Sao Luis, Brazil

I’ve just arrived in the historic centre of Sao Luis Brazil. I’ve been coming here now since 2018 and this year I decided to take some time out before my landscape tour, to do some street shooting (mostly for a bit of fun).

I’ve found that Sao Luis is very similar in terms of vibe to Havana Cuba. The Portuguese buildings are dilapidated, crumbling, and the weathered walls of them are incredibly beautiful to look at.

I decided to buy a digital camera. A really old one. One that, if I drop it, or it gets damaged in bad weather, I won’t be cut up about it. But I also decided to get a rangefinder digital camera because I have always loved the simplicity of rangefinders. This is after all, how I started out. My main camera of use for the first decade or so of my photography was a Mamiya 7II camera. And I had a particular love of the Voigtlander Bessa R3A.

With simple cameras, you know what you’re dealing with. These systems have Aperture Priority, exposure compensation and an aperture ring. That’s about it. It also has aspect ratios built in, which can be configured very quickly by pressing the up-arrow on the navigation buttons, to cycle through a small number of the most ratios : 3:2, 1:1, 6:7, 16:9 if I use the EVF with it.

Limitations brings clarity of intention to our approach.

Limitations force us to narrow our focus.

Limitations enable creativity.

Portraits and landscape work, are for me, one and the same

I am sure this is not the case for many. But I believe that once we get underway at making portraits of people, we can often find that the skills required have an overlap, if not the same, with our landscape work.

As time has passed, I now feel they are one and the same for me, certainly in terms of visual message.

On being a Photographic Artist

Before becoming an Artist, you begin your journey by emulating your heroes. Maybe going to the same places as them, even copying their compositions. It is in my view, a rite of passage that anyone starting in the creative arts must go through.

As time passes, if you are fortunate enough, your path should divert away from the things you emulate and copy to a place where you find your own voice.

But to create work that is uniquely yours, you have to become an Artist.

Being a Photographic Artist, is much like being any other kind of Artist:

  • Artists know that having talent alone does not make them an Artist.

  • Artists find and follow their own path.

  • Artists understand that following their own path will be a lonely pursuit.

  • Artists are driven to do what they do. They can’t ‘not’ do it.

  • Artists seek to express what comes from within.

  • Artists trust their intuition and judgement.

  • Artists do not need or seek validation.

  • Artists know that creating the work is, in itself, the reason for being an Artist.

Lightroom Curves, Ultimate Tonal Adjustment

I’ve just completed the writing of my Lightroom Curves’ ebook. I still have to work on the video examples that will accompany it, and I don’t have much free time right now, so I am now anticipating a late summer release.

I thought I should perhaps give a little bit of background for why I’ve created this e-book:

I’ve been a Photoshop editor for over twenty years. Once I had found the Curve tool and masks, I saw no reason to look for anything else and over the decades of using Photoshops Curves and masks, my resolution has remained unchanged. For me, Curves should be in every decent photo editor, and it should be implemented in a way that you can create masks and localised control. Photoshop gave me this from the onset and so, I have never found any reason to move away from it, and indeed feel that everyone who edits photos should adopt an editor that has a good implementation of Curves.

Additionally, I have found that Curves has a depth to it that I did not even know were there when I first started using it. Any beginner can start to use Curves straight away. But most, in my view, never truly learn it and thus tend to not fully realise the possibilities it has to offer.

Curves is easy to use, and therein lies a problem: most assume that the obvious tonal adjustments are the extent of what can be done with it. But more I have used it, the more I have realised that it can be highly nuanced, allowing for a precision of tonal control I cannot get from any other means. But this can only happen, if one truly understands what the tool is doing.

So around 2016 I wrote an e-book about ‘Advanced Curves’, to demonstrate the power of the tool and to encourage the occasional or light Curves user to delve in further.

Then recently, on a workshop, I discovered that Adobe had finally implemented Curves in Lightroom’s Mask tool. This has, in my view, moved Lightroom to another level. I had never enjoyed using Lightroom because it lacked localised Curve adjustments. That has now changed.

I’m passionate about Curves. I think everyone should know it, use it and adopt it for all of their tonal adjustment needs. But they need to understand it. And so that is why I have now translated my ‘Photoshop Advanced Curves’ ebook to the Lightroom platform.

This e-book is therefore my encouragement for regular Lightroom users to adopt Curves as their ‘one stop shop’ for tonal editing.

By learning and adopting Curves, Lightroom users will be able to execute precision control of their tonal edits.

Rather than iterating around the conventional route of exposure, blacks, shadows, highlights, whites and contrast controls hoping to get ‘close enough’ to the desired tonal response, Curves gives you a single control that allows you to pinpoint exactly where you need to change tones and to bring about the exact feel that you are looking for.

Lightroom Curves

Just a short note tonight to say that I’m almost finished converting my ‘Advanced Curves’ e-Book which was originally written for Photoshop users, to a format ready for Lightroom users.

Here are some of the curve adjustments from within the book. I am wondering how many of these curves are familiar if you are a Curves user?

Curves is like a musical instrument. The first few years with it, I learned how to play a few chords with it. A couple of melodies. Had a few stock Curves I would utilise again and again. My repertoire would slowly expand over the years as I learned to ‘see’ tonal issues in my work. Two decades later and I feel it has become an instrument I would not wish to be without, but at the same time, now realise that I will never finish exploring what it can do. It’s just so powerful, and when I want it to be, it can also be extremely nuanced.

I don’t use any other tonal adjustment tool. It’s always Curves. And yet I realise for many, it can be so easy to underutilise it.

Which is why I felt strongly about writing my Advanced Curves e-book for Photoshop to begin with, and also why I wanted to write an edition for Lightroom users.

I’m pleased to say that I have finished translating the e-book and have a version that is ready for Lightroom users. I just need a few more weeks (workshops / tours permitting) to tie up the loose ends now. I am mostly there.

Moya Brennan

I heard today of Moya Brennan’s passing. The album ‘Macalla’ by Clannad is one of my personal favourites, and is one of those albums that has kept me company through my life since I first heard it in 1985 at the age of 18. I had no idea back then, that it would become a regular companion to my life.

Rarely for me, do I get my artistic inspiration from actual photography. It is as though my photography comes through my love of the outdoors and the other things in life that affect me. Instead, I get so much artistic input and inspiration from reading, stories, films, experiences and of course music.

Music, has the ability to make me feel things that no other artistic medium can. Songs become highly personal and I am sure many of us can relate finding that certain songs will take us back to times in our lives. Whether we want them to or not.

I’m sorry to hear about Moya’s passing today. Such a beautiful voice and gifted cláirsearch player. Thank you for the beautiful music.

Intermission

I’m sorry I’ve been quiet of late. Truth is, I’d hoped to take off some time for a long while now, and this year I’m taking a bit more time out of my photography life, to have a break.

I haven’t been posting much on the blog, and mostly that is because I’m recharging by doing other things that are non photography related.

Anyway, I stumbled upon a keynote presentation today that I gave to the Royal Photographic Society back in February 2025 and thought I would share.

I think my work got very graphic and minimal around 2023. I would say I’ve relaxed off this approach a bit at the moment. Not through any conscious decision. I always just follow wherever my art takes me. But I am still very proud of this work and when you review it with the work made in 2015 and then during my first visit in 2009, you can see that I was on a path to simplifying what I do.

I cannot really explain or describe it. I’ve never been that interested in photography as some kind of ‘record of reality’. It is what we wish to make of it, and I am more interested in the interpretive side of things.

Often our previous work shows signs of where we’re going. I think these signs are much easier to see when we are looking back at the audit trail.

I will be in South America for all of May. Back home in June. Maybe I might post something whilst on my travels. We will see. Until then, if you are ever feeling tired, or saturated with your photography, sometimes the best thing to do is take a break and go and do something else. You might just be needing to step away for a while, before reconvening with new enthusiasm.

The future of photo editing

I’m not sure there is one.

Some of the more well known graphics software companies are having their share prices affected so badly now. It will be interesting to see if companies like Adobe will still be here in five years time. Let alone my worry that Photoshop will be changed beyond recognition as more and more AI features are implemented to compete with AI engines out there that can already produce great images from a few keyboard commands.

As far as I can tell, if anyone is looking for a specific image for their advert / brand / company - they are generating them on one of the many AI engines now.

I am sure that many landscape photographers are steering this way as well. If anyone hasn’t won a photo competition from generating an image by AI, then it won’t be long. It’s going to become pervasive.

If there’s less of a demand for software by Adobe or other companies, then they will have to adapt and change very quickly. This is why their share price is affected at the moment. How to manage that change, and to what, is the big question. No one knows where the whole AI thing is going, and I think all we can guarantee is that it will change in ways that we hadn’t considered. I don’t think Tim Berners-Lee ever thought that the creation of the world wide web would have, as a side effect ‘reality distortion bubbles’ for instance. No one could have predicted it. So we have no way of knowing how the whole AI thing is going to morph and change, or how it is going to affect society, behavioural patterns and life in general.

As much as we may welcome Generative Fill, these AI features are really just the tip of the iceberg for me. I have always believed that humans take the path of least resistance, and relying more on software than actually spending time and effort learning something is often the easiest approach for many. Convenience always wins.

I’ve always enjoyed learning. I’ve always enjoyed putting the effort into whatever it is I get interested in. I have seldom looked for a quick fix because I learned many years ago that they don’t really exist. There are no shortcuts in life.

It is one of the reasons why I do not use Luminosity mask software. I prefer to build masks manually as I am of the very opinionated view that building masks manually allows me to learn more about the image I’m editing. For each time I finish editing an image, I feel as though I have been educated as to how the image hangs together. I have learned how the tones work throughout the image.

Because by working through an image manually, we gain experience in learning to “read” images. This is a skill that few talk about, but this is exactly what a traditional darkroom printer gains experience in: “reading the image”, so they know “what” to do to them. When we use automated tools we don’t gain experience. We don’t learn to “read the image”. Instead, we have delegated our decisions to automation, and are essentially editing blind. This is a dangerous area to be in, because we are at risk of fixing areas of the image that weren’t broken, because we’ve not learned to “read the image”.

I hope the future allows me to do manual editing of my images.

I hope I am given the option. And if not, that it is just a period we go through.

Predictions are off the table. As a friend has said to me several times “humans can never predict the future, all we are good at is creating the present”. We simply cannot predict where it is all going. But I do think that the path of least resistance is the one most folks will take. Convenience always wins.

The Creative Act

This is by far the best book I’ve read on creativity. Written by Rick Rubin, a famous music producer, this book comes from someone who understands what it is to be creative.

All of us are creative, but few of us realise it. In this book Rubin offers insights into how to tune in, how to recognise ideas and how to work on them. Always, I enjoyed his writing because it all comes from a place of understanding that everything is fluid, nothing is ever complete, that there are always ideas being presented to us, and it all mostly stems from working on one’s own awareness and trusting and sensing one’s own intuition.

I particularly enjoyed his sections on ‘how to move on from work you’ve completed’, and more so his thoughts about art related competitions. I was relieved, but not surprised to find that Rubin is more focussed on the truth that we create art for ourselves, and often it is the creating of it, rather than the final results that matter the most.

Never judgemental of others acts, he prefers to focus on how one can tap into their own creativity citing for instance that Picasso preferred to paint when he had music, the tv and the radio on at the same time. EMINEM is another artist that can only write lyrics when he has a tv on in the background for company. I know also, that when printing in his analog darkroom, Michael Kenna prefers to listen to audiobooks. Knowing this about these artists surprised me because I prefer silence, but everyone has to find the environment that works for them.

This book is pretty much how I see creativity. I have always preferred to focus more on the internal / philosophical side of creativity, rather than the ‘how to’. This is what Rick Rubin does best in this book.

Creativity is always more a case of finding one’s way through the work. It is also about learning to trust one’s own hunches, and to change one’s mind if something better presents itself.

For me, reading this book was more a confirmation and I often found myself saying to myself ‘that’s right’ when he states something that I have always deeply known, or innately understood to be true.

A copy of this book should be on every creative’s bookshelf.

Maybe

Last year I was gearing up to publish a new book this year. It is all written, designed, and the foreword was written by Guy Tal, a photographer whom I greatly respect.

I’m sorry to let you all know that I have shelved plans to self publish any books for the foreseeable future. My reasons being that I have found over the years of self publishing, that the process is fraught with many challenges.

For the past six months or so, I have really gone off the idea of self publishing and I don’t think my feelings on the matter will change any time soon.

Self publication has been enormously stressful for me and I think the stress is now outweighing any personal artistic or monetary benefits that I could gain from going through the process again.

The only way forward for me now, would be to find someone who wishes to publish my books.