Today I just announced via my news letter, that I’m doing a six day photographic safari in Lofoten next February.
I just thought I’d let you know that it is now sold out.
I may put on a second trip, so please let me know by putting yourself on the waiting list.
This is the first announcement about some ‘worldwide’ photographic trips that are in the pipeline. Hopefully some more concrete news at the end of May.
Mike Green informed me today that he’s written a review of my Harris workshop, and thought you might like to read it.
It’s pretty accurate, but he did leave out how amazingly handsome I am…. a slight error on his part ;-)
I don’t do many podcasts. They’re quite time consuming, but above all, I can only do them when I have something to say.
Sometimes, what I have to say, isn’t immediately obvious and in terms of the Lofoten islands, which I visited this March, it took me a good month to figure out what it was, about this place, that made a big impression on me.
Speaking to a friend of mine recently, we discussed my trip and it became apparent that what had affected me the most was how the seasons felt very out of step.
Let me explain. In Scotland winter tends to come to a drawn out close around April and sometimes as late as May. But when I was heading off to Lofoten in March, there were sure signs of Spring in the air here. The sun was out and it was t-shirt territory. I even felt I had a ’spring in my step’ too (not bad for a 43 year old!).
Lofoten Islands, Norway from Bruce Percy on Vimeo.
Now consider that just shortly after arriving in Lofoten, I stood in a petrol station in the town of Leknes, waiting for my bus to arrive to take me to Reine, and outside, all I could see was a snow blizzard hammer relentlessly against the window. I do remember thinking ‘oh, what have I got myself into this time?’ and I wondered if I’d been really foolish to come to such an amazingly desolate environment (I use this term with no exaggeration – Norway, above the arctic circle at this time of year is an extremely harsh place to live).
Anyway, as the podcast shows, it’s also a very beautiful place and I certainly felt as though I’d taken a step back in time a few months, right into the depths of winter.
It was an absorbing experience to feel like an outsider, looking in on a season that was very much alive and real to the friends and locals I met in Lofoten, but had become very much a thing of the past for me.
I’ll be releasing my future podcasts (including this one) on Vimeo, because it allows me to give you an HD version with nice viewing controls. You can also find my other podcasts on Vimeo as well in 720 HD mode, so enjoy (and if you’d like to leave some nice comments on Vimeo – even better :-)
I do hope you enjoy this podcast. Lofoten is an extremely beautiful place. It has two faces, a stunningly beautiful summer face and a dramatic winter face. That is why I am headed back there this mid-summer, to photograph the night (11 till 5am brings beautiful light). Now where did I put my eye-patches?
I’ve been watching ‘Tribe’ by Bruce Parry (cool name!) on DVD this week and I’ve been enjoying it. Parry has such a sprit for ‘getting in there’.
I felt compelled to go and look for interviews with him and came upon one in which he spoke of certain things which resonated with me very much and I feel I must share with you.
When Parry is out there, trying to bond with tribes, his interviewer stated that “The secret of assimilation, he reveals, is that he never attempts to learn the language: “It gets in the way of eye contact and human understanding. The quickest way to bond is to offer to carry something, to eat their food, drink their [sometimes polluted] water.”
I bring this up, because on all of my travels, when I’ve been making photos of people, I’ve often found language gets in the way.
This is very timely because only last week, I was speaking to a girl in the office I now share (I’ve moved into a nice office in the centre of Edinburgh), and one of the girls was asking me if I learn to speak in the language when I make images of Cubans / Ethiopians / Cambodians / Indians / Nepalese….
My answer was no… I don’t use verbal language. I use a lot of body language and I’m convinced that the people I photograph have a better understanding of ‘me’ than they would if they could talk to me. As Parry stated in his interview:
“It gets in the way of eye contact and human understanding. The quickest way to bond is to offer to carry something, to eat their food, drink their [sometimes polluted] water.”
That is, in a nutshell, exactly how I feel about my exchanges with people I make images with: When I encounter someone, I get involved, and I have to communicate through my body.
We do listen to each other through our body language, and despite what someone says to you, often we’re aware if their body is saying something else.
Well, it’s just like that.
I’m a pretty open, easy going person, so I just act myself and see what happens. Often it works very well and I’m able to get up close to someone and make an image of them without them being frightened.
The other thing that really got me, when reading the interview with Parry was that he said :
“I used to worry that I would be embarrassed at dinner parties because I would be out of touch. But having travelled so much, I find the news thoroughly repetitive and negative.”
Having done a lot of traveling myself, I think I understand what Parry is saying because each time I return from abroad, I’m aware that I seem to suffer a sense of ’not belonging to where I’m from’. Scotland, or the British Isles, seems like a strange place. People are insular. They have worries about small issues. Or so it seems. It’s just that each of us, lives in our own bubble of ‘reality’, and I think what Parry is saying is that it’s easy to become wrapped up in all the problems in our own societies, and not appreciate the good that is around. I’ve certainly found that on my travels… really poor people in Bolivia, who are happy, just existing. They have food on their plate, they have a home, their loved ones are healthy and things are good.
The same in India, if things are ok today, then that is all that matters, because tomorrow is tomorrow.
The same for Cuba… and Cambodia…. these places don’t have a long term view. They are dealing with the more fundamental aspects of existence. They are just trying to ‘be’.
I think as photographers, we should try to get out there. To experience. To see the world.
It gives us a chance to see a new perspective, but perhaps more importantly, it gives us a chance to appreciate things that we didn’t acknowledge about our own societies, and to also question the way we go about living our lives too.
Surely that is no bad thing.
As photographers, we should stop every now and then and review what we’ve been doing.
It’s so hard sometimes, to see any progression in what i’m doing, because i’m too close to it. Like someone who is unable to see traits in their own personality make up that all their friends and family only know too well, being an artist comes with the same issue: that of objectivity.
I’m not really suggesting that we become introverted and look within us, or like an accountant, make a very formal assessment of where we currently are in terms of how many good images we’ve made in the past year. Or how many competitions we’ve been successful in. I’m really talking about ‘awareness’.
So objectivity – being able to see what you’ve really created, as opposed to what you ‘think’ you’ve created, comes from awareness. And awareness happens because we make a connection within ourselves – almost like a constant monitoring device, where we allow ourselves to be conscious of our creativity.
I’m certainly like that. I feel that I rarely (if at all) switch off from being in touch with ‘who I am’. I think it’s important to know who you are in terms of your artistic side, and for me, I think it comes very easily, because I’ve been doing art since I can remember, whether it was painting, drawing, music…. whatever, so I’m aware that I’m perhaps more in touch with ‘who I am’ as a creative person.
On my workshops these past few years now, I’ve had a lot of discussions with participants about this in one form or another. What I find striking is that many people find it hard to ’switch on’ their creative side and they see a distinction between what they do for work and their photography pursuits. Accountants tell me they rarely get to be creative (I know a few creative accountants, so I beg to differ), and I have lots of people from technical backgrounds (IT, Engineering) who also express a feeling that what they do for a living forces them to think in a much more analytical way, and less in a creative way.
But I disagree with this. Many, without being ‘aware’ of it, are creative in their jobs. They have lateral thoughts, solve problems in a creative way. It’s just that they don’t realise that they are using that part of their creative mind, that I do when I’m in my ‘creative mode’ to make pictures.
I’m sure it’s really that they haven’t been practicing ‘objectivity’ and ‘awareness’ in the same way that an arty-creative-type does.
So maybe, it’s a form of practice.
Becoming more aware of where you’re going with your photography comes from stopping a lot and looking at it, hopefully in an objective way. Feeling where to go next, comes from a sense of intuition which I believe only comes because we question ourselves and even though we don’t have any firm answers, opens up new possibilities in the process.
So if I were to give you a directive for a better creative life, it would consist of two things – objectivity and awareness. Be aware of what you’re doing, even in your day time job, be aware of your decisions and the times when you find yourself lost in a solution. This is no different from those moments when we’re ‘lost’ for a few hours behind a camera employing ‘vision’. Objectivity is the practice of looking back at what you’ve done and what you’re doing, almost from a 3rd-person perspective, and realising what it is you’re doing best and maybe which artistic direction you now need to take.
Over the past week I’ve been setting up my home ’studio’ for want of a better word, for printing and proofing.
As you may have seen in an earlier post last week, I took delivery of a viewing booth, which allows me to evaluate photographic images under controlled lighting. It is, as Neil Barstow – who I bought the viewing booth from, ideal for verifying that what you are seeing on screen is correct.
I bought a profiled print from Neil, along with a copy of the original file and a ‘proof profile’ for viewing the image under Photoshop’s Proofing facility (something which, I’m at a loss to understand why Adobe didn’t give this feature in Lightroom).
Anyway, the process is pretty straight forward. You calibrate your monitor, then profile it – I used BasicColour, which I have to say, has given the most accurate profile I’ve seen to date, and I didn’t have to use a spectrophotometer for my wide gamut display. Just my simple X-rite Eye one display colourmeter. It worked really well and when I threw up the verification file and set the proof to the correct profile for the print, I was able to see that the file matched exactly what I see on my viewing booth.
The next stage now is printing. I know it’s going to be a learning curve. I’ll let you know how things go as I progress, but suffice to say that I’m intending to have a fully profiled, colour accurate printing process at home : something I’ve wanted to do for a long time as it will give me full control of the final output.
Will keep you posted about the colour management efforts and how things progress.
I’ve never used this, and it’s been sitting in my desk drawer for over 4 years now, so it needs to go to a good home.
For sale, one Canon Angle Finder C. Completely like new, comes with a pouch and is in 10/10 condition.
To make it easy, you can buy it now for £115 by clicking the button below, and then using the ‘checkout’ button to get it.
I will ship to ‘anywhere’ and this is included in the price.
…comes from Imogen Heap with her amazing video ‘Canvas’.
I was introduced to Imogen by my oldest school friend and it took me a while to ‘get her’, but I think this video did it for me:
Snow is beautiful. Whoever made this video needs a big congratulations.
Over the past few months, I’ve been delving into colour management – specifically in the printing side, as I feel I understand enough about monitor profiling.
But I have to confess that I wonder if monitor profiling is as understood as it should be?
Neil Barstow of Colourmanagement.net has produced along with Michael Walker, a nice little e-Book about getting accurate colour on screen, and I think it’s very much worth a look at even if you think you’re already up to speed on calibration and profiling of your monitor.
The biggest thing for me, is how our perception of white changes depending on our environment. I edit in a room with a Solux lamp these days, because the bulb produces an even level of luminance across the spectrum. It’s not ideal, but it’s an improvement upon normal tungsten light bulbs. Many beginners edit their images in a tungsten light room in the evenings, and they have no idea that this has an impact on how they perceive the colours they are seeing on screen.
I also use a neutral mid-grey onscreen desktop background, because this also affects my judgement regarding colour.In the eBook, this is discussed, also the difference between calibration and profiling, which are very different processes. Calibration for instance, is all about getting your monitor to a specified condition with regards to targeted white and black luminance, colour temperature and gamma or tonal reproduction curve. Profiling is about measuring the characteristics of how colours are displayed at it’s calibrated state.
This is where an ICC profile comes into play. It both holds the display system’s calibration and is a way of describing the actual characteristics so that colour management software can display the correct colours. What is in your file, i.e. the actual numerical pixel values should be represented at best on your monitor, i.e. each pixel is displayed as it’s numerical values truly relate to human vision and this can only happen once your monitor is calibrated and then profiled.
The eBook finishes off with suggestions and bugs found using colour management within OSX (Snow Leopard is discussed here – especially regarding ICC profiles and the issues with type 4 Profiles), and of course Windows is covered too.
In general, this is a good eBook about a very complex subject and in it, Neil and Michael give enough information so that you’re not too confused, but a bit more aware of the issues involved in getting good colour accuracy on your monitor. You may be interested to note that I recently purchased a copy of the CMnet/Pixl Verification Kit proof and a viewing booth (for print evaluation). An accurate, measured and certified proof is the best - in fact the only way to determine if the calibration and profiling of your monitor is spot on.
Here’s a little snap of my studio desk at home with an Eizo monitor and the viewing booth to the left (note the work in progress eBook about TPE that I’m slowly getting my way through!). These things are really worth the money if you intend to evaluate your prints and also, to get the monitor profiling spot on too.
For more information about colour management and some expert advice, Neil Barstow can be contacted at Colourmanagement.net and of course, if you’d like to try to learn more about monitor profiling and calibration, then I can suggest buying his eBook as it will do you no harm whatsoever.
I love street photography – capturing the moment, a glance, a split second in the life of someone – frozen in time.
As much as it’s not what I choose to do myself, I have my own tastes in photography that maybe don’t quite match what I shoot myself. But I believe that they all share the same purpose: to inspire and guide me in doing what I do.
So it is, that I’d like to introduce you to Ruth Orkin’s work. Ruth was a member of New York’s Photo League. Perhaps her most famous image is that of the ‘American Girl in Italy’. Whilst there on a holiday with one of her friends, they decided to make photographs of what it was like for a single woman traveling around.
I do love street photography. It’s a very different form of photography from Landscape work. I find that although there is perhaps less of an aesthetic in the work, there is often more of a story involved, and I find that I look at street photographs in a much more different way than I do landscapes. I think I often feel transported back in time and find it really interesting to see the interaction between subjects. I often marvel at the timing in making the right shot (although for me, Henri Cartier Bresson’s work is less engaging).
I often wonder, who were these people? What were their lives like? I love how photography can document something, freeze it in time.
Anyway, Ruth’s work is really worth checking out and I see there is an excellent web site about her work which will give you plenty to enjoy.
Currently, there are no publications available about her work and I’ve had to rely on buying used copies. In particular, I bought ‘Above And Beyond’ by Ruth. It’s a small, slim paper back, but the images in it are really excellent. It was unfortunately, a bit expensive, but when I get ‘into something’, I usually seem to find that money just doesn’t matter that much… (ahem). I’m just very curious as to why there has been nothing published about her in book form for some time?
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