This is #30, in my series ‘the making of 40 photographs.

As we go along as landscape photographers, I feel we settle into a way of shooting. In my own case, I have a tendency to restrict myself to shooting in soft light only, but as time has gone on, I’m finding that there is a much more interesting world out there to be found in overcast, dull, rainy days, and of course – foggy days too.

We really have to ‘think outside the box’ as photographers if we want to move on with our imagery, and we have to remove any walls that we have put up over time. This is one of the biggest things I see in students on my workshops: preconceived ideas of what they want to shoot, and a real dislocation when they arrive at a spot and ‘can’t find anything worth shooting’. They have placed a limitation on their own creativity. We must learn to use what is presented to us, rather than force our own will upon our surroundings – it’s very easy to turn up at a special place like the Taj Mahal with a mind already filled with a fixed idea of what we want to capture. That certainly happened to me when I came here in January 2009. It’s hard not to with such an iconic structure. 

I’m big on visualization, building up a mental picture of how I see the ‘final print’ is an important step, but it can be dangerous to come along to some place I know well from seeing it in many books, and ‘limit’ or close my mind to other opportunities.

When I arrived in Agra on the first morning here, I was initially frustrated at the thick heavy smog. I initially thought it would be useless to try and photograph the Taj Mahal in such low visibility, but once I’d accepted my surroundings, I seemed to get along with the environment and before I knew it, I had made quite a few images of the place which I now see as a very different approach to the Taj Mahal, and I’ve certainly had a lot of correspondence from visitors to my site who share my feelings too.

So here are two pictures taken at the Taj Mahal while the entire complex was shrouded in smog. The first is of the building with a glimpse of a tourist in the middle of the shot.

It’s one of my favourite images of the place now. Walking around with my Mamiya 7, I shot the camera wide open with +1 exposure compensation to compensate for the smog.

The second image was taken in the gardens. I love repeating patterns in images and I felt that the trees were an ‘echo’ falling into the distance. Fog is a great device for isolating subjects, and the extremely soft, diffused, directionless light that it provides can be used to great effect.

Although my initial reactions where those of disappointment at not getting the usual ‘Taj Mahal at sunrise’ shot, I feel that I did eventually ‘get it’ and started to go with the flow – I went with what was presented to me and made the most of it. I now feel extremely proud of these images, as I’m sure it would have been only too easy to put the camera away and think there was nothing there to capture. I could have been so wrong.

I’m not a big telephoto shooter. I tend to make most of my images from close proximity with either a wide angle or standard field of view lens.

So discussing this image for me is a bit of a real change.

I’d only been using the Mamiya 7 for a short while when I took this with the 150mm lens (equivalent to a 75mm lens in 35mm land). The location was Torridon, a fantastic nature reserve and part of the highlands which I personally find very inspiring, yet, strangely, it hasn’t acquired the reputation that it deserves, unlike Glencoe which I feel is perhaps a bit too obvious, and overly accessible.

The occasion was summer. These days, I’m perfectly happy shooting in any season in almost any kind of weather with one exception – bright, sunny days. These I feel, are the days to put the camera away. I know we get excited by sunny days when we start out as photographers, but they tend to be the absolutely worst kind of light to shoot in – harsh with  dark shadows. Our eyes see very differently from how our camera does, and this is something that can only be learned by shooting in many types of light.

Summer in the highlands of Scotland brings as an advantage long evenings and it really don’t quite get dark. The sky will turn a dark blue, but ‘night’ as we know it in winter has been banished. The downside is that sunrise happens as early as 3am – not quite an advantage to someone like me who is typically a late night person.

Having stumbled from my tent at 3am feeling disorientated and quite frankly ‘ill’. I set off in my car for the wonderful journey around the Applecross peninsula – starting at Torridon and winding round the lovely little village of Sheildaig. 

I came round the corner of a single track road near loch Sheildaig around 4am and found that I was staring right into the sun. The air was hazy which often happens here in Summer, and I knew I could shoot directly into the sun and capture the silhouettes that you see here. Yes, each shade is just a mixture of haze and shade from a sun positioned right behind it all.

I did shoot this at a very early stage in my photography. Having only recently moved up to Medium format, I still didn’t understand that the range of contrasts and tones that we see with our eye are much wider than any camera can record. The image you see here started out as a 6×7, but over the years, I’ve had a tendency to crop it to panoramic.

I think for two reasons. One is that the sky was so burned out by lack of an ND graduated filter to control the contrast (I was still a newbie), and also because I feel that as with most images, it’s much easier to be critical of them once you’ve distanced yourself from the taking of them. I now feel that this composition works best as a panoramic with a slight crop of the right to cut out the distracting tree.

The main focal point of the image for me is not really the center Scots pines, which I have to confess were what I was initially attracted to, but it is the gradients or steps of different shades that each mountain outline provides. As I’m starting to realize, most effective images are often simple collections of shades and shapes. I feel as a landscape photographer, we are often attempting to break down the complexity of our world into a much simpler, easier to understand existence, and I feel this image conveys that aspect well.

This is image #28 in my series of ‘Making of 40 Photographs’.

This is what started the whole ball rolling for me.

Five Sisters, West Lothian

Back in the late 80′s, I was around 21 years of age and had shown a mild interest in Photography (I was really a musician and had been playing and writing music from the age of 12). A friend of mine came round one day with a book by Ansel Adams and It was the first time that I’d seen beauty and art in a photograph. Up until then, photographs had always been ‘documents’ or ways of remembering family occasions.

My youngest sister Fiona tells me that I’ve always had a camera, which really surprised me because I simply didn’t see it that way, but sure enough, I do remember having a little instamatic when I was really young – perhaps 8 years old.

Still, I digress, but with the aim of setting the scene. So there I was at the age of 21, having acquired my first SLR – a Canon EOS 650 – a super-duper auto-focus, state of the art camera (which by the way you can now pick up for around £25 on eBay). I’d just got my first wide angle zoom – a terrible 28-70 lens made by Canon with my Grant Cheque (I was an IT student at the time).

So one August evening I looked out the window and saw a thunder storm coming. It’s often the case that the light is at its most dramatic during August – the sun is now beginning to set low in the sky around 9pm and it casts long dramatic shadows across the landscape. So I went for a bike ride and took my new Camera with me.

What I find interesting about this shot are the following points:

1. I didn’t use an ND grad for it (I had no understanding that the sky is often 3+ stops brighter than the sky

2. The sky was dramatically darker than the ground, aiding me considering that I didn’t use a Grad

3. I shot a full heady roll of film at this location, and although all the shots had dramatic light and great subject matter, only one (this one) stood out.

Yep, it was the composition. Using the bale of hay in the right hand side of the frame to ‘fill the foreground’, and the diagonal shape in the sky acts as a perfect reflection to the long cast shadows on the ground, I’d made my first good composition.

Point 3 alone, was a massive learning curve for me, and I now feel that this image set me on the course I’ve been on ever since.

This is image #27 in my series of ‘Making of 40 Photographs’.

I’m not usually a Black and White photographer, but some subjects ‘need’ to be photographed in Black and White.

Motu Kao Kao, Iti, Nui

I came to Easter Island in 2003 to photograph the Moai statues but I had a few set backs. One of them being that my telephoto lens was malfunctioning (thanks to some screws being shaken loose on the rocky, unsealed roads of Patagonia). So a tip for you there – if traveling a lot with your camera – don’t let it shake around in the boot of your car – try to soften any impact by putting it on a seat near you.

So I was limited in what I could shoot – all I had left with me was a wide angle and standard lens. This shot was taken with my standard lens from the edge of Rano Kau, the largest volcano on Easter Island (the island is triangular in shape, each corner made up from a volcano).

I’m always looking for simple shapes and patterns in scenery that can be brought together to create a powerful image. I feel I managed this well with this shot – the clouds were what I was ‘visualising’ in my mind with their reflections in the sea below. I did shoot this on Velvia (it was the only film I had), but have subsequently converted it to B&W. I’ve also cropped the 6×7 aspect ratio to an almost square crop. Some things too, seem to be much better in square format as well as in Black and White it seems.

This is image #26 in my series of ‘Making of 40 Photographs’.

Some people are enigmatic and I found many of the exiled Tibetan’s in the Tinchuli region of Kathmandu to be exactly that.

Boudha Stupa

Basing myself in this part of Kathmandu allowed me to venture down to the Bodnath stupa each morning. I got familiar with the Stupa and the congregation that gathered here each morning to pray. A few days would pass and I’d start to see familiar faces – not only did the prayer wheels spin round and round, but so to did the same congregation circumnavigate the great Stupa day after day too.

And I was there each morning – playing my part too – trying to capture some of these Tibetans during their prayer – and it wasn’t easy.

I love reportage, although I feel my photographs aren’t really in this vein, every now and then I do make something in that sort of line. In this photograph you can see an old lady with a green shawl. I followed her for perhaps an hour; the Tibetans are a canny lot – and will discreetly place you out of their sight and their minds. Not through wishful thinking did I choose to become invisible to them: they chose to disregard me in their morning pursuit and this was hard to take. I’m an open person and I love the interaction, the exchange and the feeling of being welcomed into the lives of strangers – if for a brief moment.

So I started to think of the Bodnath Stupa as a place to observe, to shoot from afar, which isn’t my usual style at all – I prefer to get right into a scene with a standard lens and shoot from perhaps a few feet away.

But I think listening to your ‘emotional intelligence’ is paramount : the Tibetans didn’t want to get involved with me, and I recognized and respected it. You really have to be more than just visually aware when making pictures. You have to understand and empathize with your subjects too.

This is image #25 in my series of ‘Making of 40 Photographs’.

I think this is an apt picture to show you, after my post over the weekend about Michael Kenna – an artist whom I greatly admire for the simplicity and space in his images. Particularly those of Hokaido.

Salar De Uyuni, Bolivia

I’m finding as I progress with my photography, that I’m looking for simpler and simpler compositions. As a beginner to photography I looked for beauty in a scene only to discover that it wasn’t enough – the composition had to be good and the light – of course, had to be right too. Now twenty years down the line,  I often find I make images because the simplicity of the scene demands it. This is almost a reversal of what I would choose to do when I started out.

Like a form of Haiku, a picture can be broken down into simple components of shape, colour and tone and I think this image of the Salar De Uyuni is a perfect example of that. It works on two levels : the colours are pretty monochromatic, and the space in the composition is simplicity in itself. For me, that chromatic quality lends for a less-distracting absorption in the image. I’m drawn to the duo-tones of the distant mountains, like little triangles all lined up on the horizon. Plus I feel that the diagonal line across the sky makes the shot for me.

We were camped on Pescado Island, a little spot right in the middle of the largest salt plain in the world so I could reach the Salar for early morning and late evening shooting. But I made a point of leaving everyone else on the island so I could be alone on the Salar. Photography is not often a social act, and apart from having the thrill of being on the salt flats by myself with no other person, or support vehicle around me, it would give me a chance to connect with the stillness and space of the location. It’s a real thrill for me to do this…. be alone. I find that when I’m out there on my own, I seem to find my awareness is heightened, and that has a direct impact on my photography.

I stood in this location for a couple of hours, never bored, watching the distant storms come and evaporate, shooting telephoto and wide angle, but often preferring a wide angle field of view.

On a technical note, the Salar is bright. Very bright, and the sky for a change would be less bright than the ground. I was a little bit confused as to whether I should use a grad filter or not and I recall using one for this shot. But I metered the ground and exposed +1 to +2 stops otherwise the ground would have been underexposed. With film (as always), I’m forced to visualise the scene in terms of dynamic range, and that is something I love very much about the process…. I feel the image is created in my imagination.

And that’s a good thing.

This is image #24 in my series of ‘Making of 40 Photographs’.

Chasing an image is just what it is : chasing and I really hate to chase images because it often means that I’m already too late. There’s got to be a bit of the fortune teller in being a photographer in order to get the image you see in your mind and when something is happening, that’s usually when you should be tripping the shutter.

Baktapur Girl with decorative head dress

I think as photographers, we go around looking for a ‘moment’ and it’s our aim to be ready for it too. But I’m always aware that there has to be a pre-emptive phase to what I do.

Take the shot above. This was made in a UNESCO world heritage town called Baktapur in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. I’d been wandering the streets of Baktapur in the early morning smog when I came upon two little girls being led through the street dressed like the girl above. They were a captivating site and as I say : I felt I was too late. Seeing them walking through the street stirred up a panic and frustration feeling in my gut because I knew it was going to be hard to stop them, to convince their parents to let me make an image. So I left the scene and went back to my hotel to let my mood recover from loosing such a potentially great image.

But often serendipity comes calling and later on that same day, I entered a court yard only to find the same girls seated for some kind of ceremony. Everyone around seemed to be waiting. I seemed to be accepted because anything that I did in the courtyard was taken with no great surprise and I found myself getting close to the girl above – perhaps a foot or so away from her to get this portrait. She just seemed to be so relaxed and obliging.

But the point is : the image came to me. I didn’t come to the image. I can’t force an image to happen when I command it to, and that morning, I’d been trying to do exactly that. It’s a form of Karma – I’m sure.

Baktapur Girl #2

I offer this second image to give a little more perspective to the arranged group in that little court yard I stumbled into. I actually have no memory of making this shot, but it’s one of my favourite images…. which I find interesting because I can’t really connect it to any memory of my trip.

This is #23 in my series ‘Making of 40 Photographs’.

I spent just over two weeks in Cambodia based in Siem Reap, just outside the Angkor Wat temple complex. As much as I like to tell folk to explore the immediate landscape whilst on a shoot, I’m not one for doing a whistle stop tour of a country.

I think one of he biggest mistakes a new photographer can make is to keep moving and not spend enough time in one location.

Mother and son, Siem Reap rice fields

It’s very tempting to think that because you’ve been down a street once, that it will not hold any further surprises on a repeat visit. It simply isn’t true!

I like to base myself in one location, or a few concentrated spots for a long period of time because I feel I will get to know the geography and the people a bit better and as I’ve already said throughout this series – each day always holds its own new surprises for me – even in a familiar environment.

This picture is one such example. Each day after the monsoon had hit, Deap, my motto driver would take me out to his little village just outside of the town. It was always a fascinating adventure and the quality of the light at this time of day was just superb. Overcast skies with dark thunderous clouds would hang in the air and cast a beautiful soft light over the landscape and the people within it.

We were traveling along the road which had now become a mud slurry, when I saw this woman and her son depart from the edge of the road and down into the paddy fields. I could already see the image in my mind – a shot of them walking into the distance. So I was quick to tap Deap on the shoulder and hop off the back of the bike.

There’s no time for manual metering or changing lenses – I was lucky that I had my longest lens on – a 150mm medium format lens (equiv to 75mm) and also I had a two stop hard grad in my pocket too.

I ran back to where they had just left the side of the road and felt that I was too late. But I know from previous shoots that you should still take the image – I’m always fighting what my vision wants and what reality presents to me. So I took it anyway, and for the rest of the trip wondered just what I’d managed to capture.

I used the line of the waterway as a device to lead the viewers eye in. I don’t often think of this in a conscious way – I guess I just know from experience what works (most of the time!).

Timing is often critical at these moments.  I was aware of DOF issues and settled on an aperture I felt would work and focused between mother and son.

It feels like a shot about dislocation. She’s also looking wistfully away to the side, while we’re right behind him, and he’s obviously looking towards his mother. 

But the point about this shot is that I went down this road each day after monsoon and never saw this image before or after I took it. repeatability is important (and there’s been plenty of that in what I’ve been telling you over this series too).
The light also helped. I’d planned to come here during monsoon because the light would be less harsh and more forgiving.

This is #22 in my series ‘Making of 40 Photographs’.

I think too much equipment is a bad thing and I’ve often found that having less, is actually more.

Fox at Lago Grey, Torres del Paine, Chile

I shot this on a workshop in 2009 in Torres del Paine national park in Chilean Patagonia. The reason I bring this up is that others on the tour had access to some telephoto zooms while I did not. My Mamiya 7 system is very basic – a 50mm (wide angle), 80mm (standard lens) and 150 (75mm lens). I find the system simple, but ultimately restrictive at times, especially compared to SLR systems which have so much more scope.

Or do they?

I had my 80mm standard lens on at the time when I was composing a very basic landscape shot – the Fox hadn’t arrived yet so when he actually did pop up – I was torn. To shoot at 75mm wasn’t that powerful enough to get closer to the fox, and I would have ended up being in the middle of nowhere – not wide enough to capture the entire vista, and not close enough to isolate the fox either. Plus, it isn’t quick to change lenses and I felt that doing so would jeopardize the potential that was rapidly unfolding in front of me. So I decided to stay with what I had on the camera and work with that.

I felt at the time frustrated because my instinct was to get close in on the Fox, yet I’m now glad that the limitations of the system I was using meant that I had to work with what I had and I think the resulting image benefitted from that. It has that nice landscape vista, and simply by adding the fox into the foreground, as small as he is, gives a sense of context and scale that wouldn’t have been present if he wasn’t there. Plus, I feel it has turned what would have been a boring landscape image into something a little bit more interesting.

Had I access to a range of focal lengths, I feel I would have not opted for this composition and I personally feel that the image would have suffered. So like I say – having less equipment can be less of a hindrance and more of a benefit.

Most objects in a scene should be there as supporting actors to the main point of interest. A bad photograph often has objects competing for attention. This image perhaps breaks that rule because I’m not entirely clear if the Fox is there to add support to the mountain vista in the background, or whether the landscape is there to support and give context to the Fox. I guess you’ll have to decide for me.

This is #21 in my series ‘Making of 40 Photographs’.

A lot of images work because there is a repeating theme within. Often I feel, composition is about breaking down a scene into the simplest components available. Like I’ve said before – it’s more often about what you omit from the scene than leave in that’s important.

Simple is good. Simple is effective.

Angkor Wat Crescent Moon Sky

I’d wanted to come to the Angkor Wat temple complex ever since I first saw Steve McCurry’s work here. But I just hadn’t expected the thronging crowds that gather there each morning at 5am to watch the sunrise. So powerful is the tourist brochures, that the place is swamped with over 1,000 people each morning.

So I was looking to exclude them. Would you know that this shot was actually taken in a packed place? If I’d shot 90 degrees to my left or right, you would have seen a row of wannabe National Geographic photographers – photo vests adorned, Canon L series glass at the ready for this sunrise shot.

But what I was attracted to was the crescent moon shape in the sky. If we think about this image, it’s not really about Angkor wat. It’s really about that sky, reflected in the small moat within the Angkor grounds, and that crescent moon shape – created by mirroring the top half of the frame.

Positioning myself at the very edge of the moat allowed me to extract all the other tourists out of the shot. I’m always looking at the bigger picture too so I couldn’t help but take in the expanse of the sky and the textures going on in it. Angkor was far too dark to use as a main subject so I resigned it to becoming a silhouette – breaking down the scene into a collection of simple shapes and forms is an effective approach. But don’t forget the quality of that monsoon light too. Shot in the early hours, I knew the dynamic range was narrow (once I’d accepted that the temple would be almost black), so it was now just down to figuring out how best to represent the sky, and I did that by utilising the mirror effect and that crescent moon shape too…. simple forms, simple repeating patterns and great light are often all that’s required to create a new reality that’s pretty effective.