Shedding Old-Skin

"We need space in our creative endeavours,
just as much as we need space in our photographs"

Often, I feel too much emphasis is placed upon the creation of work. But I think as artists, our non-creative time is just as important. We need to understand and most importantly, respect that periods of inactivity are just as healthy as periods of activity are. They give us a much needed pause in our creative lives to reflect and grow.

Moonfall, Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia. Image © Bruce Percy

Creative drought is often viewed upon negatively. There is a fear that since we cannot find any inspiration to create, or cannot create at will, that perhaps the creative well is dry for good. Our thoughts go along the lines os 'I shall never be able to create anything ever again!'

I think we should look more positively at these periods of inactivity and recognise that as with any creative endeavour, there is always going to be an ebb and flow to what we do. A yin and yang. To create, we must have periods where we do not.

I see these moments of inactivity as a rest, a pause in the music of our creativity. But there is more than just this, I've often found these periods to be the precursor to some new growth in my artistry.  What I had thought may be the dwindling of my creative force, turned out to be the beginning of a new direction, or the reinforcement of a style in my work. The shedding of old skin.

If you are currently experiencing some creative drought - a bare patch in your creativity, I would suggest you accept it and let it ride itself out. Take your foot of the gas and wait.

Just as when we have a pressing issue that we do not have the answer to, I've often found that given some time away from it, the answer will come. As my dad has often said to me when I was trying too hard to get something to work: "best give it a rest for a while and when you do come back to it, you'll see it in a new light".

Human eye response

I find it very interesting that it's completely impossible for us as a species, to see true dynamic range. We don't actually see the world the way it really is - our eyes compress luminosity so that everything in the upper regions all looks the same:

The human eye compresses luminosity. In other words, we are unable to see true dynamic range. It is a physical impossibility. Digital cameras can however see the true dynamic range. Even so, just because they can, does not mean they render images the way we see them. We need to use grads to do that.

We are in fact, all blind to true luminosity in the real world. Whereas digital cameras aren't: they are able to see that the sky is 4 stops brighter than the ground. But just because they can see it - it doesn’t mean digital cameras are giving us what we want. It just means that digital cameras don’t see the way we see. And that’s the important bit.

We tend to view everything we look at, as a mid-exposure. When I look at the sky, in my mind I see a mid-exposure of it. And when I look at the ground, I see a mid-exposure of it also. As my eye scans around, I build up an internal representation of the world - a collage or collection of mid-exposures.

This is why I don't agree with the concept that 'if a scene can fit inside the entire histogram, then we don't need grads'. This belief, lacks understanding of what it is we are trying to do with grads in the first place and also what a histogram represents.

Image shot without a grad. Sky is overexposed while ground is underexposed. Although it is contained within the histogram, and is a true representation of what is there, it does not match how the eye perceives the scene (the human eye compresses dynamic range whereas digital cameras do not),

With a grad in place, the dynamic range of the scene is reduced - but not only that - the ground values move towards the mid-tone area (right) of the histogram, while the sky tones move towards the left (mid-tone) area of the histogram. Giving an image that is closer to how our eye sees.

In the images above, the left-hand one is an example of what happens when I don't use grads. The image may well 'fit into the histogram', but the ground is underexposed and the sky is overexposed:

The left-hand side of the histogram represents dark tones while the right-hand side represents bright tones. I now have a muddy underexposed ground (left-hand side of the histogram) and overexposed sky (right-hand side of the histogram).

So everything fits, but the image sucks.

And the thing about histograms is: Just because you have the space - it doesn't mean you have to fill it. 

The problem is, my eye doesn't see the ground as a dark area, nor the sky as a bright area. My eye tends to perceive them both as similar to each other and as a mid-tone. So if I wanted my histogram to represent what I saw, I would expect to see a 'single humper' histogram like this one:

One where the ground is a mid-tone and the sky is a mid-tone too. In effect, the ground and sky would share the same area of the histogram. 

And that's where grads come in, because they do this for us. They not only push the sky from the right side of the histogram to the middle tone, they also move the ground from the left side of the histogram towards the middle tone. Yep, grads not only darken the sky - they also brighten the ground because they reduce the dynamic range or width of the histogram. Since your camera is always aiming for an 18% mid-tone, everything moves towards the middle: sky goes left and ground goes right.

Again: just because you have the space - it doesn't mean you have to fill it :-)

If you do choose to use grads, there are a couple of benefits to using them:

1) You will have more space in the left-hand side for more shadow tonal information. When you don't use grads and squeeze everything into the histogram you push the ground to the left - and underexpose it. And when underexposing - you tend to compress (or quantise) different lower tones into fewer tones. Twenty discreet tones are summed into one or two tones. However, If you use grads, you open up the shadows by moving the ground towards the middle area of the histogram and this compression becomes less of an issue.

2) Conversely, the same is true for the sky. You have more space on the right for more tonal gradations and you record more tonal graduations. If you didn't use grads - many of the brighter tones are squeezed together or quantised - several tones become one in an attempt to fit it all into the dynamic range of the camera.

3) If you use grads the RAW image doesn't suck so much to look at.

Point 3 is perhaps the most important one for me. If we put all the science to one side, I'd much rather come home with something that already looks inspiring to work with.  A more balanced exposure through the use of grads will do that for me.  I wish to be engaged when I review the RAW files,   I don't wish to have to think about jumping through some additional hoops before I can figure out if there is anything of value there. If I don't use grads, I may let a few images fall between the cracks if I have to do additional processing before I can visualise if the image holds promise.

So for me, coming home with a more pleasing balanced image that requires less work to see if there is potential, is the most important aspect for using grads.

But that's just me. Which of the two images above would you choose to come home with?

The restless come down

"When I'm at home, I long to be away on my travels with my camera
and when I'm away, I sometimes long to be at home"

I'm just home from a month traveling in South America. It is something I do annually and I dearly love returning to Patagonia and Bolivia. Like most of the landscapes I have become acquainted with over the years, they have become a home from home for me. I dearly love them and would be very sad indeed if I could not return as frequently as I do. I fully appreciate that as part of my job, it is a real luxury to go to Patagonia and Bolivia each year, when these destinations are perhaps at most a once in a life-time experience for many.

Cono de Arita, Argentina Altiplano, Image © Bruce Percy 2015

I've been back home for a week, and I've found it very hard re-adjusting. Years ago, the adjustment was just as hard, but in a different way. Traveling abroad would be a real luxury for me - a once a year endeavour and escape from my (at the time) IT job. I fully see and understand the parallels for my dear clients - many of whom have become good friends. I understand their excitement on coming with me to Patagonia or Bolivia.

But for me now, the re-adjustment is different. I do so much traveling, and spend so much time with groups of enthusiastic photographers, where the chat and banter are so much fun, that it's often very hard to come back to my home town and settle back in to a routine. I noticed last year for instance, that after being home for two weeks, I was hatching plans to buy a plane ticket and head off..... I'm glad to say that I resisted the temptation and went 'cold-turkey' for a month.

It was only then that I really started to enjoy being home. The same bed each nice (bliss!), the same kettle, I didn't have to pay a fortune each time I wanted a cup of tea or coffee. I had full privacy, and the surprising thing of all - I delighted in the familiar.

It took me a while to realise, that due to the amount of traveling I was doing, I was becoming 'institutionalised'. The travel, the landscapes, the places I love to go to, were becoming more of a home for me, than my real home was.

So this year, I opted to go 'cold-turkey' for three months. To stay at home and just enjoy the familiarity of my surroundings. Well, I'm one week in so far, and I'm already feeling that sense of restlessness that seems to pervade my thoughts. But I know I'll get through it, and before I know it, I will be psychologically ramping up for going away on my travels during the autumn and winter.

It's a schizophrenic life I lead, and I think it's not dissimilar to many others who have a love of landscape photography.

The thing is, I recognise that I'm not alone. Most of us who have a passion for the landscape, have a desire to break free from the 9-5 job, or to be more connected with the world in some way.

Watching the clouds roll over a landscape, or watching the tide wash against a coastline is as primeval an instinct as staring at a fire is. It seems to be something deep within some of us, that we simply just want to be as connected with the world and our environment as we can be.

It's a restlessness of some kind, and I think it's just the way it is: we can't control the urge or the impulse, and because we can't, we never really know exactly where we want to be.

Perhaps it's just a yearning for a sense of balance that we're really searching for? 

We are inquisitive by nature: I would put it to you that all landscape photographers are seeking to know more, to feel more connected, to feel more alive, and one way to do that, is to go searching, traveling, seeking.

With that inquisitiveness has to come a sense of restlessness. And with that restlessness comes a need for some kind of balance between routine and adventure.

Grad Filters - soft graduations or hard graduations?

Lee filters introduce two new graduations of ND filter

In April,  Lee-Filters announced two new graduation sets to their ND product range. Up until now, you had the choice of either soft-graduation or hard-graduation ND filters. Now you have two further choices - very-hard-graduation and also medium-graduation filters.

Lee filters have just introduced a new 'very-hard' and also a new 'medium' graduation filter set to their existing line of soft and hard ND-grad sets.

I currently own the 1, 2 & 3 stop versions of both soft and hard-grad filters. They are useful in many different ways. But with the news of the newer graduation types, I think my filter set is going to change.

Soft or Hard, which should you choose?

Each year when I send out my trip notes for the workshops I'm running, I ask everyone to buy the hard-graduation filters. Despite some participants reluctance to get the hard-grads because they think the graduation may be too obvious (it's not) in the picture, I find the existing Lee hard-grads just about right for most applications.

The reason is that Hard grads are actually quite diffused once they are put up so close to the front of the lens. They give enough bite to change the picture, and do so without being too obvious where their placement is. They are perfect for when you just want to grad the sky only.

Soft grads on the other hand are too soft for just grading the sky - their bite doesn't cut in as much as I'd like. But I do find that Soft-grads have other uses: they are ideal for instances when there is a gradual change from the bottom of the frame to the top. Instances like lakes where the water is extremely dark at the bottom of the frame and it gets brighter towards the horizon. Using soft grads across the middle of the water help control that.

So in general: hard grads are for controlling the sky when there is a sudden shift between ground and sky. Soft grads are useful for scenes where the entire scene changes gradually as you move up the frame.

Grad Placement may not be so critical, and here's why

It really depends on the focal length. Smaller focal-lengths provide a sharper rendering of the graduation whereas larger focal-lengths diffuse the graduation, making hard-grads softer.

If you zoom out - the graduation becomes more defined. And as you zoom in, the graduation becomes more diffused. With a hard-grad it means it's a hard-grad at 24mm but it starts to act more like a soft-grad when used at 75mm. Soft grads are soft at 24m but they become far too soft once you get up to and beyond 75mm.

I illustrate this below. Using the same hard-grad, I zoom in from 24mm to 150mm. As I do so, the graduation becomes softer. I am essentially zooming into the graduation:

Using the same hard-grad, as I go up the focal lengths from 24mm to 150mm, the graduation becomes more diffused. My hard-grad essentially becomes a soft-grad at 150mm.

I have a medium-format rangefinder system. I can't see through the lens, but I've never had a problem with placing the hard-grads, and it's all because of a combination of them being so diffused so close to the lens, and the higher focal lengths. My wide angle is a 50mm for example.

Which Graduations should I choose, and why?

Your choice of camera format will also determine how your grads will behave.  Smaller-formats user smaller focal lengths, while larger formats use larger focal lengths for the same angle of view. For example, a 24mm lens in 35mm format has the same angle of view as a 50mm does in medium-format. But the same grad used on a 24mm will be more defined than if it were used on a 50mm, even though both lenses give the same angle of view.

In the graph below, I show the equivalent focal lengths for the 'same angle of view' as you go up the formats from MFT (Micro-Four-Thirds) to Large format. You can see that the focal lengths get longer and longer. This means that your soft-grad filter will become softer and softer as you move up the formats.

As you go up the formats, the focal lengths get longer for the same angle of view. This also means that any hard-grads you buy become softer as you move up for camera formats. Or harder as you go down the formats.

So it's not just a simple case of choosing soft grads over hard ones, because you think they will be less noticeable in the final image. You also have to take into account the focal lengths you're using.

In my own case, I use Medium Format cameras, and I mostly use hard-grads because they give me the right amount of graduation across the frame for the focal lengths I mostly use (50 and 80). When I use the hard-grads with the 50mm, the placement isn't so critical as there's a degree of diffusion there already, but the filter still bites into the image enough to make hard-grads a viable choice. When I use soft-grads though, they tend to be too diffused for the focal lengths I use. 

Which of the new range will I be tempted to get?

Since I'm a medium format shooter, I'm tempted to replace most of my soft-grads with the new medium grads. The medium-grads will give me what I am looking for (but not getting) from my soft-grads.

I will remain using the standard hard-grads, as they are perfect for my wide and standard lenses, but I am interested in buying some very-hard-grads for use with my telephoto lenses. As explained, when you get up to such high focal-lengths, hard-grads become less and less effective.

Using different types of graduation is a key component to good exposures. I've found for many years that I could do with some graduation filters that are somewhere between the old hard-grad and soft-grad sets, and there is also cause to have very-hard grads for use when using higher focal lengths. So for me, I will be buying some of the medium-grads and very-hard grads to compliment my ever-growing set of ND filters.

Easter Island 2016

This week I'm on Easter Island. It is my third visit to this island since I first visited back in 2003. A lot has changed in the thirteen years since I first came here.

Image courtesy Richard Cavalleri, tour participant 2016 

I think returning to a place can be very rewarding, for a few reasons.

The first and most obvious one, is that by returning, you get a another chance to capture what you failed to capture during your first visit. To fill in the missing gaps on what you thought was possible. And of course, you get to dig a little deeper. Each time I've returned to a place, I've found my knowledge and understanding of it just gets a little richer and my photographs seemed to touch areas of the place that I didn't encounter the first time.

But it's not just this aspect of revisiting a place that is rewarding. I've often found that each time I return to a place I have photographed before, that I find myself reflecting on who I was, what I was trying to achieve and also, just how much I've changed as a photographer since that previous visit.

My first visit to Easter Island in 2003 was at a time when I had only just been making photographs seriously for about three years. I still hadn't grasped what grad filters could do for my exposures, or indeed, how full ND filters could help smoothen down some of the textures in my photos. I was also very unclear at the time as to how far I could push the boundaries of my chosen film stock with regards to the quality of light I could photograph. There are numerous technical aspects that I did not know at the time, that I do know now.

Image © Richard Cavalleri. This is a cropped version of the first image in this post. Richard and I spent some time discussing aspect ratios and image-interpretation / editing techniques during our time together.

But it is more than this. Since that first visit in 2003, I've found that I've gained so much experience from photographing other terrains around the world, that I can draw upon this experience to help me photograph Easter Island in ways that I struggled to interpret. Back in 2003, I had found the terrain here extremely complex. I did not have the compositional skills to translate what I saw here. Nor had I the understanding about light to work with the landscape at other times of the day other than sunrise and sunset.

So I find myself looking back very much at who I was in 2003, not just in terms of what I knew as a photographer, but also in what I was looking for in the images I chose to create. This time round, I'm much more interested in the landscape and the more anonymous locations, rather than the statues.

I can't help but feel very grateful to have had the chance to revisit this amazing little island at spells throughout my photographic development. Each visit is like an 'intermission', a placeholder to notice the changes in my art.

I do think that revisiting places is good for the photographic soul. Some places just get under your skin, and don't let go. Some have unfinished business because you realise that you didn't have the skills to work with them the first time round, which is something I feel very much about Easter Island.

Many thanks to Richard Cavalleri for letting me use his image of the fifteen moai statues at Tongariki on Easter Island during my first (and last) photo tour here. 

Patagonia, May 2016

I'm on Easter Island right now, but as of ten days ago, I had just finished up running my Patagonia tour this year. I'm a film shooter, so of course I have no final images to show you as yet, but I did make one 'test' shot on my iPhone which you can see below.

Lago Grey, taken with my iPhone © Bruce Percy May 2016

I'm always on the lookout for patterns in nature and I'm always on the lookout for something new in a landscape I have visited many times. So this image fitted both criteria for me.

There is an embankment of sand that one has to cross to get to the waters edge, and on one side of it, I saw these frost patterns. I had never seen the black sand beach of Lago Grey with frost before. They are simply the indentations of people's footprints in the slope but what beautiful patterns they make! And also, I felt that the white frost with black sand was the perfect tonal separation that I'm always seeking in my images.

One last thing, it would have been so easy to exclude the horizontal line of the lake in the frame, as you can see from the image below - it was vital that I raise my Hasselblad (and iPhone!) to capture this line - it is a graphic shape that compliments the composition and yet, could have easily been left out.

Image showing my Hasselblad camera set up on location for the Lago Grey shot.

Patagonian Brocken Spectre

I'm in South America right now. About 10 days ago I was in Patagonia - in Torres del Paine national park where we experienced a brocken spectre one morning (see below):

The Paine massif - a mountain range that is around 9,000 feet high, rising out of the patagonian steppe, was shrouded in cloud one morning. We saw the outline of the mountain projected onto the foreground cloud from the sun behind the mountain range. What you are seeing here - is a 9,000 feet shadow cast onto a band of cloud between us and the sun. It was quite spectacular and I've never seen anything like it before. 

Many thanks to Clive Maidment for sending me the iPhone picture.

Patagonia's Calling........

In just a few days time, I will be heading back to one of my most favourite places in the world. I dearly, dearly love Patagonia and in particular Torres del Paine national park.

The Cuernos (horns) of Paine, from Lago Pehoe, Torres del Paine national park. Chilean Patagonia. One of my most favourite places in the world!. Image © Bruce Percy

I feel I have a deep connection with this place. I can't quite believe that I have been coming here since 2003.... more than a decade.

There is a spirit, a vibe to Patagonia that is hard to convey in the written word. It is something you have to feel for yourself. I find that some places that I visit, have a 'feeling', a 'smell' to them. There's something very timeless about Patagonia. It is a place where you can choose to disappear. With such wide open spaces, and such small rural communities dotted at such large distances from each other, I find I can let my mind roam.

I think we all want to be free. To escape, and to find somewhere that time seems to stand still. I think that is Patagonia to me. It is like an old friend, one that hasn't changed much over the intervening years. Patagonia is still very much the same place it was when I first visited it back in 2003. I find there's a comfort in knowing this :-).

So forgive me for feeling a sense of joy tonight for visiting this landscape. It is indeed an old friend. It is also a home from home - a special place for me, to just be :-)

This last image was shot on the very last day of my tour there last year. I know Torres del Paine so well and one of my favourite locations is towards the southern side of the park.

I stay with my group at the Rio Serrano village. In this shot - you can see the Paine massif ( a 2,884m mountain range jutting out from the landscape at almost sea level) with lifting early morning fog from the Rio Serrano pass. 

Sometimes when I'm in Torres del Paine, I see temperature inversions. It's hard to describe to people who haven't been there how otherworldly the place is. To have a mountain range like that jut high into the sky from sea level to 2,884m and literally have a different weather system at the western side compared to it's eastern side - is normal here.

I've seen snow and rain happen on the left-hand side of the frame while it's been sunny and dry on the right hand-side. I'm sure you get my drift.....

A photo can only do so much and the rest is really about being there to actually witness it :-)

And with that last thought, I wish you many happy photographic endeavours :-)

To label ourselves, may be limiting

This week I received an e-mail from a good friend of mine who at the age of 46 has discovered that she's got a talent for drawing and painting. She said that she had always assumed she was a musician and it's been a bit of a surprise to her to find out that she has this other talent for drawing and painting as well.

Blue Pond Shirogane, Hokkaido, Image © Bruce Percy 2015

The same thing is true of myself. For most of my early adult life, Music was everything to me. I played in bands, wrote music and worked with others at creating songs. I was so serious about what I did that I'd even been offered a publishing deal at one stage. I built a home studio to record all my music and if anyone had asked me up until the age of 33 how I would define myself, I would have said that I was a musician.

Until I reached burn out.

The interesting thing is that everyone else around me was always commenting on my photographs. "Bruce writes music, but you should really see his photographs". I took photography as a very incidental interest - I had owned a camera since the age of 22 and would make the occasional decent photo without really understanding how.

This was more a mind-set than anything to do with my true leanings. I had chosen to see myself as a musician and every other creative outlet was simply just for fun, and into that fun-category, I'd placed my photography.

Things keep changing, and I keep finding out new things about myself through my art.

Even though my friends could see that I had an aptitude for photography, I could not. I was blind to my own possibilities.

I genuinely believe that if something is right for you - it has a tendency to grow and take on a life of its own. I call it 'positive flow'. When I'm creating work, the best images tend to just come easily. Similarly, with anything in life, if it's right - it tends to have a natural flow to it. When it's not right because maybe the timing is wrong, or 'something' is wrong, it tends to jam, to get stuck. Good artists, I feel, know this. They have a natural intuition that tells them where to go with their work and how best to keep moving forward. It took me a long while to listen to that intuition.

Sometimes who we think we are, or how we see ourselves, may be outdated, Applying labels to ourselves can be limiting, while compartmentalising what we do as creative individuals is perhaps the most restrictive thing we can do.

These days, I try to keep things open. I prefer to see myself as a 'creative person' rather than as a photographer, because It allows my creativity to go wherever it feels it wants to.

With this in mind, I feel I am ready to embrace any new direction that I may go, because I understand that not to, would be a great disservice to my true self.

A Present

I got a present today from a friend of mine (thanks Ming!). 

A hot water bottle cover, and a roll of Velvia...... bliss! What else could a landscape photographer want in the (cold) high plateau of the Bolivian Altiplano?  :-)

A hot water bottle cover, and a roll of Velvia. What else could one want in the high plains of the Bolivian Altiplano?