Harris & Skye

This November I'll be running some workshops in the north west of Scotland. The Isle of Harris and the Isle of Skye. I still have some spaces for these and thought I could perhaps persuade some of you - who have been considering coming on a workshop with me, to come on one of these trips (hey, you can of course come on both if you like!). Each year I always find these trips slow to fill up because, I'm sure, that for most beginner photographers, they think that sunny weather and summer are the best times to take out the camera and make images. It just seems to be the nature of the beast. Also, most amateur photographers believe that Summer is the time for vacation, and winter is the time to board yourself up in the house, beside the fire, and wait it out until the sun comes back in Spring.

Well this is all very well, but most photographers don't realise that the best images are made on the edge of changing weather, and we get a lot of that here in Scotland in the winter time. With one weather front passing over, only to be replaced by another weather front, there is never a dull moment.

I also find that people tend to take mental snap shots of the weather during their working day. If we get up in the rain and go to work in the rain, then we think it's been raining all day. Ever since I started to do the workshops, I've never had a week where the weather is constantly wet or windy. It seems that as the week goes, I forget that we started off with a lot of wet weather and by the end of the week, we've experienced days of sun, cloudy weather, still mornings, windy evenings. It just keeps on changing.

The above four photos were taken this February on my Glencoe weekend workshop. The final day we were outside, the rain kept on coming in. I've seen photographers for years on my workshops want to pack away their cameras and consider the day is finished if the rain comes on. But it's actually a very beautiful time to make images, if we can manage to keep the rain of our graduated filters and front lens elements. Anyway, just look at the moods in the sky I captured. This is only possible when things are changing, and dark clouds are passing through - and this kind of thing doesn't happen on sunny days.

But winter is not just about changing moods on the landscape. Consider this Skye image below, shot last December:

Those magenta tones are very visible in winter time, and mostly never seen in summer. In fact, I often think that summer is full of yellow tones in the sky. Winter on the other hand seems to provide some great textures to pay with in many ways: moving changing light, a low sun with long shadows across the landscape, and also of course fast moving clouds blending and blurring the skies as in this shot here of Horgabost beach on Harris:

So I'm hoping this post has given you some ideas about shooting in winter.

If you have been thinking for a while about coming on a workshop with me at some point, then we're just coming into the best times of the year for shooting great, changing light.

Meeting Mr Kenna

"I met Michael kenna last night.He had the most amazing winkle picker shoes on his feet. Very tall, gangly, warm, eccentric He took the piss out of me, gave me a hug, signed my book

'with admiration' He was extremely rushed off his feet, getting torn in all directions, not wanting to disappoint anyone. I liked him immensely."

Everyone has influences, whether they deny it or not. More so perhaps in the field of arts.

Since the late 80's, I've been a fan of Michael Kenna's photography. It was he, that made me think of an image as being something that could deviate from being a verbatim recording of what was there. His images in the late 80's were often of eerie night scenes that seemed to have a presence that I could not find in anybody else's work.

He has been heavily imitated - which is perhaps the highest form of flattery one can achieve and there are many photographers who would cite him as a core influence.

For the past year, I've had a very nice correspondence with the man I consider to be a huge influence in my own photography. What initially started as a request for advice on approaching galleries, turned into a polite and often fun exchange in email from someone who came across as very young at heart, enthusiastic, and down to earth. It was a delight to find that someone I admired so much, and as busy as he is, could be very humble and open.

Just this week I attended a private gallery exhibition in Zurich - Michael had kindly put a friend of mine and myself on the invitation list.

I had a mission; I wanted to thank Michael for his kindness with a project I've been working on.

When we arrived at the address of the gallery, it seemed to be someone's home. I wasn't sure if we'd got the right address, but a moment later, after pressing the buzzer we were climbing the stairs to what sounded like a party on the 2nd floor.

The gallery seemed to be the owners home and in there, she had around maybe ten of Michael's prints, and also quite a few Elliot Erwitt originals.

The moment we stepped in the door, I could see Michael in the sitting room. It's quite an odd sensation to see someone you know well from photos and books, youtube videos etc etc, and find they're just standing a few feet away from you.

We hovered for perhaps half an hour, waiting for our chance to say  hello to him.

He said 'you made it!' and I just smiled and introduced my friend. I couldn't help notice the massive long, sharp shoes he was wearing. They are perhaps the most exotic shoes I've ever seen on anyone. So I couldn't help comment on them. Michael thanked me and then I said something which came out sounding a bit inappropriate, and Michael didn't let me get away with it. He quickly put his arm around me and said 'what was that? - did I hear you right?'.

Was this true I wondered? Is perhaps my biggest photography hero taking the piss out of me?

Yes, he was, in a good natured way.

Michael had a young girl with him. She was maybe 10 years old, who we thought was his daughter. He introduced her as his assistant. She was in fact the gallery owners daughter, but he explained to us that she was keeping him right, keeping him organised, reminding him which city he was in.... (his schedule is quite mad) at one point, while I was asking him to sign my copy of 'Night Walk', he asked her - 'hmmmm...... is it Paris today? Hmmm? No? Then, is it Munich? Hmmmm?' to which the little girl shook her head and replied 'no, it's Zurich today'. 'Oh, yes, that's right', he said. And my book was signed 'to Bruce with admiration, best regards, Michael, Zurich 2011'.

There is an old saying 'never meet your heroes', but nothing could be further from the truth in Kenna's case.

I can honestly say that it was a terrific experience for me to meet Michael. He was warm, down to earth, open, really went out of his way to spend some time with me, and he displayed these traits to everyone else in the room with him.

It's so nice to find that not only do you like the work of an artist, but you also find the man behind the work to be a nice chap too.

Michael Kenna Invite

I'm flying to Zurich on Monday. Tuesday I'll be visiting Michael Kenna's exhibition opening at the Birgit Filzmaier gallery in Zurich. Got the invitation today. Cocktails at 7pm by the looks of it.

Michael Kenna is a very nice chap indeed. Off to visit a friend near Zurich for a short trip, and also cram in time to see a personal hero.

It doesn't get much better than this I reckon.

Balancing Stones

When Andy Gray balances stones to make his beach sculptures, he says he listens to the stones with his hands. I feel I know what he means. He becomes very focussed on the weight of the stone in his hands and how the balance moves and rolls around, until eventually, he finds that magic spot where the stone will balance all on its own.

I see a symmetry with composing images. When I look for compositions, I feel when the composition is just right. A step to far forwards, a slight movement of the tilt of the tripod, a millimetre adjustment, is often all it takes to make something feel right.

Andy Gray's sculptures are the best analogy I can come up with, on how one should know when a composition is right. Your attention to detail and to a gut reaction, are essentially all you need.

ND Grads and Rangefinders

In 2008 I wrote an article on this blog regarding how to place ND grads on a rangefinder camera. I've since then had the occasional email from someone about how to correctly place them and I'd like to add some additional things to my original posting about this issue. I'd firstly like to start by saying that I like mistakes in my photography. I like the surprise element so I'm not too bothered whether the grad placement is exact. If I like the results, and they're pleasing to me, then that's all that I'm bothered about.

Here are a few examples of images where I really got the grad placement really wrong, and yet the images (in my opinion - which is really all that matters) are a success because of the wrong placement:

I was aware when shooting the Calanish standing stones, that placing the grad half way across them would cause the top parts of the stones to be black and the bottom parts to be correctly exposed. I wanted to make sure the sky was the same luminance as the ground so I placed the grad right above them and hoped for the best. The final image you see here has an almost halo like effect in the sky - this has been caused by the natural light fall-off that the lens exhibits being compounded by the grad. Yes, my Mamiya 7 lenses exhibit light fall-off. It is quite pronounced in the wide angles and I love the effect very much. I really like this image and felt it worked very well because the top 1/3rd of the sky is similar in tone to the lower tones of the grass.

I think one of the biggest mistakes folks make when using grads is to assume they should always go over the horizon. They don't always have to be.

And with this image taken on the Isle of Eigg, I can't quite remember my justification for keeping the grad so high - perhaps I just forgot to adjust it when I'd changed composition (this is a common mistake for a lot of photographers - rangefinder or not). Anyway, I love the effect that the grad caused and I feel it's added a lot of mood to the shot. Now imagine if I'd placed the grad correctly - would the image be as dramatic? I don't think so.

But what if the grad is just slightly too high, just not quite right? Well, in the next image, I managed to place it in the wrong place:

I think my reasons for leaving the grad a little high above the horizon was that I was worried that I'd perhaps compress the tones in the Isle of Rum on the horizon - and therefore  under-expose the island. So I opted for moving the grad slightly higher, but managed to move it just a bit too high. Does it kill the image? Well, it's a personal taste question, but for me, I prefer when grads are just slightly above the horizon, as I kind of expect horizons to be bright. It gives a sense of presence to an image, so in that way, I don't think the bright horizon is too much of an issue. But now that I've pointed out to you that the grad is in the wrong place - you'll probably feel the image has an issue. If that's true - it's your problem and not mine. I feel that I'm able to take a step further away from the image and just see it in its entirety. And when I look at it, like someone would who is viewing it for the first time - I don't notice the grad placement - there's simply far too much else of interest going on for me. So I think the lesson with this is to be able to not focus on something too much. Once you notice a problem, you tend to stare at it..... once you point out a problem, everyone notices it. But if you hadn't pointed it out, most folks I reckon, wouldn't see it. What others see and what you see are two very different things.

But I'm sure there are images where the grad placement is critical. I certainly get emails from folks who tell me the grad placement was very noticeable, and for that, I'd like to suggest that the reason it is so noticeable, is because they've used too strong a grad in the first place. The tell tale signs for too strong a grad are usually overly bright grounds and dark skies. Sure, it looks dramatic, but it also suffers from being extremely sensitive to where the grad is placed. So maybe this is a lesson in easing off the strength of grad you use, and learning to tell which lighting conditions and times of day will require a 1 stop rather than a 3 stop, or a 2 stop rather than a 3 stop.

Ultimately, I don't think grad placement is really the problem. If you use the right strength of grad, over a subject which doesn't have such a dramatic change in light levels, then a little bit of bad placement shouldn't really be a problem.

Lastly, If you still think grad placement is a real problem for you - then Lee Filters now have a Rangefinder ND grad set, with a special holder with markings on it, to aid in the correct placement of the filters. I'd give that a go, if my advice doesn't help you in any way.

Objectivity & Intuition

This weekend I was at the Scottish Natural Heritage conference centre at Battleby near Perth. I presented a talk and as part of it, I discussed my recent images that I made in Iceland this summer. I finished my talk today by saying that part of a photographers skill, is to gain a sense of objectivity about what you do.

So I'd like to discuss objectivity a little further.

The initial stages of photographic development

I'm sure that most of us, when we first buy a camera think that we just need to learn to use it. We think that what we need to do is learn what apertures do and what shutter speeds do. We think that technique is the most important thing.

Once we're familiar with the equipment, the second stage, I believe, is that we start to look at scenery and think 'oh, how do I convert scenery into good photographs?'. So we start on the life-long journey to improve our composition, and to gain a better understanding about light. We feel that this is where the real art is. Two stages, that's all there is isn't there to making good images? Learn the technique and then learn to 'see'.

But it's only still the beginning.

The hidden stage of photographic development

Well, what could there possibly still be to learn? The answer is - yourself.

So here are some questions I'd like you to ponder.....

Q. Do you have a tendency to narrow your view to one thing, and find it hard to see other potential images around you?

If you are close minded about your subject, then you are effectively walking past or through some great scenery and therefore great potential for images. You're walking around blinded by your desire to create something specific, rather than to create something from what is being handed to you.

Q. Do you notice how you feel when you make good images and when you make bad images?

I know when I'm making a good image because I feel it. I also know when I'm going through the motions, because my gut tells me that too. It's just up to me to listen to myself more.

Q. Do you notice small changes in light, shade and tone?

I'm not talking about whether you notice them, but whether you notice when they change. In effect, are you in tune with what is presented to you?

Q. Do you have a good sense of anticipation?

Developing a good feel for what is happening in the landscape and where it might develop, is key.

Q. Do you react badly to your photographic failures?

Being too hard on yourself kills photographic creativity.

Q. Are you impatient?

Blasting off several shots instead of letting yourself connect with what is there, is a form of photographic blindness.

Q. How do you deal with never being happy with your results?

Again, being too hard on yourself kills photographic creativity.

Q. How do you approach your projects?

Planning, patience, emotional involvement, letting things flow naturally, are all important aspects of a successful project.

Q. Do you listen to your intuition?

Your gut tells you a lot about how good the image is that you're making. It also tells you when it's time to take a rest. It also tells you to go for a stroll somewhere without any reason for doing so, only to discover that you've found a great location. Being able to let yourself flow freely and go with what your intuition is telling you - is a very powerful attribute to possess.

The above questions are really there to make you consider if you know your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to your approach to making images. What I'm really trying to do is make you consider if you are objective about what you do?

Objectivity is the key

What you think is a great image today, can, as your photographic ability develops, become a poor image in a year or two. But are you aware of your progression? Do you take stock from time to time and notice how you're moving forward as a photographer?

I'm not asking if you are progressing with your work, I'm asking if you're self aware. There's a big difference.

You may learn and progress with your technique, as too, with how you 'see', but you should also be developing skills to listen to yourself, so that you know where you are going with your art.

I've noticed in my own work a simplicity that has evolved over the last 4 years or so. It's almost as if each major photographic outing I do, brings another advancement in my style. My recent trip to Iceland is a perfect example of that. I found perhaps the most simplest of landscapes to date in my own work. Black sand and white ice make for striking images, and I'm now going back later this year, because I've tapped into something I have to explore more. But this has come about, because I'm in tune with where it is that my art (myself) wants to take me - and that's only happened because I've learned a lot about myself and how I tackle my photographic projects.

If you're not so self-aware, then I hope my blog entry has given you some ideas or thoughts about how you approach your photography. It really is all in your own hands.

ps. FYI - I write a lot of e-books about photography. Some of them, like the Simplifying Composition ebook are very popular, for obvious reasons. But the ones I really value personally, are the 'approach' eBooks like  Lofoten - a Photographer's Approach and Taj Mahal - a photographer's approach. These eBooks really cover the thinking processes I've gone through, rather than the 'what technical decisions' I choose. I get the occasional email from someone who tells me they find these the most useful... it's really what I want to hear, because I feel they are the most useful.

Printing Workshops

I'm in the middle of looking into setting up some printing workshops for next year. The way I see it is that i've had a lot of participants over the past few years who, if they've mastered the editing on a computer side (otherwise known as the digital dark room in my book), few, actually print their material out. For the select few who do, there seems to be an endless disagreement about what is the right way to do it. Some find their prints too dark (a common mistake), or when viewing them, I find there's a lot more that could have been done to optimise them.

What I find very interesting is how we 'read' a print. If you've been fortunate to seen the work of Ansel Adams in the flesh for instance, you soon realise what a great print is. It's very easy to think that most prints are good. Most prints are mediocre. Like your first photoshop edits, over a few years, you come back to your first prints and realise they weren't very good at all. It takes a long time to master the final print. Like I say on my workshops - there is no good-taste button in photoshop. You can go too far, over saturate, over sharpen, completely kill the image and not realise it at the time. That's where experience comes in.

I know there's a lot of technical stuff to cover, and most get very bogged down in that region. But shouldn't the final print be the final statement? How do you convey what you were feeling in the final print? Many suffer because they can't get their prints to come out in a consistent way.

Printing requires an understanding of , and adoption of colour management practices. Just how do you make sure that what you see on your computer screen - matches exactly what you anticipate in the final print? I've had so many emails from people who tell me they have their colour management 'close enough'. Well, it shouldn't be 'close enough'. That little statement suggests that it's not consistent and they're sometimes surprised by what pops out of the printer.

I'd love to give a workshop on making prints. I thought it would be great to cover some of the principles of colour management right through to digital dark room techniques and then the preparation for final output. Lastly, accurate print evaluation is really important.

I'd like to run some practical hands on workshops in my office, in the centre of Edinburgh next year. At the moment, my idea is to limit each workshop to a group of four, each with a computer, Eizo display and screen calibrator - for over a weekend. We'd go through setting up our environment for colour management, editing in the digital dark room, and producing high quality prints in a repeatable - expected way on an Epson printer.

Please don't ask me any specifics about it just yet - as I'm in the middle of trying to work it all out, but I'll let you know when I do have a more concrete syllabus for a weekend workshop.

1 space left for Assynt, October Workshop

I had a cancellation due to ill health for my Assynt workshop this October. So there is now one space available for anyone interested.

The trip originally sold out early May, but there is now a free space for anyone who would be interested in coming.

More information here.

Scottish Nature Photography Faire

Just a wee reminder that I'll be doing two talks this weekend (Saturday and Sunday - 11am - 12) at the Scottish Nature Photography Fair in Battleby near Perth, Scotland. More information and prices for tickets for the fair can be found at www.snh.gov.uk/snpf

Perfectionism is Procrastination

In 2009, I wrote an entry on this very blog about creative procrastination. In it, I expressed a view that when one is procrastinating, it's often a sign of something else, and in this entry, it was about lack of drive. There are those that do and those that talk about doing. The people who carry through with a project are driven to do so by something deep within, while those that think about doing something and never carry through lack drive. That lack of drive can stem from a number of factors: either they're not really that interested in it, or perhaps they're suffering a form of writers-block. But what if perfectionism is the culprit?

I bought the Brooks Jensen 'single exposure' series recently. They're small A5 booklets containing small, easy to digest articles by Brooks on many subjects related to photography. One that got me this week was his article about perfectionism. I've written about this a few times in the past myself, and I entirely agree with his viewpoint that perfectionism is a form of procrastination. Except, that I think that what perfectionism does, is create a form of creative constipation (otherwise known as writers block).

By setting the bar too high, your abilities are no long able to keep up with your own standards, and ultimately, everything you do, is found to be wanting, lacking in some way. This causes severe dissatisfaction in what you're doing (which kills the whole point in why you started photography in the first place), and before you know it - the whole thought of going out with your camera to do anything, fills you with dread.

In my previous posts about Perfectionism, some of the replies indicated that Perfectionism is ultimately a destructive attitude. I completely agree. But what we need to do instead, is strive for Excellence. There is a subtle but major difference between Perfectionism and Excellence. Perfectionism is the act of striving for something that is not possible while striving for Excellence allows you the freedom to reach the best of your current abilities.

Being too much of a perfectionist, means that you may never actually finish anything, because it's never good enough, or because you feel it's not reached some unobtainable standard - and it never will.

In my own photography, It would be all too easy to look back at some of my best images, and worry that any new work will not be as good, or will not be an improvement. I think measuring yourself in this way is dangerous to your creativity. For creativity to flow, you need to let go and see what happens. By placing no constraints on yourself when you are out making new images, can you possibly create some new work. It is only when you return from a shoot that you should allow yourself to be critical and strive for excellence, but don't strive for Perfectionism, because you'll never get there.

Which reminds me, that next time I'm out shooting, not to beat myself up so much, when I feel things aren't going the way I hoped - this is a reference back to my recent trip to Iceland in June, where I just so happened to create a body of work I'm extremely pleased with, but didn't feel it was coming together at the time of the shoot.