I love the world of painting, and this past summer enjoyed going to see one of Turner’s works in my home town of Edinburgh. While I was there, I bought a Taschen book on impressionism.

I’ve been enjoying very much looking at all the beautiful impressionistic work, and came across this quote about one of Monet’s paintings of Notre Dame, and which I believe could apply to many of Monet’s paintings:

“I vaguely felt that the subject was missing from the picture. But what was completely clear to me was the undreamt-of power of the palette, which I had previously known nothing of… I had a sense that painting itself was the subject”

This to me, summed up pretty much how I see my landscape photography.

I’m not driven by subject related scenes, much preferring to work with palettes of hues, and abstractions. In a way, it’s the abstractions, and the colours / atmospheres that are the subject of my images.

I’ve often wondered, if the impressionists had cameras available to them, would they have adopted them? To me it’s plainly obvious that they would have. I think the paint was just the medium they had available to them at the time to convey their interpretations.

I do think good landscape photographs are more about the quality of the light, rather than composition subject placement. Indeed, a picture full of beautiful light with a weak composition would surpass a great composition with poor light.

But it’s more than this for me. Photography is a way of showing others ‘what we see’. It’s possible to convey something unique to others with the medium if that is what you want to do. And that is indeed what I want to do. I’m not here to create literal scenes, and I find the idea that interpretative photography is untruthful. It’s simply another way of doing impressionism.