I found an ice-animal on the beach at Jökulsárlón. It was trying to walk its way back towards the shore, and for some reason, had been left behind by the other tiny, translucent animals that were further on towards their ultimate destination of the sea.

Is this ice, or an animal?

He didn’t appear to have a head as such, but I knew he was looking out towards the other little bergs, and wondering if he’d catch up.

I tend to find I can make up stories like that about the objects I’m shooting. They’re not just objects, but instead, they have something about them that triggers my imagination.

My little ice animal was very beautiful all the same. He had such a vibrant coat of glass ripples that I knew I had to spend some time with him.

So there I was, lying on my tummy on the sand with my wonky Hasselblad camera, figuring out just how to tell a story about him. His siblings were the perfect back drop for him, so I shot the entire picture on a shallow depth of field (why is it that so much landscape material is always sharp from near to far? Surely shallow depth of field can also help draw the eye towards and also away from subjects within the frame). I deliberately ensured his siblings were out of focus.

Square format seems to be happy to have objects placed in the middle of the frame too.

I’m enjoying very much the freedom to break some self imposed rules to my compositions by using the square aspect ratio. But I feel it’s not a replacement for my trusty 6×7 and 5×4 aspect ratios. It’s simply just another string to my bow, and by using square at the time of capture (rather than cropping later), I feel I’m forced to look at my surroundings in a different way.

As I’ve said in the past, and particularly in my Aspect Ratios e-book, the shape of the frame you compose with, really does have a massive impact on your choice of composition. For me, the aspect ratio of the camera is an often overlooked, fundamental influence on your picture making abilities. Buy a camera with an aspect ratio that you do not understand, or have no eye for, and you’re goosed.

Back to my ice-animal.

Like so many bergs at Jökulsárlón, he was simply just one of many casualties that had been thrown up onto the black sand beach. Strung out to dry and postponed from the inevitable, I knew that one day he would eventually become, just another part of the sea.

Adrift #2

I’m currently in Bodø, on the mainland of Norway, getting ready to take the 5am post flight tomorrow morning to Lofoten. It is -15 outside, and that’s before you add the wind chill factor. It was painfully cold outside tonight!

Anyway, I thought I’d share these three images with you, taken on my wonky Hasselblad this December/January in Iceland. I like the first out of the first two the best, but I think it just goes to show that taking the same shot twice, and considering the timing of waves, can reap dividends. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but certainly each one of them has a different character. The first image in this posting has more movement to me, and that really does justify the title of ‘adrift’ here.  The second image less so, because there’s no wash around the ice bergs. However, in the 2nd image those sweeping curvy lines in the composition are just *wonderful* in my book.

Adrift 1

I’m very much in love with this location. It has the most amazing, stark contrast between light and darkness.

Anyway, here’s the third image, shot at the same location, which also suggests the notion of being adrift too. In fact, with this one, the ice berg almost looks as though it’s floating on top of the sea, being carried away. I think this is also further compounded by the ice berg being very craft-like in shape too. It almost looks like a vessel that can indeed float on top of the water.

Adrift #3

I think this one happens to look this way because the ice berg is actually sitting on black sand, but I caught it just as the water was flowing back towards the sea (I often prefer to wait until the tide is all the way in, as the receding movement is usually of a more ordered nature, providing simpler lines during a long exposure).

Anyway, I’ll be announcing news of an Icelandic photographic safari by the end of the week through my newsletter first, so keep your ears pinned back (and if that looks too silly, then just check your inbox for a newsletter from me).

Not subscribed to my newsletter? Then do it here.

Dyrhólaey, Iceland, January 2012

I should be able to see any issues or problems that I didn’t see at the times of the edits. The thing is, that sometimes I don’t see a colour cast, or perhaps a dominant tone that needs to be corrected, to bring the entire scene back into balance….. these things take time.

So today I’ve begun work on scanning my Iceland images from December/January. Here’s one of the first ones.

I made a terrible mistake of looking through all the images when I got them back from the lab… I had to – as I found I couldn’t work on images from Iceland and Norway simultaneously…. which is something I’ve just discovered about myself and I’ll need to reflect upon this and ask myself why that is so.

Anyway Dyrhólaey, what can I tell you about this place? It’s stunning! And of course doubly so in Winter because the entire place is turned into a frozen paradise of subtle shade in the winter sky mixing with a dramatic black sand beach. I’m a big user of the Photographer’s Ephemeris, but have to confess that I didn’t use it to determine if the moon would be out, and whether it would be positioned so beautifully above the basalt sea columns of Reynisdrangar that you can see in the distant horizon.

I came back here a few times, and on the second occasion we had a lot of sea fog at the base of Reynisdrangar – another time, another shot, and most likely, buried somewhere in the mound of images waiting to be scanned over the next few days :-)

I last came to Iceland in June of this year, and spent three weeks wandering around the island with a terrible head cold, and a bad outlook on how I was doing in photographic terms because of how ill I felt. I’m feeling really good right now. Things have gone very well this year for me, the photography has been growing in a nice direction with the images I’ve created in Norway earlier this year, and also on my recent trip a few weeks back are making me feel very inspired. I’ll be traveling with a nice heavy backpack / roll on trolley bag made by ThinkTank – I initially thought it was too heavy a bag for traveling with, but I’m growing to really appreciate it now, as it’s great for getting a full Mamiya 7II and Hasselblad 500CM outfit around, and it converts to a reasonable backpack once on location (I do tend to leave some of the equipment back at the base though).

Iceland, © Bruce Percy, 2011

The Norway trip was something else, and I’m afraid I can’t really write about it, until I have the films processed and I work on them in my little studio. And I’ve not had much free time to do that. So before I get round to working on them, I’m back off to Iceland to work on some new images of the south of the country. I believe there’s a bit of snow there, but nothing too bad, or anything to make the trip hard to get around.

I’ll write more once i have some more news, but until then, I hope you’re all enjoying the festive break, or looking forward to the one at new year.

Luminance at Jökulsárlón

I’ve been a film shooter since the late 80’s and feel I know my medium well. I use a Sekonic 758 meter at present (although I personally wish I’d not bothered, and stayed with the superb 608 meter instead). Both meters are fine, but the 608 allowed me to see at a snap the shutter speeds for all the meter readings I record (the meters allow me to take up to 9 different spot readings of a scene).

But every now and then, I come across a landscape I’m not sure just how to meter.

My usual technique is to meter the darkest area of the picture (usually the ground) and then meter the lightest area of the picture (usually the sky) and see how many f-stops there are between them (dynamic range). I know my film can handle around 4 to 5 stops of dynamic range, and that the real world often exceeds this. My Sekonic is a snap at telling me how much contrast there is in the scene and if it exceeds what my film is capable of recording, I will use an ND grad filter to reduce that dynamic range, so I can squeeze the scene onto my film without having any blown highlights, or blocked shadows.

But I have to set the exposure somewhere between the darkest and brightest parts of the scene. If I choose to set the exposure to the meter reading for the black sand, I will make the sand mid-grey. The same with the sky. If I meter the sky and use that for my exposure – I will make the sky mid-grey, and most probably seriously underexpose the black sand.

Using the zone system that Ansel Adams developed, I tend to go on the principle that if I want an object, such as the ice to be brighter than mid-grey, I will meter the ice, and then add 1 or maybe two stops. But in this picture, I simply looked at the dynamic range of around 5 stops and decided I needed to expose right in the middle. This would mean that the sand would be 2.5 stops below my exposure, and my ice and sky would be 2.5 stops above. I used a 2 stop hard grad to control the brightness of the sky, which meant that the sky and ground had a similar luminance, while the ice would be 2.5 stops over.

I wasn’t sure at the time if I was getting it right. I just decided I had to go with my evaluations of the scene and prey that I’d not screwed up.

When I got home, I completely forgot to consider how difficult the exposures had been whilst at Jökulsárlón, because all the images came out beautifully exposed. This is a lesson in itself. We often don’t question why an image worked. It’s good to realise that what you did at the time of capture was correct, and learn from that. Conversely, the images that didn’t work are just as important. Often, photographers quickly discard the images that failed, but so much can be learnt from them.

With my camera system, I sometimes forget I have a full ND filter on the camera, sometimes I don’t take that into account when making my exposure. I’ll sometimes see images where the exposure is so off, that it can’t have been through bad judgement, but through bad practice. Workflow is everything. Get yourself organised and cut down any possible error when making images.

Luminance, Jökulsárlón - © Bruce Percy

Family at Jökulsárlón beach, © Bruce Percy

I think we have to be aware of our surroundings all the time. We have to be open to suggestion. As much as I love to work on a group of objects within the scene, I know when enough is enough. I also know that tantilisingly, there may be an even better image awaiting my discovery only just a few feet away from where I’m standing. I never understand why someone wishes to shoot the exact same spot for the entire session. But likewise, I never understand it when someone shoots only one image of a scene and thinks it’s enough. Each piece of scenery that resonates with me, often requires a few attempts to get the best out of it. I sometimes find that what I intended to capture turns out to be a half-baked idea compared to the final composition I end up with. The first image is perhaps just my introduction to a subject. It is an advertisement that draws me in. And once it has my attention, I begin to discover so much more about it.

Photography is a balancing act between haste and stagnation. Being flexible enough to keep moving, but also having the experience, or temperament to stay put and work with a subject and explore its many possibilities, is a fine skill to possess.

Jökulsárlón River outlet

Black sand beaches and crystal clear ice bergs are something to witness. But maybe not so great when your head is stuffed with the cold. Anyway, I’ll be putting some more images up once I’ve completed scanning them. Expect a contact sheet in a day or so from here.

But I’d just like to say before I go tonight that I’ll be heading back to Iceland this December / January to spend more time in the south of the country. Visiting the same locations under different light (daylight is 3 or 4 hours at that time of year), with a low sun, can show a new face to an already familiar subject.

They had been commissioned by Sepac, a partnership of post offices in small countries (Åland, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, Greenland, Guernsey,Iceland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, San Mariono). Each country was to produce a stamp with the theme “Landscape” to be launched in 2007. They chose this one of Jökulsárgljúfur National Park which I shot in the summer of 2004 whilst on a month long photography trip around the country.

Anyway, it was a real surprise to see some real examples and what struck me was the panoramic format they opted for.

I’ve decided it was time to air my thoughts on Photography. In particular, I’m a bit tired of gear-head web sites as it seems to me that everyone is so hung up on gear, gear, gear and nobody is interested in discussing the making of an image, or the more emotional aspects of taking pictures.

So with my blog, I aim to attempt to give a running commentary on my experiences, the highs and lows of being out there in National Parks, landscapes, anywhere that there is a potential picture to be made.

Selfoss waterfall, North East Iceland.
Shot at dawn whilst the sun was burning off the fog that had settled during the night.

I’ll of course discuss some of the gear involved, but I’d much rather tell you about what my senses picked up and what inspired me. Or how difficult it was to achieve the shots I was after.

Photography is an emotional art, it’s about getting out there, letting your senses become heightened through the act of photography, and seeing the world with an acute sense of vision.