor points for my tent pegs in the firm snow. As I worked on autopilot, I was dimly aware of glorious but fleeting light washing over the landscape.
By the time my tent was up and I could spare attention and energy for the landscape again, the light was gone and any opportunity for images with it.
I was disappointed. Arriving half an hour earlier would have made all the difference. Telling myself that I’d get up before dawn, I cooked some dinner and turned in for the night. The temperature was already well below freezing. I had a hunch it would get very cold indeed up here on the summit plateau.
At about 19.00, sensing the soft radiance of moonlight outside, I laboriously got dressed again inside my sleeping bag, pulled on my down jacket and boots, unzipped the frost-twinkling flysheet, and crunch-crunch-crunched out over the snow with my camera in hand. The starfield above failed to compete with the fading afterglow of sunset, or with the brash waxing moon. The silence and the isolation thrilled me as I stood alone in the midst of the vast subarctic plateau of the Cairngorms. Whether or not I came away with any more images, this was worth it.
The silence and the isolation thrilled me as I stood alone in the midst of the vast subarctic plateau of the Cairngorms. Whether or not I came away with any more images, this was worth it.
Getting what I came for
My high overnight perch on the summit of Beinn Mheadhoin
Waking up early enough for some dawn photography wasn’t hard, but getting out of my sleeping bag was. My watch had measured an overnight low of -7 degrees C. At 06.20 I was melting snow for coffee and by 06.45 I was in position with my tripod and camera. This time, I promised myself, I’d be ready.
Dawn glow over the summit of Cairn Gorm
The light was brief, but it came. After a fiery burst on the eastern horizon, pale and subtle colours lit up the mountains and clouds. The best of the light lasted no more than thirty seconds but I knew that I’d captured one of the images I’d come for; a long shot looking over Coire Sputan Dearg with the Belt of Venus glowing softly above. An hour later, after striking camp and beginning the walk back down to Coire Etchachan, I was treated to extraordinarily clear views towards the Shelter Stone Crag and over the plateau where I’d be snowshoeing out later that day. The photograph almost made itself, and ironically when I later came to process images this became my favourite from the entire trip. Previsualisation and planning had helped me to make the most of the excellent conditions, but there’s still something to be said for just being in the right place at the right time.
The Belt of Venus over Stob Coire Sputan Dearg
Cairngorms clarity
An incredible depth of snow in Coire Etchachan
A ford in the forest
Into the heart of the Cairngorms from the summit of Bynack More
Spot the distant figures
One of the images I’d come for, looking along the length of Loch A’an
A monochrome vision along the frozen shores of the loch
A microscopic Loch A’an landscape
Silence, stillness, and frost
Look down – there’s plenty of interest at your feet too
Dawn glow over the summit of Cairn Gorm
The Belt of Venus over Stob Coire Sputan Dearg
My high overnight perch on the summit of Beinn Mheadhoin
Cairngorms clarity
Looking south
A hastily revealed view in increasingly cloudy conditions
Three rules for life: Pay attention, Be Amazed, Tell About it ~ Mary Oliver
Years ago, my doctor told me that in order to avoid getting diabetes I would need to change my diet and exercise or begin taking medicine. Wishing to avoid taking medicine I asked how far I would need to walk. “Five Miles!” ……. Five miles a day? “Yes, every day!”
Well, what I thought was an enormous burden, removing an hour and a half from my twenty-four hours, has metamorphosed into an enormous gift. I started paying attention, fresh air, constantly changing weather, light, clouds, and seasons. I could not walk into the same river of life twice, the river changed, never the same. Then I began carrying a camera on my walks.
I would not set an agenda for what I might find and shoot, just set out paying attention and allowing some combination of elements to arrange themselves for a possible image. I often recall Mary Oliver’s three rules. The urge to bring the camera to the eye and record those elements has its ebbs and flows as focus and interests evolve. My challenge has been to edit my way through the 30 to 60 images I found that day. My telling about it is an expressive image.
Well, what I thought was an enormous burden, removing an hour and a half from my twenty-four hours, has metamorphosed into an enormous gift.
Zion National Park is not at our backdoor. It is three hundred miles south of our home in Salt Lake City, Utah. A six-hour drive. So, our trips there are intentional and last from three to seven days each. Every season of the year has its own rewards and beauty, spring greens, delicate and soft, deep green trees mid-summer, brilliant reds, yellows and greens in autumn and leafless trunks, branches and twigs catch the winter light.
Our recent visits have been during the winter months, January through March. Because the crowds are smaller, we are able to use our automobile to go to starting points for walks. Spring, Summer and Fall shuttle busses transport crowds up and down the narrow road at the base of the canyon that follows the Virgin River, the force that over eons has eroded and carved the place we know today.
A river runs through it. The Virgin River. It has cut through nine layers of soft sandstone over many thousand years, leaving a multi-coloured canyon that is sometimes narrow and sometimes wide.
David Ward has influenced my photography a number of times during photo workshops. When not finding appropriate subject matter while next to a river, he suggested that I look for the energy and force of the water. Another time I was resolved to make an image of an island in a lake when he asked if I had been to see the forest nearby. I was awakened to the forces of moving water and the wonder of woodlands after following him into the forest.
Among other elements that have caused me to see image making opportunities at Zion National Park have been the movement of the Virgin River and the woodlands among the towering sandstone walls of the canyon. The images here are selected from a larger body of work over three decades that we have edited into a photography book. An eBook version is available gratis at Blurb.com - Zion National Park, Utah, Colleen Smith and Wayne Bingham.
Cottonwood trees grow there and show lovely, soft spring green leaves as the season begins, and develop a deep rich green that contrasts with the dark red sandstone walls, then fall brings brilliant colours of red and yellow, again contrasting with the age-old vertical walls of the canyon. And in winter, shorn of leaves the naked trunks, branches and stems stand in stark contrast to the deep reds of the walls.
However, they almost disappear when the shade of the low angle sun absorbs them into the deep shadows. When conditions are just right, with no clouds, the sun’s rays peek above the canyon cliffs and touch the trees and they become luminescent and glow.
Cottonwood trees grow there and show lovely, soft spring green leaves as the season begins, and develop a deep rich green that contrasts with the dark red sandstone walls, then fall brings brilliant colours of red and yellow, again contrasting with the age-old vertical walls of the canyon.
I have wandered the trails along the river for miles during this wintertime wonder and been amazed at the different presentations of light captured by the trees contrasting with the dark red sandstone. A singular tree or clusters of them luminescent.
The structure of the trees is fully expressed, gnarled trunks leading to branches that go in all directions leading to small twigs, somewhat like an x-ray of the trees. This in contrast to other seasons where a trunk supports a green or red leaf laden mass. Larger trunks and branches are darker in tone than the smaller twigs.
For the past six years, I have been using Micro Four Thirds cameras and lenses made by Olympus. All of the images in this article were made using this equipment. I always shoot in the Raw format and organise utilising the database features of Adobe Lightroom, then develop further to meet my visual objectives.
I’ve asked myself why I am drawn to make images of these trees. No leaves, no deep, rich summer colour, no reds and yellows of fall. Naked they stand, aglow. Perhaps it is the subtleness of the wood catching light against the dark stone. It has been a challenge to get the exposure just right to service both foreground and background, the light and the dark.
Perhaps it is their dormant state having shed their foliage for the onslaught of winter storms, waiting to express themselves again come spring and summer.
It feels like the answer is a combination of both the subtleness of the naked trees and the promise of future growth that has brought me the satisfaction of making these images.
The sap has stopped running and will surge again when warmth returns, adding not only new leaves to what was, but growing new branches, thickening the trunks.
It feels like the answer is a combination of both the subtleness of the naked trees and the promise of future growth that has brought me the satisfaction of making these images.
Colleen and I never tire of returning to Zion National Park and it was on our schedule in March of this year prior to the Coronavirus pandemic. Cancelled, but will certainly be on a future agenda.
I have wanted to write an article about Robert Adams for some time. Not because I know a lot about him. On the contrary, it is because I know so little about him that I wanted an excuse to find out more. Since Joe Cornish and I recorded our discussion of Robert Adams’ “Beauty in Photography”, I decided there was no better time than now to do so. Firstly I needed to buy a few books to get an overview of his work. This itself is quite the challenge because he has been so prolific, having produced over 30 books in his career. I decided to purchase a range of books from early work to more recent projects. Whilst awaiting the arrival of these, I reviewed what I knew of him.
It would be difficult to argue with the proposition that all landscape is habitat.
Across the world, animals thrive and make their homes in every niche of the ecosystem. With wildlife film-making being the widely disseminated art form that it is, everyone is aware of the sheer variety and peculiarity of the natural world, evolved through time and adaptation. Now we are also increasingly aware of its fragility, usually due to habitat destruction, disturbance, and climate change for which we humans are mainly responsible.
My own interest in wild animals is strong, but my photographic endeavours with wildlife were almost non-existent until a trip to Antarctica in 2013. On this and subsequent tours, my role has been to give photographic support and lectures and to encourage a wider interest in the landscape. The majority of my fellow travellers have been wildlife enthusiasts, many of them capable photographers. Their patience and enthusiasm have encouraged me to observe and consider the lives of animals more closely.
With great trepidation, I accepted the assignment to do an End Frame for On Landscape. I agonised for some time over what image would be considered my favourite and came to the conclusion that there have been many favourite influential images for me over the years. One I remain enamoured with, as much today as the first moment I saw it, is Metamorphosis by Alister Benn.
Metamorphosis is a dark, brooding, image that is, beautifully composed and technically excellent, as is typical of Alister’s work. Looking at the image I think one of the things that grabbed my attention immediately is the exotic seaside location. Since my own home base has been the Canadian Rockies for many years now a dark granite channel on the coast of Cornwall is, to me, exotic. The very location exudes danger and I suspect is not a place you want to be in a storm. The water worn rock speaks of centuries of weathering storms and evokes the scent of sea. When I view Metamorphosis, I can smell the brine, decaying organisms, hear the roar of the sea and feel the ocean spray on my face.
Being as the lockdown has put a bit of a dampener on the concept of Passing Through, we've decided to go virtual and have a remote chat with Paul Gallagher about what he has been up to since we spoke to him last. He's included images from China, Norway, the United States and also from our own backyard in Scotland. We hope you enjoy some of Paul's 'shades of grey'.
