We put a call out for question for our third lockdown podcast with Joe Cornish and David Ward and the response has been fantastic. We're going to have to split the questions across two chats so sorry if we miss your questions this time.
As mentioned in this episode, we are looking at having a mini 'in your house' photography challenge. All three of us are going to give this a go and we invite anybody else who wishes to take part to submit some work. The only rules are that it has to be inside your house, not in your garden or out of a window.
We also mention that we're having a mini book club chat next week where myself and David Ward are going to talk about Edward Muybridge, in particular the book "Motion Studies" and me and Joe Cornish are going to talk about Robert Adams book "Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values". We'll be discussing these in two weeks time if you'd like to read them and ask us questions about them, please let us know.
Last month we set up a survey to find out a little bit more about our subscribers and also what they think about current and potential future content. We were blown away with the number of responses and we promised to give you an update on the results. The following post shows the results and some conclusions we can draw from them.
Q1 How long have you been a photographer
Looks like the vast majority are over 15 years - we’re an experienced bunch in general!
Q2 Country of Origin
More than half of the respondents were from the United Kingdom, out of the remainder, 1 in 6 were from the US, 1 in 6 from the rest of Europe and 1 in 20 from Australia with a smattering of respondents from other countries. Here’s the top results
Q3 How long have you been a subscriber to On Landscape
It looks like most of your were early adopters so a big thanks for sticking with us! We’re still gaining subscribers and there’s a natural churn where people leave for a while but many who have left have since returned.
Q4 My photography is mostly outdoors/landscape
Well, this is a bit of a ”well.. duh!!” question but we thought it worth asking if there were a significant number of your for whom landscape isn’t your primary choice. I think we’ve confirmed expectations though.
Q5 I don’t care about the technical side of photography
This one is a bit of a curveball as personally I figured people would still care about technical matters, even if they fall strongly on the ‘artistic’ side of photography. After all the technical stuff is the craft of our passion. It turns out that this is true, very few of our readers strongly agreed with the premise with the vast majority either disagreeing or not expressing an opinion either way. Intelligent analysis of the technical side of photography is still on the menu.
Q6 What other websites/magazines do you read?
We had a selection of answers, here’s a sampling of the more common ones.
RPS Journal
The Online Photographer
PhotoPXL
Outdoor Photography
Lenswork
FujiLove
Minimalism
Black and White Photography
Petapixel
Better Photography
Amateur Photographer
Outdoor Photographer
DigiLloyd
Brooks Jensen
Aperture
BJP
Lenscratch
byThom
Q7 How many On Landscape articles do you read per issue
Looks like most of you read most of them. We always planned on having a broad range of articles where readers might pick and choose what they want to read, hence why we publish such a range of content. The logic follows on a metaphor we use from music magazines where a reader may only read about the bands or music style that matches their own tastes.
Q8 Let us know what you think of the current or new types of content
We wanted to know what sort of articles you liked or might want to see more of in the future (and conversely, what you could do without). Not too many surprises but we’ll see some more book reviews, critiquing, composition, printing and post-processing in the future.
Q9 Where should we focus our efforts to improve the content of the magazine?
This was really interesting as we received many excellent comments. What we gathered from this is that you’d like to see a but more geographical distribution of photographers (we’re working on that); you’d like to see some more quality, concise videos (more about that later). Generally, it seems you want to keep the concentration on the creative side of photography and bring more content around composition, working in the field etc.
Q10 How do you read On Landscape content?
Looks like most of you prefer to use the PDF, which isn’t completely surprising, although a significant number still like to read the articles as they come out online.
Q11 What device do you use to read the magazine?
Most of you still use your laptop, desktop or tablet to read the magazine with about an even split between computers and tablets.
Q12 Do you enjoy the video content we produce?
A fairly strong response in support of video content I think.
Q13 Do you enjoy the audio content we produce?
A general yes but not as strong as support for video content
Q14 We’re looking to create some more video content, what would you like to see
The main theme of the responses was to create more on location footage but also to carry on producing our screencasts and webinars.
Q15 Let us know what we could do to improve the website
It seems that there is general satisfaction with the themes raised. The mobile theme could do with some improvement it seems and the search could be improved, both of which we have done some work towards and have plans to work on in the near future.
Q16 What should we concentrate our efforts on to improve the website?
A good range of responses and it’s raised a couple of bugs (login isn’t remembered being the main one but also bugs with the search functionality which we’ve now removed temporarily as the plugin we were using was broken). Thanks for all of the detailed feedback here!
Q17 What was it about On Landscape that convinced you to subscribe?
I think a summary of what was said here is that we have sincerity, quality and a range of content that is difficult to find elsewhere and the content tends toward the analysis of the art, philosophy and creativity rather than the technical.
Q18 What do we need to avoid to stop you unsubscribing?
In summary, don’t get too technical/gear oriented, don’t recycle cliche memes, don’t go “tips and top 5’s”, don’t take loads of advertising, don’t naval gaze too much, don’t sacrifice written content for video and don’t put the price up!
A huge thank you for the hundreds of you that took the time to complete the long survey and so many of you who wrote detailed text answers to the open questions. We'll keep trying to improve things without breaking the current general approach to the magazine. And you can let us know how we did in another five years!
Arguably, one of the hardest tricks in photography is to make genuinely different, interesting photographs of extremely well-known – iconic (for want of a better word) – places. An important question now that the world according to Instagram has only served to amplify the popularity of popular subjects.
But isn’t it rather tedious to shoot well-known places? I recall telling friends many years ago that I would never photograph Eilean Donan castle in Scotland because it was mercilessly exploited by shortbread manufacturers, jigsaw puzzle makers and every industry looking for a quick and easy commodification of Scotland’s history and landscape identity. It was – is – an icon.
Eilean Donan, Scotland
Arguably, one of the hardest tricks in photography is to make genuinely different, interesting photographs of extremely well-known – iconic (for want of a better word) – places.
Eilean Donan, Scotland
Perhaps I was frightened that I’d be unable to do something different with it. But then I was commissioned by VisitBritain to photograph it, and while I might like to think I am principled, I am not principled enough, yet, to turn down genuine employment as a working photographer!
I swallowed my anti-commercial pride and shot the castle over the course of a long winter morning. I did have to rise around 4.30am in order to drive there from Glen Coe and still be ready to scout before sunrise. And having made pictures from a slightly elevated position of the moon setting behind the castle it occurred to me that an alternative perspective might be provided by the steep sides of Creag Reidh Raineach directly behind me. It’s still Eilean Donan. Just seen differently.
It is, arguably, the problem-solving nature of seeking out the new, or ‘original’ view on a much-loved, familiar and over-photographed subject that makes the endeavour still fun, and worthwhile.
For this issue, we’re catching up with Magnus Lindbom, a landscape photographer from Sweden who featured in Issue 53. You’ll find Tim’s original interview here. Magnus spends a lot of his time in the Swedish Mountains, punctuated by assignments to Norway and Iceland.
What has given you the most enjoyment, photographically speaking, since Tim spoke to you in 2013?
The more photography I do, the more I enjoy digging deeper into things, and I think what’s given me the most enjoyment in the last few years has been to explore different areas (and seasons) here in the Swedish mountains. Not only is it fascinating to see new places but it also inspires me to try new things photographically. I guess as a landscape photographer you really are the sum of what you have experienced, right?
You’ve assumed a lower profile online over the last couple of years. Why did you decide to give yourself some breathing space, and what have you been up to?
I just felt that I wanted to focus on the photography and experimenting with new ideas, and not be distracted by social media etc. I must admit that it was quite liberating, although in the end not sharing what you do becomes somewhat suffocating. As with everything, you have to find a balance between doing the work and sharing the work.
To me, the adventures have always been the foundation for my photography, but of course, as I have developed as a photographer over the years my way of doing them has also changed. The adventures have become more focused on a theme that I want to explore photographically.
In the current lockdown, it's no surprise that there aren't many people 'passing through' Glencoe (although there are still quite a few being turned back by the local police). So this issue we had a chat online with Andrew Tobin, who has recently moved to the Highlands, and talked to him about his background in professional football photography and how he became enamoured of the landscape. We go through some of his favourite images including a couple taken near his house on his 'lockdown walks'.
The Ledmore river meanders lazily into Cam Loch, with Canisp in the background lit by a setting sun.
Detail of trees near Lael, Assynt, Scotland.
Skimming light illuminates silver birch trees on the far bank of a small loch near Lochinver, Scotland.
Photographers gather for dawn at Mesa Arch, Utah. Picture by Andrew Tobin.
A silver birch tree leans at an awkward angle in front of a pine forest near Wisley, Surrey.
Glowing sandstone lit by the morning sun at underneath Mesa Arch, utah. Picture by Andrew Tobin.
The River Wharfe rises at Beckermonds in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Flowing roughly south-east for 65 miles through some of England's finest scenery, it eventually meets the River Ouse near York and then flows into the North Sea. A third of the way along its course, it meets the little town of Ilkley, with its fashionable shops, pubs and eateries.
Ilkley is a nice place. Two thousand years ago a Roman fort (Olicana) was built here. Thereafter, not too much happened for nearly 2 millennia– until that is, a gentleman in Queen Victoria's time decided that the spring water coming off the moors was good for your health. A spa was erected and the town boomed!
An ancient track over Ilkley moor
Apart from the spa, Ilkley is famous for another thing: a little ditty entitled On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at – which is meant to be sung in Yorkshire dialect – and is translated to mean “on Ilkley Moor without a hat.”
In local legend, Rombald was the name of a giant who stomped his way over these moors, often followed by his quarrelsome wife (who is always nameless). She is famous for chasing him across the miles of moorland with a skirt full of stones, dropping them occasionally.
It was reputed to be composed during a Victorian church outing to the moors and is the unofficial anthem of Yorkshire.
Ilkley Moor rises steeply to the South of the town and levels out at 1320 feet. Combining with other high moors of Baildon, Hawksworth, Bingley, Burley, Morton, Addingham High, Silsden, Kildwick, Bradley and Skipton Moor, it is collectively known as Rombalds Moor. In local legend, Rombald was the name of a giant who stomped his way over these moors, often followed by his quarrelsome wife (who is always nameless). She is famous for chasing him across the miles of moorland with a skirt full of stones, dropping them occasionally. Some of these piles of stones are known as the Little and Great Skirtful of Stones – and are in fact prehistoric burial mounds. There is an article that I once read saying that one of these mounds had over 300 cartloads of stones removed from it, to repair local walls. It is a shadow of its former self…
In reality, Rombald was probably a corruption of Robert de Romille, the first Norman Lord of Skipton, although some have suggested he may be a remembrance of the Old Norse giant 'Raumr' (meaning 'big and ugly').
To the North of Ilkley the moors of Blubberhouses, Denton, Askwith and Barden rise up and continue on to neighbouring Nidderdale and beyond. They are bleak, wild and utterly captivating.
Autumn. An explosion of colour and a season that many wait patiently for, so that they can try to capture it in all its splendour. For the last few years, I have done the same, but my vision and desires have changed a lot recently. I am drawn more and more towards working in black and white, driven in part by using film and printing in the darkroom, but also through enjoying the challenge of being a landscape photographer, who surrounded by colour, choose to piece together the landscape photography puzzle through a limited pallet of tones.
Autumn seemed as good a time as any to try and see whether I could capture the essence of Autumn in the Woodland without the presence of colour. Working almost exclusively in two areas that I have easy access to, I shot consistently over the months of October and November with the aspiration of creating a final gallery of images that captured Autumn in Monochrome.
The project became a good lesson and exercise in using limitations and constraints to produce a final series of images that felt cohesive, and with a unity of vision.
The project became a good lesson and exercise in using limitations and constraints to produce a final series of images that felt cohesive, and with a unity of vision.
The series was predominantly shot at two locations; Rushmere country park and Aldenham woods, which are near to home and work respectively. Rushmere country park is my home from home, and somewhere I could happily walk around every day, and still feel like there are new images to be made. Aldenham Woods provided me with a place to go on the rare occasions I had time to shoot before work. Shooting locally not only allowed me to get out regularly, and be flexible depending on what the weather was doing, but I could also revisit compositions with ease if I needed to. I did manage a trip to Bolehill Quarry in the Peak District, which allowed me to add a few images that contained a different type of geography, but that was still within the brief of the project.
Black and white work has been a staple part of my photography ever since I picked it up five years ago, and I wanted to complete a project that was solely black and white. I’ve been using medium format film cameras and using Ilford black and white films, for a few years now, but I decided to shoot this project in digital. Predominantly, this came down to wanting to work quite quickly and I hadn’t yet decided on subject matter and style of shooting. Therefore, I decided to shoot the series on a Digital Monochromatic camera, which ended up being the Leica M Monochrome. Using a monochromatic camera helped create a limitation by forcing me to consider my compositions differently to how I would if shooting in colour. The camera doesn’t capture any colour data at all, only luminance values. You can also use colour filters (yellow, orange etc..) to boost the contrast. I have become very familiar with using filters in this way since starting to shoot black and white film again a few years ago.
I only used 3 lenses throughout the project – a Voigtlander 35mm 1.4, Voigtlander 50mm 1.2 and a Zeiss 100mm F2 Makro. The Zeiss was connected via an adaptor and the majority of the close-up images were taken with this superb lens. I like using fast lenses, shooting with a shallow depth of field where possible, and all 3 lenses were ideal for this project.
Where possible, shooting in conditions that were slightly flat in light, was preferred. This gave me more flexibility in post processing because I wasn’t dealing with high contrast files.
Where possible, shooting in conditions that were slightly flat in light, was preferred. This gave me more flexibility in post processing because I wasn’t dealing with high contrast files.
I eventually settled on an aesthetic for the final images, which was a result of both post processing and choices made in the field. A yellow filter was used the majority of the time, because of the effect it would have on helping pick out the bright yellows of the changing leaves, as well as give the overall image a boost in contrast.
Every session spent on the project was approached with an open mind, starting off with just walking and seeing what the weather was doing, and trying to feel what compositions I was being drawn to. Inevitably there were a number of shots that focussed on the wider landscape, but I also wanted to capture a broad range of images. This resulted in a number of close up and detailed shots, as well as using triptychs, being included in the final project.
There were a few compositions which I’ve shot in the past that I ended up re-visiting. This did result in one of my favourite images of the project, of the one brightly coloured tree on the other side of the lake, illuminated against the dark of the pine trees behind.
The woodland and forest floor offer a whole world of opportunities for those wishing to explore it. Working with a Macro lens, I would often be found pointing my camera at the ground, trying to capture the details of the leaves which had already fallen, or the textures of the pine needles and lichen.
On a particularly flat morning when I just couldn’t seem to make sense of the wider landscape, I was drawn towards the bark of a tree. Exploring the different patterns and possible compositions consumed me for the next hour or so. My favourite of these was of some bark that resembled a tribal tattoo on top of the stripped wood.
Triptychs run throughout the final set of images and it’s a technique I find myself using frequently, in particular when dealing with smaller details or slightly abstract viewpoints. The triptych allows me to examine a subject from different viewpoints or to show separate, but related elements that complement each other. Displaying images in such a way also asks the viewer to consider the relationship between each ‘panel’.
Many of the limitations were applied right from the beginning, but some were also set when I started to select the images that would make up the final gallery.
From the outset of the project, I applied limitations and constraints on myself; Shooting in Black and White, limited lens choice, two locations etc... Many of the limitations were applied right from the beginning, but some were also set when I started to select the images that would make up the final gallery. Over the course of a couple of months, I built up a catalogue of c.200 images that I thought had potential and I printed all individually on 6x4 paper. Seeing all the images laid out really helped with the shot selection process, and I found it much easier working with mini-prints away from the computer screen. Relationships between images and themes started to emerge as I moved the prints around on the desk. I would often think of a theme and work through the images to see if it ‘worked’. More often than not it didn’t, but a new idea would form by completing this process a number of times.
The final limitation presented itself during this stage of image review, when I decided that the images would only be of the woodland interior. Any images that included the sky were excluded, with the only sky that’s visible being in the reflections of puddles or bodies of water.
Working in a project mindset, complete with self-imposed constraints, really helped me focus in a way which I’d been lacking over recent months, and I am now on the lookout for what my next project will be. I have a sneaking suspicion it may be in black and white...
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!
Last year I had some ideas for a photographic project in Autumn. But things weren't as planned, and I couldn't take pictures.
Suddenly, I realised that I had to wait one more year for taking pictures in Autumn. One more year! So long!
I had a sort of Time Consciousness, the subjective experience of my own mortality, as Rafael Rojas wrote quoting Roland Barthes in his article Time and Photography. In the world we live in, in a year everything is possible, even neither we nor the world itself exist anymore.
But at the end, the Autumn has arrived with his colourful magnificence again, I had the possibility to take pictures, and the world still exists, although sad to say, crazier.
In two or three weeks the Autumn will be gone. And I have taken some pictures.
While I’m sipping an East Frisian tea and looking through the window how Autumn ends, I say: play it again Sam. And Sam, behind me, sings:
You must remember this
A Fall is just a Fall
A shot is just a shot
The fundamental things apply
As seasons go by
~ Free adaptation from Herman Hupfeld
For years I have been passionately focusing on wildlife photography, mainly during vacation travels to exotic and exciting locations. But alas - This left a gap in the many months that I am at home with a photographic itch I need to scratch.
Unfortunately, for many years I thought that in order to capture beauty it is necessary to travel away from home. And how wrong I have been…
Fortunately, we live in a beautiful location in Switzerland and my newly found appreciation and love for landscape photography have allowed me to finally discover this fact. The Seetal is close to Lucerne and being close to the alps and with several lakes nearby it is the perfect location for landscape photography endeavours.
And so the project 12x12 is born… Twelve photos were taken loosely in twelve months all within a maximum of twelve kilometres radius from home. I love the rather cinematic and uncommon format 6x17 (or as I jokingly call it 12x34). To top it off it is my objective to adorn a wall with the selection in printouts twelve inches wide.
The river flows a little over 100 metres from my Herefordshire living room. It is only just over 12 miles long and rarely 3 metres wide. In fact, in other places, it might be known as a stream. Over the centuries man has been unkind to it, channelling its waters to encourage grassland fertility in the seventeenth century, diverting its energies to power four corn mills for centuries and, unkindly, straightening it over long stretches in Victorian times to ease railway construction.
Being small, it tends to hide away and whilst a key feature of the landscape it doesn’t readily show itself. As such it doesn’t lend itself to the wider scene preferring to stay hidden amongst the trees, the fields of rape and maize or in deep channels in the grassland. This group of four photographs are part of a sequence I am developing that are designed to show the character of this small watercourse. Using a square format helps focus attention on detail whilst conversion to black and white emphasises pattern, form and texture. Colour is another story. I have used a Canon 5D Mark III/IV and Photoshop for processing.
With a photographic philosophy of pursuing more abstract, shape oriented compositions, and a wild west approach to what can be done in ' post ' ( digital retouching in computer, not camera ), I have often created finished works that far more resemble pop art, than the original scene he had actually hiked to. I like to create imagery with more unique qualities, than often the case with such beautiful, but accurate, photo imagery that has already been done. Trying new ways to manipulate an image, both in camera, and later, in post, is the challenge, that keeps this artist returning to the hiking trail, as often as possible.
Where to start?! To try and pick my favourite landscape image was going to be a hard task. It has made me think about my own photography and the connection with what I like to see in an image. I started by thinking of photographers whose work has influenced and inspired me since first picking up a camera in 2012.
There are too many to mention but I will name a few. Valda Bailey, whose abstract landscape and nature images take me to a new imagined world. Her Unbroken Spirit images of Camargue horses galloping through the marsh take me back to the days of daydreaming about horses while in class at school.
Jo Stephen, whose woodland images make me imagine fairies will pop up and make an appearance any moment. Her silver and gold tree and Sakura images are just beautiful. She proves that artistry and creativity are more important than an expensive camera kit.
I love the stark contrast between the shingle beach and the sea and the ethereal quality it has. The use of a longer exposure to smooth the sea just adds to the effect, giving a clear defined line between the sea and beach that your eye follows up to the cottages.
Bruce Percy, whose Hokkaido images are mystical yet stunningly simplistic.
They are all very different styles, ranging from simplistic black and whites to beautiful, soft colour images but they all let your imagination go and transport you to another world.
After going around in circles for a long while, the answer was staring me in the face, on my wall.
I had been lucky enough to win a copy of Lee Acaster’s, Shingle Street image, At the Edges, in a charity print auction a number of years ago and it has been hanging on my wall since then. (Read Lee Acaster's Featured Photographer interview).
If you haven’t been there, Shingle Street is about eight miles south-east of the Suffolk town of Woodbridge, across the marshes on the far side of the village of Hollesley. It is a desolate and eerie location and despite the name, it’s probably the only settlement in Suffolk without streets of any kind, just a long line of bungalows and cottages facing directly onto the beach and the North Sea.
The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. In concert, its landscape is changing irrevocably. This landscape of ice is dynamic, an attribute that means the Arctic is probably the hardest place in the world to make observations of the climate system. Yet it is this dynamism that makes this landscape so fascinating—for scientists, photographers, storytellers and consumers of stories and art alike. The changes in the Arctic demand the attention of climate scientists like never before, but they can also speak to all of us, and we should listen.
Why is it so difficult to observe the Arctic? For much of the year, the Arctic Ocean is covered in a pack of sea ice, made up of millions of individual ice floes that shear, break apart and buckle, propelled by winds and currents in almost perpetual, destructive motion. Nothing can be considered permanent atop the ice. The ocean beneath it, meanwhile, is cast in a satellite communications shadow—the autonomous underwater floats and gliders that have revolutionised global oceanography cannot work there.
The best way to make observations in the Arctic is to be passive, to drift with the dynamic frozen ocean. The German Icebreaker Polarstern has been doing exactly that since the start of October 2019. Polarstern is the fulcrum of the MOSAiC expedition, the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate. The expedition is bringing together scientists who study the ocean, the atmosphere, sea ice, ecosystems and biogeochemistry, to deliver the most comprehensive dataset yet of the Arctic climate system. I was lucky enough to be involved in the first leg of the MOSAiC expedition as one of 20 postgraduate students on the MOSAiC School, based on partner research vessel Akademik Fedorov.
RV Akademik Fedorov enters the ice
The proof of concept for a drifting campaign like MOSAiC came from the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen’s bold attempt to reach the North Pole for the first time in 1893.
The proof of concept for a drifting campaign like MOSAiC came from the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen’s bold attempt to reach the North Pole for the first time in 1893. A decade prior, American ship USS Jeanette was crushed by ice northeast of the New Siberian islands, and its wreckage discovered on the coast of Greenland three years later. Nansen thought to capitalise on this newly described drift of ice across the central Arctic—now called the Transpolar Drift—in a ship that would stay intact. The hull of this ship, the Fram, was designed such that rather than being crushed by converging ice floes, it would rise above them.
The MOSAiC comms team draws frequent links to Nansen’s Fram expedition. And these links are apposite: the Polarstern will follow a similar path to the Fram, and the comparison recognises Nansen’s own contributions to Arctic science. But there will also be stark differences. The ice is thinner and much more mobile now; Polarstern’s ice-bound journey across the Arctic will take just one year — the Fram took three.
Polarstern, before she tethered to the central floe
Working in cold conditions, you do your best to prepare the instruments for their future. We would struggle with motors that wouldn’t start and fingers that lost their dexterity. But it is after deployment that the instruments face their biggest challenges. They can be consumed by convergent ice in a pressure ridge, or topple into a newly opened crack in the ice—a lead. They can become an object of curiosity for a polar bear. Or, if their GPS fails, their position might become untraceable, especially if deployed by helicopter at a distance from the ship. Arctic pack ice can drift 10 kilometres in a day, and you might never find that bit of silver machinery in a sea of white to fix it.
At the central floe, the first big winter storm sheared part of the floe in two. The scientists onboard Polarstern had to battle the elements to recover instrumentation and reassemble one of their observational ‘cities’. These cities, populated by finely-tuned instruments, are vulnerable to icequakes.
It is this dynamism of the ice which shapes the landscape. On the Fedorov, we could climb to the very top of the ship, where every surface was covered with ice as thin as the wings of a fly and arranged into big triangular sails and bristling Christmas trees. It really felt like Coleridge’s secret ministry of frost, coating the spires of satellite towers. From there, we could look out over the sea ice.
It is this dynamism of the ice which shapes the landscape. On the Fedorov, we could climb to the very top of the ship, where every surface was covered with ice as thin as the wings of a fly and arranged into big triangular sails and bristling Christmas trees.
Perspective over the ice
In the early winter, it is a wind-scoured plain, with interlocking plates of ice creating an uneven patchwork of grey and white, occasionally cut by thin slivers of light where leads lie. At the margins of these plates, the ice is deformed, low jumbled walls of ice are constructed. Those that are remnant from the previous winter are softened by wind and snow, with long fluted snowdrifts, or sastrugi lying in their wake. At most a year old, these ridges look like ancient remains. In the subdued light that often characterises polar twilight, a band of colour on the horizon resides between two oceans of white and grey. Towards the sun, the band is pink and orange, and the ice beneath looks dark. Turn 180 degrees, and the band in the sky is a deep milky blue; the ice beneath it glows. In between these poles, there is a zone where sky and ice are matched in lightness.
Towards the sun, the band is pink and orange, and the ice beneath looks dark. Turn 180 degrees, and the band in the sky is a deep milky blue; the ice beneath it glows. In between these poles, there is a zone where sky and ice are matched in lightness.
Full moon over the frozen ocean
The dynamism of sea ice also gives it a special place in the human imagination, because of what it can do to us. As dwellers of lower latitudes, our vision of this environment is shaped by the stories that the whalers and explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries brought back—or the stories we infer from their remains. Stories of becoming helplessly trapped in the ice, listening awake at night to the desperate straining of timbers against converging ice. The terror of the mortal grip of sea ice was rich subject matter for artists of the sublime. Caspar David Friedrich’s 1824 painting The Sea of Ice was entirely a creative vision; he only had accounts of polar exploration and the ice on the surface of the river Elbe, near Dresden, as subject matter. But the work communicates the devastating power of sea ice and gives us an insight into how this environment crystallised in the collective imagination.
Ripples in nilas pinched between blocks of older ice
Carving through sea ice on the Fedorov, the sound of scraping became background noise.
Carving through sea ice on the Fedorov, the sound of scraping became background noise. But when we were stationary one night, the ice started to lock us in. It was a deep, reverberating sound—the stick-and-slip of slabs of ice squeezing against the hull.
But when we were stationary one night, the ice started to lock us in. It was a deep, reverberating sound—the stick-and-slip of slabs of ice squeezing against the hull. Although I felt in principle safe, I knew how cold it was out there and my mind made links to those whalers who in an explosion of timbers would be battling for their lives in the darkness.
In Arctic Dreams (1986), Barry Lopez writes that modern venturers through the ice do not sleep ‘free of the stories that have been passed down’. Lopez reminds us that ‘the frozen ocean itself still turns in its winter sleep like a dragon’. And it will continue to turn, its sleep more restless than ever, as the ice is more mobile. But it is less impassable now, and curiously, it is younger, too.
The decline of Arctic sea ice with climate change is most pronounced in summer. The summer sea ice extent has reduced by 50% during the satellite era (since the late 1970s), and its average thickness is also down by approximately 50%. Its age, too, has decreased dramatically as less and less ice survives the summer months before being carried out of the Arctic Ocean or melting in situ. Ice more than four years old used to dominate the central Arctic; it now constitutes about one percent of the sea ice area. Nan Shepherd noted in The Living Mountain how hot summers in 1932-1934 put paid to year-round snow in the Cairngorms: ‘Antiquity has gone from our snow.’ And so it is for sea ice. This decline in age is also integrally linked with the appearance and character of the landscape. To understand this, we need to consider the growth phases of sea ice right from genesis.
The Sea of Ice
MOSAiC was launched at the very start of the freeze-up season so that there would still be enough light to assemble instrumentation and to maximise the observational coverage of the winter. The timing also gave us the opportunity—and light—to see new ice grow. Sea ice begins life as individual crystals of frazil ice, which coalesce into thin films and soups of grease ice. In the lightly rippled open water between ice floes, you might see these early stages of growth by looking for the absence of ripples. In as little as several hours, grease ice can thicken into a dark elastic layer of nilas ice. As the Fedorov moved through leads with a new covering of nilas, we would spend minutes at a time watching the bow wave emanate away in gentle, tubular waves under the nilas. Squashed between two converging floes, nilas can bend into ripples. Windblown snow picks these ripples out, creating soft stripes that run parallel and coalesce. Nilas can then thicken and become grey ice, which can be thick enough for polar bears to walk on. As the ice continues to grow it gets whiter, and progressively rejects more and more salt from its crystal structure, become harder and more brittle.
Sea ice begins life as individual crystals of frazil ice, which coalesce into thin films and soups of grease ice. In the lightly rippled open water between ice floes, you might see these early stages of growth by looking for the absence of ripples. In as little as several hours, grease ice can thicken into a dark elastic layer of nilas ice.
Polar bears walk on grey ice
Converging layers of nilas interfinger with surprising geometric regularity, tracing the outline of castle ramparts in the horizontal plane. Later in the life stages of ice, this same convergence causes great upheavals and the formation of real, vertical ramparts. Sea ice that has survived at least two summers is called multi-year or old sea ice and can be fresh enough to drink, thicker than three metres, and increasingly hard. The reduction in brine content means it has different electromagnetic properties to first and second-year ice and can be distinguished from space. On the ice too, the difference is more pronounced than the rather prosaic modifiers multi-year or old would suggest.
A polar bear guard stands atop a pressure ridge in residual ice
Working on residual ice (sea ice that has survived one summer*) the horizon is generally distant. From a human perspective, then, old ice is another landscape altogether. The horizon is as far as the nearest pressure ridge, which might loom over you by several metres.
Sea ice may never be as vertically impressive as the great architecture of freshwater ice. Ice sheets and glaciers are built from hundreds of thousands of years of snowfall, the air slowly squeezed out or trapped in bubbles. Where they meet the sea, they calve, releasing this crystallised history of snowfall into the ocean as icebergs. By contrast, sea ice is made in haste, under the freedom of the wind rather than the crushing weight of snow. And our oldest, most architecturally rich sea ice is departing in haste, too. Icebergs will continue to cascade into the high latitude oceans as ice sheets calve. But multi-year sea ice is on the ropes. It is now little more than a tenth of sea ice area and only survives where it is swept by winds against the North American continent. Nor does it exist in any significant measure in the Southern Ocean, where winds blow ice away from the polar continent, and heat fluxes from the ocean are greater. This old terrain of sea ice is soon to be consigned to that part of the imagination where the unreal resides.
The sun approaches the horizon
It was polar night when we headed south from 85 degrees north to leave the ice behind. Around midday, on the 20th October 2019, we got the first real vivid colour on the horizon. That evening we came through the marginal ice zone and gathered excitedly to see pancake ice, c. 50 cm discs of thin ice, colliding against one another under wind and swell. It was a black and white leopard skin sea in the dark. Two days later in open water, amidst a three metre swell that opened and closed the drawers in our rooms, and made the sink pipes gurgle, we finally saw the sun again. It was a joyful return, and people hugged on the deck and smiled into the light.
Two days later in open water, amidst a three metre swell that opened and closed the drawers in our rooms, and made the sink pipes gurgle, we finally saw the sun again. It was a joyful return, and people hugged on the deck and smiled into the light
Scientists gather to look at pancake ice in the marginal ice zone
There was also a certain sadness, too. We started to think about how in a decade’s time we might be able to sail through open water to the North Pole. How in the future, as Arctic scientists, we might be leading expeditions in an ocean essentially devoid of ice in the summer. How different it would be. How different it already was.
Rings of light, Barents Sea
The loss of sea ice has significant implications for the climate system; within the Arctic and beyond it. The ice-albedo feedback is one well-known example. The replacement of reflective ice with darker ocean leads to more solar radiation being absorbed, and more warming at the Earth’s surface. It is often championed as the main reason for enhanced warming in the Arctic or Arctic Amplification, but the full picture is more complex. Arctic amplification is most intense in the winter when there is little or no solar radiation reaching the surface.
The loss of sea ice has significant implications for the climate system; within the Arctic and beyond it. The ice-albedo feedback is one well-known example. The replacement of reflective ice with darker ocean leads to more solar radiation being absorbed, and more warming at the Earth’s surface.
Likely more dominant is the lapse-rate feedback: the stable inversion layer** that characterises the winter Arctic atmosphere acts as an envelope for warming near the surface. This bottom-intensified warming is not compensated for by greater space-bound radiation higher up, where little or no warming has occurred, so the surface warming becomes intensified.
Stormy weather, Barents Sea
The influence of the rapid changes in the Arctic are spilling out of the high latitudes; by changing the Earth’s energy balance and temperature gradient from equator to pole, the Earth’s atmospheric circulation can be altered. The jet stream is powered by this temperature gradient, and the loss of sea ice appears to be connected to the propensity for wobbles in the jet stream to pause, prolonging extreme weather events at mid-latitudes.
The Arctic Ocean is also changing dramatically. Declining sea ice has gone in tandem with a more energetic circulation in the Beaufort Gyre, a wind-driven circulation north of Alaska that stores a vast quantity of cold and fresh seawater. A persistent shift in the winds could flush much of this recently accumulated freshwater into the subpolar North Atlantic, with potential implications for the large-scale ocean circulation of the Atlantic and midlatitude weather. Scientists across the world are working, through MOSAiC and through other initiatives, to better understand our climate, piece by interconnected piece.
A sea of change
As landscape photographers, we should sit up and take note that a unique landscape is literally being lost from the face of the Earth in the Arctic. We cannot replant it, we did not exploit it for resources; its loss is due to the integration of all greenhouse gas emissions and land use changes through recent history and across the world. As people who care about the landscape, we should mourn this loss. But we will have much, much more to mourn if we do not listen to the warning that its loss represents. We can all listen to the Arctic, and treasure the natural world in our actions as well as our imaginations.
*after Jan 1st it becomes known as second-year ice
** inversion layers are characterised by an atmospheric temperature profile that goes from cold at the surface to warmer higher up
RV Akademik Fedorov enters the ice
Polarstern, before she tethered to the central floe
Deployment of instruments on the ice
Perspective over the ice
Full moon over the frozen ocean
Ripples in nilas, pinched between blocks of older ice
The Sea of Ice
Polar bears walk on grey ice
A polar bear guard stands atop a pressure ridge in residual ice
The sun approaches the horizon
Scientists gather to look at pancake ice in the marginal ice zone
I was having one of our regular chats with Joe Cornish last week to catch up on things, and we both talked about making the most of the fact that we were both available to record some audio content for our readers. We’ve tried having online chats before but had problems with internet bandwidth when we were based in East Yorkshire. However, now we’re in the Highlands, we were hoping that our increased bandwidth would let us do more (a quite surprising 30Mbps instead of <1Mbps near York).
Sorting out the technology
We also ran the idea past David Ward, who was positive about it and, like most of us, didn't have anything else to do. So, we recorded our first episode using GoToWebinar. Unfortunately, there was a bit of lag/delay on the connection, which made for a stilted start, and the final audio quality wasn’t great. However, we enjoyed the process, and I went away with the task of trying to work out a better process for next time.
We ended up sending separate audio recorders to Joe and David and although we had our conversation on our phones, which got rid of the nasty lag, we used the recorders to get a good quality record in each location and also used video conferencing software with the audio turned down to make sure we had the visual cues that conversations sometimes need. The end result of this was much better and we'll stick with this going forward.
All of this description of our process is by way of explanation of why our second conversation is actually our first proper one. However, the first conversation was still interesting and so we’re including it here with the quality warning.
What did we chat about? Well, for our lower-quality chat, we challenged each other to choose a question to ask of ourselves and the second, better quality chat we had a discussion about what we have been doing since the lockdown started and how it's been affecting us
Questions for Joe, David or Myself?
What we really want to do is to continue having these conversations but make things more interactive with our audience. So if you have any questions you’d like to address to Joe or David (or myself) then please add them to the comments below, send a message via our Facebook page or via email to submissions@onlandscape.co.uk.
We also want to include other photographers in our chats and if you have any suggestions for these or want to nominate yourself, please let us know!
Contrary to what some may think, I don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all that has gone before in On Landscape, and it was only after I came across Jodie’s work on Rfotofolio that I rediscovered Thomas Peck’s critique of Rocks and Old Oak in Issue 131 while researching the interview.
Many of Jodie’s images feature trees, for which she developed an early love. The format of the photographs often draws on their subject – panoramas of windswept landscapes, vertical portraits of the trees themselves, or triptychs to echo the form of multi-stems. While many of her images are monochromatic, she also works in a soft colour, choosing this where it amplifies the mood.
Can you tell us a little about where you grew up and now live, and the extent to which place has shaped you and your interests? Time spent outdoors had a formative influence on you from an early age, and you developed an early affinity for trees?
I grew up in San Diego, California, and still live there. People associate San Diego with beaches, surfing and warm weather. However, the county of San Diego is very large and is home to several different environments: ocean and coast, chaparral, oak and pastureland, mountains and pine forests, and lastly the desert.
My family loved this backcountry. We spent a lot of time there as well as in the mountains near Los Angeles and in Yosemite National Park. I have fond memories of camping, hiking and days spent in rustic cabins. So even though I grew up near the beach communities, my love has always been for the mountains. For some reason the sycamores, oaks and pines of the backcountry have been special to me from a very young age; I remember crying when we had to leave them and go back home.
What did you end up studying, and what did that lead you to do as a career?
My studies ran a winding course. I started studying Chinese and Asian Philosophy but ended up with a degree in Art. When I was in college the photography department was not a part of the art department, but rather it was embedded in the Industrial Arts department. I didn’t pursue it because I couldn’t imagine myself in Industrial Arts. So I ended up in the Art department, majoring in Textiles and Fiber Arts.
My other love was Art History which has had a huge influence on my artistic vision today. My art degree, however, eventually lead me to teaching art and working with students with disabilities, which became my career for almost 30 years.
Last spring, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust launched a striking marketing and fundraising campaign: Give Peat a Chance. Although a member of YWT for many years, I have to confess the relevant mailer lay hidden under a pile of other post in my kitchen for some weeks and it was actually the social media side of the campaign and, specifically, a number of powerfully worded tweets that first grabbed my attention.
There were the references to Yorkshire’s peatlands being akin to the Amazon rainforest, there was hard hitting aerial footage showing the bleak and silty wasteland that covers extensive areas of our peaty uplands. Most striking from my point of view, however, was to learn that globally, peatlands are the largest store of carbon on land. I had no idea.
Perhaps that’s ignorance on my part but I suspect I was not alone in focusing all my attention on trees, trees and more trees. Woodland is of course hugely important, and it’s one of my favourite environments in which to wander and photograph, but it is just one of many invaluable habitats. Peat bogs probably don’t rate so highly in the glamour stakes but, the more I read, the more I learnt just how vital they are. In particular, I was blown away by two statistics:
Although peatlands only cover 3% of the world’s surface, they store 30% of the soil’s carbon - twice as much carbon as all of the forests in the world.
The UK’s peatlands store over 3 billion tonnes of carbon – that’s roughly the same amount as all the forests in the UK, France and Germany combined.
These are seriously powerful facts and were the catalyst for me to do what I’d been meaning to do for a while – start to give something back to the landscape I love. Better late than never, so last year I donated 5% of my Yorkshire based workshop profits to Give Peat a Chance.
It was as a result of this and subsequent conversations that led me to spend a fascinating day last summer with Lyndon and Jenny from Yorkshire Peat Partnership. For the best part of six hours we wandered around Fleet Moss – once covered in a rich peatland habitat, but now much of it is a desolate landscape, in parts resembling a First World War battlefield. It’s the worst peatland site the partnership has discovered in the Yorkshire Dales and as such, it’s one of the areas being prioritised for restoration on a massive scale.
There are a number of reasons why sites like Fleet Moss are in such a bad state but the major contributing factor is almost certainly the agricultural policy of over 50 years ago when farmers were encouraged to drain boggy sites to improve the land for grazing. The policy was well intentioned and it is only in more recent times that this has been shown to be misguided and extremely damaging.
The resulting ditches, or grips as they are known, are mostly devoid of vegetation and only serve to increase erosion. There is also a thought that an ancient boundary marker has exacerbated this problem on Fleet Moss, with a likely congregation of both human and livestock footfall along this area. As a result, a significant area of the moor is covered in hags – mounds of peat raised high above the surrounding channels and ditches.
There are a number of reasons why sites like Fleet Moss are in such a bad state but the major contributing factor is almost certainly the agricultural policy of over 50 years ago when farmers were encouraged to drain boggy sites to improve the land for grazing.
These channels and ditches simply aid the flow of water off the moor and cause massive problems in the dales below. Extreme weather is part of the issue but the extent of flooding is exacerbated by the inability of the uplands to provide the kind of natural flood defences of which it is capable. The problem can also be seen in the likes of Semer Water and the Wharfe, with staining and silt from the peat. Peaty water must be filtered before it can be safely treated to become drinking water. This is an expensive procedure and the cost is, of course, passed on to us, the customers.
A number of different factors have contributed to large areas of the moor being worn down to bare peat and, in places, even down to the rocky mineral layer below the peat. Some of the channels are several feet deep and work has started to begin to shore these up. Hundreds of coir logs are used in this process, with hundreds more to be flown in this winter. The beneficial effects of these are evident, with vegetation already starting to grow back in some areas. Cotton grass plug plants have also been introduced and it was encouraging to see these starting to sprout new and healthy growth.
It was interesting to see the range of other plants growing on Fleet Moss and to understand their place, or otherwise, in this habitat. Of course, Sphagnum moss (and there are countless varieties) is one of the most important plants you will see growing in a peat bog. Apparently, the plants hold over 20 times their weight in water! Much of the Sphagnum moss was dry and yellow, having been deprived of the water on which it thrives. Conversely, star moss typically thrives in a drier environment and is something you would not wish to see growing in abundance on Fleet Moss.
Sphagnum moss (and there are countless varieties) is one of the most important plants you will see growing in a peat bog. Apparently, the plants hold over 20 times their weight in water!
By the same token, it was not a good sign that we saw a patch of harebells growing in one area – I tend to think any native wildflower must be good – but of course, they are all associated with particular environments. Other plants that thrive in peat bog are crowberry (not a plant I knew other than by name), bilberry and, much to my surprise, cloudberry. I had eaten cloudberries in Norway a few years back and had no idea they grew in the Yorkshire Dales – sadly we saw no berries, only leaves – but it was great to learn they exist here.
We also saw masses of bog asphodel – I don’t recall ever seeing such a spread – so this was encouraging and perhaps shows what is possible. Likewise, we saw an abundance of Deschampsia grasses – a favourite of mine to photograph. I was also shown a wonderful clump of sundew plants – again, I don’t recall ever seeing so many in one small area.
There were clumps of heather but nothing widespread and, although we photographers tend to enjoy photographing endless carpets of heather, blanket bog covered primarily in heather is not a good thing. Biodiversity and balance are key.
Of course, it’s not just about the plants. Wildlife thrives on healthy peatland and, even in its degraded state, Fleet Moss is home to countless insects, as well as short-eared owls, golden plover, curlew and many other birds. It was wonderful to see and hear many of these during the day. Perhaps most exciting was to be taken to a wonderful little oasis in the middle of Fleet Moss – a saturated area of mosses and grasses, very wet an example of what more of the area can and, in time, will look like again.
It’s also great to see other restorative work going on in Yorkshire – for example, the National Trust is currently repairing the raised bog at Malham Tarn Moss. It’s another area I love to photograph and is home to one of our most exotic flowers – Bogbean.
The landscape around Malham Tarn has changed a lot over the years, due to the intervention of man, and the Trust is having to balance the demands of the various habitat types present in the area to ensure the most sympathetic restoration.
The landscape around Malham Tarn has changed a lot over the years, due to the intervention of man, and the Trust is having to balance the demands of the various habitat types present in the area to ensure the most sympathetic restoration.
I’m aware my account of my day with YPP and of the work that is going on is necessarily simplified, I’m sure I’ve made a few too many generalisations and there are things I’ve not even touched upon. However, I hope I may have helped to open a few eyes, in the same way, mine was opened when I first became aware of the true value of peat. As well as continuing to contribute to the ongoing work, I hope to find ways in which my photography can perhaps shed a little bit of light on the hidden charms of the peat bog. It will be a challenge, but I’ll give it a go!
Further reading
There are some excellent articles online, where you can read more about the work going on and about why this kind of conservation is so very important. I’ve included links to just a few of these at the bottom of the page.
and asked 'Do we have a Voice? And does being an outdoor photographer inevitably lead to environmentalism? And if so, what if anything are our responsibilities?'
"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 (via the contact page), who is keen to spotlight what has become the issue of our time. And how we might use our photography to best highlight the importance of nature, with joy, irony, anger, sadness or humour…whatever that voice may be."
We all get excited when an opportunity arises for a trip to somewhere special for photography. The chance to photograph something new and fresh excites the mind. Let’s face it however unless you are able to afford the costs and time for these trips, they are not a regular opportunity. Most often we settle for what is within a short distance of our home. How do you stay “fresh” and enthusiastic, at the same time making imagery that is of a high personal standard that others will appreciate and find meaningful as well?
Niagara Panorama Frozen mist from the falls coats the trees and shoreline of Goat Island just above Niagara Falls in this winter panorama of the river.
Most of us have a specific location that we choose to visit and photograph over and over. For some that location may be a destination such as a national park or a city. Others like myself may be fortunate enough to have such a location near to us. Having local access to a location allows us to photograph in a variety of seasons, light and weather conditions. But how do you take advantage of this, getting more than the standard “iconic” shots and personalising your portfolio of work? This is what I call “Capturing The Essence” of a location, taking images that represent the feeling of the place through detail and action shots.
I am fortunate to live within ten minutes of Niagara Falls, in western New York State. This is truly one of the natural wonders of the world. It is also one of the most visited and photographed natural parks, being located on the border between the United States and Canada, an hour and a half from Toronto, Canada and a half hour from Buffalo, NY. This makes it a year round tourist attraction and sometimes difficult to photograph without jostling with tourists. With all of my gear, I am frequently stopped and asked to take family photos with various phones and cameras, making it a wonder I get any photography of my own accomplished. Niagara Falls changes with the seasons as well as a time of day and weather conditions.
Whirlpool Rapids The rapids leading into the Whirlpool State Park area of the Lower Niagara River. Accessed from a trail that runs down the face of the gorge and along the river, this location is a popular area for hikers. There are numerous trails that access both the US and Canadian sides of the gorge.
Over The Edge Waters rush over the edges of the American Falls at Niagara Falls State Park.
When I mention Niagara Falls I am sure that a picture instantly springs to mind. We have all seen the standard iconic images of Niagara Falls a thousand times. If not, just Google the park and you will see a screen full of nearly identical images. I have a number of these in my portfolio as well because they sell, but I strive as well to capture images of the park that are original and representative of how the park makes me feel in the moment. If these shots are meaningful to me then they hopefully will have a similar effect of others. When you have the luck of being able to see a location in many different conditions you begin to see things like autumn leaves on the ground in Zion, rock formations, animals, etc. that are specific to that location and have just as much emotional value as the iconic shots. Grand sweeping vistas are wonderful but sometimes the more intimate images convey as much emotion as the wide angle shots. Having a body of work that is singular and representative of your vision will set you apart from others, demonstrating your compositional and story-telling skills.
Niagara Falls is so much more than a huge waterfall. The Niagara River is a very large river connecting two of the Great Lakes. The upper river is wide and flat as it flows from Lake Erie, and the lower river is narrow, powerfully rapid, and passes through a gorge before emptying into Lake Ontario. The water at the Falls is a beautiful blue-green, due to minerals picked up off the rocks below. There are wondrous rapids that dance with the power of so much water moving through the narrow lead up to the falls. Below the majestic waterfalls, begins an entirely different world. The deep and narrow nature of the river below the falls makes for rapids and whirlpools that race through the first half of the deep Niagara gorge, before slowing as the river once again widens.
Niagara Falls is so much more than a huge waterfall. The Niagara River is a very large river connecting two of the Great Lakes. The upper river is wide and flat as it flows from Lake Erie, and the lower river is narrow, powerfully rapid, and passes through a gorge before emptying into Lake Ontari
Winter’s Strength The American Falls up close in winter. This late afternoon image had so many soft colours throughout, from the warm light of the setting sun, the magenta light of the falls lighting that had just come on, and the soft green colours of the water's sediment. I love how the ice builds over time, causing constantly changing sculptural formations on the rocks and plants.
In the spring and summer, everything is surrounded by lush green plant life and the sun glints off of the moving waters. Autumn brings variable skies and changing colours as the oaks and maples lose their leaves for the coming winter. Niagara Falls in the winter is like a crystal fairyland as snow and ice coat everything around falls. The rising mist from the waterfalls coats everything, both natural and man made. The longer the freezing cold lasts, the thicker the ice builds up. Additionally, because the river doesn’t freeze, we are blessed with migrating ducks, geese, Tundra Swans and a variety of gulls that winter here. This makes the area a hot spot for birders, year round.
With such a variety of changing conditions, I never lack compositional opportunities. Additionally, seeing a spot that might offer possibilities under different conditions is easily noted for future visits. Travelling to other national parks around the country means accepting the conditions found during that window of travel. Lady luck combined with advance prep work will get you great images, but you get what you get.
I try to make at least two trips during the year to other areas so I know how it is to come away with just average images. I am both a landscape and wildlife photographer, so my chances of finding interesting subjects are better. I always take notes and iPhone images to keep track of interesting spots for future trips. In the end, though, nothing beats having the source in your “backyard”. Keep an open mind and finding fresh images that keep you from losing sight of the changing beauty and impact of your local spot will always be there for you.
Turquoise & Gold
The turquoise waters of the Niagara River Rapids at Niagara Falls, offset by the orange warmth of the morning sun as it rises above the horizon. Christmas eve morning at Niagara Falls State Park, NY. I loved the bookended gulls on the log.
Strength – Summer
These two images were taken in the same location above the falls. This rock never moves and during the summer has plants and moss growing on it, making for an interesting study of the water moving around it. 1/6th of a second is perfect for moving water and texture here.
Soft Niagara Sunrise
sunrise view of the Horseshoe-Canadian side of Niagara Falls. The colours were brilliant as there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun was nicely diffused by the rising mist. I know this shot is probably a very cliche view of the Falls but it never ceases to impress. Every visit is different.
Winter
These two images were taken in the same location above the falls. This rock never moves and during the summer has plants and moss growing on it, making for an interesting study of the water moving around it. 1/6th of a second is perfect for moving water and texture here.
Niagara Panorama Frozen mist from the falls coats the trees and shoreline of Goat Island just above Niagara Falls in this winter panorama of the river.
Whirlpool Rapids
The rapids leading into the Whirlpool State Park area of the Lower Niagara River. Accessed from a trail that runs down the face of the gorge and along the river, this location is a popular area for hikers. There are numerous trails that access both the US and Canadian sides of the gorge.
Over The Edge Waters rush over the edges of the American Falls at Niagara Falls State Park.
Niagara River Rapids #5
Number five in a series of Autumn images taken at Niagara Falls State Park in western New York. The focus of these images is on the flow of water and it’s interaction with the land.
Winter’s Strength
The American Falls up close in winter. This late afternoon image had so many soft colours throughout, from the warm light of the setting sun, the magenta light off the falls lighting that had just come on, and the soft green colours of the water’s sediment. I love how the ice builds over time, causing constantly changing sculptural formations on the rocks and plants.
A while back, Guy Tal and I spent a while on the phone chatting about landscape photography, art, psychology and much more. I also asked him about how he got started in photography and his interest in the outdoors. We've transcribed the interview for your reading pleasure and if you have any other questions for Guy, please let us know and we'll try to do a follow up.
How did you start living a visual life?
I started photographing when I was a teenager. I lived in Israel at the time, and I always liked spending time outside in the fields, on the beach, in pine forests, and other natural places that were within my reach. For reasons I can’t remember, I decided one day to take my father’s camera along on one of my explorations, and I was absolutely fascinated with it. To study the world through a viewfinder, looking intently at things I loved and trying to compose them in appealing ways, was an incredible feeling; and then the sense of gestation, waiting to get my pictures back from the lab to see how well I’ve done, sometimes even to rediscover things I forgot, only prolonged and intensified my interest. Oh, and that first roll of film, not a single exposure on it was usable, but the experience for me was just addictive.
Although I had no way of knowing it at the time, I feel fortunate today that during the first decade I’ve been using a camera, I didn’t know any other photographers. I didn’t know anyone I could talk to about photography other than the people that worked at the lab; I couldn’t tell you who famous photographers were; I’ve never even heard of Ansel Adams in my first 10 years or so of practising photography with ever-growing interest. I was doing photography by myself, for myself, as my default mode; I didn’t have to tune anything out and I didn’t have anything to influence me; I just went about it in the way that was most intuitive to me.
What were the sorts of other media were you interested in? Were you a film buff or did you read novels?
I’ve always been a reader. At one point in my young teens, I had read all the books in our town library’s kids section and so they allowed me to borrow from the adults’ section just so I had something to read. So that’s always been a part of my life and gave me a lot of ideas. For much of my childhood and adulthood, I never really liked my life in Israel, never really connected with the place, the culture, and the politics, which is kind of odd because it’s a place where you’re raised to have a deep connection with the land and its historic and cultural significance. In hindsight, I can say that it always felt alien to me, but I didn’t really have any other point of reference until I left in my mid-20s.
For many years, books were my world and allowed me to imagine going to all kinds of places I never thought I’d see in person. And I had the natural world to spend my days in, away from the confusion of human affairs. At the time I had a lot of fields and orchards around my home, some that were abandoned by former Arab and Palestinian residents who were driven out when Israel became a state (before that it was a colony under a British mandate). I was never very social, so I just roamed these fields by myself a lot of the time, often with my dog. And then the camera came along. For me, photography was always part of an immersive experience, not just a means of taking pictures.
At the time I had a lot of fields and orchards around my home, some that were abandoned by former Arab and Palestinian residents who were driven out when Israel became a state (before that it was a colony under a British mandate).
Going back to the relationship I have with pictures, at some point I started looking at coffee table books and magazines with nature images which I didn’t have access to as a very young person. My fascination grew even more—I could actually see places that previously I only read about and could only imagine. I’ve always had this thirst for exploring, roaming natural places looking for flowers and animals, butterflies and nesting birds and anything else I could find. With access to magazines and books of fine photographs, I started seeing all of these exotic places and exotic wildlife. I started reading about incredible adventures people were going on and it became a passion for me. In truth, I didn’t think that I would ever be able to do or see most of these things for myself, but then a series of unexpected opportunities came that ultimately allowed me to pursue a life of writing and photography in a place I never expected to fall so deeply in love with. It was the culmination of a lifelong interest, yearning, and love for pretty much all things wild.
To those that know me, it will come as no surprise that my choice for this issue’s end frame is a woodland image. One of my more popular lectures is based around woodland photography, during which I talk about some of my influences. I include some of our classic 19th century English landscape painters such as Gainsborough and Constable.
Amongst my more contemporary influences is the photography of Shinzo Maeda and Christopher Burkett; it is Christopher’s image titled ‘Glowing Autumn Forest, Virginia’ that is my chosen end frame. As well as being a master of woodland photography he is also a consummate printer of his work, still preferring to create stunning Cibachrome prints for many years after its demise.
Last year we had a spate of planning applications in the Glen Etive/Rannoch Moor area. Firstly the King’s House hotel was sold to the Black Corrie’s Estate and, with a lease to Crieff Hydro negotiated, a rebuild of the newer part of the King's House was proposed. The design was disliked by most in the extended community but still, the planning officers waved it through. With my eye already on planning applications in the area, I also noticed an application for run-of-river hydro developments in the Glen Etive area. This was not just a single small weir in the commercial forestry area of the Glen, which would have been annoying but acceptable, but the damming of every single significant water flow into the river Etive.
Beinn Fhionnlaidh and Meall a Bhuiridh, Allt Mheuran - Colin Prior
I linked up with a group of people online, a ragtag bunch of writers, walkers, environmentalists (i.e. a bunch of normal people who really care about the landscape) who were brilliant to work with and with whom we developed a plan of action to try to protest these applications.
One of our first priorities was the development of a Facebook page and website to raise awareness of the issues and try to inform the public of what they could do to submit their own objections. I should point out here that we weren't being NIMBYs here, we reluctantly agreed that half of the schemes in the forestry commission areas were acceptable but those within the multiply designated wild land areas were not.
It fell on myself and David Lintern to do most of this work on the website as I have the IT/design experience and David is excellent at writing. It quickly became apparent that one of the primary resources to raise initial awareness of what might be lost was inspiring photography. Fortunately, one part of the Glen has been popular with a few photographers for a while and so I was able to recruit a few photographers to share their photographs (see the website for details). Big thanks to David Ward, Colin Prior, Michael Stirling-Aird.
But this didn’t cover all of the tributaries and so I spent a few days wandering up and down the three rivers on the wild status land side of the Glen (the North side) in order to collect both video and drone footage for use on the website. Here is an example of the drone footage we used.
Because of the website and Facebook page, we managed to raise a huge amount of support and had petitions with over 10,000 signatures which we were able to supply to the planning officers as well as drone footage of the most at-risk river locations. We also managed to get an interview on the BBC news (which you can see here).
We were also able to create ‘simulations’ of how and where the weirs and pipes would go and the visual impact of them. They're very amateur ones but they were done in a hurry - better something rough and ready that shows clearly where things will land than just an abstract technical drawing.
Sadly, on the first pass through the planning system, it was approved on the basis of community support (despite the fact that all of the six people in the community are employed by the developer in some way).
One of our local councillors managed to get enough support for a full hearing at the Highland Council in Inverness and our website and drone footage was used to support our objections. Again though, the planning was approved and so we thought that was the end of things.
However, the action continues and as developments start to happen, the photography will be used as a reference for the location before development as well as recording any out of 'planning' procedures.
Although the proposal is withdrawn at the moment, I will be ensuring the area is well represented photographically in preparation for a possible planning objection.
Using your photography to help support objection campaigns
Despite being unsuccessful at stopping the Glen Etive application, it made me realise just how important photography can be in raising awareness of the constant encroaching of our landscape. Although I live in a fairly spectacular part of the country, the use of photography to show the beauty of less spectacular areas can be a major tool in ensuring the unwarranted development of publicly accessible open areas, parks and countryside.
So how can you go about trying to help in your local area?
The easiest way to do this is to subscribe to your local paper and keep an eye out for campaigns. Alternatively, contact your local councillor or MP. They will have had various issues raised to them and a quick request via email and you will probably be put in touch with one or two local groups that campaign on such matters.
Once you’ve found such a group, ask them what they might need in the short term. In the longer term, the following types of photographs will be useful
Showcase images to be used to show the beauty of a place
Reportage images of ‘action’ happening around a place
Ongoing rephotography campaigns to show changes in an area
Showcase Images
These are the bread and butter of most landscape photographers work but make sure you capture images that show the extent of the area in question, not just details.
Allt Mheuran - David Ward
Reportage
You might not be a reportage photographer but you’ll still probably have more skills and understanding of photography in general than the people campaigning or of people enjoying the space. Don’t underestimate how useful environmental portraits can be too. I haven't taken any of these but David Lintern, who worked with me on the website took a few good ones and here's another of kayakers contributed by Paul Crossan.
Rephotography Campaigns
Showing the way a landscape changes naturally and by the hand of man will help to demonstrate what is happening in a way that the written word can struggle with. This may be river bank erosion (in Ballachulish we have an issue where the local water authority changes the flow of the river slightly and in so doing changed the water so it starts to destroy a local path), changing water levels (showing how floods may cause problems in developments), etc.
Tell us How You've worked or Campaigns that you might help with
If you’ve helped in campaigns like this in the past, we’d love to hear from you. I’m no expert and only got involved in the Glen Etive and Ballachulish campaigns when I realised if it wasn’t me, there would be nobody else.
Many years ago as a university student studying humanities I had to get used to writing ‘Compare and Contrast…’ essays. The format was quite strict: take two authors, ostensibly writing about a similar theme, and then discuss in what ways the novelists were similar, and how they were different. The same subject, different techniques, leading to a different outcome. I guess this analytical approach stuck because as I look at these two photographs by Finn Hopson, I can’t help but react in exactly the same way. They both have the same subject – woodland scenes with mist and fog. They are structured very similarly – strong verticals bisected by flowing horizontals. But their mood is completely different. The first is aloof, serene, receding. The second is warm, enthusiastic and inviting. How is it, when so much is similar, that we can have such a visceral variation in reaction to an image?
Let’s deal with the comparative elements first. Whilst there is obviously a difference in format (square vs rectangle), both compositions are built around the same basic framework. The trunks of the trees create a structure that feels ordered – not an easy thing in itself to achieve in woodland usually so chaotic! They anchor the images, forming an authoritative background arrangement. True, in the square image, there are horizontal branches coming off the trunks, but to my eye, these seem to disappear – there are two trunks that dominate, creating a grid-like pattern. In both images, my mind notices the verticality of the trees.
We see a lot of images of trees and woodlands, but less often of large-scale forests enveloping the landscape of Europe. Perhaps this is inevitable given where we are. As the mists rise in Jean Discours’ photos, you can almost sense the earth breathe, the respiration of the trees made visible. We asked Jean to tell us more about the landscapes of L’Aubrac in south-central France, and his explorations with a camera.
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 south of France, in the Gard department, close to the Cevennes mountains, and I grew up there. After studying mathematics and music for some time in Montpellier, I started teaching in elementary schools. My mother was a teacher in contemporary dance and this art accompanied me throughout my childhood. Yet it was classical music - I learned to play the transverse flute - which had an influence on my artistic career. My ear for music became more acute and after several trips to Ireland, I took to their way of passing on music and started to play Irish music. Along with my passion for music, and even before, I enjoyed roaming the country looking for minerals or mushrooms, both activities that led me to take an interest in geology and meteorology, scientific fields which are very useful for landscape photography.
It is about 10 years ago, in love with the country places I went to in summer to get some fresh air or to pick wild raspberries or mushrooms, that I had the desire to capture those precious moments, and my interest for photography developed then. I am essentially self-taught; I have acquired my knowledge in books on photography, from discussions with other photographers, during workshops on photography, and in exchanges with my friend Christian Astor who is a painter. Since 2014 photography has become the main activity for me. I live in the Rhône valley where it is often hot and sultry in summer, and as often as I can, up I go to the hills of the Massif Central with my photographic gear on my back.
Back in January, Mark was in between two workshops he as running based in Kentallen. This village is on the coastal road from Ballachulish to Oban and approximately 25 minutes from Glencoe. Tim and Mark met at the Joe Cornish Gallery when Tim had just started using his large format camera and since then Mark has transitioned from using large format to digital photography. In this podcast, Mark talks about how and why he transitioned from large format, the challenges, and why he enjoys printing workshops.
For you — the blind who once could see —
The bell tolls for thee…
~Neil Peart 1952-2020
In 1982, Neil Peart, the drummer and lyricist with the Canadian rock band Rush, wrote these words for a song called Losing It (on the album called Signals, 1982). The verse refers to Ernest Hemingway, who finding himself in poor mental and physical health and unable to write a short RSVP to an invitation from the White House, shot himself. A bitter end to such brilliance. The meaning of a life distilled into seconds and then memory.
As a lifelong Rush fan, I can truly say I was devastated when, on the 10th January, it was announced that Neil Peart had died at the age of 67 following a three-and-a-half-year battle with brain cancer. As an introverted and somewhat geeky teenager, the lyrics of this man gave me hope that being different was ok; the self-validation of an individual was valid, and the meek may inherit the Earth! I felt infused with a sense of right and wrong, a strong moral compass and a dedicated work ethic. Neil and his two bandmates shaped my young mind and the subsequent life I have led thus far. I can assure you, I am truly grateful.
For the last 20 years, I have lived that life with a camera in my hand, and the hobby of which I was once a passionate amateur, has become a profession and a lifestyle. But what role does photography play in this life, and why is it so important, not just to me, but to millions of others around the world as well? Have we lost sight of this meaning, and can we get it back?
what role does photography play in this life, and why is it so important, not just to me, but to millions of others around the world as well? Have we lost sight of this meaning, and can we get it back?
Now I’ll admit, as starts to an article on landscape photography go, I would understand it if you decided to go and read something else, but I hope you’ll stick with this, as I have something that I believe is worth hearing. Trust me!
Grace Under Pressure
Much has changed in this last 20 years; digital has become by far the most common medium for photography, both in capture and output. Our lives are online 24/7, bombarded by a million photographs, or should I say images?
For many, landscape photography has become a competitive sport. Why should my life a as landscape photographer be stressful, when really, it’s all about a walk in the woods?
I picked up a camera all these years ago to relieve stress, and now my life seems full of it. Isn’t that odd? This pressure we are under to perform, to be seen performing and to compete is relentless. Social media demands content from us on a daily basis with the lust of a physician’s leeches. For many, landscape photography has become a competitive sport. Why should my life a as landscape photographer be stressful, when really, it’s all about a walk in the woods?
Part of the answer is that we’re an odd species: Social, yet competitive - intelligent, yet irrational - developed, though primal! It would appear that we’re at constant war with ourselves, knowing one thing and acting in another. Advertisers and marketers understand these juxtapositions all too well and exploit our fears, desires and insecurities for their profit. Your typical photography magazine is mostly advertising - propagating gear and location envy. Self-doubt, fear of failure, the constant comparing with our peers and judgement of others whose images are more popular than ours! As Marlene Dietrich famously said - “I want to be alone!”
In this article, I want to look at the symbiotic relationship between Landscape Photography and a meaningful life. One feeds the other, or rather they can! It’s about having grace under pressure, a clear head in the maelstrom, an inner knowledge that we are true to ourselves. What does this look like?
This project began several years ago when I first noticed the notation ‘Mud & Sand’ on an OS map of the Bristol Channel. I couldn’t work out why these beaches should be so muddy and I was curious to find out what they looked like.
To be honest, my first impressions were not very positive. As a stock photographer, I am aware that I often look to idealise the landscape in my work, and most people think of idyllic beaches as having golden sand and bright blue sea. The mudflats and brown sea that typify the beaches of Somerset and Newport, in particular, do not fit this vision.
It was only when I was listening to someone express their strong opinion about how ugly they found the Somerset coast that something changed. We Osmonds can be contrary folk; prone to exploring different angles when a strong opinion is presented to us (my younger son, in particular, is a master at this). I was suddenly determined to explore this subject and prove them wrong.
The reason these mudflats exist is that the Bristol Channel, whose waters are rich in sediment from the several major river systems that flow into it, deposits the mud in the vast inter-tidal zones created by its famously large tidal range.
The reason these mudflats exist is that the Bristol Channel, whose waters are rich in sediment from the several major river systems that flow into it, deposits the mud in the vast inter-tidal zones created by its famously large tidal range. But that is not all. The mudflats are at the centre of a constant battle between the erosive forces of tide and weather, and the stabilizing forces of halophytic plants trying to establish salt marshes. The huge array of patterns created by these opposing forces, in addition to the wet surfaces that reflect whatever drama is playing out in the sky, are what make the landscape here utterly intriguing.
It was perhaps because of the wet, reflective surfaces that I acquired a taste for those vile winter days with showers blowing in from the sea. On such days, the light is constantly changing and in conditions like that, photos just appear instantly out of nowhere and are gone the next second. This is where I find photography as a medium really comes into its own, because it can capture brief moments like that and the satisfaction in doing so, as well as that feeling of having endured tough conditions, really appeals to me. I also found quite early on that the pictures I was getting in those conditions were very monochromatic, so it was a natural decision to continue the project in black and white.
It was perhaps because of the wet, reflective surfaces that I acquired a taste for those vile winter days with showers blowing in from the sea. On such days, the light is constantly changing and in conditions like that, photos just appear instantly out of nowhere and are gone the next second.
The biggest challenge with this project has been simply getting access to the subjects I’ve wanted to photograph. You have to take great care as the signposts on the beaches here all attest to. You cannot simply walk to the sea at low tide otherwise you’ll get stuck. I’ve had to think creatively and use stable ground in whatever form it comes, be that as man-made concrete flood defences or patches of salt marsh, whose root network stabilizes the mud enough to walk on. There has been an awful lot of studying maps, studying tide tables, visiting and revisiting locations in order to get all of the elements aligned for the pictures I wanted. As a result, I have come to know certain key locations such as Sand Bay and the River Parrett Estuary extremely well.
Once I had a collection of images that sat together coherently, I started to think about publishing a book of the project. I’d had a book published a couple of years previously by Frances Lincoln, but that was more a celebration of Somerset as a region. This was a very different body of work focusing on an unusual subject and its aesthetic qualities when photographed in a particular way. Not many publishers really dealt with this sort of photography but I’d been collecting some of the magnificent titles released by Triplekite Publishing, particularly David Baker’s Sea Fever, and I thought I’d approach them.
You get so many rejections as a photographer that it’s always a bit of a surprise when someone says yes. I had to redouble my efforts that winter and get out at every opportunity to make sure I had enough depth of coverage in time for publication. Although Triplekite is sadly no longer publishing, there are still copies of Mud|Sand available online both in the UK and America, as well as signed copies direct from myself (jamesosmond.co.uk/art). Book publication usually signifies the end of a project but I’m never able to lay anything completely to rest and I do continue to revisit the Somerset coast working in both colour and monochrome.
Do you have a project that you are working on that you'd like to write an article for us about? We'd love to hear from you, so please do get in touch.
It was an unexpected surprise when Charlotte invited me to contribute an End Frame… but, like many before me, my initial enthusiasm took a dive when I started to think seriously about it – a favourite image – just one – out of the hundreds of favourites that delight and inspire me – some created by famous photographers, others by undiscovered genius’s who I am fortunate to count as friends – how could I do that?
I was on holiday when I got the call, so had time and space to think about my choice. It didn’t help. But once I got home, inspiration took hold and suddenly I knew what I would present to my fellow readers.
So, here we have an image from Ray K. Metzker, an American photographer who throughout a 60+ year career (born 1931 – died 2014) pushed so many boundaries to create four or five bodies of amazing work – any one of which would have been enough for most people.
Apparently, he was a quiet man. But he had a bold vision. He studied at The Institute for Design in Chicago in the late 1950s and then took off to Europe. The time he spent travelling fixed his creative point of view. He decided that ‘light’ would be his subject and that he would seek complexity over simplicity. If you look at any of his images – exclusively black and white – from then on you will see that singular purpose.
He is primarily known for his urban cityscapes – deep blacks, bright whites, structure and angles, silhouettes and anonymous passers-by. He pioneered selective focus and multiple exposure, and developed a technique of ‘composite’ images where he created a tapestry print from a whole roll of film!
But I learnt all this later. I first came across his photography in a book called simply ‘Landscapes’.
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!
Photographing forests and trees belong to the main areas of interest for me. It is an exciting and rewarding challenge in my opinion to explore the possibilities of framing a scene within the square format. There are different compositional principles compared to other formats.
For example, it is often more appealing to place a subject in the centre of a square image than in a rectangular one. Yet a decentered placement may work as well in other cases. But this is only one aspect. There would be a lot to discuss I think.
The agricultural landscape that I do most of my photography in does not lend itself to a minimalist approach. The landscape is dotted with farmsteads, grain silos, wind turbines, and a host of other distractions. Isolating a subject in such a busy environment is not impossible, but it is difficult enough to be frustrating.
When fog sets in, frustrations and background distractions disappear. Driving through an all-too-familiar landscape on a foggy day becomes a trip through undiscovered country. The windmill in a field that – on a bright, sunny day – would border on the trite now is a great photo opportunity. The rolling hills covered with crops and a windbreak become useful graphic elements.
At the same time, fog is concealing distracting details it is revealing a fresh perspective. It encourages a new look at old things. It’s easy to develop lazy seeing when driving past very similar views. A fog-enshrouded landscape helps me “restart” my seeing by providing a different context to the familiar. Looking at my environment in a different light encourages me to be more mindful of the things around me when the fog disappears.
Each year here in New England a marvellous transformation takes place. As days shorten and the nights get colder, the green chlorophyll that lets leaves provide nutrients to the trees all summer gets put away for one last flourish. In some species, the seasonal change induces a flush of sugar production, which is restricted by the cold nights from reaching the trunk of the trees. But in these trees, the pigment anthocyanin allows the trees to access the produced sugar by minimizing oxidation before the leaves fall. The reds of maple, dogwood and oaks are due to the presence and protection of anthocyanin.
But the yellows, oranges and browns of birches, poplars and hickories come from another process. The carotenoid pigments that colour these trees’ leaves are always present in tandem with chlorophyll. The shorter days of fall trigger a reduction of chlorophyll production, causing it to dwindle until only the bright colours of carotenoids remain.
So those of us who love the colours of fall should take a few moments to give anthocyanin and carotenoids their due…
Walking softly and carrying a large tripod, I explore the woods and waters of my native New England and beyond to experience and share the amazement of their subtle beauty.
This mini-set of photos features three different locations: Kauai (Hawaii), Lake Louise and Herbert Lake. They are among my favourite spots in the world.
"Water's Alive" pays tribute to one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring subjects that I have ever photographed - water.
In my five years as a professional photographer, I have documented water in many ways. But every time I look at it, I see something different. I learn something new. Whether I freeze its movement or let it flow through long exposure, it always speaks to me in a unique way.
"In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; in one aspect of you are found all the aspects of existence." - Khalil Gibran
Last autumn Stephen Gledhill, who is one of our subscribers and contributors, suggested we got in touch with Stu Levy. He had just got back from a trip to The Lake District with six photography friends. Most of them have known each other since a large format monochrome landscape photography workshop in Bluff in Utah in 2001. One of the newcomers Stu is well known and highly accomplished, respected and published photographer based in Oregon in the US. We got in touch with Stu to find out more about his photography and his time as an assistant instructor with Ansel Adams.
Tell me about why you love landscape photography? A little background on what your first passions were, what you studied and what job you ended up doing.
Photography and rock music were my twin passions during my teenage years in the mid-1960’s. I was doing documentary photography in high school and college, but also photographed musicians, both for publicity use and in performance.
There was no art in my home, and my only exposure to art was through school trips to the Art Museum, where I was attracted to surrealism – my favourites being Miro, Magritte and Escher.
I was given the book Family f Man as a high school graduation present, and learned about Karsh and Cartier-Bresson while in college, but knew nothing of the West-Coast Landscape tradition in photography.
I started Medical School and had almost no time for photography for the next 6 or 7 years.
In Joe's previous article (Looking for Landscape Photography), he wrote about a definition of landscape photography as a means to probe his own motivation, curiosity and creativity as a photographer. In this article, Joe looks at one of these genres of landscape photography - the geographic landscape.
One of the great virtues of photography is its ability to stimulate our interest in the subject photographed. Admittedly, a good or great photograph may be more likely to achieve that than an average one. But even so, any well-executed photograph that reveals detail and space, form and shape – the content of a scene – in a moderately interesting way, can be described as geographic.
It was gratifying to discover that the Wikipedia definition of geography provides much evidence to support this assertion, beginning with a translation from Greek: γεωγραφία, geographia, literally "earth description”.
It is a month since we launched tickets for the 2020 Meeting of Minds Conference and we have sold more tickets so far than we had in total for our first conference back in 2014! This year is also our 10th birthday, so the conference is a true celebration of how On Landscape has grown, our diversity of contributors and the landscape photography community.
We're delighted to announce more speakers for the conference, with Yan Wang Preston, Daniel Bergmann, Jackie Ranken and Mike Langford adding to the line up.
We are also pleased to announce a few of our exhibitors for the event with Fotospeed, Teamwork Photo and Beyond Words joining us this year.
The early bird ticket offer runs our tomorrow and we will announce more offers throughout the year. There are only 15 dinner tickets left so if you'd like to attend the dinner, please hurry! Click here for ticket information.
Announcing More Speakers
YAN WANG PRESTON
Dr. Yan Wang Preston is a photographic artist interested in the contested states of nature in contemporary societies. She has completed two large-scale projects - Mother River and Forest, both of which won many international awards such as the 1st Prize, Professional Landscape, 2019 Sony World Photography Awards.
Her solo exhibitions are shown at venues including Gallery of Photog-raphy Ireland and the 56th Venice Biennale and Chongqing China Three Gorges Museum. Her monographs Forest and Mother River are both published by Hatje Cantz in 2018. Find out more about Yan and read the article she has written for On Landscape.
DANIEL BERGMANN
Daníel Bergmann is a nature photographer from Iceland. Most of his field effort has focused on documenting and interpreting the landscape of his home country. Daníel’s fascination with wide open spaces, rock and ice have increasingly brought him further north into the Arctic, mainly Greenland and Svalbard, where there are also not as many tourists to avoid as there are in Iceland. Find out more about Daniel.
JACKIE RANKEN
MIKE LANGFORD
Jackie Ranken is an Australian born, landscape, art photographer now living in New Zealand. She has over thirty-five years’ experience within the visual arts and has been an international awards judge since 2002.
She combines her art practice with teaching and is a presenter in workshops and seminars internationally. Her passion is the creation of multi-layered narratives via in camera multiple exposures and intentional movements.
Mike Langford is a New Zealand born, landscape and travel photographer. He has been a professional photographer for over 35 years and an International Awards judge and lecturer for 25 years. Mike’s passion is travel/Landscape photography and travel book publishing, with over 26 books to his name.
They are both Grand Masters of the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) and a Grand Masters and Honorary Fellows of the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography (NZIPP). They are also both Canon Masters and EIZO Ambassadors. Find out more about Jackie & Mike.
Exhibitors
This year at the On Landscape Meeting of Minds Conference we are using the new gallery space at The Rheged for our exhibitors & coffee breaks. This is on the top floor of the building (there is a lift available for disabled access).
This will give us unprecedented space for our exhibitors and delegates to mingle during coffee and lunch breaks.
Inspired by image makers around the world, Fotospeed began life manufacturing quality darkroom chemistry and specialist fine art printmaking processes. www.fotospeed.com.
With 35 years of technical experience and as the world of traditional darkroom made way for the digital revolution, Fotospeed utilised its wealth of expertise and understanding of image making to engineer and develop a comprehensive range of exceptional digital inkjet papers, inks and accessories.
With a respected reputation for quality and service, Fotospeed is now an established distribution company for worldwide market leading brands such as Hahnemuhle Fine Art Papers, Kaiser Photographic equipment, Herma Adhesives and Canson Infinity Papers.
Teamwork Digital is the premier Phase One partner in the UK, and digital medium format photography has been our specialism for over 20 years.
We offer sales, rentals and technical support of Phase One camera systems and Capture One software, as well as running open house events so people can get hands-on with Phase One equipment.
In representing Phase One, we offer solutions and support to professional and enthusiast photographers, cultural heritage institutions and industrial businesses looking for the ultimate image quality.
Arrange a demonstration of medium format system
If you are curious about digital medium format, Teamwork Digital will be on hand throughout the conference to provide personal demonstrations of the Phase One XF and XT camera systems. This is a great opportunity to demystify what can be achieved with a medium format system and to have all your questions answered in practice, and with expert guidance.
If you wish to arrange, please contact Al Simmons on al@teamworkphoto.com or 0207 323 6455.
Beyond Words is a specialist retailer of photographic books. After 12 years trading as a shop in Edinburgh, Beyond Words now operates as a mail online business. We also sell a range of the best photographic remainder titles at about a third of their published price. For this conference, we will have a selection of the latest landscape photography books along with classic and hard-to-find titles.www.beyondwords.co.uk.
Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create… Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Introduction
This is the second article of my series about Expressive Photography. In the first article, I tackled the common evolution of the photographer towards the path of personal expression (click here to read the article). In this article, I would like to ponder: what is expressive photography? What does it take to reach this level in your photography? Which traits or characters tend to define the philosophy and modus operandi of the expressive photographer?
Personal and expressive photography
Photography is a medium that offers limitless possibilities. We can use it for very different reasons, with very different purposes and in order to reach very different audiences.
When it comes to music, writing, or painting, we tend to make a clear distinction between the different ways in which these mediums work. We instantly grasp that a poem has a different purpose, motivation, and target audience than an obituary in the newspaper.
For some reason, however, many people tend to put all forms of photography into the same bag, as if all photographic images are made with the same purpose and motivation. This is, of course, not a good idea. The definition of the word “photography” is “writing with light,” and in fact, that is what we are doing every time we press the shutter. Just like when we are writing, we are using a language, visual this time, which instead of using words, syntax, and grammar, uses visual elements like tone, colour, contrast, shapes, lines, and textures.
I’m not sure if Hamlet would have really ever had this dilemma. He was also unlikely to ever change his ‘point of view’ on Claudius, his uncle/ stepfather. He may, however, have liked to see what the castle at Kronborg (Elsinore) looked like from above, but that was not really possible at the time. Kronborg sits at the water’s edge and towers above everything else around it.
This analogy is a bit of a stretch perhaps, but the point is fair. Until recently, you could not frame a landscape image from altitude unless you had a convenient hill, mountain or building to climb. (helicopters and planes notwithstanding). Then along comes the drone and a sudden burst of creativity is fueled. Competitions, books and social media are now filled with images captured from above while the ‘photographer’ stays rooted to terra firma. It is an exciting development in an art form that has always morphed and ‘improved’. But should we jump in and ‘take off’?
To Drone
A new Perspective
Without a doubt, the main reason to own a drone is to unleash the opportunities that it provides for creativity. Views, scenes, angles, speed etc. They are all fresh and easily accessible without too much effort (or danger).
Without a doubt, the main reason to own a drone is to unleash the opportunities that it provides for creativity. Views, scenes, angles, speed etc. They are all fresh and easily accessible without too much effort (or danger).
Imagine for a moment that you cannot separate the two sea-stacks in your chosen view. You want to present them without the overlap, but there are always limitations as to where you can stand. You try left, right, backwards, forwards, perhaps it is a cliff edge, the sea itself, an ugly building etc.. A little more height, however, and the sea-stacks separate nicely, and perhaps now they do not ‘cut’ the horizon either.
While it becomes more difficult daily to find unique ‘terrestrial’ compositions, the novel opportunities for drone photography are much greater. Think how many abstract views of river deltas you have seen recently, or images of a lighthouse from out to sea. Projects such as ‘The Wall’ (Read Simon Butterworth's article about his project) show their potential, either on their own or combined with more conventional photography. Indeed, the ILPOTY TOP 101 photos for the last few years have had 10-20 images each year taken from an aerial perspective.
Then, of course, there are also those incredible video sequences. Who does not enjoy watching as the videographer sets the scene. Around those mountain tops, up the waterfalls, over the iceberg, backwards through the forest. The timing of the emergence of drone video has been perfect for the relatively recent boom in vlogging.
Expense?
To be sure, drones that are ‘landscape photographer worthy’ are not cheap. But neither are they really that expensive. Leading examples of drones capable of solid 4K video and very reasonable (20+Mp) still images, can cost less than a new telephoto lens, and only slightly more than the latest smartphone. Compare that to buying a new camera system complete with a set of lenses.
Easy to fly
Control is actually relatively simple and easily learned. Like all new skills, mastery is developed over time. But the manufacturers make starting out very straight forward. They throw in automated controls that make certain tasks seem elementary. Image stabilization, collision avoidance, flight levelling, follow me, autopilot and waypoint navigation are just a few of the more common standards. Yet there are also more hands-on skills that can be assimilated and used for a more personalized cinematic experience.
Control is actually relatively simple and easily learned. Like all new skills, mastery is developed over time. But the manufacturers make starting out very straight forward.
Weight
By definition, almost, these incredible technical devices are really light. The units themselves have to be to fly efficiently and maximise battery duration. There is a trade-off for size, stability and payload (what camera they can carry), but typically the drones themselves do not represent a great burden.
Not to Drone
Expense
I have myself seen a favourite lens roll down a rock and plunge into a river in flood, never to be seen again. Yet accidents are infrequent and generally do not result in the loss of a whole camera system. Drones, on the other hand, are a little less forgiving. Repeated damage and/ or complete loss seem to be inherent risks that the photographer must take into consideration, especially when operating over water. There are ways to mitigate risk, but those big sweeping vistas from mountain tops and other dramatic landscapes bring with them a vulnerability that the operator must accept, or keep things to a much lower level.
Weight
Drones are light, but that is not the full story. Batteries do not last that long and their recharge is not a simple matter ‘in the field’. Generally, a stack of pre-charged additional batteries will be required for extended flying. In addition, there is a controller. This typically weighs about the same as the drone itself, and it needs a battery too! Finally, when out and about, the drone is not likely to be a landscape photographer’s only piece of equipment. There will be the main camera for stills, with appropriate lenses, tripod, filters etc, etc. Then a vlogger may also have a separate camera (and tripod) for video capture. Suddenly that is a lot of equipment. For any real distance away from your vehicle, you will need to be making choices of what is essential and what to leave behind.
Nuisance
Perhaps the biggest negative of drones for many people is the nuisance factor. That whirring noise from those high speed blades travels a long way, especially in the calmer conditions that are needed to fly. Understandably, people visit wild places of outstanding beauty to immerse themselves. To see the sights and to be at one with nature. Most ‘pilots’ are very conscientious and will not fly while others are around. But there are always a few who flaunt the rules and ignore the impact on others.
No fly zones
This is more problematic than it may at first seem. On a recent backpacking trip to hike the Timberline Trail on Mt Hood in Oregon, a friend brought his drone. He had done extensive research and checked all official online ‘no-fly’ sites. What he did not know, was that there was a tiny clause in the small print of the local backcountry permit. That’s a lot of extra weight he carried for four days for no reason. Again, there are those who would flaunt the rules, but if you want to play by the book, it can be difficult.
Perhaps the biggest negative of drones for many people is the nuisance factor. That whirring noise from those high speed blades travels a long way, especially in the calmer conditions that are needed to fly.
So, what is the answer?
Alas, poor Yorick...
It is, of course, a very personal decision and I can understand the answer will be different for different folks. No right or wrong. I fear there is also a little bit of NIMBY in this dilemma.
The opportunities are great, but these ‘wishes’ are not critical to my craft. I am on a continual journey of discovery and there are many other opportunities for me as well. While I might consider a drone in
As a landscape photographer and occasional vlogger, I am excited by the opportunities that a drone could provide. I would love to include some epic, cinematic footage from the places I visit on my adventures. I am also often in a situation where I would love a little more height on my tripod. Further, I truly enjoy some of the footage I see on YouTube etc., so I am a current avid consumer as well.
Yet, I have also been in the situation where a drone operation has not only disturbed my ‘peace’, it also has made still photography very difficult. This is perhaps nothing more than the inconvenience that you expect at a popular viewpoint. Try finding a spot at Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island for sunrise. But did we also really need a drone buzzing along the curve of the beach, 20’ above the heads of a dozen photographers, just as the sun ventured above the horizon?
The point is, I like what I see, but not when I am there.
So for me, I always come back to the ‘nuisance’ factor. I know that I never like to hear a drone going overhead, especially when I’ve gone to great effort to reach an isolated pristine destination. So should I be a part of the problem, even if I don’t think there is anyone else around? I just don’t like the idea that I could upset even one person. The opportunities are great, but these ‘wishes’ are not critical to my craft. I am on a continual journey of discovery and there are many other opportunities for me as well.While I might consider a drone in the future, it is just not right for me at this time.
I first met Garry Brannigan in March 2007, a year or so after he had started to provide photographic workshops. My reason for attending was simple; I had bought a DLSR when they came below £1,000 and needed help to get it to do what I wanted. In the event, the necessary information was provided very quickly at the first session before we went out on location. I so enjoyed this first experience that I, like many others, rebooked for subsequent workshops. Of course, the content changed from the mechanics of the camera to a greater understanding of what works in good compositions and different situations.
Garry has been running his workshops since 2005 after a career spent in editing photojournalism on UK national newspapers. He is based near Swaledale, where I first met him and, through him, I have been fortunate to explore much of the Scottish west coast developing a passion which has seen me return most years.
This slot is called End Frame and I was asked to contribute comments on an image which has influenced me. Like many others have said this is a rather awesome task as so many good images abound by many famous photographers and some less so. We get bombarded with images good and bad through social media and so many stay on computer drives never seeing a printer. Garry encouraged us to print our images - sometimes with surprising results! I often find images once printed move between keepers and not; the immediate impact may not be the lasting one.
The image I have selected is one of Garry’s early images from Swaledale which introduced me to some of the elements of composition. As part of his workshops, he shows some of his images and invites comment. Essentially a simple picture from which further ideas and styles naturally develop, but one which made an impact when I first saw it at that first workshop. I am pleased to see that it has retained a place on his website.
David Speight joined us to chat about his photography whilst he was staying just around the corner at the bottom of Glencoe. We chatted about the background of his photography and took a look through some of his favourite images. You can see some of the images in the gallery below. A big thanks for David for sparing us a few minutes whilst on his Christmas holidays!
It’s been a few years (over 8!) since we performed our mammoth “Big Camera Comparison”. For those of you who haven’t seen it, we compared medium format and large format film against various digital cameras including the then cutting edge Phase One IQ280, an 80mp CCD sensor which we used on a Linhof Techno, an Alpa and a Cambo technical camera (we also tested a D800 and a 5Dmk2). You can find the results of that test here but the general summary was that the 80mp and 5x4 were quite close in many ways (more fine detail in 5x4, more punchy contrast in the 80mp - prints looked similar). But one of the big reasons we made the test was a reaction to an article in Luminous Landscape declaring that the IQ180 cameras now beat 8x10 film and to cut a long, laborious and geeky story short, the answer was “no they don’t”. The results from 8x10 film blew away the 80mp Phase One sensor and it’s fabulous Rodenstock lenses completely. Here’s a repeat of the side by side comparison with a quick photograph of the test scene first.
8x10 Velvia 50
Phase One IQ 180
Our final analysis had the 8x10 film coming in at about 300-600 megapixels. However, that didn’t tell the whole story as 5x4 film came in at a potential 200+ megapixels and yet the IQ280 files printed just as good. The 8x10 photographs in the field looked better than the IQ280 definitely but not by massive amounts.
Since then, there have been lots of improvements in camera sensors and obviously very little movement in film technology. Although to be fair to film, its use is now growing and there have been some ‘saves’ and ‘remakes’ (e.g. Kodak E100G). Recently Joe Cornish has upgraded the new IQ4 150mp sensor and TeamWork approached us about going out and testing the camera in various ways. We’ve talked about our general reactions to the camera in a previous article, but we were also interested in how it compared with 8x10 film being as things were getting close in our previous print comparison.
So, Al Simmons and I took a walk around Glencoe for an afternoon accompanied by James Fortune who just happened to have a D850 which we were able to include in the test.
To get the right comparison, I was using a Toyo 810MII camera with a Schneider 110mm Super Symmar XL lens to try to match the field of view of the IQ4 150mp sensor on the Phase XT camera and the 23mm Rodenstock Digaron HR lens. These are very similar angles of view as you’ll see in the test images.
We were not trying to be as technical as our last tests as these were more about ‘in the field’ use and the numbers from the previous test probably tell us the theoretical results. Hence our first photograph was taken at Glencoe Lochan. It was a bit of as mess as I’d forgotten they were draining it to repair the dam, ah well this is a resolution test so no problem. Here’s the view as taken with the IQ4 150mp followed by the photograph from the 8x10 camera. The 8x10 was used with a graduated filter but obviously the holder vignetted badly. We also took a photograph on colour negative film which showed no vignetting.
IQ4 150mp
8x10 Velvia 50
The following is a zoomed view of the point of focus for both cameras which is shown on the Phase camera by a red outline
IQ4 150mp detail
8x10 Velvia 50 detail
Our following test took us to the top of Glencoe from a spot called “The Study”. Here’s the overall view from the Phase and 8x10 cameras.
IQ4 150mp
8x10 Velvia 50
The 8x10 shows the vignetting from the graduated filter again and the two pictures have different conditions. If you look at the small red outline near the middle of the picture, this is where we’ll be doing the comparison. Here is our first comparison at zoom level one
IQ4 150mp
8x10 Velvia 50
Nikon D850 (14-24)
To get a better idea if you’re on a smaller screen, we zoomed in on the area around the road sign. We’ve also included James Fortune’s photograph from his Nikon D850 with the 14-24 lens.
IQ4 150mp
8x10 Velvia 50
Nikon D850 (14-24)
Before people say that the Nikon or Phase photos aren’t sharp, this is because it’s been massively uprezzed in order to compare at all. Here’s the raw version of the IQ followed by the raw version of the Nikon
You can see that although the Nikon isn't pixel perfect, the IQ is about as good as you'll get. (the 14-24 is a good lens but nowhere near a Rodenstock HR Digaron).
Our final comparison pictures were taken below the house in the last photograph (I like to call it Hamish Macinnes’ house instead Jimmy Saville’s as Hamish is a nice bloke who actually lived in the house. It’s now owned by a plumber from Inverness!)
IQ4 150mp
8x10 Fuji Pro 160 (Colour Negative)
You can see here that the 8x10 photograph shows no vignetting as this was taken on Fuji Pro160S film and needed no filters.
The red area is quite small on this comparison but hopefully, you can still see it. Here are the contents of the area starting with the Phase version.
IQ4 150mp
8x10 Velvia 50
Nikon D850 (14-24)
And again, here is a version zoomed in a little further to show fine detail differences.
IQ4 150mp
8x10 Velvia 50
Nikon D850 (14-24)
And a final high resolution comparison of the 8x10 Velvia and Phase One IQ4 150mp here's the writing on the road sign from Glencoe.
8x10 on left, Phase One IQ4 150mp on the right
Well, what does it all mean??
We’ve covered a huge amount of this territory in our previous comparison article which I’ll link to at the end of this but in summary, 8x10 trounces the Phase One camera for absolute detail but unless you’re printing over three meters wide then it’s not going to be visible.
What is more, the Phase One system has become quite ‘friendly’ now, with its fast frame rate live view, focus peaking, huge dynamic range, very little colour distortion and electronic shutter, there are very few reasons why any sane person would want to use an 8x10 instead. The Phase cameras have reached a functionality and usability point that means using medium format digital is no longer a fight with the equipment. Joe Cornish will write about his own medium format pathway a future article but we have discussed the falling away of MF digital hurdles as each new camera gets released.
Then again, photography is an art, not a science, and many people make their choices of medium based on how the process works for them creatively. There’s also the small matter of expense to take into account as well.
These tests don’t really mean much beyond a nice ‘experiment’. Getting a sharp result from 8x10 is no mean feat, what with sagging film, camera movement, trying to use smaller apertures to keep sharpness, fighting with a metre cube camera, carrying a 20+kg backpack etc, etc. It really is a challenge. Personally, I love using the 8x10 though. It feels like you’re really ‘working’ something and the satisfaction of a good result can be directly proportional to how hard it was to make it.
For me though, the real benefits of 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10 systems are the ease with which camera movements can be made, the beauty of lenses that render beautifully to the corners, the accessibility of lenses that have ‘character’ that you just can’t use on smaller formats, the colour reproduction of Velvia 50 (still hard to match, even with ninja photoshop skills), the relinquishment of the continuous upgrade cycle and the pleasure of really knowing your equipment.
The conclusion at the end of our previous article stands as true now as it did then. Use whatever makes you happy! If that's pinhole or 8x10 it doesn't matter a damn. (However, an 8x10 frame on a light table and a good loupe is a rare joy indeed).
p.s. When we arrived at the study in Glencoe, the conditions were amazing and I quickly shot a hand held, five frame panorama on my Sony. Sometimes a lack of faff beats everything!
Usually, our featured photographers concentrate on trying to show a natural-looking and people-less landscape, but so many talk about how outdoor activities got them into photography in the first place that we thought it would be good to show the landscape in a slightly different light. Hamish Frost has taken his passion for the outdoors, added photography to the mix, and developed this to the point where he has managed to build a new career for himself photographing people enjoying the landscape. Hamish has previously said that much of the time in adventure sports photography, getting a perfect photo just isn’t feasible, but that certainly hasn’t stopped him trying.
Spindrift blowing off the summit ridge of the Parrotspitze
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 actually grew up in Cambridge but moved up to Scotland to study Engineering at Glasgow University. Five years of probably not working quite as hard as I perhaps should’ve, followed by one year of actually knuckling down for a Masters degree, eventually led me to a graduate job working for SSE (Scottish and Southern Energy). Whilst I was there, I got caught up in the Scottish backcountry skiing scene, so much of my free time was spent out exploring the Highlands on skis.
For those who don’t know, skiing conditions in Scotland can be quite ephemeral, so I was lucky to have a very understanding boss who would let me take days off at the last minute when good conditions prevailed. Sometimes even this wasn’t enough though, and when the days got longer in spring, I’d often find myself getting up at a stupid time of the morning to fit in a ski before work, or running up a mountain after work to ski a line before sunset. At the same time, I was getting inspired by a lot of the photos I’d see online from established adventure photographers based in places like Chamonix, North America, or even closer to home in the UK, and I’d take my camera out on my ski missions to try and emulate what they were doing. At some point, there was a changeover where, rather than just being something I did whilst out skiing, the photography instead became the main driver behind my mountain days, and I was actively going out and planning my days around trying to take good photos.
This is one of the most fundamental and common questions I ask when looking at client images on photography workshops. It seems a simple question and one to which is easily answered. However, the answer, in reality, does not reflect this. Indeed, the question ‘Why did you take it?’ is not given a lot of thought and this can be the difference between an excellent image and an average, or even a bad one and responses can be convoluted and unclear.
As landscape photographers, we are often fortunate enough not be rushed. This does not mean that we don’t have to work quickly as sometimes this is the case. In fact, many non-landscape photographers have the impression that we are involved in a leisurely pursuit, hanging around waiting for the light to change in our favour. As you know, this can be far from the truth. Perching on a rocky outcrop by the edge of a storm charged sea with the wind and spray blowing towards you and a blizzard about to hit you requires the photographer to work fast ensuring you do not drop any equipment into the swell. You need to know how to assemble your kit, load your filters, and set the necessary exposure in double quick time, and all without falling in yourself!
Wester Ross, Scotland. I was entranced by the swirling of the seaweed and the rushing of the sea backwards and forwards as successive waves broke amongst them. I was stood knee deep in seawater holding tightly to the tripod so that it wouldn’t be knocked over and making exposures when possible. I had to work quickly as the tide was coming in making it impossible to stay in one spot for very long.
Flood Plains, South Iceland. With only a sharp cold wind to contend with, I was able to spend a leisurely couple of hours walking amongst these grasses contrasting beautifully against the black sands so common to Iceland. I knew that I also wanted the majestic headland and stormy clouds in the distance to feature.
However, in the main, we can take time to contemplate and choose the image that we will take. But is this the case? Often when arriving at a location there is an inclination to walk around ever so briefly and then set up your tripod, attach the camera and start shooting. There is an emotional surge and mental obligation to ‘get one in the bag’. Let’s face it, you have driven or walked miles to a particular location, and you have an obligation to be successful, to bring home some great images. The question is what are you doing to make this happen?
Often when arriving at a location there is an inclination to walk around ever so briefly and then set up your tripod, attach the camera and start shooting. There is an emotional surge and mental obligation to ‘get one in the bag’.
My experience, having worked with lots of photographers over many years, both as a workshop leader and one to one, is that people do not take the time to stop, think and experience their surroundings. Often there is an urgency to start taking photographs, with the hope that the discovery of a successful image is back at home scanning the raw files on your computer. On consideration, this is very much ‘after the fact’, and you are often a long way from where the photograph was taken so “nipping back out to have another go” can quickly turn into disappointment at the lost opportunities. To add to the disappointment, whilst you are looking at the image files and recounting the time you where there, you piece together the places you should have set up and see with staggering clarity were you could have done better!
Notice that autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
Every autumn, in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere, deciduous trees undergo a radical transformation, climaxing in an explosion of colour before shedding their leaves and becoming dormant during winter, preparing to start the cycle all over again in Spring. It is a miracle of nature brought about by seasonal changes in the diurnal light cycle, temperature and prior rainfall that halt production of green chlorophyll and allow yellows, reds, oranges and purples to show through.
We all know this story, which for all its splendour also is so predictable and commonplace that it is easy to miss as we go about our daily lives.
We all know this story, which for all its splendour also is so predictable and commonplace that it is easy to miss as we go about our daily lives.
Mired down in work and domestic responsibilities, the autumn colour change can happen without our notice. And if that happens, we lament that we missed it. We examine ourselves and ask why and how we drifted away from nature, why we don’t look up at the stars on a clear night anymore, why we didn’t notice the scent of sage this year.
One morning, in the Autumn of 1994, I took a shortcut across a field in Connecticut, hurrying to get to my destination, when I looked down to ascertain why my shoes were soaked through to the socks. The answer halted me. The ground was covered with richly coloured, dew soaked leaves made even more saturated by the soft, lightbox effect of cirrus clouds high overhead. Luckily, I had my camera with me loaded with Velvia. The beauty caused me to pause long enough to marvel at nature and to record that feeling on film.
That’s what photography is to me, an effort to record a feeling – really, an emotion – that I can share and recall. I often read or hear photographers talk about the importance of having something to say through our work, but I’ve rarely felt that I had something to say. I don’t even really know what that means. It’s the landscape that is speaking to me. On the rare occasion that I do reportage, I have a story to tell, but mostly I am not trying to say anything. Usually, I am trying to listen.
Ever since that day in the field in New England, autumn has been a favourite time for photography because autumn is more than a visually spectacular colour change. Autumn is Mother Nature singing, with all her heart and soul, her song that we can hear if we remember to notice. But how can we not notice such a loud phenomenon?
Whereas the solstices are subtle and slip by unnoticed, the autumnal equinox is a time of great upheaval, a beautiful death throe before the cold stillness of winter. The shedding of leaves is a great entropic event that deposits countless tons of biomass back onto the ground, to be recycled by worms, insects and bacteria into basic nutrients that will, once again, climb the cambium layer of the very tree from which they fell to grow new leaves.
Whereas the solstices are subtle and slip by unnoticed, the autumnal equinox is a time of great upheaval, a beautiful death throe before the cold stillness of winter.
In nature, spring is a time of birth and childhood, of newness and learning, of adolescence and maturation. Summer is the important and necessary time of production, like the prime of our adulthood. Make hay while the sun shines. Autumn is a time of fulfilment and harvest when nature rejoices her accomplishments by showing off all her resplendent colours as she prepares for winter.
Just as we miss the autumn colours if we don’t look up in our busy lives, we can miss the autumn of our lives if we don’t make an effort to fully live it, to be fully in it. .
That’s me. I am at the autumnal equinox of my life. Strong and virile for the past 64 years I now find myself changing, even failing in certain ways. I’ve always loved the colours of autumn but now I identify with them. I am them. Autumn is a whole new level of maturation. Autumn is a time for appreciation of life, for reflection on accomplishments as well as failures, a time to rejoice in the bounty, and a time for peaceful resignation and preparation before the inevitable.
The challenge is to recognise it and enjoy it to the fullest. Just as we miss the autumn colours if we don’t look up in our busy lives, we can miss the autumn of our lives if we don’t make an effort to fully live it, to be fully in it. It is a time to reflect, but it also is a time to live in the moment, to make the most of each day, to appreciate the beauty around us in nature and in our friends and family. A time to get outside with our cameras and listen. Because unlike nature, we have seen our last spring.
On our 200th issue, we decided to have a special Passing Through podcast. David Ward and Joe Cornish are running a workshop in the area and Ted Leeming and Morag Paterson are in Scotland also. We decided to invite them to dinner followed by a roundtable discussion on what we as landscape photographers can do to help protect the environment and mitigate climate change.
Our goal was to be specific about the types of activity that would be specific to us as photographers but we also discussed some general adaptations that anybody can make. Charlotte and I included ourselves not only as enablers of the discussion, but also, I hope, because we have made adaptations in our photography business to try to have less impact on the environment.
If you have any questions for David, Joe, Ted, Morag, Charlotte or myself, or have ideas of your own, please add them to the comments at the bottom of the article and we'll try to follow up this discussion with a separate article bringing the community into the discussion.
I'd like to add a little bit of news to the discussion as well. At the end of last year, the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild gave the Award for Excellence to a campaign website, Save Glen Etive, David Lintern and I built. The website made dramatic use of photography donated by Joe Cornish, David Ward, Colin Prior, Michael Stirling-Aird and many others. Sadly the campaign didn't stop the development but it raised awareness to the point where we had tens of thousands of supporters and petitioners.
There is a forest, in the north of Rome, almost undiscovered and perhaps for this very special to me. It is named Macchia Grande and can be reached by driving for an hour and a half in Viterbo countryside.
A forest, an atmosphere, a journey of emotions.
I have been always living and working in a big city, where the noise of people, night and day, chasing chaotic rhythm, is everywhere. I often spend days too full of commitments, phone calls, jobs, meetings, losing myself and what I really love doing. Therefore, it becomes important for me to have a refuge from the daily madness where I can escape, and this forest is really a hidden corner of total tranquillity.
Taking photographs is, first of all, connecting with the most inner part of myself, and trying to capture, in one shot, what I am feeling at that moment.
The mornings of winter bring with them the magic of places hidden by a misty layer, which slowly thins out, discovering the shapes and colours of intertwined branches, each one ready to tell its story.
I have been walked a lot in this wood last cold December. Whenever I could run away from my daily duties, I woke up very early, preparing my thermos of coffee to arrive before the sunrise. When the fog still enveloped all the trees.
Some might think that walking alone in a forest in the first light of the morning can be dangerous and scary. For me, nature is a source of inspiration and serenity; it gives us emotions in a unique way and for this, it is always worth observing it.
The mornings of winter bring with them the magic of places hidden by a misty layer, which slowly thins out, discovering the shapes and colours of intertwined branches, each one ready to tell its story.
A story that brings us back to the childhood fantasy, which seems to talk about fairies, dancing elves, lost princes and princesses who have hidden their kingdoms among these curved trees, to show them only to those who have the imagination to believe it yet.
I could not see almost anything in front of me, I only felt the crunch of the dry branches and the leaves under my shoes which, in the silence, increased the feeling of being in an enchanted place. Oaks with branches of green ivy still intertwined close to the trunks appeared to me, golden leaves shining and filtering the sunlight seemed dancing in the cold.
Thus, the forest wakes up, slow and sly.
Walking along the paths, I come across two horses that slowly ate still frozen grass, without looking at me, as if I hadn't been there. They were beautiful and wild.
The photos shown in this small project are the emotions I felt during those winter mornings, minute by minute. They allowed me to rediscover the tranquillity I needed, finding again myself, my memories, and the most precious and intimate part of me.
The hidden geometries, chaotic and so ordered as a whole attracted me most. So, I got lost in the wood, watching and taking pictures of particular connections that for me are intimate and perfect.
Nobody, in those mornings, had still woken this part of nature ... And I was lucky to have seen its beauty for first. The hours passed, the fog cleared, the temperature rose a little and the colours become sharper and brighter, ready to let a new day begin.
This is not simply a forest for me, but a refuge of thoughts and a door to my imagination.
The photos shown in this small project are the emotions I felt during those winter mornings, minute by minute. They allowed me to rediscover the tranquillity I needed, finding again myself, my memories, and the most precious and intimate part of me.
It is always difficult to choose a favourite photograph especially when you have a broad interest in landscape photography. I started by deciding on a genre chosen from impressionist, minimalist and classical. After some time and lots of image reviews, I settled on a minimalist image.
I think there are many things that attract me to minimalism but one of the main attractions is the sense of artistic freedom. Unlike a classical landscape which is to some extent laid out by nature, the minimalist landscape photographer can choose where to place the subject in the frame. This is partially driven by the fact that there is often only one subject, giving a great deal of choice of subject position which can radically alter the feeling of the photograph. The artistic freedom is further enhanced by the opportunity afforded by post-processing. This allows the photographer to de-emphasise any other elements in the photograph, blur the horizon line and alter the mood of the sky. All of these are also possible in a classical photograph but to a much lesser extent.
As you probably know, On Landscape isn’t the normal ‘reviews, adverts, competitions and special offers’ website. Although, we have done the occasional review where there has been a gap in the available information (ND filters, Grads, etc) we generally try to avoid them. However, we did notice that there was a big gap in the market for reviews of high-end 8x10 pictorial lenses so we figured we could probably add at least one new reader if we could get our hands on a one!
Fortunately, Robert White called us recently and asked if we wanted to take a look at the new Cooke PS945 and Cooke XVa lenses and so we were All Systems Go!
In all seriousness, Robert White did ask us to test these lenses as they were a new release of existing stock but using a slightly different shutter. The big hurdle retailers and manufacturers of large format lenses encounter is the fact that there are no new Copal shutters being made. (This is also a big issue for technical medium format digital cameras which has recently been addressed by the new Phase One electronic shutter on the Phase One XT camera).
Fortunately for Cooke Optics, a stash of Copal shutters was found recently. The only downside is that they were in the relatively rare Copal 3S shutter size (slightly smaller than the Copal 3). Cooke have adapted the PS945 and XVa lenses to these new shutters and Robert White asked us if we could check the functionality of both of them before they went on sale, which we were very glad to (you’ve got to think about that extra subscriber!)
Cooke PS945
The PS945 lens is one I that I already had some experience with as a colleague loaned me one a few years back but which I couldn’t quite justify the purchase of (they’re not cheap). I loved the ‘look’ of the lens though and so I was really happy to have a chance to put one through its paces again.
The PS945 is a ‘remake’ of a classic turn of the 20th Century portrait lens called the “Pinkham & Smith Visual Quality Series IV Soft Focus Lens”. The lens is nine-inch (229mm or about 60mm full-frame equivalent on a 5x4 camera) focal length and is f/4.5 when wide open. This was *the* classic portrait lens that you may not know of but you will have certainly seen the results of in early Hollywood portraits. It exhibits a wonderful balance between a glowing, soft-focus but with beautiful fine detail even when wide open and as you close the aperture down, the glow slowly disappears, the focal plane shifts and the unique bokeh of the lens becomes more prominent.
The lens appeared at the tail end of the ‘Pictorial’ era of photography (where photographers were trying to make photographs look like ‘paintings’ - i.e. transformative). In many ways, it was just a little too late to become really famous but the pictorial look carried on in the commercial and movie world long enough to give it a hell of a reputation.
My first experience with the lens was on a trip to the Peak District where we had a late summer picnic at Stanage. In between watching the climbers on Manchester Buttress, I spent a while looking for some nice heather and birch combinations to try the ‘new’ lens out on. What I found immediately fascinating when looking through the ground glass was the field curvature which, in combination with tilt movements, I could use to create quite unique areas of sharp focus in an image even when using the lens wide open. I also was quite taken with the fine level of control of the ‘glow’ in the picture, where a small change of a third of a stop shutting down the aperture can quite significantly change the quality of that glow.
The final result was a balance of glow and sharpness even though the lens was nearly wide open. The field of focus runs in the front of the image but instead of extending out to the background, it turns upwards to follow the birch trunk. I didn’t know at the time but I had created one of my favourite images!
I had more opportunity to test the lenses this time around and I also had a 10x8 camera to try them with. Supposedly the PS945 lens doesn’t cover 10x8 (5x7, just) but I found that as long as I wasn’t focused on infinity, I could get corner to corner sharp coverage. And in the vast majority of cases, you would want to be using this lens on closer subject matter anyway, in order to make the most of its visual qualities. This 10x8 coverage gives the lens an effective aperture of about f/0.6 - talk about wide open! The equivalent focal length on a 10x8 camera is about 28mm equivalent on 10x8 so a fast, wide, characterful lens!
The first thing I did when I got the latest version of the lens was to take a series of photographs of the ground glass (cheaper than taking 10x8 film!) at various apertures. The following animated image shows the results of this and I also include the four frames with the biggest changes (from f/4.5 to about f/8 - the lens didn’t have an accurate aperture marking plate).
As you can see here, the growth in the ‘glow’ as you open up is significant but the detail still remains. It’s very close to what you see when applying the ‘Orton’ effect.
f/4.5
Approx f/5.6
What I really wanted to try out was a few real photographs on my 10x8 and so on a trip to visit Michela Griffith, we took the full 10x8 system out for a walk in Crinan oak woods. Here’s one of the photographs taken wide open and also one closed down a bit (about third to half a stop).
I was amazed at just how different the images look when you study them a little closer.
As you can see, there is a definite soft glow about the wide-open image and in contrast (see what I did there) the slightly closed down aperture has become more ‘normal’ looking, albeit with excellent bokeh.
Looking a bit closer you can see more of the way that the wide-open version has the distinct glow through which the image is actually quite sharp, whilst the slightly stopped down version is more ‘edgy’ and you can also see that the point of focus has shifted as well.
f/4.5
Approx f/5.6
Finally, if you really zoom into the image you can see more of the quality of that glow.
Crop of the 5000dpi scan of 10x8 images above
Cooke XVa
The second lens that Robert White sent for me to test was the Cooke XVa. This is a lens that was one of Ansel Adams’ favourites and he used it as a ‘portable zoom’ on many famous images (see below). When I say ‘portable zoom’, I refer to the idea that this is a ‘triplet’ lens that can be used in three different configurations that give three different focal lengths. By default its focal length is 311mm but if you just use the rear element you get a 476mm lens and just the front element gives you 646mm (be aware that the single element configurations need more bellows than you would expect!). So if you’re using these elements on a 10x8 camera like Ansel did, you have the equivalent of a 40-60-80mm full-frame equivalent range.
Ansel Adams' image taken with Cooke XV
I didn’t do a great deal of testing with this lens as it’s characteristics are fairly well known. In short, it’s sharp as a tack when used in its default configuration but when you use the single elements, you lose some sharpness and the lens isn’t quite as well corrected (we’re nit picking here though. I imagine for black and white, the single element versions would work very well though.
Here’s a photograph I took from the top of Crinan Wood looking back toward Oban on the rear element only at f/45.
Colour Corrected and Multi Coated
What both of these lenses have beyond their older sublings is that they are very well colour corrected and are also multi coated for better flare resistance. This makes a big difference as anybody who has tried to shoot old lenses with colour film will attest to.
In essence, if you want to create a classic pictorial look using colour film, these are pretty much the goto lenses. I’ll supply a few links to portrait and landscape examples of the PS945 at the end of this article
Why do we care?
A bunch of you might be saying “Why should we care about a lens for 10x8in the modern era?”. Well, you don’t have to but I was intrigued at looking at these lenses in comparison with the lenses we see developed for 35mm cameras. There seems to be an addiction to sharpness in modern lenses that is losing ‘character’. Although there are some lenses that include some of the characteristics of the PS945 lens for instance, they are very few and quite often very expensive. In truth, the only real way to get the 10x8 look is to get a 10x8 camera and use some of these older lenses.
I remember when the Lomography lenses came out with their Petzval lenses and thinking these would be a perfect 35mm equivalent to the large format look. Sadly, although they had some ‘character’ they were really a poor substitute.
I would love to see some 35mm lenses that had half the character of some of these classic lenses but I think the market would be too small to make them cost effective.
If anybody has their own favourite 35mm lenses that can create a characterful, pictorial look, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll try to test a few of them.
I’m delighted to have come across Alan Henriksen’s detailed explorations of the natural and the man-made on Lensculture recently. As well as sharing his images with you, he has some rather special anecdotes too. Despite developing an interest for photography and printmaking at a very early age, it remained his hobby, enabling him to continue to make the images that he wanted to and to maintain the enthusiasm that was sparked by a visit to his local library.
You became interested in not just photography, but printing images, at a very young age. What prompted this, and how fundamental to your relationship with the camera has it proved to be? (You’ve talked about having retained the wonder of a child.)
In 1958 I asked my mother if I could use her Argus C3 35mm camera so that I could make some snapshots to contribute to the slide shows my parents occasionally put on during holiday family gatherings. Rather than allow her then nine year old son to use her good camera, she gave me a Kodak Brownie camera, and I began making snapshots of family, friends, and neighbours. During the summer of 1959, I visited a friend, who introduced me to his hobby of making photograms by placing objects on print-out paper and exposing the ensemble to sunlight. I brought my prints home and showed them to my mother. My parents remembered my interest and gave me a photo printmaking kit called Foto-Fun for Christmas. The kit included a contact printing frame, some print-out paper, trays, chemicals, and a few negatives. After printing the supplied negatives, I began printing some of my own and my parents’ negatives. Even though I had no exposure to the idea of photography as a fine art, I loved the sepia tonalities of my little contact prints and found them more beautiful than the original commercial prints.
For the first few years, photography was just one of several hobbies. But that changed in 1964 when a friend brought a book of Civil War photographs to school. I visited my local library hoping to find similar books of old historical photos. Instead, I chanced upon Peter Pollack’s book, “The Picture History of Photography” and opened it to Edward Weston’s Pepper 35, the one in which the pepper is lying on its side, in a funnel. I immediately responded to that photo, as well as the other Weston photos in that chapter. I thumbed through the rest of the book, discovering images by Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, and others. In addition to the Pollack book, I found Beaumont and Nancy Newhall’s “Masters of Photography.”
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!
The high deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas inspire me to take intimate images of the landscape. Big Bend National Park in Texas is my favourite area for taking images of cactus, especially the agave cactus.
I've spent the last few days sifting through the thousands of images I've taken over this past summer whilst working full time in the backcountry of Canada's Banff National Park. These, I think, have to be my favourite images I've taken. Not only because I think they are pretty images in of themselves, but also because of what they represent to me.
These photos are taken in a boundary-region that marks the border between a semi frequently visited area of the national park and one that is almost pure wilderness, beyond where very few people ever visit.
Just knowing that there are wild places out there still, (in one of Canadas most visited national parks at that!) is important to me. And for me, every time I look at these photos, I am brought back to that special place.
These four images hopefully depict my interest and passion for using ICM (in -camera-motion) and multiple exposure photography as a way to express my interest in more subtle, abstract and ephemeral imagery, as well as experimental imagery. I have read that it is overused now, so I am late to the show. I recall being attracted to ICM images from occasional examples in postings on line back in 2008.
I started to develop my skills while walking on beautiful sunny days and being frustrated at not being able to photograph because of the so-called harsh light. I discovered that one has to practice, practice, and experiment. And that actual movement of the camera has to be judicious to achieve desirable results. I strive for expression, not simply an image with movement and ICM technique. If a scene does not motivate me, no amount of ICM is going to help my depiction of it.
In a world of built-in obsolescence and yearly upgrades and updates to our phones, computers, cameras, accessories and software it’s not easy to tread a comfortable line between being well equipped and up to date without biting off a much larger share of the world’s resources with each new purchase than is sustainable globally. (I think it’s a relatively widely accepted premise that companies drip feed their releases piecemeal to maximise consumer spend every step of the way; putting profit ahead of sustainability.)
Right from the outset, I want to be clear that my intention with this article is to stimulate debate and discussion, as opposed to preaching or lecturing and I’d very much like to hear other people’s thoughts and opinions on the subject in response.
In today's global photography community, the temptation of an extra few megapixels here, and a slightly sharper lens there, or any modicum of additional functionality is hard to avoid with gear chat being one of the core currencies of conversation among fellow 'togs, not to mention being bombarded by advertisements and gear-fest gatherings such as the Photography Show and Photokina etc. On the other hand, it could be argued that unless you’re regularly printing your photographs at a vast scale a lot of this technology is over-egging the pudding, or using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
In today's global photography community, the temptation of an extra few megapixels here, and a slightly sharper lens there, or any modicum of additional functionality is hard to avoid with gear chat being one of the core currencies of conversation among fellow 'togs, not to mention being bombarded by advertisements and gear-fest gatherings such as the Photography Show and Photokina etc.
Partly stemming from the environmental projects Ted and I have been working on (and if I’m frank a degree of laziness on my part when it comes to researching and trying out new gear), combined with the <10% possibility of getting anything reliably delivered to our new house, over the last year or so we’ve been experimenting with “making do”. For example, I stupidly caught my filter holder on a balcony the previous year, meaning I lost my favourite filter and the holder. Initially, I didn’t replace it because I thought I would be able to get it back when I could return to the hotel and get access to the adjacent land, yet even when I realised this hope was fruitless I decided to try and get by with my other (admittedly numerous) accessories.* For a while, I was often caught lamenting the loss of my beloved 1.2 stop but as time went by I started experimenting with new techniques that would enable me to capture images I liked in a variety of circumstances where I would have quickly reverted to type given my usual kit. I’ve created work over the last year that I don’t think I could have imagined if it wasn’t for that moment of clumsiness. I play with exposure more than ever now, and often combine a series of images of a subject or theme over a month, or sometimes years before combining them into a single image or series.
As far as my camera body goes, I haven’t upgraded it for five and a half years now – it does pretty much everything I need it to. While the guys at Canon have generously loaned me other models to try over the years – that undoubtedly are better at certain things – at the moment I can’t see how I would justify buying a new DSLR. This is also, by the way, a great testament to buying a solid piece of kit that will go the distance and tolerate a high level of abuse. I feel the same about my rucksacks – one of which I’ve had for about 10 years now (an fstopgear Tilopa). It’s still my go-to pack and the one I would trust to keep my gear pretty much safe and dry come hell, high water, hail, snow or a gigantic wave (I’ve tried them all except hell so far). My phone is over five years old too and has seen a fair share of repairs during my scatterbrained custodianship. Technical outdoor clothing is becoming increasingly easier to maintain (or acquire second-hand), with many of the outdoor companies offering repair services, although I’d be really grateful if someone could point me in the direction of a pair of trail running shoes that last more than six months.
I’m not expecting it to be easy, and I imagine I’m still going to have to make the occasional second-hand purchase here and there (my tripod head is a daily annoyance I really need to get around to sorting) but it’s what I’m doing for now. For anyone else interested in going down this road I would recommend looking for refurbished/second-hand equipment from any number of big brand companies that sell 'pre-loved' equipment from their trade-in departments; I’ve used Wex Photographic before, but a quick search online throws up any number of options to consider. I’m also a keen eBay user for both buying and selling; it’s a great place to pick up a bargain. Whether you use a more prominent company or buy direct from the likes of eBay or gumtree, it goes without saying to do a little research on the vendor, see how many items they’ve sold overall in the case of eBay, and check out reviews and feedback wherever you are shopping online. In short, you can often pick up an extremely high-quality piece of kit at a much-reduced price.
For anyone else interested in going down this road I would recommend looking for refurbished/second-hand equipment from any number of big brand companies that sell 'pre-loved' equipment from their trade-in departments; I’ve used Wex Photographic before, but a quick search online throws up any number of options to consider.
Next, we plan to turn our attention to filing and internet usage – we’ve had the policy over the years of keeping all our shots, with three backups. Given that we’re probably switching to cloud-based storage, and that data centres require vast amounts of energy (not least due to the fans working to keep the machinery cool), I’m going to do my best to sort out the wheat from the chaff; while undoubtedly laborious, it will probably be quite liberating and uplifting to whittle things down that way. Likewise, browsing on the Internet has a footprint all to itself, and we’re looking at making our screen time more targeted and efficient to reduce the inevitable distractions that tend to pop up, ubiquitous to almost any online activity. I did an internet search(!) and found a graphic with some eye-opening comparisons that we should all be aware of.
On that note, my screen time is drawing to a close for today, it will be interesting to review how this has worked out at the end of the year. In the meantime, I’d love to hear other people’s stories, whether it’s solutions they’ve found, issues they struggle with, or contrasting opinions.
*Honesty fact check! Ted has reminded me that I did buy a really terrible cheap replacement holder from eBay. I hate it.
The conference will be held from 13th - 15th November 2020 at the Rheged Centre in the edge of the Lake District, just above Ullswater.
I'll be completely honest with you - Meeting of Minds was started because I wanted to go to a conference with a diverse set of landscape photography practitioners and there wasn't one. The only way it was going to happen was if we started one ourselves and so that is what we set to do. The very first conference was a great success, both financially (we didn't make much of a loss) and also, much more importantly, in terms of the quality of the talks given. We wanted a range of speakers, classical landscape photographers, contemporary practitioners, alternative processes, artists working with parts of the land, etc. that would inform and inspire our audience. I think the conferences managed this as we had a lot of feedback from people who took inspiration from the talks and went away to work on their own projects with renewed enthusiasm.
The following two conferences kept up the high standards and you can see for yourself what the talks were like because we not only recorded them for posterity but we also live-streamed them over the weekend. You can watch the recordings of our 2018 and 2016 conferences over on our YouTube channel.
We also introduced a delegate photography exhibition. Every attendee submitted a digital image and with the help of Fotospeed, we displayed all of these in one of the gallery spaces at the Rheged. Not competition, no prizes, just a way of sharing and discussing each others images. At the end of the conference, each attendee could take away their image as well.
Two of our most important ideas were that there should only be one talk on at a time (no deciding which ones to go to and which to skip) and that there was sufficient time in between talks to socialise, pick up and enjoy a drink and to take a look at the photographs on display.
So please come and join us for our fourth On Landscape Meeting of Minds conference in the Lake District in November.
Tickets
Full price tickets are £270 and we are running an early bird offer of £220 (£50 discount) up to 29th February. If you'd like to book the conference dinner as well, please book the combined ticket. Buy tickets here.
Speakers
We are delighted to announce the following confirmed speakers, with more to confirm in the next few weeks:
David Noton
David Noton is an acclaimed landscape and travel photographer with over 33 years’ experience as a professional travelling to just about every corner of the Globe.
David Ward
David Ward is one of Britain's most notable landscape photographers. His eye for shape and form is without equal and produces work that is startling in its clarity and intensity. David will be our conference host and will also be presenting one of the talks at the conference.
Trym Ivar Bergsmo
Trym Ivar Bergsmo is a Norwegian photographer based in Harstad, North Norway. rym has worked in the arctic for more than 30 years documenting the lives of the people of the north, their landscape and culture.
Alister Benn
For 20 years Alister has travelled the world in pursuit of quiet and inspiring landscapes. Having lived in China, Tibet, Borneo, Canada and Australia he has returned to his native Scotland, far from the crowds, to work and write on the west coast with his partner Ann Kristin.
Exhibition
We’ve been working behind the scenes on the On Landscape Conference and are delighted to announce the 3rd On Landscape Conference Exhibition in collaboration with Fotospeed. This year the exhibition is in a newly refurbished space at The Rheged centre.
The exhibition will run over the weekend of the conference and will include not only images from our speakers but also images from attendees! This year the gallery is in a new area of the venue.
Each attendee will have the opportunity to have a 16x12” (or 16” long edge) landscape photo, printed and mounted on foamex (or equivalent) and hung alongside our speakers prints in the exhibition room for the duration of the conference.
This 'community exhibition' is a chance to share your work with a like minded audience and chat about the work of your contemporaries and speakers whilst having a coffee.
Lightning talks
A lightning talk is a very short presentation lasting only 10 minutes. These have proved popular with the audience and this year we will be running the lightning talks after lunch on Sunday in the main auditorium. If you're interested in presenting a lightning talk then please get in touch to confirm your place.
Still need convincing on whether to book?
Take a look at the recordings from our previous conferences
2018 Conference recordings
Click here to visit the whole playlist or start watching below
2016 Conference recordings
Click here to visit the whole playlist or start watching below
Artistic photography is a unique form of creative expression, combining technical and compositional skills and reflecting very much the personality, maturity and personal philosophy of the photographer.
Mastering photography is a lifelong process. In fact, it never ends, it is simply terminated the moment we cease our existence. This is no different to mastering any other field, particularly when head, hands and soul need to cooperate in its practice.
The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world class expert in anything… It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery”
~ Daniel Levitin, This Is Your Brain: The Science of a Human Obsession p.197.
If we take a look at any of the old Masters of Photography, we can see that all of them fit the profile of being relatively obsessive, passionate, patient and with a very strong commitment to their craft and art in terms of time and energy.
This is somewhat uncomfortable to hear, particularly nowadays when we seldom have time to do anything or have the patience to wait for the results. In this world of ours, of immediacy and shortcuts to the summit, becoming a master photographer has been trivialised and there are many who think that good marketing, big print sizes or strong impact can serve to compensate for a lack of egoless passion, hard work and tireless dedication. Fortunately, this is not true, and never will be.
John Szarkowski, the former curator of the MoMA and one of the most important individuals in the history of photographic art, already warned against this a few decades ago: “It is not quite satisfying to be told that growth comes in tiny increments, during long days of plain work. We prefer to think of it arriving as a series of epiphanies, each opening a door onto a world that had previously been hidden.”
Even if I agree with Mr Szarkowski, I also think that such moments of epiphany do occur. However, these do not happen at will, they cannot be rushed or artificially provoked. They only happen as a side effect of a prolonged and sustained period of work, commitment and reflection in the first place.
This time, the water won, reclaiming all that humans had wrought. The contours of tree-lined farm lanes are still visible in the skeletons of submerged trees. When they finally topple or are felled by beavers, they will feed the encroachment of rustling reeds. Silence has descended, broken only by the soft whistling of tufted ducks, the croak of an egret, or the squawking of geese flying up to escape a marauding eagle. Roe deer soundlessly appear at the edge of an island and slip away again like ghosts. Light plays on the water, which ripples with movement caused by underwater life and tidal currents. This is a world of light and reflections, of mist and shadow.
In 2017 I embarked upon a photography project that would eventually take me almost three years to complete. My aim was to portray a hidden world that most visitors miss but, to me, forms the soul of the wetlands national park known as The Biesbosch.
When I moved to the densely populated Netherlands, after growing up in hilly New England, I found myself at a bit of a loss in Dutch nature. The strip of dunes protecting the land from the sea felt limited and over-crowded. The forests of the Veluwe are carefully tended and its Red Deer culled to keep them from destroying the habitat. It’s all so tame. But in time I grew to appreciate its quiet beauty.
Eventually, humans left the Biesbosch and it became a sunken world. In later centuries, some of the Biesbosch was once again reclaimed and farmed. Its tides were stemmed by the great barrier dams of the southwestern coast.
It was this expanse of freshwater tidal wetlands, however, that really captured my imagination. The name ‘Biesbosch’ is derived from the Dutch word ‘bies,’ or bulrushes, a pioneer species that is eventually supplanted by reeds and various types of willows. This delta swamp, about 300 sq. kilometres in size, had been reclaimed for farmland and villages in the early Middle Ages. But civil wars diverted funding from the upkeep of the dykes, and, during a series of severe storms in the 15th century, they broke several times, flooding the area. Eventually, humans left the Biesbosch and it became a sunken world. In later centuries, some of the Biesbosch was once again reclaimed and farmed. Its tides were stemmed by the great barrier dams of the southwestern coast.
But recently the Netherlands adopted a policy to create overflow locations close to the great rivers, allowing sudden increases in water levels to divert and flood the land, thereby preventing more serious flooding. The Biesbosch became one of these designated overflow spots, which meant lowering dykes and moving farms. The Haringvliet Dam has been opened slightly to allow for tidal movement and the return of the great sturgeon. Gradually, the water is taking over again.
Something about this history triggers in my mind an association with what might happen in the future when climate change causes the seas to rise and reclaim large populated regions. I might mourn the loss of some of the beauty that we humans have created through the ages, but I would like to think that birds, animals, and plants would thrive, and that nature would reign again, undisturbed by humans.
I might mourn the loss of some of the beauty that we humans have created through the ages, but I would like to think that birds, animals, and plants would thrive, and that nature would reign again, undisturbed by humans.
Most visitors only see the populated face of the Biesbosch: water recreationists, a network of powerlines on huge pylons, herds of imported exotic grazers (Highland cattle, Konik horses, and even Water Buffaloes), and the remaining farms with their fields and livestock. The world of water, reeds, and their denizens is usually hidden from these visitors, and fortunately so. The presence of humans (even my presence) makes ripples in this world. Luckily the ripples are brief and eventually fade away. There are vast expanses of water and reeds, but also a maze of narrow creeks one could get lost in. The water in the hidden creeks is sometimes only 20-30 cm deep and so limpid that you can see everything below the surface.
Because I live very close to the Biesbosch, it has become my favourite photography haunt. I go out in all weather, at all times of day, and in all seasons. Ospreys and crested grebes, roe deer and beavers, morning mists, reflections in the water… there are always inspiring images to capture. Besides, simply being out there soothes my soul. Whether I’m on foot, in a boat, or just driving slowly with the window rolled down and the camera within grabbing distance, all my senses are open, and my mind is on nothing else but my surroundings. Although it’s an experience I prefer to savour alone, occasionally I’ll be with one or two other photographers, but only if they don’t talk too much.
When I started feeling the need to develop my artistic eye and photographic skills further, a photographer I’ve always admired, Theo Bosboom, suggested that focusing on a project would be a good way to achieve this. He offers a course, which basically consists of a year of mentorship, guiding the photographer through the various steps towards producing a consistent series of images. It was exactly what I needed, and I signed up for it, choosing the Biesbosch as my project focus. After getting off to a false start (I fell and broke my right shoulder late 2017), I resumed work on the project in the fall of 2018.
But the early work I’d done had made one thing very clear to me: my original concept – a portrait of the Biesbosch throughout the seasons – was far too encompassing. I had no idea how to choose my images, what to include and what to ignore. And, even more important, I wasn’t sure how this would help me grow as a photographic artist. How to get past the standard landscape and bird portraits and delve into my perception of the soul of the place?
Theo suggested that I refine my project definition by writing out what I consider to be the soul of the Biesbosch. That’s when I sat down and wrote the words I’ve included at the beginning of this article. This text has been my guideline throughout the work. My aim is not to show people what the Biesbosch looks like. Other photographers have done that quite well. Alfred Stieglitz once wrote, “My photographs are ever born of an inner need – an Experience of Spirit … I have a vision of life, and I try to find equivalents for it sometimes in the form of photographs.” My aim is to portray this silent, drowned world of reflections, mist, and shadows that mirror my inner vision of life.
My aim is to portray this silent, drowned world of reflections, mist, and shadows that mirror my inner vision of life.
Spending more than a year photographing the same location was a surprisingly enriching experience. There were times, as I collected more and more images, that I wondered if I could possibly acquire new, fresh ones. Had I exhausted all possibilities? Somehow, this always resolved itself. I found myself going deeper and deeper, moving past the images I had built in my head and finding unexpected new ones. I had imposed a restriction upon myself: only black-and-white photos in 2:3 format. This challenged me not to rely on colour and cropping techniques. It meant focusing on the strength of composition, lines, and texture instead of the subject matter.
As I progressed, especially once I started thinking about the final selection of images, I kept a mental list of photos that I felt were missing. However, as most of you know, nature photography is serendipitous. And when you’re floating past a stunning scene in a boat, you only have one or two chances for a good capture. Some of the images I hoped for never materialised (or did, but the image quality didn’t meet my standards).
The final selection of photographs would prove to be as important and time-consuming a task as taking and processing the photos. The guiding principles involved more than simply choosing what I considered to be my best images. It meant creating a narrative; putting together a selection of photos that coaxed the viewer into the story and told it coherently, with enough variation to keep it interesting. It was far more difficult than I had expected.
Maybe because I never considered photography as a career, the primary motto guiding my choice of subjects has always been ‘Follow what you love.’ Since working on this project, I’ve added a second precept: ‘But stay out of your comfort zone.’ In the end, the images I was unsure about when taking the photo often turned out to be the best ones. Staying out of my comfort zone proved to be a valuable learning experience. I think, like many photographers, I tend to go for images that are easily readable and comfortable for the viewer: recognizable subject matter using standard rules of compositions. I started experimenting with abstract, impressionistic images, chaotic compositions, the sort of image people might respond to with “What is it?” My explorations started having an effect on my other photographic work. I started to understand why experienced photographers might go out for an entire day and come back with only one image that they’re happy with. This, more than anything else, has contributed to my original goal: honing my skills as a photographic artist.
When you compare this flat, watery expanse of reeds and willows to more iconic locations for landscape photography, the Biesbosch would seem a very dull place.
And what have I learned from the project? Obviously, I’ve learned to put together a consistent series of photographs that tells a tale.
Returning again and again, however, enabled me to go below the surface and discover quiet beauty that might be invisible to others.
I’m very grateful to Theo Bosboom for guiding me through this process with patience, well-timed suggestions, and respect for my creative style. And what have I learned from the project? Obviously, I’ve learned to put together a consistent series of photographs that tells a tale. I’ve also learned to view my work critically and not accept images that fall short of my highest standards. But – and maybe this is the most important lesson of all – I have learned to look carefully and delve deep when I want to discover the soul of a location. The Biesbosch is a magical place, but you will only see the magic if you pay attention.
In the words of the poet Mary Oliver:
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it
In November, I visited the Joe Cornish gallery to give a talk, along with Joe Cornish and Lizzie Shepherd, at David Ward's exhibition, "Overlooked". The exhibition itself was fantastic and just in case you missed the talks, we recorded them all for posterity. The following is Lizzie Shepherd's talk. You can see the other talks on our YouTube channel or check in the back issues
I always struggle when asked what my favourite picture – or who my favourite photographer – is. To me “favourite” is very transient; it all depends on my mood and where I am currently focusing my photography. If I am in a “minimalistic landscape” mood, then I would be thinking of a work by Bruce Percy; if I am in a “mountain landscape” mood, then it could be a work by Colin Prior; if I am in a “Black and White landscape” mood, then a work by Paul Gallagher; and so on.
Currently, I am focused on woodland photography and attempting to bring order through composition to the chaos of the woodland – something that is not easy (at least not to me!) So, when I was asked to write about my “favourite” picture, it was obvious to me that at this time it would be a woodland image.
One of the immense benefits of the digital age (beyond the wonderful sensors we now get in cameras) is the rise of the YouTube Channel, specifically (for me) the photography related channels. These channels provide a massive resource for all genres of photography and allow you to follow the ups, downs, and thinking of different photographers which you may not have discovered without the power of YouTube.
Over the past few years, Mark Littlejohn has written articles (click here for Mark's articles) and given a talk for us (at the Meeting of Minds conference 2016) and from Saturday 15th February – Saturday 16th May 2020 he'll be having an exhibition of photographs at the Joe Cornish Gallery. On the 21st of March we're organising a mini event where Mark Littlejohn, Joe Cornish and David Ward will be giving talks (more details at the bottom of the article).
To celebrate that, we asked Mark to revisit his work with the Steamers and talk about how working in this way has affected his photography. Mark also contributed loads of photographs, some old classics and many new creations.
I retired from the Police in late 2011, having completed 30 years service with Cumbria Constabulary. The last decade had been spent analysing paedophiles computers and reviewing the material they had been accessing, sometimes millions of images at a time. I needed something to relax me and it was photography that fulfilled this role. I spent the first year of my retirement wandering Ullswater and the Eden Valley taking various photographs. But I missed the camaraderie of my working years and in 2013 I decided that I should perhaps think of getting a wee job somewhere (or perhaps more accurately my wife wanted me out from under her feet). A friend told me that there were some seasonal jobs at the Ullswater Steamers starting in February. What could be better than to spend my days sailing up and down Ullswater in all weathers and getting paid for it. The operations manager was already a fan of my images and I was barely even interviewed. The only question was “When can you start?” I’ve been there seven years now and I have loved nearly every minute. I am currently a senior crew and have no interest in driving the boat. It would just get in the way of my photography.
However, I didn’t realise the effect that it would have on my photography. When I started in 2013 I had owned a digital SLR for three short, fun filled years. Being a wee bit old when I took up photography I’d decided to do it my way. I never read a book or studied a YouTube video. I just went out and pointed the camera at things I liked. Up until I joined the Steamers I shot quite a lot of images with a wider angle. I might get up close to my foreground and work out how I was going to shoot it. I still used a tripod. I still used filters. But when I started looking back at my seven years on the Steamers I realised that there was a lot more to this article than just a few images taken from the boats, or from wee spots I’d spotted from the boat as we sailed on by. On reflection, I realise that these few years changed my whole outlook. It changed the way I saw the world and how I wanted to capture it. It made me appreciate changes in the quality of light, the direction of light, how rain, sunlight, cloud, mist, time of the year, month, day and hour can change a well-known scene. I remember listening to Jem Southam and the way he intricately observed the same places over many years, examining the minutiae of detail contained within. I can see what draws some people to keep photographing the same location, over and over again. Admittedly my chosen location covers a bit more space than Jems.
I see other landscape photographers travelling all over the UK, consulting the latest photographers guidebook and going from honeypot location to honeypot location. In all probability ignoring unique scenes on a daily basis as they whizz past concentrating on their satnavs guiding them to the postcode of the next location. I am constantly uncovering new and hitherto unknown gems in an area I’ve already photographed countless times. Why would I need to travel when I have such riches on my doorstep?
Over the past few years, I have accumulated a number of what I term “work” photographs. I have sorted these into a small number of categories:
The Commute
I suppose we should start with the commute. I travel from the Eden Valley to the Lake District every morning. That makes it sound like a long journey but in fact, Penrith is only 5 miles from Ullswater and the two regions blend into each other over the five-mile gap. In fact, I often refer to the Pooley Bridge boat as sailing from the Eden Valley into the heart of the Lake District. I used to drive the staff minibus to work but I think people got a wee bit fed up of me making slight detours and the occasional emergency stop in order to grab a shot. These days I travel under my own steam and on some occasions try and get out before work if the forecast is good. At the end of the summer, three of the youngsters and I went up onto Striding Edge for dawn. Made for a long day but the fun of the morning made up for it. Admittedly they had more fun than me as I had to get back down for work while they were all off.
Boats and Crew
We run a fleet of five old heritage vessels, the two oldest being Lady of the Lake (1877) and Raven (1889). These two boats were built for Ullswater and have spent their whole service here. I have been trying to get photos of these two lovely old vessels in atmospheric conditions but for some reason all my favourites have been of Western Belle. She is a newish boat, built in 1935 and has been here for less than ten years. However, she always seems to be in the right place at the right time. Sometimes it is hard to work out the scale of the scenery but inclusion of one of the Steamers helps to show how majestic the mountains and crags are. With regards to the crews, some of them are nearly as old as the boats. A lot are like me – they have had their first life and are just enjoying their second. Usually in far nicer circumstances than their first. It makes for a very relaxed working day as your friend and colleague has usually seen it, done it and isn’t fazed by anything and isn’t interested in indulging in any work related politics. It also means that there are no issues with me spending a fair bit of time taking photographs. I’ve seen boats go out where the average age of the crew is 65. It makes me laugh when I’m selling tickets and an older person (usually dressed in several hundred pounds worth of walking clothes) says “two concessions to Glenridding”. I always reply “We don’t give concessions to the elderly, we employ them”.
Weather
When I started working on the steamers I never really thought much about taking photographs in the rain. It wasn’t really something I did. I won the take-a-view Landscape Photographer of the Year with an image taken in horrendously heavy rain. The forecast for that day was horrendous, but it didn’t bother me. Working on the lake had shown me how conditions like that can be wonderfully atmospheric and show how dramatic and real our scenery is. I was taking photographs from Lady of the Lake during a storm and an old lady came up and said, “What are you taking photographs of? It's miserable”. I really did want to reply, “that’s not miserable. You are”. On another occasion, I remember once we had finished a late charter at Pooley Bridge on Lady and we had to travel back up to Glenridding to finish. As we moved away from the pier we were hit by a storm and had extremely heavy rain. In the gathering gloom, we sailed up the Lake and the skipper started playing “Ride of the Valkyries” over the loudspeaker system. It was the most wonderfully surreal experience. Very heavy rain has a way of flattening out the wake and other waves, almost giving them the appearance of sand dunes. It is a most unusual experience. A big advantage to wet weather photography from the boat is that you can keep everything dry downstairs, keep an eye on the way the weather conditions match the scenery and then just make a quick appearance under the canopy for a shot and things don’t get too wet.
Scenery and “Spotting”
I’ve spent years walking around Ullswater and yet working on the boats surprised me by showing me some gorgeous new views that I wasn’t prepared for. The aspect of my photography that I am most proud of is the fact that a huge number of my favourite images are taken within 10 miles of home. I appreciate that I am lucky enough to live within easy distance of some stunning scenery but I am a firm believer in knowing your local area. Light plays a major part in my photography and knowledge of the how the sun works in different areas in different seasons and at different times of the day is important. I tend to plan my shots for specific locations/times when the sun is favourable and dynamic range isn’t such an issue. Whilst I would tend to guard against going out with a preconceived shot in mind, it certainly helps if you know in advance the probable direction and angle of the light. One of my favourite shots from the boats is “Belle of the Ball”. This is a particular tree by Purse Point that changes colour very quickly and then divests itself of its foliage almost immediately gaining its Autumn coat. In mid October the sun stays quite low and sneaks in past the corner of Place Fell just as the early boat leaves Glenridding. This means that while it strikes the Belle of the Ball beautifully, it leaves the majority of its ‘colleagues’ in the shade. The different ways the light can affect shots on Place Fell, with its dense forest of old Silver Birches, throughout the course of the year can be quite startling, showing that you can’t beat in depth knowledge of a location. I always look forward to coming round the corner of Silver Point towards Glenridding. It is at this point that you get your first proper view of the end of the Lake, with St Sundays Crag rising majestically above Glenridding. We also have my favourite Scotch Pines, standing out on a spur of rock in Blowick Bay, with Caudale Moor looming up in the background. Another favourite section is Hallinhag Woods, nestling into the base of Hallin Fell. It is at this point where there is a plaque in commemoration of Lord Birkett, who managed to fight off attempts to dam the Lake in 1962. Being on a boat means you can quite often change your composition simply. I really do feel that there is a single best place to take an image from and I am extremely pedantic about getting the right perspective. Arrangement of the elements is key. Over the last few years I’ve concentrated on training the skippers to change course slightly in order to take advantage of certain conditions. Moving slightly further out from the shore or just trying to line up certain aspects of the shoreline becomes a matter of routine. I’ve also trained them to shout over the tannoy “Mark to the wheelhouse” if they seen some light or a change in the conditions that might interest me…
A Different Viewpoint
Viewed from the lake you see things that are invisible from any of the numerous paths that crisscross the area. I’ve travelled over the squiggly road to Martindale numerous times but conditions in the wet mean the road sometimes gleams and you can see it from miles off. I noticed this several times from the boat and realised that the front of Bonscale Pike would make an excellent vantage point. Likewise, Fusedale – a little valley that I think has wonderfully photogenic layers and angles. I never saw that till approaching the jetty at Howtown. There are just so many wee nooks and crannies to explore. It really does reinforce my thinking that instead of fleeing from one location to the next we should just concentrate on becoming intimate with one area. It teaches you more about composition and what makes a good landscape photograph than a hundred formulaic magazine articles and books. Intimacy with your local landscape allows you to impart more emotion into your images without even realising it. If you don’t feel any emotion for your subject how do you expect your audience to feel anything when they look at your images.
Abstracts
Abstracts are something I love yet are images I never actually set out to achieve. They tend to come to me while I’m on the boats. I tend to take them when I’m completely relaxed and at ease with both my surroundings and myself. People put themselves under too much pressure to get a shot. Whether that’s because they get limited opportunities and feel that they have to maximise their time and have to produce something.. I take a lot of images with my phone when I’m on the boats – this tends to add to the sense of relaxation. There is no pressure in a phone shot. It's of the moment and in the moment.
I'm on the Phone
I take a lot of images with my phone when I’m on the boats – this tends to add to the sense of relaxation. I sometimes feel pressured to produce something. Working on the boats and taking pictures on my phone takes away that element and leaves me almost carefree and back to basics, taking quick snaps of things I like. More or less my whole approach since taking up photography.
Working on the boats is an endless voyage of discovery. I always remember a comment made by a passenger a while back “So you just sail backwards and forwards on Ullswater all day. That must get boring”.
To be bored with the Steamers would mean I was bored with life.
Mark Littlejohn Exhibition at the Joe Cornish Gallery
Acclaimed photographer Mark Littlejohn is exhibiting at the Joe Cornish Gallery for their first 'Focus on...' exhibition of 2020 from Saturday 15th February – Saturday 16 May.
Mark has a unique approach to landscape photography, preferring the less popular view and concentrating his efforts to the earlier part of the day. He sees little point in constantly travelling in search of exotic locations when a beautiful image can be right on your front door, which for Mark is Penrith in Cumbria located between the Eden Valley and Ullswater.
Saturday 21st March - Mini Meeting of Minds
On Saturday 21 March, Joe Cornish Galleries in association with On Landscape are delighted to be hosting a Mini Meeting of Minds Conference around Mark Littlejohn’s exhibition A Decade of Moments. Confirmed speakers so far are photographers Mark Littlejohn, Joe Cornish and David Ward. The afternoon and evening will comprise a conference followed by a private buffet.
Tickets will be on sale in early February so save the date and keep an eye on your email!
Not everything that appears in the newspapers is bad, though it can at times seem that way. We have the Washington Post to thank for bringing Motoko Sato’s photography to our attention. In addition to the black and white images featured there, she also works in colour, delighting in the flowing lines, detailed textures and soft light that she seeks in her quiet places in Japan. It’s a pleasure to be able to share more of her work with you.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, your education and early interests, and what that led you to do as a career?
I was born and raised in Tokyo. My father was Hiroki Sato, a botanical artist, and our garden was full of wild and mountain grasses. When I was a kid, I thought I was a person who was not worth anything. I was afraid of getting close to people and always loved making something by myself. I went to a junior high and high school attached to Joshibi University of Art and Design to study traditional craft pottery, plant dyeing and weaving. At that time, I learned art and painting from a couple of sculptors, and I was especially impressed by the sculptor Alberto Giacometti. After graduating, I went to Musashino Art University to learn more about fine art. During that time, I was able to open my heart to people little by little in the society of school.
I have been involved in art education as a teacher for 38 years since graduation. In addition to painting, I continued to do pottery and dyeing alongside my work until my parents fell ill. I bought a camera when my parents, whom I had been caring for 14 years, passed away. I think that all my experiences before I began photographing have led to my current photographic expression.
You include a page on your website about your father, Hiroki Sato, and his botanical art. How much of an influence was he on your development as an artist? What did you most admire in him?
My father, Hiroki Sato, was born in Kagawa Prefecture and graduated from the Department of Architecture, then moved to Tokyo and started as a book illustrator. He illustrated many picture books, encyclopedias, various photographic books of plants, newspapers, magazines, and textbooks of various subjects for elementary and junior high schools. He participated in the establishment of the Japan Botanical Art Association in 1970, and since then, annual Japan Botanical Art exhibitions have been held at Odakyu Department Store in Shinjuku, Tokyo. In his later years, he was active as a lecturer in the Botanical Art Course nationwide, and in 1994 he was awarded the “International Arts Culture Award” for his contribution to the establishment and improvement of Botanical Art by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Culture. He passed away in August 1998. He was able to draw anything, not only botanical art but also technical drawings and historical illustrations. What was better than his outstanding depiction and imagination was that he really liked drawing itself. I respected my father for that. And I thank my father for not preventing me from going on the path of art. On the other hand, my parents were aiming to be so perfect that I was disciplined very hard, and I was hit by my parents every day and had a deep fear of people.
David Townshend’s exhibition ‘Creating Good Impressions – where art meets photography’ takes place at The Yarrow Gallery in Oundle, Northamptonshire from 10th to 24th January 2020.
It features seventy abstract and impressionist landscape works created locally and as part of his ongoing Coastal Impressions project. Ahead of the exhibition, David shares his thoughts on what inspires his photography.
My exhibition is of impressionist photography, a style that I have been exploring over the past three years.
As a young lad living in coastal Norfolk, l was a keen birdwatcher and naturalist. I took up photography as a teenager, taking images of the things that interested me, always outdoors. I tried birds but, beyond the gannets on a trip to Bass Rock, they were too far away! I was happier taking photographs of wildflowers, landscapes, gardens and architecture. I rarely shot in black and white, and have always loved colour. My interests are pretty much the same now, and for many years my best work has been taken with a macro lens and tripod.
I trained as a scientist – I did a PhD on shorebird ecology, studying grey plovers and curlews at Teesmouth on the coast of North East England. My career was in nature conservation, working for the UK and then English government agencies. My role was to protect sites and species in coastal Northumberland and then in Devon & Cornwall. Latterly I produced reports on the state of England’s wildlife. As a consequence, I tended to view the world in a scientific, objective, literal, ‘accurate’ way.
I am not a great traveller and not one to hunt out photographic honeypots looking for the depressions in the ground to place my tripod for the ‘trophy’ shot that so many others have already taken. I much prefer doing something different and increasingly I enjoy creating interesting images from ordinary subjects.
In my plant macro photography, I began exploring different, more artistic ways to create images, particularly using very shallow depth of field. This resulted in my successful panel of images for a Royal Photographic Society Associate Distinction in 2015. It was based on a plant in my garden – Astrantia or masterwort, with its small but complex flowers. The whole panel was created from one plant, indeed from one side of one plant, in a border. All the images were taken back-lit early in the morning during the 3-4 week flowering period. The key pieces of equipment were my macro lens, my tripod and a garden chair!
With the freedom of retirement, I continued to challenge my in-built objective, scientific approach to plant photography and to discover my artistic side. Grasses moving in the wind has proved another productive area.
Then in 2016, I began a new phase in my photography, expanding my non-representational approach beyond plants to landscapes in all their forms. This was stimulated by the inspiring workshops run by Valda Bailey and Doug Chinnery. They teach the use of multiple exposure and camera movement techniques to produce impressionist and abstract images. And, most importantly, they then encourage you to use your camera, take chances, create images and develop your own style. Discovering and exploring this impressionist approach has given my photography new impetus and purpose, and I continue to enjoy and benefit from the stimulation of Valda and Doug’s workshops and Facebook group.
My style is to use multiple exposure and camera movement techniques to create images that interpret light and colours, shapes and patterns in landscapes, in the broadest sense. Some of my images are pure abstracts, but in much of my work, I combine elements present at that location at that time on that day to create a sense of place.
Three years on, I am evolving my own style, developing a major project and holding my own exhibition.
Style
My style is to use multiple exposure and camera movement techniques to create images that interpret light and colours, shapes and patterns in landscapes, in the broadest sense. Some of my images are pure abstracts, but in much of my work, I combine elements present at that location at that time on that day to create a sense of place. Because I capture the moment in-camera rather than compose on the computer, my images are the product of spontaneity, serendipity - and a bit of fun.
Impressionist photography appeals to me because it provides the opportunity to be creative. I am able to present a different take on the world around me, producing unique images that sometimes challenge you the viewer, invite you to pause and explore but perhaps with a reward when you recognise a pattern or place. The results I hope are striking, intriguing and sometimes enigmatic, like a half-recalled memory tantalisingly just out of reach.
I hope that others enjoy or at least engage with my photography, and my exhibition gives me a chance to share some of my favourite images. But I am fortunate enough (perhaps old enough?) not to crave social (media) acceptance from others. If I like my best images then that is enough for me – and I do!
Technique
All the images are created in-camera at the point of capture. My camera allows me to choose from various exposure blend modes, and vary the number of exposures, shutter speed, focal length, white balance and of course viewpoint in creating the final composite frame. All are hand-held - one of the cardinal Bailey/Chinnery rules is to leave your tripod at home!
Subsequent editing in Lightroom is limited to basic adjustments such as exposure, vibrance, tone curve and white balance. However, I have found that the freedom with which I tweak images has increased as my personal style develops. But the technique is not an end in itself, rather a tool to release creativity.
The second part of the exhibition, comprises images from my Coastal Impressions project - my interpretation of the English coast. Through patterns, textures or pure abstract, I interpret our coastlines, both broad landscapes and the intimate details of creeks, boats and moorings.
The exhibition
My exhibition of impressionist and abstract photographs is in two parts. The first is of images created locally, of landscapes and historic buildings such as Cambridge colleges captured in unexpected ways. There are also multiple exposure images taken in my garden.
The second part comprises images from my Coastal Impressions project - my interpretation of the English coast. Through patterns, textures or pure abstract, I interpret our coastlines, both broad landscapes and the intimate details of creeks, boats and moorings. The exhibition images include not only iconic subjects such as Lindisfarne Castle and the Thornham coal barn, but also the ordinary or mundane, even concrete wartime defences. The majority of my Coastal Impressions images are created on the Northumberland and especially the Norfolk coasts, areas I know well and visit most frequently, but I am now expanding my portfolio by visiting coasts around the country, always trying to capture a sense of place.
This project was the product of a new photographic approach and my life-long affinity with and love of the coast, but it was given a great boost by a chance encounter. Soon after I started taking impressionist landscape photographs I happened to show some on the back of my camera to my wife’s weaving tutor Melanie, who lives on the Norfolk coast. She was so taken by my images that she has based three textile design challenges and two exhibitions including the work of more than 50 textile artists, all based on sets of my Coastal Impressions images. Thanks to her encouragement I have gained the self-confidence to produce two Coastal Impressions books and hold my forthcoming exhibition.
‘Creating Good Impressions – where art meets photography’ is being held at The Yarrow Gallery, 2 Glapthorn Road, Oundle, Peterborough, PE8 4JF from 10th to 24th January 2020. The gallery is open daily, Mon-Sat 1030-1300 & 1430-1700, Sun 1430-1700. For more information on the gallery website.
There’s always been an aspect of ‘Emporer’s New Clothes’ when discussing fine-art printer papers. There are plenty of articles online explaining gamuts, d-max, substrates and coatings as if they are the be-all and end-all. The particularly technically minded love delving into detail in search of the absolute best and I’ve been down that road myself, but it’s not for everyone.
What most people will want to know is: What’s the practical difference between these papers and will the resultant prints be the best they could possibly be? (spoiler: yes!). With that in mind here’s a pragmatic explanation of some of Fotospeed’s Fine-Art Papers and my personal choices.
For my own printing I’m interested specifically in fine-art papers which can be used in my Canon Pro-1000 inkjet printer, this process is commonly known as ‘giclee’ and (despite sometimes having a slightly smaller gamut) compares favourably to C-type (or lightjet) on a few counts namely:
The paper weights are generally heavier and therefore suitable for “hinge mounting” in a frame without noticeable warping.
The paper weight itself makes these prints tactile – they feel as good as they look.
True matt finishes in a variety of textures are available.
You don’t need a printer the size of a building to produce state-of-the-art giclee prints!
Since I have a personal bias towards matt papers I spend a bit of time comparing matt and gloss and more time talking about the matt papers generally.
Colour Management
Before we get started, I do have to add one important caveat. Unfortunately picking a nice paper is pointless if you don’t have a good printer, an accurate print workflow and a solid (although not necessarily comprehensive) understanding of colour management.
Unfortunately picking a nice paper is pointless if you don’t have a good printer, an accurate print workflow and a solid (although not necessarily comprehensive) understanding of colour management.
If you want your prints to come close to what you see on screen you need a screen that displays the gamut you are working in (whether it be sRGB or AdobeRGB), some method for accurately profiling the screen, a high-end printer, accurate paper profiles, a basic understanding of soft proofing and an understanding of how to knit all these aspects together! I use Fotospeed’s free profiling service to create custom print profiles for my Canon Pro-1000 which I found to be much better than the generic profiles. I used their guides to make sure my print settings were ‘just so’.
With good colour management and neutral lighting, you should be able to produce prints which are almost identical to what you are seeing on screen.
Paper Types
Fine-art papers can broadly be broken down into 2 categories, Matt and Glossy.
I’ve avoided any heavily textured matt papers because I find too much texture distracting on smaller prints. This is a personal choice dependent on subject matter-
I’m comparing 6 different papers all from Fotospeed whose papers I recently switched to having mostly printed on Hahnemuhle and Canson papers in the past. The Fotospeed papers are of the same high standards as the papers I have been used to, so switching brands made perfect sense given that Fotospeed is a UK company with excellent technical support (which I have leaned on a few times!) who are very supportive of the UK landscape photography community.
In the autumn Alan Lait launched his exhibition 'Lakes and Mountains' at the Joe Cornish Gallery as one of their Gallery Photographers, having a permanent exhibition at the gallery. Susan Rowe, who proofreads all our content put us in touch with Alan so we could find out more about his film photography, climbing and his love of the Lake District.
Can you tell me a little about your education, childhood passions, early exposure to photography and vocation?
As a young lad, I had an interest in art and drawing and was first introduced to the dramatic landscape of the Lake District on a family holiday, where I can remember making some pencil sketches of the mountains, crags and views. I think it was also on the same trip that my Dad lent me a 35mm film camera and I took my first roll of 24 exposures.
After school, my original intention was to pursue a career in graphic design or product design but at the time I believed I wouldn't be sufficiently talented to make a living out of it and instead followed my other interest in technology, and studied Computing Science at University. That lead me to a career in the telecoms industry, which has since been my primary vocation. However, as a very necessary life-balance to the day-to-day challenges of business, I rediscovered my enjoyment of photography about 15 years ago.
What camera did you originally use and when did you start using a digital camera?
My first camera was the Praktica MTL3 35mm film camera, lent to me by my Dad, and my early exploration of photography was really learning the basics of exposure, film speeds and composition with that camera. I subsequently had a small APS Canon film camera for a while too before purchasing my first digital camera, which was a Sony DSC P-10, back in 2004, with a 5MP sensor which seems tiny in comparison to today's cameras and smartphones! I think I owned a couple more pocket-sized cameras, before upgrading to a Canon compact bridge camera, that I took with me on walks in the Lake District, primarily to take photos as a record of mountains and routes I'd climbed up.
Each morning during term time, the photographer Al Brydon takes his son to nursery school. At first, it is up the road, past the local Social Club, then after a while, they turn in at an opening which is the entry to the cemetery. It is a large open area with wide, orderly, avenues. Splendid views over the Peak District National Park and, naturally, plenty of graves and memorials. You might even think, “A lovely spot to be buried!”
Some of these graves will be adorned with bunches of flowers or single flowers in a vase. These simple offerings are our connections between the living and the mourned dead.
Regular mourners tend to the graves, sweeping dirt and debris from the memorials, cleaning lichen from the gravestones. These important rituals help them maintain connections with their departed loved ones. Some graves are never visited, so they get weathered and less and less visible over time.
As Al and his son wander through, they go past various metal bins, where all sorts of rubbish are deposited.
The flowers he saw over the next few months lying in these bins were often roses - ‘a rose for remembrance’. Another favourite was chrysanthemums, which in many countries symbolise death and are only used for funerals and on graves. In the Far East, they are flowers which symbolise lamentation or grief.
These particular flowers had been discarded for being too faded, too lacking in colour and just tired. Perhaps they had been replaced by fresh ones, or perhaps the cemetery manager had removed them because they were no longer fresh and whoever had left them hadn’t returned.
The flowers he saw over the next few months lying in these bins were often roses - ‘a rose for remembrance’. Another favourite was chrysanthemums, which in many countries symbolise death and are only used for funerals and on graves. In the Far East, they are flowers which symbolise lamentation or grief.
Normally these bunches are wrapped in plastic with traces of condensation on the inside, tied with a silk ribbon; remnants of handwritten notes, sometimes wrapped in newspapers; old headlines reminding us of past celebrity misdeeds, great sporting triumphs, or politicians leading the country to uncharted places.
Al began to capture these on his phone. It is quite an old, battered phone by now, but it keeps capturing gorgeous colours.
These ‘Cemetery Bins - The Graveyard’s Graveyard’ with their faded flowers began to show up on Al’s Instagram and Twitter timelines. I could see immediately that they were magical. Not conventional landscapes, but documentary landscapes of the mind. Seeing them made me make all the connections about what they represented, how each bunch tells a story, how they are part of time, yet frozen in time.
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They also reminded me of Dutch Old Master still life paintings, such as Rachel Ruysch’s Basket of Flowers. A lot of Al’s work has a darkness about it, so it is no surprise that this does,. It is after all, a bleak subject. The colours shine from a dark background in these photographs. It is rare to find blue roses, but these seem to be popular for laying on graves and there are certainly a good selection in this series.
I’m hopeful that these images will be exhibited at some point as I think they will make a glorious translation from the tiny views we have in social media apps, to proper photographic prints. Meanwhile, I hear talk of a book of these, which will be a wonderful thing too.
To me, it shows that working in a series, treading the same paths for an extended period can make for a great body of work. By walking through this cemetery day after day, most of what is static retreats from your field of view. Only then can you see the small details, the changes, the something that makes a place different. In these images, Al has picked on something most would pass by, and we can revel in what he sees.
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!
These images were taken during my first ever photographic trip to Torridon, NW Scotland. Each tree has a story to tell, a story based on their very different locations, whether that be within ancient woodland, the edge of Loch Maree, or sitting alone on open land surrounded by mountains. The age of the trees really resonated with me, as did their fight against nature and mankind. Weather, climate change, and human intervention have clearly changed the landscape forever, and it made me wonder what I would have seen if I had stood in each location only a few decades ago.
All of these photos were taken on the same early Summer morning at the same lake in beautiful atmospheric conditions at Creeve Lough in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. They have been submitted in chronological order.
I have long been captivated by the black and white images of photographers like Ansel Adams, Byron Harmon, and Bruno Engler. Adams is a household name but the latter two are likely not familiar to many photographers. Byron Harmon, and Bruno Engler, photographed primarily in the Canadian Rocky Mountains and tripped the shutter on many historic images of this area.
Inspired by these early explorers I have lived in, and explored, the Canadian Rockies for the past 35 years or more and these are some of my favourite black and white images I have made of the places I love. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed making them.
One of the most beautiful roads in the entire Albertan rocky mountains is a winding path known simply as Alberta Highway 40. Closed for six months out of every year, this countryside route is considered one of the province's most breathtaking sights. For any professional photographer, driving along this route at least a few times is a must.
For this submission, my goal wasn't just to capture the beauty of the landscape but also to focus on how consistent these mountains are. Despite the constantly changing weather during my trip, these ancient mountains exert a sense of permanence, no matter what's going on around them.
When you enter our house, you are immediately confronted with a huge watercolour painting of distinctively Australian gum leaves. I completed it over 35 years ago as part of my high school leaving certificate. It is over a metre wide. It is a faithful reproduction of one of my photographs. It is of dead dried leaves scattered on the ground. Hints of Wabi Sabi, exploring the dying, forgotten and decaying. Beauty in things seemingly past their life. It is a monochrome watercolour painting and is painted in sepia. The watercolour paint is made from a mixture of carbon and umber, painted on cotton rag paper. I look at it and am reminded that I have been pulled towards monochrome, carbon on cotton art ever since my youth. Unknowingly. This is a beautiful painting, which was given a highly commended at the Lloyd Reece Youth Art Awards. Meeting Lloyd before he passed was indeed an honour, as is an award with his name. To think I was still a scruffy teenager of 17 at the time. Some things don’t change.
This one painting confronts me. How did I know as a teenager that this is where I would end up? A stark reminder of my early vision. I have gone in a huge circle. Actually, it’s really lots of smaller ones. From black and white photography, through painting watercolours, drawing (with pencils, pen & ink and charcoal), colour photography and large format photography, only to end up again where I started. It is a journey through monochrome. A medium I absolutely love. What follows is a discussion about why it affects me so. Perhaps, some of these reasons will connect with you, and even inspire you to play with it some more. This article is the first in a long series on monochrome, and is really the introduction. The foundations of our practice. For it is important to ponder the why, and figure out what really drives us. For something that may start out as an experiment in self-development may become a passion.
How did I know as a teenager that this is where I would end up? A stark reminder of my early vision. I have gone in a huge circle. Actually, it’s really lots of smaller ones. From black and white photography, through painting watercolours, drawing (with pencils, pen & ink and charcoal), colour photography and large format photography, only to end up again where I started. It is a journey through monochrome
One of the arguments that often surfaces is the perceived difficulties between photographing in colour versus creating in monochrome.
A couple of weeks back I visited the Joe Cornish gallery to give a talk, along with Joe Cornish and Lizzie Shepherd, at David Ward's exhibition, "Overlooked". The exhibition itself was fantastic but even if you didn't get to see it, we recorded the talks for posterity.
The exhibition is sadly over now but we have Lizzie and my own talks left to publish. The following is my talk on what I've learned about the type of trip that produces my most meaningful work. The final talk by Lizzie Shepherd will be in the first issue of the New Year.
If you're on a mobile device the link you need is https://youtu.be/RJLBeXfLAsc as our mobile theme currently has a technical glitch so you won't see the embedded video.
Pretty much the smallest scrap of woodland has the potential to enchant us, whether we make images or not, and time spent among trees has certainly enchanted our Featured Photographer for this issue, Richard Corkrey. He is fortunate to live close to some stunning areas of woodland and his images – a mix of colour, black and white, and infrared – should certainly tempt you to go for a wander in the woods.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, your education and early interests, and what that led you to do as a career?
I grew up in East Dorset. Being surrounded by lovely woodlands and heathland the local images have always stayed with me. Children were given a lot more freedom back then, so it wasn’t unusual to be gone for hours exploring these wonderful places. As a result, I grew to love and feel totally at home in woodland. I suppose being an only child gave me a very active imagination, so these places took on a life of their own.
I was privately educated for my first few years of schooling. The curriculum was rather weighted towards classical and literary subjects. Reading poems like “The Song of Hiawatha” and “Horatius” at the age of eight was very daunting and I hated it. I loved the imagery, though. It fueled my imagination and has stayed with me and very much shaped my artistic vision in later life.
The family moved around a lot finally settling in West Sussex. I did a variety of jobs before moving to live in Bruges in Belgium for several years, working as a night manager. On my return to the UK, I attended college to study accountancy. This eventually led me to move into IT as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.
I am also a keen musician; music has always filled a large part of my life. I played in various blues and soul bands in the 1960’s and was active on the folk scene up until fairly recently.
How did you become interested in photography and what kind of images did you initially set out to make?
I bought a small Samsung pocket digital camera which I used to document the many walks my partner and I used to do. I quickly learned that there was more to it than just pushing a button. My efforts to improve quickly got me hooked. I bought a book to help me improve, the “Digital Photographer’s Handbook” by Tom Ang.
I was surrounded by woodland and already had a close affinity with it. My active imagination quickly made me realise that here was something my creativity could work with.
This was just the beginning of my photographic journey, so I found it a bit heavy going. It did teach me a lot about composition and correct use of light which are the cornerstones of good photography. Slowly I learned to move out of automatic mode.
On Landscape’s Issue 180 features an intimate meditation from Joe Cornish on environmentalism, photography, and responsibility. Joe’s article ends with a request for readers to share how nature photographers might be able to “help the causes of the landscape, ecosystems, and the wild world” through collective action and individual behaviour change.
As Joe’s article makes clear, the issues affecting the wild places we photograph and our planet more generally are incredibly complex. Considering this big picture can feel overwhelming, distressing, hopeless, and paralysing. Yet, even in the face of such complexity, it is possible for individual nature photographers and small communities of like-minded people to make a positive impact, especially in targeted ways. This article is about one such effort, the Nature First Initiative and it's 7 Principles to help reduce the individual and collective impact of nature photography on wild places.
When using a drone, it is important to check and obey local regulations. Responsible drone pilots fly only in permitted areas, stay well away from wildlife, and respect the desire of other recreationists to experience peace and quiet.
Our Field, Quickly Transformed
Historically, nature photography has been a force for good. Conservation photographers have played a direct role in the preservation of ecologically sensitive landscapes and the protection of endangered species.
Anyone who has been a photographer for more than five years can clearly see, nature photography has undergone a dramatic transformation with the rise of platforms like Instagram, instant access to detailed location information, and technological advancements that make photo-taking much easier.
Photographs of wild places have motivated generations of people to experience nature for themselves, helping transform individuals into advocates and creating myriad conservation movements in the process. Photography has also offered an accessible means of self-expression, and a way for individuals to more intimately connect with nature and share experiences with others.
However, as anyone who has been a photographer for more than five years can clearly see, nature photography has undergone a dramatic transformation with the rise of platforms like Instagram, instant access to detailed location information, and technological advancements that make photo-taking much easier. Some of these developments are positive, like enhanced camera technology that opens up creative avenues by reducing technical barriers. Additionally, because information has been democratised, nature is more accessible to a broader range of people.
Unlike many nature photographers, I did not grow up hiking, backpacking, and camping. Instead, I found much of my initial inspiration to get outside in the early online travel and hiking journals of Colorado bloggers. These trip reports and online communities helped lead me to nature photography and without them, I probably would not have started pursuing photography more seriously. Thus, a conundrum: I am immensely grateful for others who have shared inspirational, motivational, and helpful information online. Conversely, this same information is leading to the ruination of special places and the very experience many of us go outside to find in the first place.
This summer, I watched a pair of photographers trudge through these fields of wildflowers with no regard for their impact. In a place like this, careful steps are essential for preserving the flowers, especially as visitor numbers increase even in remote places like this.
One of my more memorable early photography experiences was hiking to four remote slot canyons in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. To find the canyons, we started with a tattered guidebook with a vague reference to the area along with sketchy GPS coordinates that proved to be somewhat inaccurate. With a lot of route-finding and exploration, we eventually found all four of the canyons we set out to visit and didn’t see a single other person over a few days. Now, one of these canyons is listed as the top “thing to do” for the area on Trip Advisor. In less than a decade, a truly hidden and difficult to access location is now a top tourist attraction.
I was recently asked to come up with a definition of landscape photography by a learned society, a remarkable turn of events for someone with almost no academic qualifications. This proved both a fascinating and near impossible endeavour.
Only very slightly altered, this is my final text in question:
"The word, landscape, is more than territory, land, ground, or property. Landscape is also a concept, a view, a prospect, a perspective. Its association with art is indivisible having its origins as a word from Middle Dutch, circa 1600, related to painting.
Landscape is widely considered to be the most popular theme in all photography. Although the limits of the genre subject matter are debated, there can be no doubt that definitions of landscape in photography are broad. They include grand vistas of mountain and sea which may encompass hundreds of square miles, to small natural details of just a few square centimetres. Landscape can be about the iconic, the sublime, the geographic; it can be about habitat, about the environment, about landscapes altered by industry, dereliction, contamination, the aftermath of natural catastrophes, war, urban sprawl. Landscape can illustrate agricultural practice, pastoral beauty, intimate details from nature… from the poles to the equator, and from below sea level to the mountain tops, the list of landscape possibilities seems almost endless.
Landscape is widely considered to be the most popular theme in all photography. Although the limits of the genre subject matter are debated, there can be no doubt that definitions of landscape in photography are broad. They include grand vistas of mountain and sea which may encompass hundreds of square miles, to small natural details of just a few square centimetres.
The Sublime
Landscape as Habitat
While it is difficult to define all the possible strands of landscape photography, perhaps a common definition might stand around emphasis…so although people, animals and inanimate objects may be present in the pictures, any players in the scene are subordinate to the landscape itself as seen through the eye of the camera.
Photographers may see landscape as an objective pursuit, aiming to represent what they see with an emotional detachment, even as scientific evidence. Or they may use it purely as an exploration of their inner lives, as a source of metaphor, reflecting their deepest feelings and concerns. There may be a strong political or environmental dimension in landscape photography. Representing natural beauty, or grim dereliction may be a matter of identity for the photographer, even of pride or shame. There may be a mix of all these intents, or perhaps none at all.
The technical approaches of landscape photography are wide and may include the rigorous discipline of large format and tripod to the more spontaneous hand-held and phone photograph. Intentional Camera Movement is almost a sub-genre of its own, and additionally, drone imagery is a burgeoning and revolutionary thread in contemporary landscape photography.
Altered Landscape
At a time when our planetary ecosystems are themselves being endangered by human activity, and the environment is the burning issue of our time, landscape photography has never been more relevant or central to public discourse and debate.
At its best landscape photography may give an insight into the landscape photographed, and also into the life and perspective of the photographer. As in all areas of photography, landscape is a theme of infinite potential.”
At a time when our planetary ecosystems are themselves being endangered by human activity, and the environment is the burning issue of our time, landscape photography has never been more relevant or central to public discourse and debate.
The Grand Vista
The society in question actually wanted a one sentence answer; on that count, I failed in my quest rather spectacularly.
Nevertheless, I felt grateful for the challenge. It forced me to question my own motivations, my commitment, my craft. Having seen the dedication of so many of my contemporaries to their lifelong passion, I couldn’t help but feel that my own efforts where…all over the place. Proper landscape photographers mine their themes and agendas deeply, producing stylistically consistent and laudably coherent visual narratives. My own work – to me at least – seems a near random and eclectic mash-up. I wonder if I am a mere dilettante?
When I look back at my career I realise that although I strongly ‘identify’ – in the modern parlance – as a landscape photographer, my background is rather less high brow. For a few years, I made a living (just) doing portraits, office interiors, and long-since defunct pieces of office machinery.
The Metaphoric Landscape
In 1986, a modest book project about the founders of the National Trust might have proved a breakthrough.
If landscape is a creative calling (I believe it is) surely it is our imaginative response to the landscape and the conditions, translated through our own personal filter that matters, being spontaneous, personal, critical, unorthodox surely? A strong emphasis on atmosphere, mood, emotion, expression, concepts.
The total fee for this project was £400. The writer kindly ferried me around to the various sites, and covered my food costs; the fee paid for my film and processing (almost). It was hardly an auspicious beginning.
But the publishers liked my photographs. They offered me a travel guide book on a French region (Loire). This eventually turned into a series of eleven. Subsequently, other publishers followed, and enough money to put food on the table. Travel photography became my career. It made a move to North Yorkshire possible, and eventually, I would move on creatively too. But for a long time, the travel photography habit remained.
It was a workflow of strategy, preparation, pre-visualisation, working to optimise the lighting, trying to load the dice in my favour. Method, planning, tactics. I didn’t really want to confirm the popular view – to reinforce stereotypes of place – but that is often the role of the travel photographer anxious to please their client, and so, inevitably, some of the time I did just that.
If landscape is a creative calling (I believe it is) surely it is our imaginative response to the landscape and the conditions, translated through our own personal filter that matters, being spontaneous, personal, critical, unorthodox surely? A strong emphasis on atmosphere, mood, emotion, expression, concepts. Nearly ten years of travel photography practice meant my methods were often far from that. Has my travel work contaminated my development as a landscape photographer? Or is the cross-over between these two forms of our art inevitable, broad and maybe even healthy?
Iconic Landscape
In an attempt to understand this better I analysed my own work. What was it about? What are my interests, my obsessions? What am I trying to say? What are my beliefs, and feelings?
How do I see the world?
Have I escaped my travel photography strait-jacket?
Reflecting the conclusions of the text above, I realised that my own work (from my point of view at least) could be divided, very roughly, into the following:
Geographic Landscape
Iconic landscape
The Grand Vista
The Sublime
Intimate landscape
Altered Landscape
The Metaphoric Landscape
Landscape as Habitat
The Landscape of memory
All of which might look like category minestrone. But there has been a purpose: to probe my own motivation, curiosity and creativity as a photographer. This inquiry formed the basis for a talk entitled ‘Landscape in practice’… this is how I have come to see my own photography.
“In the next episode” I’ll look at the first of these categories, and get to grips with the Geographic Landscape.
With the launch of his latest book 'Behind the Photograph', it seemed like an appropriate time to catch up with Charlie and to hear more about how his background as an assistant stage manager affected how he sees light in a landscape and how his choice of cameras influenced his photography. Enjoy the read, as much as we enjoyed chatting with Charlie.
Tim Parkin (TP): I wanted to talk to you today specifically about your use of composition. It’s one of the things that most people seem to comment on as you have a unique look.
There’s a dominant school of photographic composition that is very David Muench - foreground/background, powerfully forced compositions - but your pictures are almost the antithesis. They are very much in a more painterly frame of reference if anything.
Before you picked up a camera, what was your visual education and what was it? Were you interested in painting? What was your exposure and influences before you thought about photography?
Charlie Waite (CW): The way you’ve phrased that question is quite unusual. I think I suspect it was born in my observing of the lighting directors in the theatre. I think that’s probably true as I always think lighting directors never really get the credit they should get. As they bring a play to life, they inject gravitas and pathos into it. Their name is often not on the programme, it might be but very very small.
Actually in the way that landscape photographers or photographers generally until the late 1970s maybe, who were illustrating books, sometimes they didn’t get a credit! Even if all the images were made by that one person.
I remember thinking how clever it is to create a shadow as opposed to a highlight and I’ve always thought that shadows play an absolute immense role even in a sitting room, and obviously lighting does.
I’m going off the point! But anyhow, that’s probably what it was and I noticed the way that wardrobe mistresses, set designers, actors, the director, all of them, they all got a lot of credit, but the lighting guy or woman didn’t. I was an assistant stage manager in theatre for quite a long time and I use to think “that’s clever”; he/she can just manipulate the audience or encourage the audience to look in a particular place or enjoy a particular part of the set. Especially shadows - I remember thinking how clever it is to create a shadow as opposed to a highlight and I’ve always thought that shadows play an absolute immense role even in a sitting room, and obviously lighting does.
When I say sitting room you don’t tend to have the same lighting as a dentist room! I wish they could change that! Wouldn’t that be better, if lighting was really pleasing and complemented the furniture, and was all together a much more enjoyable experience and to be part of. And yet they slam these neon tubes in - and banks are just as bad. If doctors waiting rooms could be more pleasing in terms of lighting, it would be great.
To answer your question though, instead of going off the point somewhat, I think in fairness, that would be my first influence. Watching how lighting and how stage lighting influenced the performance.
TP: You were, as I understand from your background, taking portraits of actors and maybe photographs of performances, would that be right?
CW: Yes, not many performances but actors you’re quite right. When I left the profession, jumping from the frying pan into the fire, going from acting into photography, I photographed many actors. I think the thing I really knew about that was that it’s a very invasive experience. People say, I don’t take a good photograph or I don’t like being photographed, everyone finds it difficult and people almost feel the victim when the camera is raised up at you. So I feel the business of being photographed was almost an ordeal for actors and everyone thinks that actors must have huge egos. On the contrary, they absolutely don’t, they are mostly quite timid and insecure. So I found that when photographing actors, the best thing of all was to encourage them to present themselves in their best possible mode and attack the camera. To have authority, a bit like a tennis match, and so that worked. I photographed thousands of actors over ten or fifteen years.
TP: Did you take inspiration for your photography from anybody? And talking about adversarial, it makes me thing the use of Yousuf Karsh
CW: That’s extraordinary! I was just going to mention him. It all stemmed from the pleasure I got from lighting from the theatre, and I learnt a little bit about lighting people. Oddly enough I looked at some pictures my dad took of my sisters in Germany and also a lovely photograph of him that was done in France when he was in uniform. I thought how clever it was that the side lighting and the jaw and the top lighting for people with thinning hair was skilful. I enjoyed that process. I like the acting fraternity, they are good souls. They are usually not what people think they are, they aren’t full of ego, far from it and not always that confident either.
TP: Who else would have been an influence at the time? Bill Brandt at the time maybe?
CW: Yes, definitely, although some of his images were quite spooky sometimes and quite punchy, contrasty, but I have a big admiration for him. I think you hit the nail on the head, he was as good as any. There’s also Irving Penn and a few others. Generally speaking I think it all goes back to the way the human body and face can be lit on a stage and to be presented to an audience. Complementary lighting was also important as every actor wants to look good. Seeing images, I think would be fair to say, that match the image they have of themselves.
I had a lovely interview ages ago by the assistant of a photographer who I can’t remember his name. The assistant was asked what was it that your boss, the photographer, always used to say to get the best out of people to get potency and a real authority from the person sitting for them. I’ll never forget him, he always used to say “If I’ve had it, I’ve had it a thousand times, I want you to look through the front of the camera, through the front of the lens, through the camera itself and out the other side of the camera. Through my eye, through my head, through the back of my head and a thousand miles further on.” It was a great line, I think what he was suggesting that they refocus on infinity, so they don’t focus on the object in front of the lens. That’s what gave the great Bette Davis “the look”.
I’ll never forget him, he always used to say “If I’ve had it, I’ve had it a thousand times, I want you to look through the front of the camera, through the front of the lens, through the camera itself and out the other side of the camera. Through my eye, through my head, through the back of my head and a thousand miles further on.”
I thought that was so, so good, so I didn’t exactly say that but I did sometimes say “have a high opinion of yourself. Treat it like a tennis match, serve an ace”. I can’t even get the ball back these days!
TP: When you moved on to doing landscape photography, how did you approach that in terms of composition and did anything transfer from what you’d done before in terms of portrait?
CW: That’s a good one Tim! I think organisation is key. There are bound to be influences that I’m not even aware of and if I dig deep, I think probably relationships and sort of strength, and nothing to lose. That’s the only word I can find really. I’ve often thought of landscapes a bit like interior design, that’s the only analogy I can think of. Where something looks good if it’s got something else to support it. That probably does go back to the theatre and set design.
TP: It does seem like an interior design/set design and lighting balance in a closed space.
CW: I think you’re right, and another element is that I’m incredibly untidy. I’m a horror story, my office is untidy, and I think I can just about close the drawer if I take something out of it, but not all the way! I’ve often thought why does everything have to be completely tidy in a photographic composition? Why am I so intolerant of something that I find is slack or not tight? Perhaps I need to see somebody in a white coat.
I also want the landscape to present itself, in what I say is one of it’s best performances. I’m not very good with any aberrations or any wonky bits!
TP: Can’t get the makeup artist in for the landscape can you!
CW: No you cannot! I enjoy that and I often walk away from something that I can’t make right. Even before Photoshop or anything it’s probably one of the reasons that I’m not good at Photoshop and I think it’s a wonderful tool but we don’t want to go off the point of composition. There’s something hugely rewarding in that, to be gifted something that you’ve come across and you’ve organised by being there at the right time, right place, all that stuff. That’s a huge joy as opposed to saying, “I’ll put another sky in.” I think that I care about a lot, but that’s not to be disdainful of anyone who uses Photoshop as it’s a wonderful tool. But from a compositional point of view, I like it to be tight and to make up for my terrible, personal untidiness.
TP: If you look back at what books or magazines that you would have read at the time, what would have been your visual influences or were part of the visual environment you were in. What books or paintings would you have been looking at?
CW: That’s fascinating. My mum used to say, you ought to know about painters and I used to say “I don’t know anything about painting”. I left school when I was 16 years old and only took one O’Level. Never went to university, never went to galleries, and my mother was very encouraging. She said I ought to go to gallery and study classical artists, the way they use light and form, shape, design, pattern, colour, dimensions and relationships, geometry and all of these things which are integral to landscape photography. I did go but not enough and I’m still probably not doing it enough.
As far as which artists, there is French painter called Claude Lorrain. I never actually knew much about him, but I started thinking how the usual suspects such as Constable and the likes, were absolutely skillful they were in working with light and producing a sense of three dimensions. I think I ought to do more, and I should go and see more of Claude Lorrain’s work. I felt you could step into his photographs and you know the far distance is about a mile and a half away and the skill to do that. So I’m probably subliminally influenced but I am by absolutely everything.
TP: Talking about subliminal influence, I presume you enjoy seeing movies, seeing films?
CW: Yes I really do and I think we’re influenced by what we see on television too.
TP: Cinematography is obviously a classic influence on most people, which movies were you enjoying at the time?
CW: I think I’d seen Casablanca ten or fifteen times! I can’t deny black and white resonates hugely with me. It was all 30s and 40s, Humphrey Bogart and all that crowd. Spielberg and all his lighting and cameramen, and some of the editors. That’s another person who’s the unsung hero. I’ll never forget years ago I went to see, Richard Attenborough doing a talk about Ghandi and I asked a really crass question “What role does the editor play in the construction of the film?” He answered very gracefully, he said “Probably more than the director”. I thought that was a wonderful piece of honesty, so I love the way when you look at editing some of the black and white films. Double Indemnity, I can keep remembering just completely marvellous. Jimmy Cagney and all those sort of films. I think about them a lot and the lighting played such an important part and their technical equipment in those days wasn’t so sophisticated. I’m not sure that we’re producing movies that have such an immense power to them, that move and awaken things in the viewer as they did then. There is a big come back to some of those film nows. The British Film Industry is showing them an enormous amount and they are very quick clips now in some television you see now, which I don’t see much of and some movies you see, are very short on the particular scenes. David Lean said, "you savour, but don't linger". I think people would do well to come back to that idea.
TP: Long establishing shots, are some of my favourites in films.
CW: That's the word, establishing shots. I look back and some of those and I probably see Casablanca again, again and again. I don't know why I loved Double Indemnity so much. My knowledge of films isn't hugely extensive but the process of composition I think sometimes is really very elusive. What is it that stimulates you to stop and start the process.
TP: This was one of the questions I was going to ask. How much of you working is instinctual and how much do you think you are consciously making choices about line curve, intersection, etc.
CW: I think it's developed over the years. I look at some of my photography from quite a long way back and I have to say that I sometimes wince by noticing what I overlooked and now I'm now much more thorough. Now I think I probably do my absolute best to take in every single element of what I'm looking at. To ask myself whether it have any case being there or not. I do try and pare away, pare away, until I'm telling my story. That doesn't mean to say that it's going to be a series of graphic, geometric shapes. I do find myself thinking more over the years, I'm developing and I'm still short sighted sometimes though, I really am.
I was looking at one of my old pictures the other day and I thought “I didn't notice that”. I'm often saying to photographers about noticing everything! Absolutely everything. As well as being frozen by the beauty of what you're looking at or the magnificence of what you're looking at. So you've got that to deal with as well, you've got to convey something of your sense of wonder. Which I think most of us are all having at in a different way.
I have a phrase "just having a go" and to try and produce and image that evokes in someway our sense of wonder. I think that's probably it and I'm sure we'd all agree that's what we're trying to do. It's awfully difficult. I remember people saying in the old days "I hope that comes out".
TP: It doesn't matter how many pictures you end up taking though there's only one or two that really work in that way. If you go out and take three or three hundred, you nearly end up with the same amount in the end.
CW: How true!
TP: If you look at the pictures in the book for instance, were many of those were instant ‘snapshots’ of recognition or would you say a majority of them have had a while sitting working on them?
CW: I think the latter. I used to feel that unless something was presented to you on arrival or I call it “gifted to you”; unless you were offered this wonderful combination and configuration of light, shapes and all that stuff on arrival, you couldn't predict what it might become if graced by a particular lighting scenario. It was impossible to say if I come back at dawn, yes you can predict mist but you can't predict the formation of the sky and the roll of clouds which play such an integral part.
I think the days are gone where I've arrived and it's been bang on. I try now to think that the structure is there, and that's sound, and the shapes seem to integrate with one another quite nicely, so I'll come back and see it in various different lighting conditions. Some might be two or three, perhaps four times maybe, maybe five at the absolute most. Let's be honest, sometimes, you turn a corner and kapow! We all know that and I would be fibbing if I said it took me days and angst. Not at all sometimes, it's bingo.
TP: So this is like your set design. Your set design has been recognised, you're just waiting for the lighting crew to arrive to accentuate things?
CW: That's certainly true. We are so impressionable when we're younger, you're the product of your experiences. So I was very impressionable and I went into the theatre when I was 16/17 years old as an assistant stage manager. I was watching great Shakespearian productions and high end ones even in repertory theatre, which are the places I worked. So I was constantly watching actors and the way they moved, and again, always lighting. I can't emphasise that enough, that had a massive effect on me and probably my photography.
There's this huge school of though amongst non photographers that we meet so often. You'd laugh if someone said you must have a good saucepan as this food is amazing! Gosh your frying pan must be incredible, the gravy is out of this world! We don't want great accolades and pats on the back but I think a lot of us would like our audience to appreciate that we have refined our eye over, in case of some of our chums, 20-30 years or more. That's not come easy, we have tripped up along the way and composition of a photograph is tantalisingly difficult sometimes and sometimes it's just out of reach! You just want to put the lid on it and think, this is precisely what I wanted to say and do. I'm not saying we want to be given a crown to put on our heads to say how marvellous we are, but I think a lot of our audience perhaps aren't fully aware of the angst that goes on in trying to get parity in the result. To have parity with our artistic intentions, I find it still terrible difficult. I know if I asked you the same questions and our chums, we'd all say that it's not always laid on a plate.
TP: Talking about cameras, your camera of choice has been historically the Hassleblad, with its square format. How much do you think that format of square and the use of that particular camera type has influenced the way you work compositionally?
CW:
So out of that probably came the rectangle and then out of that came 36x24 I suppose. But then the Hasselblad seemed rather an inappropriate camera to suddenly make your world a square world! At the same time, I think it was the strictness of it and the fact that it didn't really lend itself to landscape photography that I kind of liked.
It's probably quite a bit now that you mention that. The very first camera I had was an old Nikkon Ftn with a Photomic head [https://camerapedia.fandom.com/wiki/Nikon_F], that great big thing with an aluminium front. That's was the very first one I had, and I used that for actors but then I had an opportunity to buy a Hassleblad. I didn't even know what a Hassleblad was when I got it in my 20s! I remember thinking square seemed to be pretty cool. Perhaps that's the wrong word to use, it seemed not to lend itself to landscape, as I think human vision is probably more oval generally. So out of that probably came the rectangle and then out of that came 36x24 I suppose. But then the Hassleblad seemed rather an inappropriate camera to suddenly make your world a square world! At the same time I think it was the strictness of it and the fact that it didn't really lend itself to landscape photography that I kind of liked. It forced me to do things that perhaps would be seen as not quite the thing t do. One of the things that people often say is don't put anything in the middle. For example I found myself gravitating to the lonely item which we see lots of those, and I understand why. I think the square encouraged me to give credence and and sense of import to an item.
I was brought up in the New Forest and I was hopeless at photographing the forest, it was chaotic! I couldn't find anything, it was really difficult. Far to busy and frantic, all types of stuff going on. So I couldn't refine and refine, which I quite like to do. I think square made me take a particular part of the landscape and make a big song and dance about it. I know the square is coming back now quite a lot just as I seem to be doing quite a lot more conventional rectangular!
TP: Looking through the book you notice that you've used quite a lot of landscape orientation pictures and a few panos. Many photographers like to use this foreground/background composition, and you very rarely use that structure in a picture. A majority of your pictures tend to be distant and taken from a slightly elevated view point. I wouldn't say it's a formula that you use, but it's quite common.
CW: That's a rather good point. I don't use very long lenses so perhaps I do pick out things? But you're right, I'm often up a ladder, usually to reveal more plains if I possible can. I want to try and mitigate the two dimensional nature of photography. I don't like to block things, I'd rather reveal more than conceal more in a way. That's a good point!
TP: I was looking through the book and there are pictures like Sinalunga (page 81 in the book) that's got a foreground/background effect and obviously the lavender fields. But the lavender fields (page 125, Valensole II, Provence, France) is probably the only one where you've gone up quite close to things. Maybe the ">pumpkinsfrom a while back.
CW: I think you might be right there. I was was looking at Sinalunga and you're right. Down and up works quite nicely I think. That's a good point.
TP: I wonder if that's a symptom of that the Hassleblad not having so much depth of field and also the square format not trying to force a foreground. The upright portrait classically does.
CW: That's a very strong point. I'll buy into that idea. Sometimes it eludes me, sometimes we don't see squares. So it is slightly perverse to photograph something in the landscape with a square format. There weren't many lenses made for square, I think I there was a 40, 50 and a 150, 250 and that was it.
TP: You obviously shot with a 6x17 occasionally as well.
CW: I did, how scary, what a beast!
TP: With digital cameras now you have probably normalised to a 2:3 ratio. Do you photograph to crop ever or do you always use the aspect ratio of the camera?
CW: I think the latter. I don't think people should be forced into it. A lot of people probably are. Perhaps some are able to look through and think I'll crop that out later and I'll tighten that up, and I'll take a 1/15th of the image off there. I think the discipline of trying to fit, so there's not a lot of post cropping. Might have been once or twice.
TP: It's difficult to visualise the edges of a picture when they are not actually there definitely.
CW: Isn't it just! You're quite right. You know we say that that we used to say that only 98% of what you see is there in the viewfinder. Is that all sorted out now with digital?
TP: Yeah on digital it is I think. Mirrorless is perfect, as you're seeing the final picture of course. I think on some of the SLRs they are pretty close, they aren't far off these days. Still the range finder cameras, the digital range finders can be off. I tend to use a mirrorless camera.
CW: I'm tempted, I'm just waiting for a Hassleblad back to come back, the CFV50C. What a name for a bit of equipment!
TP: That with a camera looks absolutely extraordinary. We had a chat with Paula Pell Johnson at Linhof Studio back in June with Joe in a podcast. We chatted about what was exciting coming up in gear and Paula said the most exciting was the new Hassleblad digital back that fits straight onto the old Hassleblad camera and also had it's own little mirrorless SWC type camera as well. That should be interesting.
CW: And a special battery for it, and you have to get a special adaptor. If you're talking about the one which came out a month or two ago, with the hinged view finder. I'm hoping my friends at Hassleblad might find themselves sending me one! Not yet! It's the same mega pixel count
It delivers a hell of a good image I must say. I didn't think, I ought to have looked at the lenses as there were times when I thought about the old Hassleblad lenses. I know we're going off piste a bit! I thought I better check up as I was using lenses which were 30 years - 40 years old! The SWC body which has a fixed 38 on it and the distagon lens which I've got. I thought that perhaps I wasn't getting the best resolution and honestly when I look at my transparencies which I still do a bit of, I think that I'm alright. Even going up to some fairly bit size 4ft or so I think I'm alright. It's good to hear you say that the lenses are still good on the old Hasselblad system, as I feel they are!
TP: Still one of the best lenses I've ever tried is the last Hassleblad lens, the CFE 40mm, the very large 40mm.
CW: I'm so glad you say that, I think so too. I'll stay with it then! If my friend Tim says it's alright then it is! I'm glad you say that as I do worry and think Charlie you better check, you're behind the times!
TP: I was going to ask you, do you think you can get the landscape photographer of the year exhibiting back at somewhere like the National Theatre?
CW: How funny! That's an extraordinary question because I was talking to the head of publisher at the AA who are going to do the next book and that's exactly the question he said. Because he said yes it was elitist at the National Theatre, yes not everybody could go and see it, but the setting for the exhibition was hard to beat and also 35,000 people, you can't always that number to come into even The Photographers Gallery over an eight week period. That's the what we could enjoy, especially if they play had three intervals!
TP: I thought it was the best place for an exhibition I've seen.
CW: I couldn't agree more. I have to thank the guy behind it who was the unknown figure called John Langley, who's retired now. He wasn't front of house manager, he was much bigger than that. He loved photography and he mounted 160 photographic exhibitions during the time he was there. He was an extraordinary man, he gave me three exhibitions at the National Theatre. I'd rather be there than anywhere else, so I'm glad you say that, as it's a mixed audience, and you're introducing photography to people who would have never thought of going to a photographic exhibition. So it met with a really wide audience. To answer your question, I'm hoping we can! That's not saying that Network Rail do make it less London centric which everyone said is that it had to be in London, and said get it up to us! So it goes to twelve stations and I'm thankful for that and we are running again.
The website is being done by the people who do the Sony World Photography, the same group More Wilson in Salisbury, down the road!
TP: Two more questions for you. How much influence do you think the camera you use, I.e. the shape, the haptics etc, influence your picture generation? I'll give you an example, the use of a waist level view finder on the Hassleblad vs a SLR through the lens view or a heavier camera.
CW: Looking down as opposed to looking across. Well I think. It would be fair to say I remember talking to Joe about this. That when the great Ansel Adams and his 10x8 and even before then the whole plate and half plate, I think you could study in-depth from right to left and top to bottom. All the integration of what a photograph is of all the different elements. I think it was a bit like going to movies with a 10x8, and I've still got an old Gandolphi and I still enjoy that to look through it. I've actually found all the dark slides, and perhaps I should have another go!
You're almost looking at a monitor. I do think being able to see more has a strong bearing on your powers of observation. They are enhanced by able to see more. That little viewfinder, I still think people shouldn't look at the LCD screen, but that's me old school.
Joe and I had an quite an in-depth conversation where you put your cloth over, you know this, and you're getting down to business. You can explore on that ground glass screen what you're about to make an image of. You're almost looking at a monitor. I do think being able to see more has a strong bearing on your powers of observation. They are enhanced by able to see more. That little view finder, I still think people shouldn't look at the LCD screen, but that's me old school. I still think looking at the back, unless you put a cloth over it, you totally exclude everyday life and look at it in that aspect.
I think the answer is yes, it does. The other thing is I really enjoy that machine, I enjoy holding it! I saw an old friend the other day who was in a MGB and he said that it's not that's it an old car, I just have had it for 30 years and I'm wedded to it. I can't give you a logical or rational reason why. It's like an old bed, or a good sofa. I think it does influence me a lot though and the process of using it.
TP: Like the mirrorless cameras, do you find yourself working differently when you're using those as opposed to a large digital SLR?
CW: Yes, only word I can think of it “reach”. I can't reach what I want to photograph. I find it rather difficult to explore. I don't want to have to enlarge up chunks of it and see it in isolation. Is that hedge got something out of it? Has that rock, has that field? The lichen seems to have changed colour half way through, wouldn't have noticed that so I had to enlarge it up. That's frustrating to always have to make it bigger. I'd rather have a loupe and do it the way I just described.
TP: Do you use a phone to take photos ever?
CW: Yes, I really do. Joe was so honest when we went up and I did a little chat up at the gallery. It was a lovely answer and it shocked people in the audience. Somebody from the audience said could I ask you Joe what his favourite camera, and he said quite rightly, yes, my phone! I love that about him you know, there are many lovely qualities about him that are enjoyable and I loved that he shocked people by saying that.
I think it's the most marvellous compositional aid. I wish they made the screen bigger. I think we would all be lying if we said we didn't use it.
TP: What aspect of using a phone do you like most? Is it the fact that you've a large screen to play with?
CW: That's hugely enjoyable, I still use my silly bit of cardboard though, 5x4 frame thing. It's about exclusion more than anything else. I think that the composition business is made hugely easier by that little simple thing of cupping their hands together that cinema-photographers do. What does it look like alone? What does it look like without the supporting bits? I think the phone is a really good adjunct to the conundrum of composition.
On all our Light and Land trips, you always say what's the thing that eludes you most. What's the thing that you find most tantalising and difficult - it's composition! If I haven't heard that a thousand times. We're all finding it elusive.
TP: Final question then. You mentioned slack in pictures. Getting rid of the slack. Can you say what you mean by slack or give us a few examples of what it might be?
CW: I think the only way to describe it is... it's hard to articulate isn't it? I think interior design is probably the best analogy to use as you walk into somebodies house and you think, nothing goes with anything. It's an aesthetic minefield of a disaster. You just don't feel comfortable.
When you look at a shop you're often drawn into it because of the exceptionally stylised window display. I sometimes look at fashion and I'm not a fashionable person, but I look at the clever way women's clothes are designed. I find myself thinking how well organised that is, not just the cloth but the pattern.
So slack is where there is insufficient attention to detail. Other people might like lose and I used to think a single blade of grass unsharp and effected by wind movement was unacceptable. So I had to put a roll of 400 in, as it was just not on.
All of a sudden I find myself saying, snap out of it Charlie, a bit of grass moving is totally OK! On the whole, I think all this goes back to your very first question about that stage set.
A presentation, and I still think of it as a production and I think you probably agree, a photograph is a technical term but it's a production made up of so many different things going on. Once you start getting obsessive about it, which is what it is, I find myself not being able to tolerate something which is any way lose.
Yet, I still look at results and think for god sake Charlie you didn't see that!
A couple of weeks back I visited the Joe Cornish gallery to give a talk, along with Joe Cornish and Lizzie Shepherd, at David Ward's exhibition, "Overlooked". The exhibition itself is fantastic and is well worth a visit but just in case you missed the talks, we recorded them all for posterity.
We are publishing the talks in reverse order though as David's exhibition runs until the 14th of December and we're hoping that seeing the talk will convince a few more people to visit. The following is Joe Cornish's talk
We'll be running the remaining talks in the forthcoming issues. If you're on a mobile device the link you need is https://youtu.be/R-G27Fdgx50 as our mobile theme currently has a technical glitch so you won't see the embedded video.
I’ve seen an awful lot of images of mountains and mountain ranges from various locations displayed online, they’re an impressive dramatic subject that demands your attention, but this particular shot of Esen’s is a firm favourite of mine and it continues to linger in my head, not because of the mountains so much, but because of the composition, the handling of the subject, and the feeling that the image gives to me as a whole.
I’ve been an admirer of Esen Tunar's work (read his featured photographer interview) for a long time, he has a certain calm surrounding his images that have a direct effect on my mood when I view them. They’re also the type of images that make me feel like there’s little or no separation between you as the viewer and what you’re looking at. He has the ability to capture an image that transports you right to that very place and make those places feel familiar to you, whether it be mountains like this, deserts, or even the farthest away of stars and galaxies that he’s photographed. I admire anyone who can do that with their photographs.
Esen’s image of Vesturhorn I first saw on social media several years ago now. As soon as I clapped eyes on it, the image demanded my attention and whisked me off to Iceland, yet it’s a place that I’ve never actually personally visited. I felt like I was there, on the black sands, feeling the cold, being buffeted by the wind and seeing this all very much with my own eyes.
One of our readers, Colin Jarvis, popped in to say hello last month on the way back from running a workshop in Skye. After sitting down with a coffee and biscuit we recorded a screencast where Colin talked about his week on Skye and the work made by him and his clients. A big thank you to Colin for taking the time to talk to us!
The true artists, are almost as rare a phenomenon among painters, sculptors, composers as among photographers. ~Paul Strand
Photography has drawn criticism from painters and art critics practically since its inception. Examples are not difficult to find, going as far back as French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire who declared photography, “the refuge of every would-be painter, every painter too ill-endowed or too lazy to complete his studies,” to modern figures like Gore Vidal who, when criticising the work of photographer Cecil Beaton, claimed that photography is, “the ‘art form’ of the untalented.”
To this day, at least in some quarters, competition and prejudice between photographers and painters often surface, whether in the form of barbed, cynical, comments, in excluding photography from some art venues, or in more subtle ways, such as various titles and headlines referring to “art and photography,” as if the two are inherently separate things. Alas, competition and tribalism are innately human qualities, often transcending reason in their pettiness and extent, and sometimes culminating in outright rancor and intolerant attitudes. It is therefore perhaps appropriate that I begin this discussion by admitting my own position on the matter: I think that those who believe in the unequivocal artistic superiority of one medium over another, do so because of personal bias and perhaps ignorance, rather than objective judgment, and do a disservice to art and to artists.
I think that those who believe in the unequivocal artistic superiority of one medium over another, do so because of personal bias and perhaps ignorance, rather than objective judgment, and do a disservice to art and to artists.
Of those who gave serious thought to the distinction between photography and painting as media for art, I took note of painter Edvard Munch who, despite being an avid photographer, did not think that photography could live up to the expressive powers of painting.
I wondered if I was missing something important, perhaps being biased subconsciously toward my medium of choice, because, admittedly, creating art in photography was not a considered choice for me.
I also took note of the shifts in the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, who started off as a painter, then became one of the most accomplished photographers in history, only to return to painting in his elder years, saying in one interview, “photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing.”
Simon has given us a delightfully concise bio, so I’ll add a little. His images have been widely published; he has had success in high profile competitions including the Sony World Photography Awards, the International Photography Awards and the UK’s Landscape Photographer of the Year Competition; and he has written for On Landscape on several occasions. Looking through his website I was especially interested in his aerial images from the Scottish Borders, and we thought it would be good to find out more about what he’s been up to recently both at home and abroad.
Tim spoke to Simon shortly after his image ‘Condemned’ was confirmed as the overall winner in the 2012 ‘Landscape Photographer of the Year’ competition amid, it’s fair to say, some controversy associated with the disqualification of the image that was initially announced winner. You can read the original interview here. It seems like the obvious place to begin…
Tim spoke to you back in November 2012, the weekend after ‘Condemned’ was confirmed overall winner in that year’s ‘Landscape Photographer of the Year’ competition. Looking back now, what perspective have you gained on how that came about, and the difference that winning made for you and your photography?
With the benefit of hindsight, I can see how the 2012 edition of Landscape Photographer of the Year confirmed a path that was latent at the time. My early years in photography were spent trying to get the maximum number of clicks on sharing sites such as ePHOTOzine and photo.net, and I came to equate the value of work with its popularity.
My more esoteric efforts were kept private and I publicly displayed only work that conformed to the aesthetic prevalent in popular landscape photography at that time. My winning shot had only been included in the entry to make the numbers up. When it won I was not only completely staggered, but I began to see the importance of originality and following my own ideas.
The 2012 LPOTY was mired in controversy, from the expulsion of the original winner to my own upgraded contribution. To say my winning shot was unpopular would be an understatement; the online opprobrium continued for months.
The 2012 LPOTY was mired in controversy, from the expulsion of the original winner to my own upgraded contribution. To say my winning shot was unpopular would be an understatement; the online opprobrium continued for months. Up to this point I had dreaded public criticism of my photographs, but faced with a tsunami of bile I had no choice but to suck it up. In the end I grew to love it. I had a feeling of loss when I was no longer savaged in the pages of fishing magazines or hiking websites. I was left with a feeling that whatever I did in the future, public reaction couldn’t possibly be any worse. The whole experience gave me the confidence to plough my own furrow and to hell with what anyone thinks. Three years later I once again had a positive competition experience when the Blue Fields series was shortlisted in the Professional Landscape category of the Sony World Photographic Awards. The publicity was huge and I’m still selling prints on the back of it more than three years later.
At the time you were working as a full-time musician. Has your love of photography now altered the balance in your life, and how much time can you devote to it?
At the time I was - and still am - working as a full time musician, a clarinet player to be precise. The hours are good but the commitment to maintain playing standards has to be rigorous. Making recordings and performing regularly in public requires you to be match fit, both mentally and physically. Playing music is not a job I could take a long break from and come back to if other things didn’t work out, for that reason photography has in many ways been a lower priority than music. Having said that, the two things work brilliantly together. The orchestra regularly does international concert tours and I can often find the time to stay on for a couple of weeks to do some photography after the other players have gone home. I feel very lucky to spend my days doing things I’m passionate about - both of which started as hobbies.
I, as many photographers, have places I feel at home with, I like to go back to and be reminded of why I went there before. I have many on my list from the barren deserts of America, the snow laden farmer’s field of Japan, and of course, too many locations of the Scottish Highlands to mention here.
Strangely, a place I feel I have not photographed enough, and one which I live very close to, is the Lake District. This is a place with which I am very familiar and memories of visits here go back to when I was a child climbing and walking in the mountains with my father, camping trips with my friends whilst at university and some of my earliest memories of lugging around a large format camera. To me, it seems almost unjust to not have an extensive back-catalogue of photographic explorations of this beautiful part of England. So why is this?
I suppose the fact that it is so close and ‘so familiar’ meant it did not register as a place to visit when I had to set aside the time to travel and make photographs.
I suppose the fact that it is so close and ‘so familiar’ meant it did not register as a place to visit when I had to set aside the time to travel and make photographs.
My time for that was always dedicated to Scotland, and in a large part, still is. Other factors that have caused this preterition are quite simply the Lake District was a holiday destination for my young family, and also, I had worked there running photography workshops for over twenty years!
As Margaret Soraya was passing through Glencoe, she lives near Loch Ness, we enticed her to drop in with cake, tea and biscuits.
The landscapes Margaret captures, typically on the remote islands of the Outer Hebrides, Inner Hebrides and Orkney Isles, are a reflection of her solo time in nature, being still and embracing quietude. In this podcast, Margaret talks about her exhibition and what she finds in the quietness and solitude of the islands that keeps pulling her back.
See Margaret Soraya’s landscapes from the Outer Hebrides, Inner Hebrides and Orkney Isles in her exhibition ‘Quiet’ at Bosham Gallery, 1 High Street, Bosham, West Sussex PO18 8LS from October 5-December 14, 2019.
Margaret has a talk on Saturday 30th November | FINDING YOUR OWN CREATIVE SPACE Artist Talk With Margaret Soraya | 3-5pm | Bosham Gallery
Our planet is a paradise of endless, unimaginable beauty and as a landscape photographer, I have been privileged to have been able to visit just a few of the treasures it has to offer. I have gazed, literally mouth ajar, at sites of both natural and manmade beauty, be they an overwhelming wonder such as the Grand Canyon or Machu Picchu or an intimate shaft of dawn light shining through a cobweb laden with overnight dew in my back garden. Such sites never fade or dull, each remaining a part of my combined experience. But both my senses and subsequent deliberations were left genuinely reeling following a recent visit to the unimaginable world of the Carrara marble quarries.
Here amongst the towering peaks of the Apuan Alps, man intervenes with nature with apparent disregard in an overtly brazen manner. And yet the consequence is magnetic, staggeringly captivating and eerily mystic. The accumulation of some 700 disused and modern operational quarries - excavated over 2000 years - has left a multitude of deep and seductive, yet horrific, scars across a previously pristine landscape. Our guide consoles us nonchalantly that they are only allowed to excavate 5% of the "hills" as the range is protected by UNESCO. I look around me and ponder the figure, it seems pretty significant in the context of an entire mountain range to me!
We had travelled to Tuscany for a friend's book launch and decided to return home through the hills. As we exited the tunnel at the top of a pass, I could but stop, stand and stare. The scale of the scene was in every sense simply breathtaking as I looked across a mountain range shrouded in intermittent clouds towards the Mediterranean glistening far below in the distance. Quarries dotted various slopes which have been mined as they provide the source of the purest white (and other) marble on the planet. Michelangelo's David and other magnificent statues, cities and palaces across the globe have sourced their raw material from this unique place. As you drive up the steep winding road towards the huts of various tour operators, shops selling an infinite choice of marble eggs, chess boards, tables, statues and lights line the route.
I become overwhelmed as our Landrover crawls up the 45-degree incline and I look both down and ever upwards to immense, smooth cliffs of neatly cut rock set into the surrounding natural landscape. Cavernous holes in sheer rock with ignored no entry signs as tourists seek to touch, explore and live this unique environment.
I become overwhelmed as our Landrover crawls up the 45-degree incline and I look both down and ever upwards to immense, smooth cliffs of neatly cut rock set into the surrounding natural landscape.
I am in a Tolkienesque scene of fantasy madness - huge excavators and lorries with wheels twice the height of a man appear as Tonka toys against the endless quarry faces which in turn are miniaturised by the scale of the hills themselves. An entire ridge hundreds of metres long simply removed. A hillside of rock sliced away. Tourists as ants against the backdrop. All I can do is reach for my camera and begin.
As we drive away too few hours later and over the following days and weeks, my thoughts begin to reflect on what I have seen and wander in many different directions. I am reminded of the colossal majesty of the 7 year long "Workers" project by the matchless Sebastiao Salgado where he explores the lives and working conditions of the people who dig, mine and excavate for our everyday pleasures such as sugar, gold and oil. I begin to ponder what I have just seen in a similar light against everyday products bought in the shops, where they are sourced and the impact each has on some part of the planet remote both spatially and often in thought. The discord of both immense and yet in the 27 years since Salgado completed that immensely questioning work little appears to have changed.
I wonder what will happen when the quarries reach their 5% limit for extraction. Will the companies tidy up and walk or will they chip away for just a little more. And then a little more again, arguing consumer demand and local economic justification, and they would be far from the first industry to do so. I later even argue with myself over whether I should submit this article and in doing so potentially encourage vanity travel and the carbon footprint of others as they hop on a plane for a long weekend to capture their own interpretation of these remarkable edifices. (I am happy that I did at least think on this and determine the benefits of raising awareness over the potential costs made my actions justifiable though I recognize nothing is perfect).
The quarries have left a profound impression on me. They undoubtedly reinforce many questions on a wide range of issues including beauty, greed, consumerism, society, environment and personal responsibility.
The quarries have left a profound impression on me. They undoubtedly reinforce many questions on a wide range of issues including beauty, greed, consumerism, society, environment and personal responsibility. They have reminded me to never stop thinking about how I might proactively answer and address such questions both through my work and with respect to my own lifestyle and in questioning others. As a such, they have been as inspirational a venue as I have ever visited, though as I now reflect, maybe not for the reasons I thought as I first drove through that tunnel and looked out in wonder.
Call to action
Carrara represents my current “Voice”, thoughts and reflections on consumerism and climate change and the dilemma of my own carbon contributions vs my work as a landscape photographer. In this, as some will already know, following much soul searching Morag and I will stop running all our flight based photography workshops at the end of current commitments and will cease flying wherever possible as part of our own contribution to take personal responsibility.
This has been a very difficult decision to make and how each of us responds will always differ but I am sure I am not alone in recognising the urgency to act. In this regard these pages have already seen the excellent articles on this subject from Joe Cornish and Niall Benvie giving very different personal perspectives on the subject. Personally I think we have to each take responsibility for our own actions and together bring politicians and “corporates” to account, I believe that images can have a profound effect in helping to raise awareness and to change attitudes and would like to thank Tim for giving us all a forum to commence the widest possible discussion on the subject.
I am very excited to see what “Voices” come forward and invite everyone to contribute their own Voice, together with any ideas as to how we can take the discussion forward.
Borrowdale Fells, from Castle Crag, Lake District, late autumn.
For a magazine dedicated to landscape photography, it is perhaps occasionally worth asking the question, why bother photographing the landscape, what’s it all for? And what does landscape photography mean, for the photographer, but also for the viewer? Charlie Waite gave a most succinct answer, at least from the photographer’s point of view, in his book Seeing Landscapes:
Photographing the landscape should give you pleasure ~ Charlie Waite
I’m sure this works for all of us: the sense of being there, seeking to marry the fleeting experience of the moment with our technical mastery of the camera.
However, the viewer’s reaction to an image is slightly more complicated to disentangle. The viewer is not there, may well be completely oblivious to the technical skill of the photographer, and yet still has an aesthetic response to the resulting image. This is why it’s interesting to analyse the mood that pictures create, the feelings they inspire, and to link that back to the decisions the photographer must have made at the moment of making the image. A case in point is Joe Cornish’s image: Borrowdale Fells, from Castle Crag, Lake District, late autumn. (see above) There is a soft, wistful feel to this image, tranquillity and quietness - it is all very peaceful. An image of subtlety rather than explosive drama. Why is it so pleasing? Compositionally, the picture is very contained. The eye is perhaps drawn first to the sunlit foreground area bottom left, with the tiny sparkle of light reflecting off the beck and the warm-toned trees and heather.
During our last Meeting of Minds conference, one of our regular visitors, Trym Ivar Bergsmo, said to us “Would you like to come and stay with us in Norway sometime and allow me to show you around?” As both Charlotte and I are more of the cold climes holidaymakers rather than the beach and cocktails sort, this caught our interest immediately but in the frantic conference conditions, it slipped our minds. We checked that Trym was still amenable and arranged a date to try to coincide with probable Autumnal conditions, around the end of September to the start of October.
Tim, Trym and Charlotte
For Trym’s sake I don’t want to reveal the actual location we stayed but I can summarise by saying it’s somewhere on the south side of the Lofoten Archipelago, midway between Narvik and the tip. Most of our explorations covered Lodingen, Hadsel, Vågan & Vestvågøy. I will also apologise for the number of photographs in this article but for me, each image revealed something about the area different to my preconceptions of mountains, rocky beaches and fjords. Finally, Trym was the perfect host and I have to give a big thank you to him and his family for allowing us to share his house and his love of his country.
In a quiet moment, Trym strikes a "Ruckenfigur" over his native land, recalling Caspar David Friedrich.
Arriving in Narvik and getting past the shock of driving on the wrong (right) side of the road, our first major hurdle was moose dodging, when an adult and juvenile ran across the road right in front of us. Trym said that this surprise was the hardest to organise for us! Are Norwegians always so accommodating?
Anyway - the rest of the journey that evening passed without mammalian obstacles and we arrived in the dark on a small peninsula to a beautiful home and a welcome meal where we slowly unpacked.
An example of the scenes we were passing on many occasions but were unable to stop the car at. Fortunately, before each road tunnel there are places to stop your car for a short while and we made the most of this to capture a wider view. Those familiar with British birch trees will notice the difference in colour here. It's not a photographic error, the Arctic birch trees had a more orange yellow than the typical British more lemon yellow.
I was unsure what photography equipment to take to Norway as I knew we were going to be climbing and walking (well - I thought we were going to be doing lots of climbing, more later) and hence most of our weight allowance was taken up by trad climbing gear (lots of cams!). In the end, I settled for a simple Sony A7R3 and 24-105 thinking that it would handle most situations.
Our first day started early with a trip over the border to Abisko in Arctic Sweden where we bumped into Oliver Wright (who works in the area) and a random encounter with Alister Benn (who was scouting with his partner). The drive over the border would have taken about two days had I stopped everywhere that looked interesting, but we had a goal and once we got there I knew why. The Abisko canyon is beautiful and the forests that surround it were nearly at their peak of Autumn colour, a swathe of orangey-yellow with mixed colour still in some of the trees.
Not intended to be a finished photograph but just a record of the view of the lower Abisko river. The combination of Autumnal colour, water and rock made me want to spend more and more time here.
I found a way down to the edge of the river to make the most of the lichens and protected autumnal colour and spent the remaining part of the day exploring the forest and canyon. I could spend weeks in just this location and hope to return.
The following four days were spent exploring the area and getting past that usual visual hurdle of seeing too much to photograph but not enough to deeply interest. It seems to take me a while to start to see things that really engage. I talked a little bit about this in my presentation at David Ward’s talks which will be included in the magazine in the next issue.
Although Trym was only supposed to be around for a few days of our trip, after a couple of days Trym asked if he would mind his company for a bit longer as the Autumnal conditions were some of the best he’d seen for many years and the prospect of settled weather for over a week couldn’t be resisted. How could we refuse a knowledgeable and entertaining guide! (and not only did he arrange the moose and sea eagles, he also managed to organise Charlotte’s first aurora viewing on the balcony of his house!)
Another 'tourist' shot to capture a memory of a moment. This was the very last glimpse of light as we returned from a day climbing near Henningsvaer. The colours visible on the banks of the mountains opposite were what stopped the car but the wonderful reflections and pair of swans in the lake to the right were the icing on the photographic cake.
What became quickly apparent was just the extraordinary amount of forestry and scrub of all types. Although most of the trees were birch, there were also many aspen, rowan and willow. In some ways, the views seemed similar to Scotland - but a Scotland without deforestation where the trees wandered all the way to the natural treeline and the small amount of commercial forestry was drift planted and in most cases not visually unsettling.
At the end of the first week, I felt like I had my ‘eye in’ and was starting to see compositions and ideas that ‘worked’ for me. We also had the first cold spell with early morning mist and frosty conditions. The arrangement of the fjords meant that quite often a gentle onshore wind would carry wet warm air into the mountain valleys where it formed layers of mist and created an accumulating hoar frost in little cold pockets.
On our drive out to go climbing, we saw some amazing hanging mists as the moist, coastal area drifted into the cold valleys from the overnight clear skies. We returned the following day with Trym to find the same conditions. I spent some time working out whether to keep the skyline and glow of direct sunlight in this picture but I think it gives a little context and interest. The two key parts of the picture are the cold, clean trunks of the birch against the warm, frosted grasses and the snaking brook winding its way through the picture.
The following couple of days were spent exploring near Trym’s house and reminded me of why I need to spend more time randomly wandering in a sort of photographic Brownian motion. Not only that, the fun in rock hopping, exploring and chilling out is as important as the photography itself for me.
We did spend a couple of days rock climbing though, our first proper outdoor trad climbing. I quickly found a problem with climbing in Norway though, beyond the cheese-grated ankles implicit in gabbro crack climbing, and that is the distraction of the landscape when you’re supposed to be belaying your wife!
Whilst walking near Trym's house we discovered a very wet and boggy hollow. On traversing above the reflections of the wonderful blue and fluffy skies complemented the far mountain range.
Back to the photography though and we spent a two-day trip driving down to the tip of Lofoten, which had drama in spades but didn’t work for me. The best part of this trip was discovering the areas around Henningsvaer and Valberg. A wonderful stretch of coastline with amazing autumnal colour.
After a final frosty morning which produced the best hoar frosts of the trip, we spent our last day following the cruise liners down to Trollfjord.
After seeing so many images from Lofoten, and refusing to research the trip ahead of time, I was most pleasantly surprised to find that the area had so much more to offer than just the mountains, fjords, aurora and beaches that I had seen previously. The combination of arctic flora and mountain habitat gives something familiar to those who may have visited the Scottish mountains but with a consistency of colour, texture and dynamics that provide abundant material for the landscape photographer. We were obviously lucky with the weather and autumnal conditions but I could see that the potential was there even if these didn't play their part in the same way that we encountered them.
Again, I apologise for the abundance of photographs. I hope they portray a different side to the area than you may have seen previously.
If you can access them, the banks of the Abisko canyon have so much to offer. This Rowan and fallen Willow tree are exquisite but the mixture of glacial blue water and white limestone banks gives this scene a wonderful colour balance. As a side note, I started to use polarisers for the first time on this trip because of their ease of use with the H&Y filter system.
Behind my previous image, the rowan tree dangled it’s limbs next to the canyon wall on which I found these extraordinarily bright lichens. In order to get this view I had to stand on a rock and hold the camera at full arms length above my head. With the combination of the tilting rear screen and multiple attempts, I finally got the composition I wanted.
Not intended to be a finished photograph but just a record of the view of the lower Abisko river. The combination of Autumnal colour, water and rock made me want to spend more and more time here.
An example of the scenes we were passing on many occasions but were unable to stop the car at. Fortunately, before each road tunnel there are places to stop your car for a short while and we made the most of this to capture a wider view. Those familiar with British birch trees will notice the difference in colour here. It’s not a photographic error, the Arctic birch trees had a more orange yellow than the typical British more lemon yellow.
I can’t recount some of our experiences of Norway without mentioning the aspen. Having never encountered these before they were quite the revelation with their spindle trunks, beer mat leaves and waterfall rattling in the wind. Here they formed an odd ‘eye’ shape. I can only presume this is related to the fact that a stand of aspen is typically a single organism and grow from root suckers (I’m guessing they started from the older stand in the middle of the eye)
One of our goals was to climb the very pointed peak in the centre of the skyline here, Stetind. Sadly the snow arrived early. However, I was determined to find a place to photograph it, at least from afar, and this mossy moorland near Trym’s home provided enough foreground interest to arrange into the twilight glow.f
Another ‘tourist’ shot to capture a memory of a moment. This was the very last glimpse of light as we returned from a day climbing near Henningsvaer. The colours visible on the banks of the mountains opposite were what stopped the car but the wonderful reflections and pair of swans in the lake to the right were the icing on the photographic cake.
On our drive out to go climbing, we saw some amazing hanging mists as the moist, coastal area drifted into the cold valleys from the overnight clear skies. We returned the following day with Trym to find the same conditions. I spent some time working out whether to keep the skyline and glow of direct sunlight in this picture but I think it gives a little context and interest. The two key parts of the picture are the cold, clean trunks of the birch against the warm, frosted grasses and the snaking brook winding its way through the picture.
As the sun rose above the mountains, it case shadows against the rising mist. The backdrop, still in shadow and illuminated only by the blue sky above gave a beautiful colour contrast.
To be blessed with still weather in autumn next to water gives so many possibilities. Here the reeds had captured many birch leaves in sweeping patterns. My only job was to arrange the frame edges.
In a quiet moment, Trym strikes a “Ruckenfigur” over his native land, recalling Caspar David Friedrich.
Whilst walking near Trym’s house we discovered a very wet and boggy hollow. On traversing above the reflections of the wonderful blue and fluffy skies complemented the far mountain range.
Whilst I was sitting with Charlotte as she took a photos of some reeds, I turned around and noticed just how intense the leaf litter and ferns were. The leaves almost had a transparency which gave them an essence of internal lightl. Here, the dwarf dogwoods (small yellow/red leaved plants gave the red end of the spectrum.
If Carlsberg made summer homes. To be fair, nearly every remote house seemed settled into a tiny nirvana. Here the last rays and calm conditions reflected the drifts of fireweed and stands of birch.
Attracted by the rowan saplings glowing orange at the foot of this birch I looked for arrangements that worked against a backdrop of moss covered boulders. The main choice was whether to place the top half of the birch against the dark rock or not. I think the contrast worked well.
Almost home after a twighlight session and I made another emergency stop caused by that insane splash of red in the top right. Fortunately the wind was rising and falling and gave me enough time for a 4 second exposure without too much water movement. The curled reach of white branch skimming the water’s surface echoed by the shapes of the rest of the branches finished the composition off.
Seeing the temperature drop dramatically, we set off early to look for frosty conditions and were well rewarded as the next few photographs will show. This was a view of a secluded summer house with, remarkably, no access road or parking! That at least kept things wild…
Below the road in a small pocket that would receive no daylight, was a collection of discarded birch trees (possibly from road clearing). These had started to collect lichens and the bark was starting to peel. They provided great background for the colourful blueberry and dogwood growing around them.
A fern curls its way out of a stand of frosted juniper. Despite having a tripod with me, I chose to make most of these photographs hand held so as to give myself more opportunity to play with camera positioning. I compared a few hand held to tripod mounted photographs and was happy that there was little difference.
The dwarf dogwood, also known as bunchberry, is a exceptionally beautiful plant in summer with its white flowers and lipstick red fruits, but the autumnal colour and texture impressed us the most. The four leaf tipped shoots typically showed a developing orange and red colour but in thie frosty hollow that turned into a warm browns and oranges. With firegrass and birch bark as a background I spent some time working on a complementary composition.
As we followed cruise liners down Trollfjord, we encountered a patch of incredibly blue water. Complemented with the sunlit orange-yellow of the birch and the faint blue of the cool shadows, this was a rare scene that looked over saturated in real life.
Sometimes light does the strangest things. In this scene, the two bare aspen are lit by a shaft of sunlight from between two mountains behind me that has bounced off the water, caught the trees and then disappeared off to the right of the image. The scene lasted about two minutes, enough to nearly run myself off a cliff in my bid to find a suitable vantage point.
Once the light had disappeared from the previous trees, I made the most of the still conditions to find some reflections through the grasses int he foreground. This is about a 50% crop and one of the few times I wished for a longer lens than 105mm
As we had some time to fill, Trym took us to a small road near where his parents lived and we took a walk past a reservoir. “This won’t be very photographic so we don’t need to bring cameras”. I took one just in case.
In the opposite direction to the previous photograph, two boulders nestled against each other and a rowan and birch tried to find the light in between.
On a tiny side road off the main dual carriageway in Svolvaer we tried to find access to a stand of aspen. What we found was so much better. Only 200 yards from the main road through a major town.
Visiting a friend of Trym’s on the island of Henningsvaer we returned to the car to find a wonderful raking low light on the side of the mountains.
When I received the offer to write this article, my first instinct was to refuse. First off, I’m not very proficient in English. More or less at ease when it comes to listening and reading, but much less so when speaking or writing. Writing is not a favourite pastime of mine either, or at least it hasn’t been for a while. But lo and behold! On the same day, I received Charlotte Britton’s message, while browsing a photography page, I came across the very photo that I will be discussing here. It seemed to me that it was a sign and I decided to write in French (not my first language either) and to ask my daughter for an English translation. I spoke to Charlotte about my project and I got her approval. It took me some time, but apparently, you’re reading me right now!
It is perfectly legitimate for you to ask me: why is this photo in your (favourite!) magazine whose name clearly indicates the preferred orientation of images, and in which we usually admire landscapes with very minimal human presence? Well, those aren’t the only photographs found here, but it is the general trend; beautiful colours and splendid curves that come to us from almost everywhere. And here, we’re faced with a street well populated by people and vehicles, soaked in the pouring rain. Moreover, taken in a black and white which betrays the photograph’s analogue origins and its age. This won’t be a revelation - an urban landscape is necessarily populated, and even in a city like Warsaw in 1968 there were cars, trams and buses, not to mention the motorcycles and bikes, absent in the moment we are witnessing because of the rain. By this slightly roundabout discussion, I come to the answer to the above question - what is pictured is indeed a landscape, and to boot, I very much like this image taken by a photographer who is little known outside of Poland.
This may be a good time to say a few words about the author of this shot. Zbyszko Siemaszko was born on the 30th of August, 1925 in Vilnius (then in Poland, now in Lithuania) in a family of photographers. His father’s studio was frequented by political, religious and economic figures looking for the perfect portrait. Young Zbyszko’s path was clear but World War II disrupted his plans. Despite his young age, he was drafted to be a soldier in the polish guerrilla army after the 1939 invasion of Poland. During and between battles, he stayed faithful to his passion for photography and documented life in the underground resistance. Only less than a third of those photos survived the war. Severely wounded to the head two separate times, he was made a prisoner by the Gestapo. Luckily, his fellows managed to free him.
After the war, he finished his studies and was hired to photographically document the reconstruction and restoration of Warsaw’s architectonic monuments. He then worked as a photographer in magazines and some of the city’s newspapers. He became, in a way, THE Warsaw photographer. He kept taking pictures of the city until his death, on the 4th of March, 2015, when he was 89 years old.
Let’s go back to the picture in question. This image came into my life multiple times during very different periods. The first time I saw it, it must have been in a magazine or a newspaper, and then in a photo exhibition. With the birth of the Internet, I’ve caught glimpses of it multiple times. It was easy to remember; it is the perfect photograph for me. But each time I saw it, my experience of it was different. I know — or rather I knew — the place where the picture was snapped perfectly; back left, out of frame, the “Moscow” cinema which doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe because of the name — or is it real estate speculation? The building was made famous by Chris Niedenthal’s photograph taken on the 13th of December, 1981; on the theatre’s bill is an advertisement for the movie “Apocalypse Now”, and in the foreground, a tank from the polish army — you can’t make this up!
The most famous photo of Martial law. A tank sits in front of Warsaw's Kino Moskwa. The film being shown is Apocalypse Now. Photo: Chris Niedenthal pic.twitter.com/52lcwpGKEu
How completely different from the picture we’re discussing!
Back to 1968; at the time I lived only a few trams stops away from the street pictured, in the same direction the shot is taken. I didn’t yet know that 150 metres away was a photography shop where I would buy, almost 20 years later, my first camera.
Back to 1968; at the time I lived only a few trams stops away from the street pictured, in the same direction the shot is taken. I didn’t yet know that 150 metres away was a photography shop where I would buy, almost 20 years later, my first camera. I also remember this rain, what a downpour! We always view and feel a photograph through our experience, but there is of course also the aesthetic aspect of it, which is far from negligible here. The gracefulness and the poetry of those milliseconds captured on film were extracted from a daily life that was far from simple and easy. The horizon tilts slightly to the right, which is quite far-off from an architectural photographer’s habits; they usually structure their pictures with very sharp and neat lines.
This certainly deliberate characteristic makes the scene feel alive and aerial. The girl seems to fly over the pavement without ever touching it. Where is she running to? Is the car with a slightly open door waiting for her? We will never know, and it is best that way. It allows each person to see and experience this image differently. A thin slice cut from time and light which our individual gaze will uniquely colour.
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!
These photographs represent an attempt to switch away from my ‘go to’ mode of photography (coastal landscapes, usually wide angle / tilt-shift) to more challenging monochrome work in more complex inland environments, using longer focal lengths. I was helped in this direction by breaking my arm! It became impossible to carry more than one camera with one lens at a time, and certainly no tripod. Here are my attempts at making some sense of the complexity of my local woodlands. All my weeks off work gave me the mental space and time to think carefully about the distillation of composition in these environments.
I have been photographing in the Northern Kettle Moraine State Forest in Wisconsin for a number of years. One feature of the forest is a number of planted conifer woods that were put in as part of reforestation in the last century. These conifers are not natural to area and are being harvested to make room for native hardwoods. These conifers stands provide an opportunity to feature repeated patterns and symmetry in the woodlands.
