A lot of people know my landscape photography as ‘simplified’ and some even go as far as to say it’s ‘elegant’. All very complimentary to me, and it makes me happy because this is exactly what I aim to achieve with my landscape images.

But what of my portraiture work? I personally see no difference between landscape images, and people images. To me, one is the landscape of a place, while the other is the landscape of a human soul. The same compositional rules apply – shape, tone and form are all required and of course the emotional engagement must be there too. So I’ve always been intrigued with people who like landscapes, but don’t like photos of people, or the other way round.

Image © John Foster

When I make pictures of people, it’s because I find them very engaging. Either it’s their posture, the colour of their clothing, or there is a spirit about them that I find appealing, but ultimately, the composition has to be there too.

So while thinking about the kinds of portraiture work I would like to do as a new project, I’ve been thinking about how it would be nice if the work was simple and has some beauty or elegance to it. I know myself well, to know where I am with my own aesthetics and abilities as a landscape photographer: so I’m aiming to match my current level of ability and aesthetic with a new subject. For a long time now, I’ve believed that certain subjects work well for us, only when we have reached the right state of readiness. In other words, we do our best work when we encounter the right subject at the right time in our own artistic development. When both these worlds merge, the work can often bring on a new awareness of our style and future direction.

For some reason, the Geisha of Japan sprang to mind. I’ve been speaking a good friend of mine who told me about Kusakabe Kimbei’s work, and I reproduce a hand coloured image here. I think there is indeed something elegant and beautiful about the work, and it shows me that there is great potential to this subject.

Kusakabe Kimbei (日下部 金兵衛) (1841 – 1934)

I bring all this up because I’m simply trying to explain how I can become inspired by certain subjects, or how the creative process can begin for me. I still have no idea whether a trip to Japan is actually on the cards as yet, or how realistic it may be to make images of Geisha, but the wheels have started to turn, and I’ve started to research the possibilities.

One of the things I love to do about anything I get really into, is to buy books on the subject. Today I received a copy of John Foster’s book ‘Geisha & Maiko of Kyoto’ (you can also view his work on Geisha at his website too). I’ll start by saying that it’s a great book. It tells me a lot about the Geisha and Maiko but also, from a photographer’s perspective, he tells me about the issues in working with his subjects over a seven year period.

John Paul Foster's book on the Geisha

John is a passionate photographer who has very similar attitudes to making portraits as I have: his first rule is that he is there to make friends, not offend anyone. So making images is secondary to the experience of meeting someone and finding out about them. He cares a lot for his subjects and has the utmost respect for them. I feel this is key to any engagement with a possible subject for portraiture photography  and it’s something I’ve always kept in mind while making images in Cambodia, Cuba, India and Nepal. People are people, no matter wherever you go, and they have feelings.

John’s book has given me a lot of insights into the possibilities of engaging Geisha and the chances there are of making any photographs of them. From what I’ve learned: it’s not going to be easy…. But I’ve been so inspired by his images because they show me the ‘elegance’ and ‘simplicity’ that I’m seeking.

Of course, John’s book is not the only one I’ve bought on the subject of Geisha. I also found Jodi Cobb’s (National Geographic photographer) excellent book, which has a more ‘reportage’ aspect to it. Her website has an excellent ‘street photography’ section on the Geisha.

Jodi Cobb's book on the Geisha

All of this, is helping me gain better insight, and also helping me build my enthusiasm for a possible project. Whether I actually make it out to Japan is another story all together. But right now, I feel I’ve found something that is inspiring me to find out more, and this is key to any possible project one is considering undertaking.

For anything to begin, a flame has to ignite first.

It’s been long overdue.

I’m a portrait / street photographer as well as a landscape photographer. And it’s been a good few years since I made any portrait shots. My trusty Contax 645 film camera has been gathering dust, and in this time, I’ve been focussing very hard on building a photographic workshop business.

Ethiopia, Rajasthan, Kathmandu, Lalibela, images © Bruce Percy

Everything needs balance. Too much landscape work, has left me hankering to go out there and make some new portraits. Only thing is…. I’m not exactly sure where to go. I have the whole of July free, and also December. Ladakh has been on my list for a long time, but I feel a sense of inertia in booking flights there for this July. This makes me feel as if there may be another story waiting to appear and take my attention. Bhutan is also somewhere I would love to go, but I’ve not had much free time of late to research it. The climate is a vitally important ingredient in making portraits. Rainy season works best for people shots as the light is soft and diffused. Summer harsh light is the least attractive.

I guess right now, I’m looking for inspiration. I seldom have time these days to wander through other peoples portfolios: running a business, and working on your own photography is very intensive, sometimes too much so. I love it, but I think I’m needing to take a break, look around, see what’s out there, and forge a new direction. Got any suggestions?

It’s been four years now, that I’ve been self-employed as a full-time photographer. In that time, I’ve made the transition from looking upon my own photography as a passion / hobby to something that is at the core of my identity and is also my work.

Image used by kind permission of Amantani.org.uk

I was told by a few friends who are photographers, that there is always the danger that turning any passion into a job, can kill that passion. It’s true, this is a real possibility and I’ve had periods over the past four years when I’ve felt as if I’d hit rock bottom in terms of inspiration, simply because I was working too hard, making sure I was making a living, and spending most of my time teaching others, but not making many images myself. There has to be a dividing line and if you are to venture into something you love doing as a job, you need to make a distinction between ‘work’ and ‘hobby’. It’s taken me a while to get there, and part of that process has been to realise that each year, I need to set time aside for myself, for my own photography. It’s a hard balancing act to do, when you’re always thinking about ensuring you keep making a living, and is not, as I’m sure others assume, an easy life.

Image used by kind permission of Amantani.org.uk

So I’ve been on the lookout for some inspiration. I’d dearly love to put my landscape work to one side for a while, and focus more on making images of people. The last time I did this was in 2011 in Ethiopia, and my real ‘blaze’ at making people images happened in India and Nepal in 2009.

A good friend of mine mentioned that there is a children’s charity called Amantani, based in Peru, who’s primary aim is to help Quechua children with their education. Often walking miles each day to get to school, Amantani have been looking for funds so they can house and educate the local Quechua children and prevent them from walking many many miles each day to and from their school.

Image used by kind permission of Amantani.org.uk

I decided to look into Amantani a bit more, and I stumbled upon a little photographic gallery (which they have kindly allowed me to reproduce here). The work was really beautiful. I thought, wow – I’d love to go there and work with these children if I could get images like these. They are fly on the wall documentary images. But what struck me most, was that they were taken by the children themselves.

I find it truly inspiring to think that little girls and boys made these images. It’s made me wonder – do children in general make more truthful images?

Images used by kind permission of Amantani.org.uk

I think they do. Or at least, they must do. I can hardly imagine a child being full of pre-conceptions, and if anything, their eye’s must be closer to their hearts and to what they feel, than the average adult.

And the thing is, I really want to get involved. I just don’t know in what way as yet, or indeed, if it’s a possibility, but it’s given me inspiration, and any creative person should follow what inspires them.

One thing is clear to me though, the images captured here were made in the least self-conscious way. I’m fully aware that anything I could do, to document what these children experience each day as part of their Quechua lives, would only capture the surface. For one, I’m not a child (well, I do have some friends who would dispute this) – it takes a lot of effort to blend in, to become invisible. I’m so envious…. if only I were 7 years old again, maybe I could create images as honest as these are.

If you’d like to see the children’s original photographs, or find out more about Amantani, then please go here.

And if you would like to donate, please go here.

I’ve been thinking for a while, that I’ve not had any chance these past few years to make any portraits.

It was startling for me to read reviews of my book, where the reviewer was surprised to see the inclusion of portraits as well as landscapes because they viewed me as a landscape photographer. This in itself was very interesting to me, because it allowed me to get a glimpse of how others perceive me and what I do.

Shot in India and Nepal, 2009

I always thought I was a travel photographer, because it entails all the destinations that I’ve been to, all the landscapes that I’ve shot whilst there, and also, all the people I’ve encountered and photographed too.

For me, there is little difference between portraiture and landscapes. They both have personalities and they both need to be engaged in,  a dialogue of sorts – the interaction between yourself and your subject.

They are also subjects of beauty, and I see many compositional attributes that are appropriate in landscapes, present in portraiture too: I’m often seeking pleasing tones, compatible colours and ‘a moment’. With landscapes, we have to watch for elements changing in the landscape and make images when we see detail changing or becoming visible. With portraits, I have to watch my subjects as they dance between different expressions of the face, their body movement, their change in pose.

India, Ethiopia and Cambodia

And they’re both very exciting to shoot. Landscapes because you’re dealing with the unpredictable elements of a landscapes soul. Portraits are exciting because of the unpredictable elements of a persons spirit.

I deliberately interchanged the words ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ between landscapes and people, because in a sense, they are the same thing when we choose to make images of them with a camera.

Nepal and India

I also get a lot of inspiration from making images of people. It’s all too easy to become single-minded in your approach to photogaphy. We should often seek out new things that interest us, as often, they are a guiding post to where we should go, to who we are seeking to grow into as a creative person (I hate using the word artist, yet, in truth, that is exactly what we are).

So in order for me to ‘feed my soul’, I’m heading off to Portugal in November to catch up with some friends in Oporto. We’re heading back into the highlands, and I’m hoping that it will be a week of making images of the locals there. My first and only visit was in 2007:

There is a story to tell in the little villages of northern Portugal. I felt I touched upon something in these images at the time, but I’ve never been back to explore it. I think that’s part of the job or ‘journey’ of a creative person. To know when something has been left unfinished, to know where there is potential to grow, and to take action and put some new work into being.

I’m now hatching plans for further trips to make portraiture. I’m not exactly sure where just yet, but what I do know, is that I’ve been neglecting my portraiture leanings for some time, and that as a creative person, my inner ‘artist’ needs to be fed.

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.

Baktapur Girl with decorative head dress

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….

Jose, Bolivian Highlands, 2009

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.

Sometimes, you befriend people like my football chum here

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.

Pushkar, India, 2009

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.

Meskel celebrations, Ethiopia, 2010

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.

I’ve been a bit swamped lately, and I’ve only just literally started to work on my Ethiopian image this afternoon.

But I’m a little troubled. My Nikon Scanner’s software isn’t supported anymore and I can’t get it to work on Snow Leopard, so I’ve had to resort to buying Silverfast. Talk about clunky. Talk about confusing. Talk about being able to screw up a scan so easily.

First Scan from Ethiopia

I used to work in Software, and I know it’s easy to make a hash of stuff (hey, I was never that great a programmer), but the user interface could really do with an overhaul on their software and more importantly, so could the workflow. It’s rubbish.

Anyway, here’s the very first test scan I’ve done. I think it’s going to take me a few weeks to get to grips with scanning on Silverfast. It’s always painful for me having to learn new software, get used to the way *it* wants to work, rather than it working the way *you* want it to work.

Hope you enjoy this first taste of my new portrait images from Ethiopia. I have no idea what is in store at the moment because all I have is a big box of negatives all sitting in their sleeves at the moment, and a cumbersome way of scanning them on a Canon 9000F to see what the digital-contact-sheet holds.

I’m busy writing some chapters for the eBook I’m working on about Street Photography, and I’ve been diverted to reading on Photo.net today about David Alan Harvey. I’ve loved his photographs for some time now, and he’s a very simple shooter, only taking with him a Leica, 28mm and 35mm lenses.

35mm negative, Voightlander Bessa R3a, 40mm nocton lens

I’ve been busy writing about how I prefer prime lenses and that I prefer to go out with only one or two lenses with me. Often it’s only the one lens I use. In the case of India and Nepal last year, the entire collection of images I made were shot with my Contax 645 and an 80mm lens. I didn’t need anything else.

I’m a big subscriber to keeping things simple and cutting down on the amount of gear I travel with. It can be back breaking bringing too much kit with you, but it can also inflict a sense of creative constipation because you also have too many choices at hand. You think that bringing all the lenses you can think of will mean you’re going to be prepared for just about any photo situation, but the truth is more often the case that we just confuse ourselves with what to use and when.

It takes time to master lenses, but that’s not really the issue at hand. It’s more about immediacy. If you have one lens on your camera at all times, you learn to work within the confines of that. I prefer primes because they make me roam a location and work the scene more. I also prefer primes because I don’t have to think about different focal lengths. I make do with what I have. I also prefer one lens because there is no delay in choosing another one. I also start to ‘see’ every potential encounter in the focal length of the lens I have on me.

Using one lens makes it easier for me to ‘visualise’ and be proactive, rather than reactive. And it also means I’m much more free to move around.

For the past week or so, I’ve been collecting images and stories from my trips around the world for a forthcoming ebook I plan to release about Street Photography, or more specifically, portraiture in a street environment.

It’s coming together really nicely at the moment and is going to be a bit of a whopper this one I feel. I have three sections to the proposed ebook now:

Approach

This is where I discuss the conscious and subconscious decisions I make whilst out shooting.

Technique

This is where I discuss the kinds of lenses, the types of film, the choice of light I use and the pre-picture taking techniques I use (my camera for instance, is always pre-focussed).

Street Stories

This is more a ‘making of’ section, where I discuss what happened on a case by case basis with each of the images I illustrate.

I have topics like ‘From Within – getting into the picture’, a section on body language which is very important. How you convey yourself to your subject can make or break the exchange.

Which is really what portraiture is : an exchange or dialogue between you and the subject.

Anyway, it’s very exciting. I’m really enjoying writing this one as I think I was originally wondering how I would approach it. But now that I’ve laid out the guidelines for each of the chapters, I’m on a roll now.

Girls Fishing at Sra Sang, Angkor Wat, Cambodia

I keep getting some folks out in the web call me a ‘landscape shooter’, but that’s only really part of the story for me. Originally yes, I started in landscapes, but I feel that in around 2004, things changed. I’d been interested in shooting people for a long time, but I had simply never made the leap. It all seemed to happen for me in 2005 when I went to Cambodia.

Armed with a collection of cameras, I remember trying each of them out to find which ones worked best. The EOS 1n was put away pretty soon as it was too obtrusive for me. I had a Bessa R3a which was a joy to use and most of my subjects didn’t take me too seriously with my small, quiet camera. But strangely, I got the same response with my Mamiya 7II. It was possible to make street photos with a big camera so long as it was quiet.

I’ve moved onto the Contax 645 system now, primarily because the Mamiya7II has hopeless close focussing (it’s a rangefinder) – it’s possible to get away with some street shots like this one below:

Wool dyeing in the Souks of Marrakech

Anyway, time to get on with my writing, which is great fun because I get to relive the experiences of being back in all the places I’ve been to. Sort of like a virtual holiday :-)

I shot this in Jaipur, at the hotel I was staying at. There’s nothing posed about it from my recollection and as far as I remember, the girl was very happy to have her photo taken, but she’s got quite a strong stance in the image. There’s almost a defiant expression there and it certainly took me back when I saw my contact sheet for this – I took so many pictures of people while I was away, I’ve found that I seem to have suffered blank out periods where I really can’t remember anything about the interaction.

But I guess that is a good thing, because it allows me to take the image for what it is, rather than what I wanted it to be. That’s the beauty about a bit of distance between shooting and processing.

Now, the reason why I wanted to show you this image is because I think it’s fairly mono-chromatic. All the tones are sort of reddish-brown. Personally, I love it (but I’m apt to like my own work – it’s what I do – so no surprises there). This is one image that would be very tempting to turn into a black and white because it just has different shades of the same colour, but then again, there’s nothing wrong with having a colour image that is mono-chromatic. There’s a lot of warmth in those tones and that is something that would, I feel be missing from a black and white image.

My encounters with the people I photograph can sometimes be fleeting. Take this image for instance. One minute I’m wandering the ‘blue city’ area of Jodpur and I’ve passed several places of worship with sounds of music and clapping.

Then I turn a corner, and this little girl is on her way with her mother somewhere. I don’t speak the language, but I’m able to open a dialog and quickly we’re on the same page and i’m able to make this shot.

But I don’t know where they were going, or what the occasion was. Does it really matter I ask myself? I guess it doesn’t, and in some ways, not knowing allows us to conjure up our own emotion and mood, our own idea of what was going on.