I’ve been away all week on the isle of Eigg with a terrific group, running a workshop.

I’ve not got much time today, but felt I should let you all know that all the new images I’ve been producing for the past year – are now up on my site.

New images section of my site

I decided to separate them into a ‘new’ section, away from my older work, as I feel there’s a refinement in my style over the past few years. So if you’d like to browse the work, which includes Iceland, Norway, Patagonia and my recent trip to Bolivia, please click on the ‘new’ section to the navigation menu at the top of the blog.

I hope you enjoy the newer images presented in portfolios, even if you feel you know most of the work by visiting my blog.

I’ve just been informed today that the content for my Iceland book – ‘a journal of nocturnes’ will be featured in this September/October editions of Lenswork Extended.

If you’re not familiar with Lenswork, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It is perhaps one of the few very high quality photography magazines out there. Run by Brooks Jensen, the slant is very much on black and white photography only, and focusses very much on the artistic side rather than the technical (just fine by me – I get inspiration from enjoying others work, not looking at camera gear). Anyway, Lenswork also covers colour work in their extended edition, which is the place you’ll find me, along side an audio interview.

When I have more firm news about this, I’ll let you know.

Meanwhile, things are ramping up here at the office in Edinburgh for the release of my 2nd book this November (official release date is now 1st of November). There will be news about advanced orders, including some very special limited edition variants of the book in this months newsletter first, which you can subscribe to on my home page.

I love to make up stories, whether it’s verbally, or visually.

Tonight I’ve just got my 8-rolls of film back from my little jaunt around the central highlands of Iceland over the past two weeks.

Raudafoss-Tryptich, Iceland July 2012 (click for a larger view)

There’s not much in the rolls of film I came home with. I didn’t expect there to be, because I don’t think I was operating on full-cylinders for the first week and a half. Partly due to tiredness from all the traveling I’ve been doing, and also because the weather (Iceland had been having a terrific summer up until I arrived), was pretty miserable and lacking colour most days.

Until that is, I visited Rauðfossar waterfall in the Rauðfossafjöll range (central highlands). It came at the very end of my trip, and talking to a friend of mine about the experiences, she said to me ‘it seems you enjoyed your last week in iceland, and I’m sure you’ll look back on it fondly’. Well, I guess that’s very true, as I’m particularly happy with these three images (or stories as I like to think of them, because I feel they illustrate some aspects of Rauðfossar’s character – the waterfall is very difficult to photograph in its entirety, as it’s so large and looks like a rather messy spiders web from afar).

But up close, the waterfall is a wonder. There was even a tiny glacier in the river bed (the remnant of last winter, that still hadn’t melted away). And although it is called Red falls, it actually has a lot of orange stone in it (the image on the far right has not been messed about with to make that foreground rock look as orange as it is, that’s really mostly how it looked + velvia saturation).

This has been a place I’ve been trying to get to for the past eight years. I’m surprised that it is not on some central highland-tour stop. None of the buses stop here, there isn’t a campsite at the base of the falls (I have an epic tale to tell of how I managed to get here), and it’s not even featured on most of the postcards you see in Iceland. In short, unless you’re really into studying Iceland a bit more than the average tourist, you’ll probably not know anything about this beautiful place.

Now, in terms of my little epic tale – of how I got here. I’m embarrassed to say that I had to ford three rivers to get here, and maybe walk around eight miles in total. Most of the wardens in Landmannalaugar don’t know of it’s existence, and it was only by spying a map in a little cafe that I saw the words ‘raudafoss’ and said – oh – where is that? There seems to be a campsite near by’, and before I knew it, I was packing my my tent and heading for a bus that would drop me off at the particular campsite. I still had no idea if I was going to get to this waterfall, but I felt that if I got to the campsite ‘near’ it, I might get a better informed opinion from the warden there to how it might be possible to get to the waterfall – which is exactly what happened. I was informed upon arrival at the new campsite that the waterfall was ‘just around that bend, maybe 8km away, easy to get to (yeah, right!), and maybe a little stream to cross (yeah, right – ha ha ha).

I made it to the waterfalls around 9pm after crossing three rivers, some large expanses of moss and not another person to be seen for miles. I also add that on my return just after midnight, I had to cross the same river (almost waist-level in places) without my trousers on and boots held high in the air (as well as camera bag), and me cursing myself for being so daft to get myself into this situation (the amount of times I get myself into stupid situations for the love of a landscape photograph).

I got back to my tent near 1am, dirty – the river was full of black sand and silt. But happy, because I knew that I’d finally made it to the waterfall I’ve been so wanting to visit for years.

Madness, but then again, isn’t that what all landscape photographers are?

In terms of compositional information.I seemed to be attracted to rocks that had a degree of separation from their surroundings. Either in space (solitary rocks), or more often in terms of tonality. Playing in a landscape like this almost felt like I’d been let loose in a sweetie-shop (candy store). It felt like it was easy pickings to go find a rock that stood out – some were yellow-gold, and others were bright orange. It would be a great place to teach people about composition from the point of view of using colour and space for separation.

(ps, if you click on the image – you’ll see a nice big jpeg of the three images of the waterfall).

Just back from the isle of Harris, after a workshop. What a nice group I had!

Thought I’d share the image selection for my forthcoming Iceland book. Click to enlarge.

chosen images for the book

Be back in a few days, after I’ve had some time off. Away to St.Kilda in a week’s time to do a personal photography project. More to come on that I hope.

Feel the need to go exploring in a different direction. Thinking of Ladakh for August. Portraiture images only.

No landscapes.

Been too long doing landscapes and there’s a whole big world out there. Been speaking to Matt Brandon and Gavin Gough in Asia – both very fine photographers and worth looking at their sites. I think some time out there later this year may be on the cards.

What are your inspiration plans?

As part of my ongoing project to produce a book about Iceland, I’ve had to dig out my biography and look at what might be relevant for the release of the book.

jokularsgljufur stamp, 2007, © me

It’s almost a ridiculous thing to say – but I’d completely forgotten that in 2007, one of my images – an image of Selfoss waterfall in the north east of Iceland, was used on two stamps in a fetching panoramic design.

I got in touch with Grafískur hönnuður, the graphic design company who worked on this for SEPAC (Small European Postal  Administration Communities) organisation. Borgar, my contact there – sent me the original Photoshop file today, so we can include it as part of the intro wrapped inside the dust jacket of the book.

All this digging up the past, has unravelled a few things for me. First, I’d forgotten about the stamp and I hadn’t made the connection between it and my forthcoming book. But also, Borgar told me that the stamp won 4th place in the Deutsche Briefmarken-Revue “most beautful stamp in Europe competition” 2007!

How great is that?

Well, I guess that’s a really nice surprise for today. It makes me wonder, just where I’ve been, and where I’m heading. My iceland book seems to be evolving (still – considering that I thought that the design was complete). So when a piece of work is done, it’s never truly done is it? Things have a way of resurfacing and coming back full circle into your artistic life. Be it revisiting a place, revisiting work you did, or working on something new. The act of creating new work based on themes from your past can uncover so much and it’s always worth taking a moment to consider who you were then and who you are now. It’s only with some distance that I’m often able to be objective about ‘what I am’.

A few days ago, I was down in Nottingham, working on the final press book design for my 2nd book. If you’ve not been reading my blog of late, then maybe you don’t know that I’m planning on releasing a 2nd book this Autumn / Winter. The book is about Iceland and it’s mostly a monograph, but it does have a few stories and experiences from my time shooting there.

Journal of Nocturnes Cover

I’d like to say a big thank you to Darren Ciolli-Leach at 22:22 Design for his invaluable assistance and experience. Darren has been instrumental in turning my mockup’s into something more professional looking. He says – in his own words that he’s a ‘font-aholic’. I particularly like the fonts that he suggested for the book covers.

I’m intending to release the book in a few variants:

1. Basic edition

2. Book with special limited (to 300 copies only) slipcase.

3. Book with slipcase and limited edition print (125 copies only)

4. Deluxe version with slipcase and three prints that make up a triptych (45 copies only).

Journal of Nocturnes slipcase

There will be more details about the book and my special guest photographer who has written the preface for the book in this month’s newsletter (due out on the 27th).

If you don’t subscribe to my newsletter, than you can do it on my home page. Each month I always notify people of new workshops and special offers firstly through the newsletter, so it’s a good idea to subscribe if you want to be one of the first to know about workshops before they sell out, for instance.

As for my current book, the limited edition print versions of Loch Lurgainn are almost sold out now, so if you were thinking of getting a copy with one, then time is running out :-)

Nocturnes – a composition, or piece of music that is inspired by, or evocative of the night.

My 2nd book project has been evolving over the past two months.

Initially, I just knew I wanted to do a second book, and had slated some time in for a trip to Iceland this December / January with the hope that something might come out of it. I had no idea at the time if the 2nd book would be about Iceland, but I did hope that it might be.

A Journal of Nocturnes

I’ve learned, that things don’t always pan out the way you intended them, and to have a fixed idea of what it is you want to do – is too rigid. Certainly, having something to focus towards is a great motivator, but I also need to leave some room for change, and be able to consider that what I’m working on might not be the right fit, and something else might be better.

My 2nd book is taking shape quite strongly now. I originally had the idea of putting a book together about the south coast of Iceland and my ventures there to photograph the black sand and ice bergs. This brought me on to think about how to merge two different shoots – one from last Summer when I created a lot of very dark, monochromatic images of the black sand and ice bergs, and the more recent shoot this December/January, where the images are much more optimistic, light in tone and as a result – have a very different feel. This created a bit of a problem for me, and I felt the book was not gelling as well as I’d liked.

I felt that I wanted to add in some stories too, and give the viewer of the images some context, an idea of what I was feeling at the time. So over the past few months stories – some almost like poetry have been creeping into the book. It started to feel like it was coming together, gelling in the way I’d hoped. So until maybe a few weeks ago, I felt the book was on the right track and that it was mostly done, just the finer points like spelling, grammar, layout to be worked on and finalised. But the peace didn’t last long. I was aware over the weeks that I felt a little like something was missing from the book, and I didn’t feel it was complete. I can only get to this point if I give my work some time to sit, let it be absorbed and get comfortable with what it truly is, as opposed to what I think it is. In other words – a sense of distance is required, and so I’m always happy to give things some time, to see if they are indeed ready or maybe need some work.

Someone asked me if I were going to put some of my older images from Iceland into the book. I’d be hesitating about doing it, because I feel they represent who I was in 2004, and don’t really have much correlation to how my photography style has moved on. But I reconsidered, decided to have a go at putting them into the book, and found that I was wrong – they worked. So much so, that the book is a sandwich of three parts – the first section starts of with coastal shots that were shot during the night, while the middle section deals with inland areas of iceland shot during the summer months and much warmer light. The last section goes back towards the coast and deals with a more lighter ending feel to the days work. It was conceptual and I didn’t even know it until I’d put the thing together and a friend commented on how it seemed to work more as a piece now.

So the book has been retitled too. I had never really been happy with the title, but since I now have a collection of images, all mostly shot during the nocturnal hours of the day (I’m a low light shooter mostly), and since all were created during pre-dawn, post-dusk, even sometimes around 3am for instance, I feel the images have an otherwordly feel to them. The stories that I’ve written have been put together from the journal that I sometimes write in. So all this kind of wraps up to give me the title of ‘a journal of nocturnes’. Nocturnes is defined as ‘a composition, or piece of music that is inspired by, or evocative of the night’. I feel my images are compositions that are evocative or inspired by the night, so I feel it’s a perfect fit.

I feel the book is much stronger now. So all that needs to be done now, is get the preface written – as I type this, my special guest whom I’ve asked if he will write something as a way of an introduction to Iceland has responded and said yes. So I’m delighted by the news.

I’ll be traveling down to Nottingham this April to put the book together with my friend Darren, and expect to have something finished and ready for release later on in the year.

I hope my posting today has given you some food for thought regarding the creative process. It is always flowing, changing. It is never static and when someone says the work is done, what they really mean is that it has reached a conclusion for the moment.

Just  a quick post today to let you all know that the Iceland Photo Safari announced through my monthly newsletter, published last friday, is now sold out.

Many thanks for everyone’s enthusiasm and interest in this trip!

South Iceland – Icebergs, black sand beaches and waterfalls
9-day photographic safari, Sept 24 – 2nd Oct

£1,995 per participant

On Friday I published news about this new photographic safari via my monthly newsletter. I will be going to Iceland this September to spend 9 days photographing the south coast with a group of 8 participants.

Images shot this Dec/Jan in Iceland on my Hasselblad

I decided that if I were to run a trip in Iceland, it would have to allow some concentrated time in some great locations, rather than be a flat out, snatch a few hours tour round the entire country. This I feel, is impossible, because there is just far too much to cover, and not enough time.

This trip has been put together to give everyone several days in a few choice locations. My favourite place being Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon where we will have two whole days there to shoot sunrises and sunsets, and also explore the black sand coast line where you will find many icebergs of varying shapes, texture, size and colour.

For more details about the trip, and the locations we will be visiting, please go here.

Please note: this is not a workshop in the detailed sense that my workshops are in Scotland. We will be moving every couple of days, and as such, our time will be limited to on-location shooting. So it’s really a 9 day trip to get as much as you can out of the locations we will be visiting, and of course, you will get guidance from myself, be able to share ideas and thoughts with a group of like minded souls and immerse yourself in photography for a concentrated time.

I always let folks know about new trips through my newsletter first. The trip is now mostly sold out – six of the spaces have been filled and I only have two spaces left. If you want to know about new trips, and get first chance at booking onto them, then it’s a good idea to subscribe to my newsletter! :-)

If you’d like to come, the two remaining spaces can be booked here.

When I made this shot, I felt at the time (and still do), that I made the right composition choice.

I had the terrible temptation to try to get more magnification on the basalt columns you see sticking out of the sea – this, I feel is due to what I described a few days ago in my post about 2% vision.

If I’d had a bigger telephoto, then yes, it would have been sorely tempting to get right into the heart of the picture – to the basalt columns of Reynisdrangar, but I feel that would have been an error. The strongest lens I had with me was a 120mm, which essentially is equivalent to a 60mm in 35mm territory. Not that strong, and I feel this compromise allowed me to think more about the sweep in the coast line and the snow and ice that was covering the usually black sand beach.

So again, not going in for the massively zoomed in crop allowed for a bit more context. It also allowed for a lot more space too – as I’d wanted to keep in the sky and the colours present there.

So is this image really about the stacks, or are they just an ornamental feature within? Is this image about the coast line, or is it really a contextual shot – something to illustrate the space, the feel of the entire coast line and climatic weather conditions that were there at the time? My feeling is that it’s the later.