Ideology in Paradise

This week I spent a small fortune on books at Beyond Words Edinburgh festival stall. I thought I'd go for a visit, catch up with Neil and see what he has to offer.

I came away with an exhausted bankers card, because I bought:

Hiroshi Watanabe's 'Ideology in Paradise' Paul Caponigro's Meditations in Silver Editions 1,2 & 3 of Brooks Jensen's 'Single Exposures' series Michael Kenna - images of the seventh day.

All are excellent books, but I'd like to talk about Hiroshi Watanabe's Ideology in paradise book.

A beautifully put together book, I found it on Neils book shelf at the back of his display purely by chance. I think I was intrigued by the front cover and of course the title. What could 'ideology in paradise' mean?

So I opened up the book and browsed the contents. Don't you find you make your mind up about a book in a matter of seconds? Well the image above drew me in. The people dancing, and those vibrant colours, just made me want to find out more.

I wasn't even entirely sure just what the book was about. In fact, I went through it, and wondered just where in the East the photos had been taken. There is nothing in the text or title of the book to suggest it's North Korea. It was only when I decided to read the inside flap that I understood. To quote, it says:

"One is quietly lulled into a sense that life in North Korea might, in fact, be just as it appears within the frames of these images - normal - instead of like the stories of kidnappings, military posturing, and famime. To Watanabe, it is this sense of tension between the news stories flooding the media in both Japan and in the US and his experiences travelling and photographing - that interests him in this topic".

On the surface, looking at a lot of the pictures in the book, which have a very beautifully over-processed look to them, you feel that Watanabe is making casual snaps of friends.

It would be so easy to think that people in North Korea do not do as we do. They do not laugh, they do not go for a walk, they do not live normal lives, but as his book shows, human nature comes through all the while, even if the regime that is above them has a grip on how these people live.

I really enjoyed the book. I was intrigued and I think that's the hallmark of a good book for me. I'd already bought the other books I listed above, and all of a sudden I was breaking the bank and going for this one. I had to own it.

One thing though, I'm sure some of you wonder why I'm so interested in the subject matter. These images look like reportage shots to a degree, and that's not really how I shoot. True, but talking to Neil from Beyond words about this, he has told me that a lot of photographers he sells books from - are similar. What they shoot, and what they like to look at, or enjoy in terms of photographic sensibilities, often is a different world away.

Ideology in Paradise is available from Beyond Words, if, like me, you have an interest in other cultures and a documentary style of photography.

Understanding Light eBook now Available

Stephen Trainor and myself are very pleased to announce the release of  Understanding Light with The Photographer's Ephemeris eBook.

The book explores how to improve your photography through an understanding of natural light. The eBook uses The Photographer's Ephemeris application to explain many of the points presented.

The Photographer's Ephemeris is available free (as a desktop edition) at Stephens site http://photoephemeris.com. It is also available as a great iPad version and also an iPhone version on the Apple app store.

Rather than a point-by-point 'how to' manual, the book explores at a high level some of the science behind natural light, and illustrates key points with a number of case studies where I explain the thinking and planning behind some of my images.

The eBook is now available from my online-store.

Ansel Adams in Colour

I've been pretty quiet of late on my blog, and this has been for good reason. The past few weeks since I returned home, I've been busy preparing my first cloth bound book for printing. It's been a long haul, but I think that anything worth doing, should be done properly.

Doing a book requires a lot of preparation. You may think the choice of images would be the hardest part, but it's been a huge learning curve.

Firstly there is the cost of doing a book, learning about paper types and also, getting past the jargon that printers talk in. There is also the question of storage and distribution to overcome - where exactly do you store 1,000 books?

The good news is that the Quark express file is almost ready now. I spent the early part of this week in Nottingham with my friend Darren putting the layout together. We've got some beautiful fonts in there and the layout is simple yet elegant. The ISBN number has been allocated and the preface has been written by someone whom I admire the work of greatly. The book will be released by Half-Light Press. Estimated release date is the later half of October, early November, but I will preview a proof copy of the book on this blog when the printer sends me one.

So why the title 'Ansel Adams in Colour'? Well, I guess the past few weeks, as I've been busy looking at samples of paper types to use for my own book ( I have settled on a fine Japanese art paper), I've been busy plundering my ever growing collection of fine photography books for comparisons. One such title that I hadn't looked at for a long time is Ansel's book about his colour photography.

Apart from the fact that it's beautifully printed on the finest stock Silk paper I can imagine, I'd almost completely forgotten that Ansel shot colour at all.

This brings up an interesting aspect for me. I feel that photography that is considered 'art' is often black and white. Certainly, I'm in awe of the medium, despite that I don't shoot it myself. But what of Colour? Why has it not been embraced so steadily by the photographic art world? Well, I think if we look inside Adam's book, it's clear to me that Ansel had trouble with the medium. That's not to say his work was bad. It's rather beautiful in fact to see very Adams-like compositions, but done in colour. The thing is though - he was troubled because he lacked the degree of control that he wanted over colour. Ansel was no black and white purist, and is often noted to have looked forward to the digital revolution and the means to control colour the way he wanted to. I feel that perhaps, since the amount of dark-room control that was ever present for Black and White, allowed it to establish itself more than Colour could. Colour has been a late developer (no pun intended).

So what of Ansel's book. It's a great read. It's also interesting to see how he grappled with the problems of working with early colour and how he failed (too strong a word) to reach his vision with the medium. I personally think this book is a very important document, illustrating the trials of colour, how it was perceived by the generation of the 40's and 50's.

Maybe you didn't know that Ansel had made colour images? If so, then I can recommend this book as it's a beautiful edition and I feel, should be part of every landscape photographer's 'core' book collection.

It turns out that the book has been revised and expanded since my early 90's edition, and unfortunately - is now out of print. So if you're interested in this title, my review is based on the 1st Edition, and you can get a copy of it on AbeBooks.com.

Lofoten - a photographer's approach

For those of you who aren't a member of my news letter, I've just released a new eBook - Lofoten - a photographer's approach. This is perhaps my most favourite writing project to date, because it has nothing to do with the technical side of making images, but instead, is about approach. It was great fun to write it because I had to relive the experience of being back on Lofoten and just how everything there - the people, the weather, the quality of light, and how I felt about being there - all came together and resulted in the final images you see within the eBook.

I think how we approach and deal with a subject is more important than knowing which f-stop to use, or what shutter speed to use. I believe that being more aware of our surroundings, and heightening our sense of awareness is vital if we are to improve in our photographic endeavours.

Anyway, that said, I'm sure that the sales of this title will be a lot smaller than the techy books, simply because of the demographic involved. Many people own cameras, but don't consider themselves artists, while proportionally, few artists own cameras.

Learning the technical helps, but it doesn't make us great photographers. If only learning the techy stuff was all we needed, then it would be great wouldn't it? Actually, no it wouldn't, because what makes photographers stand out, is the differences in how they see and how they respond to what they're experiencing.

You can get 'Lofoten - a photographer's approach' alongside a 1080p version of the related podcast here.

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Galen Rowell's Inner Game

Well, I feel I've returned to my roots this week, upon viewing the re-issue of Galen Rowell's 'Inner Game of Outdoor Photography'.

I'm a huge fan of the late Galen's work, as it was he, that set me in motion to get out there and make my first early morning images.

So coming across this book, which is a re-issue, was quite something because it has taken me right back to my own beginnings. Right at the start of my own photographic development, I came across Galen's work in the form of his book 'Mountain Light', which is by most accounts a classic in the philosophy of outdoor photography. Unfortunately, Mountain Light is no longer in print, which I feel is a sore omission. I didn't think I'd see another Rowell book which would come close to what Mountain Light had to offer, but I'm pleased to say that 'Inner Game' is a worthy match to Mountain Light and I've not been able to put it down since i got it a week ago.

Containing 66 essays compiled from his monthly regular column in the USA edition of Outdoor Photography, Galen covers all aspects of outdoor photography.

From the onset, Galen prepares us for what he has to say by giving us a little background to his own upbringing. His mother was a cellist, and as he says, 'my mother didn't didn't teach the cello, she taught people'. Galen conveys this as a way of saying that people are ultimately behind the images that a camera creates. It's something I firmly believe myself.

Inside the book, the late Galen discusses many aspects of outdoor photography as you will see by how the book is divided up:

1. Visions - Mysteries of the creative and cognitive processes

2. Preparations - pushing the limits of equipment, film and technique

3. Journeys - Merging visions and realities

4. Realizations - communicating your world view through photography

There are many inspiring moments within and If I could leave you with one, it would be this:

"The fact that no major publication would print my well-executed photo of Warren Harding hanging on Half Dome, a newsworthy event in which I was directly involved, led me to my local camera store, where in December 1968 I purchased a Nikon FTn with two lenses"

One thing leads to another, and I find that such a powerful statement. We are who we decide to be, and in Galen's case, he made his own 'history'. Driven to get a camera because his friend had been overseen by the local press turned out to be a gift to us all. Galen's work has been hugely influential to me and many others. If you're feeling a little low on inspiration, then by all means, this is a superb remedy as well as a great introduction to the late great Galen Rowell.

If you'd like to buy a copy, it seems that the 'global empire book stores' have missed out on this one and either don't list it in it's reissued form, or the price is downright crazy. Just as well, because my good friend Neil at 'Beyond Words is offering it  here for a very nice price.

New eBooks Released

Title says it all :-) I'm pleased to announce the release of the following e-Books.

Simplifying Composition - Aspect Ratios, in which I discuss the many aspect ratios and how they influence and affect your compositions. There is now a 'beginner' tab to the store and in there, I have the three 'understanding series' of e-Books about Exposure, Depth of Field and also Histograms and Bit Depth. You may know all this stuff already.... but then again, you might not. I put these books together to cover the basics because I've been very surprised at how many participants on my workshops for instance, didn't know how to focus their cameras.

I hope you find them of use to you. I tried my best to distill into a very easy to digest format, what I think we should all know.

You can get them at my store.

Night & Low Light Photography

One of the books I bought recently from Neil at Beyond Words is all about shooting at night. I'm predominantly a low-light shooter, and I do sometimes get towards the edge of darkness, but never really fully in it. So when I was looking on his store last month, and itching to buy some new books (a hole was burning in my pocket), I chanced upon this title and thought it might help me get out there and start to shoot the other side of the day that most of us don't bother with.

In Jill's book, she not only provides some reciprocity charts for popular films, but also goes well beyond the chart that I own for Fuji Velvia 50 RVP to show you what exposure times you need to get you into the minutes and hours territory of night shooting with that film (and others such as Tri X, T-Max, and some tungsten balanced films too).

Unsurprisingly, the forward to the book is written by Michael Kenna, who is perhaps the champion of night shooting, often making his surreal images from 8 hour exposures.

I've enjoyed reading Jill's book. It's very accomplished, makes you want to get out there and try stuff with your camera at night, has lots of tips and suggestions, and also has chapters by many of the photographers featured on the Nocturnes web site, which is highly recommended, just to give you the taste for night shooting alone.

So this book is a bit of a mixture of nice reading, without being too fast into the technical, has examples, some study cases by numerous photographers and every now and then, gets into the nitty gritty of how to do it - with a digital camera, film camera, large format camera, etc.

I highly recommend it, and as usual, if you'd like a copy of this book, then I do believe that Neil from Beyond Words can get you a copy or you can order it from him here*.

*Please note that I do not make any money from my recommendations to Beyond Words. I simply believe in supporting a good photographic book shop, despite the fact that I've spent a small fortune lately on some rather lovely books!

Beyond Words Book Shop

You may have noticed that i've put up a little banner for Beyond Words book store on this blog. There are not many good photographic book stores left, due to the onslaught of stack em high, sell them low operations such as Amazon and I feel that we're losing out on specialist book stores that offer us the chance to find out about books that we wouldn't ordinarily learn about.

I think it's important to support or endorse things that I believe in. So in an effort to do that, I've added the little banner onto this very blog to help encourage you all to go look, see if theres anything of interest in the shop and maybe even subscribe to Neil's news letter for upcoming publications.

Just so you know - I'm doing this out of an interest in keeping a good book store alive and by helping you guys learn more about other photographers too. I should stress that I am not making any money from this arrangement - it's just here for your benefit.

I should let you all know that I want to start to review books in future, time permitting of course. I'm going to start by plundering my existing collection but vie also just bought a small fortunes worth of books from Neil so I hope to review these as well, once I've got hold of them.

Learning about other artists and being able to disappear into the world of someone elses photographs can only be a good thing. I hope you will enjoy my reviews as and when they happen.

my first book

Just back from my Skye workshop. So i'm a wee bit tired, but the trip went well. I'm almost done writing the first draft of my very first hard bound book.

I'm hoping to have it released next year, but thought that I might release an e-book version of it before then (maybe for Christmas). The book will contain 40 images culled from my portfolio containing a mixture of landscape and portraiture from Easter Island, Patagonia, Nepal, India, Portugal, Iceland and of course Scotland.  I think it would be nice to release it as an eBook, but the idea is that it will come out as a nice coffee-table edition - roughly around the size and dimensions of an Vinyl LP. I'm hoping to release it as a strictly limited edition run of 3,000 copies, with the first 500 accompanied by a tipped in photo of the front cover image.

Anyway, for those of you who are Ansel Adams fans, you've probably noticed that the title is identical to his. This is in part homage to him, and also because I think it's a great way of representing what I do, under a first edition book.

First eBook on iBooks

Just a quick entry today to let you all know that 'Simplifying Composition' is now available on Apple's US iBooks store.

If you have an iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone and live in the US, then it is now possible for you to download the ebook to read in the Apple book reader app.

I've also been told that the remaining four technique eBooks are with Apple and will take the usual 2 weeks to get through their approval process.

If you want to read the nice review - just click on the image for a larger version!

UPDATE: My eBooks will Initially be available only in the U.S. but my distributor is expanding to all territories in the next two weeks. The current iBookstore territories are: U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, and France.