The Journey

Tonight I'm busy editing a lot of new images from Iceland and also Lofoten and I can't help be reflective about what I've captured this year so far.

There was so much snow in Lofoten that I didn't know where to take my group, until one of them said 'are there any beautiful tree's we can photograph?'

As much as I might want to plan a shoot, decide on what I want to capture, things never turn out the way I expect them to, and that is alright with me. In fact, that is very good indeed.

In last month's newsletter, I discussed the need to not pre-visualise before turning up to a location. We all do it - we've seen countless photos of places, so much so, that it's practically hard to see them any other way. And yet the art of a good photographer is to work with what he's given, and not lament what we didn't get. This means turning off any pre-visualised ideas of what you want your trip to be, because photography is a journey. 

I never know where I will be taken. I never know what I might see, and even though I go back to many locations each year in similar seasons, I still find new things.

There was so much snow in Lofoten that I didn't know where to take my group, until one of them said 'are there any beautiful tree's we can photograph?' I knew of a place, but it has never been too successful for me in the past, because the background behind the trees is always too visible. This time it worked because there was no background. It also worked because there was so much snow in the sky and it was so similar in tone to the earth. 

Perhaps I'll see this scene again next year when I'm back in Lofoten, but I'm not counting on it. In fact, it's better to just go along for the ride and see what happens and where the light and the atmospheric conditions take me.

Bracing Myself

In just a few days time, I will be thrown back into Winter. Each February I spend two weeks above the arctic circle in Norway's Lofoten islands, and each year it's just like a winter reset.

Made after several days of looking at this scene. Sometimes I like to let a view sit in my mind's eye for a while before I know how I think I want to capture it.

It can be a bit of a jolt to the system, to have to go to Norway at the end of January. While winter is starting to show signs of loosening it's grip here in Scotland ( the days are gradually getting longer), it's not the case in the Lofoten islands up above the arctic circle.

One of the ways I cope with this, is to review my images from Lofoten. It helps me get my 'head into gear' for the trip ahead. My mind is filled with mountains and that beautiful northern light for days before I arrive.

I think there always has to be a 'settling in' period when we venture out with the camera. Go somewhere so different from where we've come from, and it can me physiologically challenging.

But today I've been thinking about the image at the top of this post. It is the view from my friend Camilla's spare bedroom. Camilla lives in the beautiful town of Reine, and her home is situated on the very edge of Reinefjorden. It's one of the most amazing views in the world as far as I am concerned, and it's a place where you can constantly study the shifts in light and season.

Making the photo you see here was hard. Simply because each time I looked out my bedroom window, the view seemed to suggest that although there was something beautiful happening every second, trying to capture the essence of it, would be a challenge.

I think some locations can be quite intimidating on that front. They're just so enigmatic, that the act of trying to start, to begin to make photographs of it, can be quite daunting. Start on the wrong foot and you might just screw up. Take the wrong approach and you might find you feel dissatisfied with what you create: often I feel there has to be a right time and it's best to just leave things until it feels right. So I left my camera in the bag for a few days.

The pressure was gone.

I just enjoyed what I was seeing and this in turn allowed my mind to become immersed in Lofoten. I found my mind and my dreams of what I was seeing began to sink into my emotions over the coming days until it eventually became second-nature. 

I started to understand, to anticipate what the winter storms were going to do to the view I had in front of me. I knew by now where the snow showers were going to go and what parts of the mountain scenery would be obscured and it was at that moment that I took up my camera and started to make photographs.

Lofoten February 2013

I'm just heading off for South America today.... by tomorrow evening I shall be in the Atacama at the top of Chile, where I will acclimatise for three or four days before I head off into the Bolivian landscape. But before I go, I thought I would share with you a selection of images that I made in the Lofoten islands of Norway this February with my two groups. I've still got a backlog of images to work through, but thought it would be nice to end on some images before my departure for south america.

It's always nice to look at new images. It can give one a sense of enthusiasm and satisfaction - as creative people, we all need to create. If we don't, then we feel stuck.... it's so nice to see some of these images become realisations, as I'd lived with them in my mind for so long, and just didn't have much free time to work through what I've shot.

I still have many more to work through, but right now, this feels like a decent distillation of what I encountered last February. Each of the trips I ran had very different weather. The first week was particularly calm with perfect reflections most mornings, while the second week was perhaps more unsettled, but dramatic all the same. I'm now feeling as though I could really do with visiting the Lofoten at a completely different time of year now. And it has to be said that I think it's now time for me to visit some places new, for my own personal creativity. Lofoten is like an old friend to me now.

I'm delighted to say that I will be in Japan in February 2014 for a few weeks, as part of a new project I'm working on, and I have plans for somewhere else in December too. I feel it's time to reach for some new places and with it, new inspiration in order to keep things fresh.

I do feel I've found a very beautiful photographic-friend  in the Lofoten islands and I will be back there next January to explore the more northerly regions of the islands.

Wishing you were here (speaking figuratively about my pending destination of the Bolivian Altiplano!)

Further to this original posting, Erik (see below) wrote to me about his concerns about the lonely tree edit. I often feel it's not so obvious any errors or things that can be improved upon an edit until some time has passed. So it was interesting to see Erik point out something that was not working for him. Here is my rather quick correction to this image. I feel it works better, and would still require a few more days for me to sit on before I know for sure I am happy with the edit:

Into the polar night

When I started out making pictures and putting them up on this website, I found over the years, that I’d get correspondence from all over the world. When I look back at the early days , I can still remember the first emailers. I had maintained a long standing dialog with them while I was an amateur myself. Over the years while my own hobby turned gradually into my current profession, I had one or two stalwarts who maintained a beautiful correspondence with me. They never seemed to lose sight of me, nor I them.

One of those stalwarts was Vladimir Donkov.

A young Bulgarian photographer, Vlad was busy carving a career for himself, and doing things in the photography world before he was 20 years old, that most of us in our 40’s are still dreaming about.

Vlad would email me perhaps once, maybe twice a year, just to check in, tell me about his own photographic journey. I’d never met him in person, but over those initial years of working on my own hobby and website, I felt I’d kind of got to know him well. To me, Vlad was and is still, someone I relate to because we share the same passion.

Then, in 2009, Vlad emailed me to tell me of his plans to go and shoot images in the Norwegian winter. Oooh, I’d always wanted to go and make images in the snow, and so I thought I would accompany Vlad on his journey there. For some reason, I was under the impression that he had invited me, but we have many jokes these days about how I actually invited myself along on his trip!

So in March 2010, I went to the Lofoten Islands, at the time, a still relatively unknown location for winter shooting and met up with Vlad. He was perhaps 24 years old at this time, and I was 42 years old. I kind of like to think it’s funny how the numbers are reversed. I was wary that he might think me an old bore, or that I find him too young or immature. I’m glad to say that I found a great friend in him (despite him probably finding me immature ;-)

Vlad was solely responsible for me coming to Norway's Lofoten islands in winter, and I think he needs the recognition for being the one who started off what is now turning out to be a photographer's winter paradise. Each month, I see images of Lofoten appear on my facebook page from amateurs and professionals that have been drawn to the place for the same reasons Vlad and myself love it. It is a stunningly beautiful and wild place.

Vlad emailed me today to let me know about a new project - a video - that he has been working on. He’s made a really nice video of his work in the Moskenes region of the Lofoten Islands and the video has been done in conjunction with the support of Hasselblad. The video is excellent, and I just want to share it with you, as I feel it's inspiring to see him out there, in the Lofoten landscape, working his magic.

I think it's fantastic when people realise their dreams, or have a 'go-do' attitude. Vlad clearly has this and is very much following his own path.

If you'd like to know more about Vlad, and see some of his work, his site is called VerticalShot.com.

I'm on the Lofoten Islands

I arrived in Reine, Lofoten a few days ago. Tonight I will be picking up my first group for the next week. The weather has been unseasonably mild, but there is plenty of snow here. This is just a short post to send you all my little 'post card' from Reine.

I've got my trusty Mamiya 7II cameras with me on this trip, alongside a Lumix GX1 (fabulous little camera) and some fresh stock of Fuji Velvia. It's been great returning back to my Mamiya 7II. It just feels so comfortable and there really is something to be said about working with a particular system for a very long period of time: it becomes almost an extension of you. Like a duck to water, I'm finding that although I haven't really used the Mamiya 7II in a year, everything has come back to me like second nature.

I've given the Hasselblad system around a year and a half of dedicated time, to get to know, as I think it's important to stay with a system for a while to get to understand its strengths and weaknesses and most importantly, to see what kind of impact it has on my image making. I do love square aspect ratio images, but I often find that if I'm going that way, I will simply crop my Mamiya 7II images to suit. I just think I'm really a rectangle shooter, that sometimes goes for square. It's taken me a year or so to find that out. Just glad to return to a system that I feel works very well for me.

Image associations?

Ok, this posting is perhaps a 'little out there'. So be warned :-) I was sent through one of those e-mail circulars a few days ago, and in it, there was this graphic/photo of a big fish with a set of little red houses on top of it.

As soon as I saw the image, It reminded me immediately of my friend Lilian's house in the beautiful town of Reine, Lofoten. It was almost an immediate association I made with her home and with the Lofoten islands in general.

I sent the image to Lilian and asked her 'did you know you live on top of a big fish'?

I think the reason why I made the immediate association is because of a few things: Lofoten is surrounded in fish. It is in their culture, their history and there are fish drying racks everywhere you go. So the theme of fish is quite prominent. But what really made me think about Lofoten was the little red houses on top of the fish in the image. They are exactly like the red-painted fisherman Rorbu huts you see dotted all about Lofoten.

Ok, I'm sure some of you may be thinking that I've left the planet here a bit, but not so. If you consider how I've made those associations, you'll see that it's all about symbols. I saw this image and thought 'fish' and 'red houses' and my mind made a very quick association to the Lofoten Islands. It was also an immediate response too, which I think is worth considering.

I often find while I'm in the landscape making images, that there are 'symbols' everywhere. Things that remind us of other places, of events perhaps. Sometimes I'm not sure why I've been drawn to a particular spot and I'm sure it's all subconscious.

But I think it's worth thinking about how us Photographers are first and foremost visual people. We interpret our surroundings by what we see. But we also interpret our surroundings by responding to the symbolic nature of objects we find within our field of view. And often times, these trigger emotions within us.

As soon as I saw this image, I had very warm thoughts of my friend Lilian, living her happy life on the little peninsula, in perhaps one of the most beautiful towns I've ever spent time in.

I think that's just magic that our visual senses can take to us to another place.

If you'd like to read more about one of my 'associations', I wrote about photographing a piece of ice earlier this year in Iceland. The piece of ice reminded me of an animal. You can read that post here.

Looking for the essence (part 6)

This will be my last post for the next few days, as I'll be on the Isle of Arran tomorrow for a week, conducting a photographic workshop. In the meantime, I thought I'd leave you all with this image that I shot in Lofoten islands, Norway - this March.

I love to shoot during the cusp between night and day, as I often find the light to give the landscape an otherworldly look and feel. It is as these times when the light is so special that I lose myself in my imagination. I think that's what we all strive to do with our landscape photography ultimately.... it's that passion for being outside, experiencing the elements that we are chasing. I also have to say that I find I feel very 'alive' at these moments. So I think that's why I love shooting in twilight and just at the cusp of sunrise.

In this respect, this is what I'm seeking in my images: to depart from the norm, to show a scene that conjures up a mood or a feeling that we have. To create something new and emotional. I'm not really interested in whether it is 'accurate'. It just has to have some form of 'essence' for me. In this case, I think this image takes me into a dream-like world, and for that reason alone, it does have an 'essence'.

Variations on a theme (read location)

This image was taken at one of the many times I've been down at the waters edge of Reinefjorden.

I can't seem to stay away from the place, and I've shot it under vastly different lighting. The above shot was taken in February as part of a Safari I was running. We did come back in March too, and we got the light you see in the image below:

Quite a marked difference in light. Partly to do with the sun being more directional, hitting the edges of the Lofoten 'wall', this shot was very much a 'throw-away' effort at the time. But I'm glad I decided to stay put and just shoot. Literally a minutes walk from where we were staying, it was from a slightly different vantage point. But it was the same fjord, and the same mountains, just from a slightly different angle, and with much different light.

But I also shot this image in March too, of the same fjord:

But I think the last image is more a 'standard' landscape image. It shouts 'vista-shot', which is no bad thing, but just perhaps a little too 'expected' for my own liking. I much prefer the first two efforts as in each of them, there is a very strong message that I feel is less evident in this shot.

I think that what I'm striving for in every image I make, is some form of presence, or individuality. Certainly the first two are very unique. The first is mostly a play on lighter tones and calm reflections, with a dominant mountain in the frame, while the second image is mostly about directional, moody light.

Returning to the same location time and again, always yields something new, because each time the location is new. We are reactionary beasts and in photography, I feel that means we react very much to the differences in the quality of light - if we choose to observe, and notice those differences.

Red Morning, Reine, Lofoten, Norway

Just a quick post tonight. This image is of my favourite mountain in the Lofoten islands - Oldstind. We had some spectacular light in February (there's no guarantee what you'll get, any month).

I love simplified compositions and anything that is distracting should be thrown out. You'd think that having loads of stones in the foreground would be distracting, but for me, I'm always looking for uniformity. They all are very much alike, that my eye quickly absorbs them. That, I feel, is the key to good images - nothing should really jar with your eye's movement through the frame. It also helps that the snow is of similar tonal ranges to the mountains in the mid-ground. And of course, the light was spectacular this particular morning. Really something.

Enjoy your weekend. Many more 'wintry' images to come over the next few weeks as I work through my backlog.

Lofoten Islands, Norway

I'm just starting to work through my backlog of images from my last two (recent) safaris to the Lofoten Islands this February and March.

I loved the simplicity of these little ferns in the bay of Ytterpollen. It's normally full of reflections of the background mountains, but when we got here in February, the entire bay was frozen over. While the group were eating their packed lunch out of the boot of the car, I made this shot at the roadside on my Hasselblad.

I love shooting shallow depth of field at the moment. Being able to see through the lens is a luxury for me, after spending so many years working with a rangefinder (which i still love very much).

Anyway, I'm looking forward to going back to Lofoten in 2013. I published dates for two consecutive safaris in February this morning, and all the spaces were sold out within four hours.

I'll be back with more images from my trips, as the days progress. But right now, I'm off to watch some telly and enjoy some time at home. Enjoy your weekend!