Thoughts on mentoring

I’ve been mentioning folks now for over five years on a one to one basis, and I have some thoughts on what mentoring should be, and what anyone who is wishing to be mentored should consider before working with a photographer who’s work they like.

I think first and foremost, if one is going to look for a mentor, they should really try to answer the question as to why they want to be mentored, and what they are perhaps hoping to get out of the experience. And also - why that particular photographer?

There are a few things I think anyone who wishes to be mentored should consider before approaching someone for mentoring:

  1. You should choose a photographer because you think there is something about their work that you can learn from. Or because you think they may be a good teacher. Some photographers may be better teachers than they are photographers. While others may be great photographers but not so good at teaching. Do your research. Watch interviews, or read interviews, study their work, and philosophy. See if it resonates.

  2. Best to get an idea of what the expectations are before you begin. Having a clear idea of what you are expected to provide, and what the teacher will provide is key.

  3. As a student, you will be expected to put effort into the sessions, and provide images that meet exercises your teacher will set you. The only way to improve, is by doing the work yourself.

  4. The mentoring might not be what you expected. In fact, it probably won’t be anything close to what you anticipated. Going into mentoring with a photographer, I would advise you to keep your mind open, and go with wherever they wish to go with you.

  5. Try to leave your ego outside the sessions. As tough as it will be, your work will be up for review, always with the aim of trying to encourage you to broaden your skillset. This can only happen if you’re receptive to feedback. If you have a good teacher, you should come away from the sessions feeling encouraged, and with “buy in”. In other words, you should feel a belief and commitment to do the work you’ve been set.

  6. Best not to go into it, hoping that the teacher will love your work. They are not there to validate you. They are there, irrespective of how accomplished your work is, to give value and find some things to help broaden your skills. No matter how accomplished the work is, as a teacher it is my job to always offer something. In these circumstances I always make it clear that what I am offering is not a criticism of the work, but just different ways to consider the work. The aim is always to expand the students skills in either seeing or interpreting the work.

  7. Mentoring is a relationship, and as such requires honesty and accountability on both sides. You have to be ready to be vulnerable. As a teacher, i’m more interested in what you need to improve on, than what you do well already. To admit where you had difficulty or struggle is helpful for me in finding the areas we need to work on.

  8. Lastly, but perhaps the most important: try to submit work that is your own. This sounds harsh but what I really mean by this is you should submit work that is the least influenced by the photographer you want to be taught by.

    In my own case, I have no interest in repeating the same compositional devices or editing techiques that I did with a certain landscape, with a student’s similar imagery. Yet it is not uncommon to be sent submissions that are of the same locations or similar compositions as my own.

    I would urge you to try to find images that you know are your own work, and do not “borrow” too heavily from the teacher you are hoping to work with. This will have several benefits;

    a) it will be more interesting for the teacher to work on things they are unfamiliar with
    b) it will allow your teacher to remove themselves from your work
    c) you and your teacher will be in a more neutral place for the mentoring to begin

—

Ok, so there is a lot to think about above. But important points to consider.

I would say however, that it’s ok to pursue mentoring, even if you can’t answer some of the questions I’ve put forward for you to consider. I merely wish to put them forward as food for thought.

Cusi Cusi

I’m in the Puna highlands of northern Argentina today. Exploring more of the Puna region. Went out this morning in -10ºC temperatures to shoot some beautiful landscapes. All shot on Fuji Velvia 50 with my Hasselblad film camera.

The rest of the day is sitting around in the dryness of the desert with not much to do. So I played around with some more images I shot on my little Leica M240 camera from the surrounding towns in the highlands here. More wall art and interiors.

I’ve been feeling I should be documenting my travels more. Not just focus on the landscape photography side of it. Perhaps it’s the realisation that I am approaching 60 next year, and it’s making me think that I should have been documenting my travels in the past. I’ve been a photographer for 17 years now (full time), and I had always made a distinction between my landscape work and any other kind of imagery. Always feeling that anything outside of my landscape work would be irrelevant, or throw away nonsense, but I’m curious if I can make some nice documentary images as well of the environments etc while I am sitting around between the landscape shoots.

Purmamarca Graffiti, 2026

I'm Enjoying very much playing with an old Leica M240 and some Light Lens Lab lenses. These images were shot yesterday afternoon in the northern Argentina town of Purmamarca.

I love the colours and of course the inventive art work. I like how the camera’s colours respond to editing as well.

I’m also enjoying making images of the periphery visuals around my landscape work, while I am travelling.

I would so like to make more street images and just images of the events that happen around my sessions outside of the landscape work I do.

The Shoot is a Performance

How I responded to the street scenes in Burano Italy was mostly due to how I felt about the colours and the luminances of the light the afternoon I went for a 2 hour shoot.

Colour is an emotion. Contrast is also an emotion. How the light interplays with our subjects can shape how we explore our subjects and interact with them during a shoot.

I know if I went back to Burano today, to walk the same streets, in the same order, I could not reproduce what I shot above in the same way. The light would be different, and my eye would be attracted to different things.

Similarly, I know if I tried to reproduce the images I shot recently in Sao Luis, Brazil, they would not be the same. The day I shot the images above was a rainy day. The walls were dark with dampness. Earthy. Less vibrant. Daylight colour temperature. I think Sao Luis like’s to be this way. It’s sitting in its humidity slowly collapsing into the earth that supports it.

I often like to think about each of my shoots as a performance. Each new location I go to, has a natural time to be walked through. There is a finite duration for me to wander around and play with what’s there. It is also dependent on when I arrive there as well, and I’m always wary of going to a location too early in the afternoon, because I may have walked through it all, and explored it before the light I love has arrived. I know in my heart that I cannot repeat the performance of walking through the same streets, and of capturing the same images again in better light. It just doesn’t work that way.

Shooting is definitely a performance. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It has a final outcome.

And like all performances, what we encounter as we travel through a landscape or a city is never repeatable in the exact same way. Variances of light, variances of colour, also our own internal moods shape how the performance unfolds. And that is just fine. That’s what I love about it all.

I enjoy thinking that each portfolio I create, is a little play of sorts. A document of my time. A unique performance.

As it is for everyone with a camera.

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, Precision 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.