Do you filter down (reduce), or build up (introduce) objects into your compositions?

I'm always intrigued by the journey from the moment I step out with my camera and come up with the final image. It's a filtering down process for many, but for me it's the opposite way around. Let me explain.

Many workshop participants tell me that when they are confronted with some new location, they find it hard to filter it down to one or two main subjects. I remember one participant telling me that they 'start with everything and have to reduce it down to one or two things over a matter of an hour or so'. Certainly, I'm aware that for some - being confronted with some new scenery can make things very hard to distill into a coherent composition. Everything is vying for your attention and it can be hard to give some elements priority over others.

In the main image to this post today, I show you the final image from a shoot in Hokkaido last December. For me, I tend to be drawn to a subject instantly. It's the opposite of the 'filtering down' approach that some of my participants describe. For me, what tends to happen is I see one thing in the distance and I'm so attracted to it, that everything else around it disappears. Let's zoom out from the image above and have a look at the surrounding landscape near it in the image below:

This is exactly what I saw from the side window of my guide's car and I felt compelled enough to ask him to stop so I could go and make a photo of the tree. In fact - if you look closer - you'll see i'm in the shot - making my way across a river bed that was covered in snow, to get to the tree. 

Can you spot the tree I photographed? 

I like to think that if something is worth photographing - is strong enough as a compositional subject -  it will tend to catch my eye. Like window shopping, I often find something jumps out at me. I think this is a combination of visual awareness and visualisation at play. The awareness to spot something and the visualisation to imagine how it could be with other items removed or reduced in the composition.

I often find I start with one object, and introduce others. In the instance of the main image in this blog, I did exactly that - despite all the clutter and confusion of other trees at the roadside, I could 'see' the lone tree sitting on its own, and I knew there was potential. I also understood that I would have very little else in the frame to draw attention away from it once I got closer. I saw all this from the passenger seat of my guide's car and I believe I utilised my visualisation skills in order to 'see' it.

Once I was closer to the tree, I started to think about the surrounding landscape and which elements, if any, I could introduce into the scene. I've introduced the sun into the frame, as this was more a fortuitous event rather than something I'd noticed in advance. I made several shots - some without the sun and some with, because I can never tell at the time whether I'm overcomplicating something, so I like to make insurance shots for later on. I'm convinced I can only do good editing while at home behind my computer, not while on location. But the key point I'm trying to make is that I started with the tree and slowly started to introduce the surrounding landscape into the scene.  

So which way do you tend to visualise your compositions? Are you a 'start with everything and filter it down to a few objects', or do you start with one thing that grabs your interest, and slowly introduce other objects into the frame?

The undefined line

Sometimes, what we're really attracted to in a picture, is not the form or the subject, but the contrast between where the subject begins and where it ends.

Kitami , Tanno, Hokkaido, Image © Bruce Percy 2015

I think that's why I love images where the main subject in the frame isn't so clear. My mind has to 'fill in the gaps'.

These Hokkaido images were made with this in mind. But the editing had to be done carefully. Just like writing a story, I needed to decide on the correct amount of detail to provide. If I had given too much away, the viewer's interest may wane, and if I hadn't give enough away, the viewer may have been confused and lost. 

Kitami , Tanno, Hokkaido, Image © Bruce Percy 2015

It was interesting for me to shoot these images. I was confronted with absolutely nothing (and I mean nothing). I felt like I might get snow-blindness because I could not discern the sky from the ground and I found that my mind wanted to fill in the emptiness with something.

Just the hint of a tree, and my eye's seemed to latch onto it, like I was clutching at a lifebuoy ring.

Our visual system 'constructs what we see'. This is why we see faces in the shapes of rocks for instance. So when I was working in these empty places, I couldn't help but find my mind was going into over-drive, trying to imagine more than what was there. If you've ever been driving in a white out, you''ll have experienced your mind imagining obstacles that come out of the snow in front of your path.

So with these edits, I wanted to ask the viewer to work a little harder. The first image requires more work than the last one does. I love playing around with different strengths of contrast, not only while I'm editing work, but also at the time of capture. I was well aware that sometimes the trees would come and go, surface and sink behind a veil of snow.

You see, not everything is so clear cut - in art as it is in life, and why should it be? Through concealing elements within the frame, we invite the viewers minds to imagine what may be there - to fill in the gaps, and that's no bad thing at all :-)

Four views of Lake Kussharo

I visited lake Kussharo in Hokkaido, Japan one day last December, on what was a murky grey day. I love overcast days and days when the to most non-photographers the weather would be considered 'bad'.

On the horizon I could see the snow-covered hills that surround Kussharo veiled in mist and low-pressure clouds. The lake itself had taken on a milky greyness to it (light reflected from the grey sky) which I felt complimented the black volcanic beach.

I saw many similarities with this location, weather wise and also subject wise, with Patagonia's Torres del Paine national park. Both possess a stark beauty which only becomes apparent to us photographers once we embrace muted colours and tones. I see a beauty in landscapes when they appear to most as bleak - I hope you do too.

But Kussharo had much to offer with overhanging trees leaning towards the water, and I spent much time roaming up and down its edge looking for suitable trees that had separation from their neighbours like the image below.

I spent quite a bit of time on this tree, positioning the far-off hill between the branches, and ensuring that the branches themselves didn't protrude out of the confines of my frame. I think I have two or three rolls of images (30) shot at this very spot where I experimented with my tripod height until I felt I'd fully explored the compositional possibilities here.

And sometimes removing lake edge trees seemed to be the way to go. I like to try to get as many different interpretations of a place that I can. I think it's easy to get lost in searching for great foreground subjects all the time, when there may be an image there that doesn't require one. 

And just before we left, I noticed some coastal decorations in the water. Hokkaido and indeed Japan, seems to have many coastal defences around its periphery - I'm not sure if they intended for Tsunami defence, or just coastal erosion, but it was interesting to note that a small 'coastal defence' had been put here at the edge of Lake Kussharo.

The weather was rather murky and wet, and my guide had a lot of work with the last image helping me shield the lens of my camera because it was pointing straight into the wind (and rain). But I feel I made a collection of images that have a certain character and feel to them on a day I feel that many people would prefer to stay in-doors.

I often feel that the difference between the impression we get from a photograph and how it felt to be at a location are often quite different. So many times I could be overwhelmed by the bad weather and choose not to go out, only to miss great potential. If I get soft light and a good composition, I don't sit at home going 'yuck - really horrible weather'. Instead I'm often pulled in by the tonal shifts that happen through a picture where soft light played around.

I'm not a fair-weather photographer, because that would be extremely limiting to what I photograph. I made (in my view) four really nice images on a day that many wouldn't consider ideal and I did it not just because of the soft tones present, but because I felt there was atmosphere and mood present, and also, because experience has taught me that these kinds of days are beautiful in their own way.

Veiled landscapes

When I researched my trip to Hokkaido, I had wanted to include the famous 'blue pond'. Many of you will know it from one of the desktop images that is available on the Apple Mac OS.

The blue pond, Hokkaido, Japan December 2015
Image © Bruce Percy

I'd been told by my guide, that this pond is frozen over from November until late April and there is often a lot of snow covering the surface. So the chances of seeing any colour would be minimal.

The winters here are extremely cold. I mean really, really cold - Siberia cold. So I turned up in mid December expecting to use snow shoes and wearing all my clothes and underwear at the same time ;-) Only, I think the weather was really messed up due to El Niño. I found Hokkaido practically balmy with temperatures above freezing.

One positive aspect to this change in the usual December climate was that the landscape was covered in a mist, which I think was brought on by the warm air mixing with the cold snow covered landscape.

So when I met my guide on the very first day of the trip, I asked him if the blue pond would be visible. What I didn't understand until after I'd seen it shrouded in fog, was that this is a very unusual situation to have. In fact, I think my guide told me that he had never seen the blue pond like this before.

The Blue Pond, Hokkaido, Japan, 2015
Image © Bruce Percy

It's often hard to judge your feelings on visiting a place for the first time. When I think about some of the places I go to each year as a repeating schedule of my workshop itinerary, sometimes I see a landscape in very unusual conditions and despite telling my participants how unusual it is, I think we all come away from our first experiences with an assumption that this is how it always is.

Certainly for me, I loved the blue pond so much that l asked my guide if we could stay nearby so I could try to photograph it again in the morning. What I discovered the next day though, was that not only had the fog dissipated over night, but so too had any atmosphere to the place. I made zero photographs this day as a result.

I love fog. It can reduce backgrounds to nothingness, and can give a sense of depth to 3D objects when converted into 2D

Fog also adds mystery. We enjoy not knowing the full story and I'm convinced that our minds enjoy filling in the gaps - what we can't see - we imagine.

Density Ratio? - New Hokkaido Images

I've just completed work on a new set of images, shot over a six day duration on the Japanese island of Hokkaido.

I have wanted to come here ever since I got to know the beautiful mono work of Michael Kenna. He has been photographing this island for over a decade and his images are really a lesson in simplification.

Over the past few months, I've become aware that I seem to be very selective with regards to how 'dense' the scenes are that I choose to shoot. I think when you're peering through a viewfinder at a white canvas with only one tiny little tree, you are forced to think long and hard about what it is that you're trying to do. How minimalist can one go?

I know that many consider my style 'minimalist' but I've come to realise that I do look for a certain ratio or degree of emptiness in my compositions. 

I am wondering if each of us has a 'goldilocks' ratio for our own compositions? For example, perhaps if you look at your own work, you can see there is a trend to shoot very busy scenes over less busy ones? My feeling is that each of us has a gut instinct to go for a certain amount of objects in the frame. If we find a scene that is more empty than we are used to, we feel either unsure or insecure as to whether it 'feels right', and the same too if the scene is more complex than we normally shoot. If this is the case, I think it simply may be down to a matter of taste, something each of us chooses based on our own aesthetic sensibilities.

So with this thought in mind, I am going to actively give myself more permission to vary the complexity of my compositions in future.

I'd like to think this is perhaps a signal, something that is telling me that what I want to do with my photography is changing, or maybe it's just a recognition that I do tend to gravitate towards the very simple most of the time, and there are other kinds of compositions out there that are equally as valid, but I'm missing out on, because my own aesthetic taste keeps forcing me to work within a small range of 'acceptable compositions' Time will tell.

The new Hokkaido portfolio is up under my 'new work section of this website.

Looking forward

Dear all,

I'm in the Atacama desert at the moment and new year is almost upon us. I always find new year a time for pause and this year I seem to be looking back to my very first travels to South America in 2003.

Back then, I had only really been into photography for about three years. Up until my trip to Patagonia, I had been mainly making photographs as a memento of my travels. But Patagonia changed all that and I found that my time there turned my hobby of travel into a secondary aim: I was traveling to make photographs now, not the other way round.

Since then I've been back many times. Patagonia has become an almost yearly adventure for me, and indeed, a home from home. It is also dear to my heart because back in 2007,  it was where I ran my very first workshop! So there is a deep connection to this place for me for several reasons.

And so too the Bolivian and Chilean Atacama desert. First venturing here in 2009, this place has become somewhere where I feel I've grown as a photographer. I've written in the past that the Bolivian landscape helped me to simplify my style over the years. I feel it is a place I am still building a relationship with as I notice my photography is evolving from my visits here.

So too with Iceland. I have had a long standing, and deepening relationship with it since 2004. First venturing around the ring-road  on the local busses, I spent a glorious summer photographing throughout the beautiful evenings. This trip has stayed with me as one of the more pivotal moments in my own photographic journey. I feel my photography came on in leaps and bounds.

You may have noticed from the way I have been writing about Patagonia and Bolivia, that I like to get to know places by returning many times, over many years. I feel this approach allows me to connect more deeply as I begin to learn and understand how the landscape works.

And now to the present day. 

Last month I visited Hokkaido. It was in some respects, a 'rite of passage'. I know some of the places here so well through the work of Michael Kenna, that the trip here felt like I was re-connecting with who I was way back in 2000 when I first picked up a camera. I felt as though I am at the start of hopefully a new and lasting relationship with this landscape, but that is really for the future to show me.

So I am now looking ahead. In 2016 there are a few new locations lined up, that I am looking forward to visiting for the very first time. Knowing the way I seem to work, I hope that they may be the start of some new life-long relationship, where my appreciation and depth of understanding grows as the years pass, and that maybe my association with these new places brings new insights and enlightenment to my photography.

By looking back, I see that I've come so far and I delight in realising that I may still have a long way to go, both in terms of life-experiences and artistic development. This I feel, is at the core of why we photograph -  to experience life and find ourselves inspired and engaged in the future. It's a great way to go through life.

Here's to 2016 and beyond.

I wish you well.

Thoughts at Lake Kussharo, Hokkaido

I often see similarities between one place in the world, and another. 

Me photographing at the edge of beautiful lake Kussharo, Hokkaido Japan, December 2015.

I've been on the island of Hokkaido in northern Japan for the past week or so, and I have been surprised to find that the landscape here often reminds me of Patagonia. For example, on the shores of lake Kussharo, I found myself thinking I was somewhere in Torres del Paine national park. This is in part because of the weather but mostly it was because the shoreline was black volcanic sand and the vegetation scattered around the edges were also similar to what I've seen in Patagonia.

But the similarities didn't end there. In northern Hokkaido, in the town of Wakkanai, a small fishing town situated on the coast, I felt that I could have been in Punta Arenas on the edge of the Magellan straight. Both towns have an 'end of the world' feeling to them. Tinned roofed buildings, rusting industrialisation scattered in the fields, and the low flat coast line with a sea that could be a channel, or an ocean. Punta Arenas and Wakkanai were inseparable in my mind.

Laguna Armaga, Patagonia. Image © Stacey Williams (thanks stacey!)

Perhaps though, the reason why I see so many similarities between different places in the world is much simpler than I may imagine: it might be a case that I'm drawn to those places because they are comfortably familiar to me: they resemble my own country of Scotland in ways that are not immediately apparent to me. I may be just be drawn to places because underneath - they offer the same things. Similar weather, similar terrain. Ultimately, they offer something deeply comforting because I 'understand' or 'know' them so well.

But I think it's really just that the more I travel, the more I will be prone to draw comparisons between places. It's unavoidable really. 

Either way, I enjoyed seeing the resemblances. It allowed me to look more closely than I would if I was just a normal tourist, and it's also very comforting to experience a sense of familiarity while I'm on my travels: everywhere feels like home.

Hokkaido is perhaps a place I will be returning to from now on.

Acknowledging your influences

I'm in Hokkaido, Japan right now. It's lovely to be here.

Acknowledging one's own influences is good for the creative-soul. It's good to give credit where credit is due, and it's also very humbling to recognise that there is no such thing as true originality: we derive our work from what inspires us.

I think that acknowledging your influences is first and foremost a respectful thing to do. But it is also a way of understanding and tapping in to what it is that drives you forward as a photographer. 

Homage to Michael Kenna, Hokkaido, Japan, December 2015

I have learned so much by following (literally) in the footsteps of some of my heroes. I first visited Patagonia in 2003 because of Gallen Rowell's images of Torres del Paine national park in Chile. And now I am in Hokkaido, guided there by the inspiring photographs of the island by Michael Kenna.

When we do follow in the footsteps of our heroes, a few things happen. Firstly, we learn why certain locations worked for them, but we also learn a lot about ourselves in the process. I've arrived at a location I know through someone else's work whom I admire, only to find out that the landscape is more urbanised than I had thought. Or maybe I find out that there is simply only one aspect to shooting the location. Either way - I learn. And if I am fortunate enough, I may see other possibilities in the landscape: a view, or a fresh aspect that was not explored by my hero.

Following in someone else's footsteps is a worthy thing to do. But hopefully at some point, we begin to forge our own path. Even if you are visiting the same place as your hero, hopefully you'll begin to find your own voice after a while. I certainly think this is how my time in Patagonia has panned out for me over the last decade: where I initially saw Galen Rowell everywhere, I have moved past this and have found my own aesthetic in the Patagonian landscape. Now that I am here in Hokkaido, I acknowledge that I am at the very beginning of finding my own voice here. At this very moment,  Hokkaido is Michael Kenna and Michael Kenna is Hokkaido.

One thing that I'm acutely aware of, is just how much work MK put into crafting his vision of this island. It is a very personalised one, because on the surface, Hokkaido looks nothing like his images suggest. For one, it is a very populous place. It has as many people living here as there are in my native Scotland (5.5 million), and the landscape is not as pure and empty of people as MK's images suggest: the main source of industry on Hokkaido is that of agriculture and the landscape is littered with farms.

Looking for Tonal Separation

I’ve been coming to Iceland for over a decade and often visit it several times a year. It has become a home from home, somewhere that I feel I have built up a deep visual relationship with.

One aspect of returning many times to the same location, is that its appearance can be quite different during different seasons. In the winter months, Iceland can be shrouded in a blanket of snow, and this I feel can add a dynamic contrast to the black beaches found on the south coast.

View of Reynisdrangar sea stacks from Dyrhólaey, South Iceland, 2012. Image © Bruce Percy

I think my image of the distant sea stacks at Reynisdrangar, shot from Dyrhólaey illustrate just that. I was particularly drawn to the tonal separation between the foreground sea stack of Dyrhólaey against the background snow covered cliffs of Reynisdrangar. When I have visited this location during the summer months, the background cliffs are often too similar in tone to the foreground stack. So much so, that they often merge to become one confused mess in my viewfinder.
 

Some thoughts on to working on tonal separation

Perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve reached by visiting the same places during different seasons is in reading the tonal separation between objects in my view. I feel I am now at a level in my art where I make ‘black and white’ images ‘in colour’ (I often find that when I convert my colour images to monochrome, very little change is required because I am reading the tones of the scene at the time of capture). Well, I'd certainly like to think this is the case ;-)

I believe the biggest pit-fall for many of us is our inability to abstract a scene into an image. To do this, we need to understand that the skills used to compose our camera on location are no different from the skills we use to interpret and edit a scene during the ‘post-process’ phase. In fact, I abhor the term ‘post-process’ because it encourages us to think differently about two tasks that should use the same skills. The pit-fall is that many of us don't.

While out in the field, rather than thinking ‘tree’, ‘river’ or ‘bridge’, I try to think about the tones present within the scene. Because this is what I do when I am ‘post-processing’ my images.  If you are a film photographer, I would suggest using a spot meter, as it helps me build up a mental picture of the tones contained within the frame. If you are a digital shooter, then I would suggest using live-view. Live-view is fantastic because it transforms a scene into 2D for you. It further helps you abstract the real world into a tiny postcard image on the back of your camera. If you make the distinction in your mind by thinking of the back of your screen as a photo, rather than a view of live scenery, then you're on the right track.

To aid in helping you think more about tonal separation, try turning the jpeg settings to monochrome as this will give you a black and white rendition on your live-view screen. The Raw file will still be in colour but you will have a tonal rendition on your camera that should aid you in noticing tonal errors much more easily. You should be able to see more clearly tonal errors such as foreground objects merging into background objects or two objects of similar tone colliding with each other. Beware though that often green and red have the same tonal rendition in monochrome.

In praise of shadows

I've been reading a beautiful book called 'In Praise of Shadows'.  It was written by the Japanese author and novelist Jun'ichirō Tanizaki and is considered a classic essay on Japanese aesthetics.

As a westerner, I find reading Tanizaki's book is opening up some thoughts for me about light, the way we use it in the west, and in particular, how varying levels can be employed to create a sense of quietness in our environment. Tanizaki talks at great length about the beauty of shadows.

Although his book may be more related to architecture design, I do feel that as a photographer, it's touched upon something that is close to my own heart: that of how I respond to my surroundings. In the days of old Japan, subdued lighting was used to give a sense of calm or 'quietness' to a space. Areas of shadow were an intentional and appreciated consideration to building design. My feelings are often influenced by the lighting of my environment, and I find that most modern, brightly lit places aren't relaxing places to be.

Shadows are the places where our imagination is given free reign. In Tanizaki's book, he delights in suggesting that the corner of ancient temples where very little light penetrates, allow the mind to find quietness and a space in which to dwell. While reading Tanizaki's thoughts, I couldn't help but feel I always knew this. I think that most of us do.  I just needed someone to spell it out for me. 

For instance, as a child, I remember being afraid of the dark and would ask for the hall light to remain on, because in the shadows I could see many possibilities. This is something most children do, and in my adult life as a photographer, I find I still see possibilities in areas of negative space or where shadows exist.

As I've progressed as a photographer, I've had to open my eyes to what is really before me. I have come to know that I am sensitive to light levels where initially I had no idea that I was. Shining a direct light into my eyes is tantamount to a pneumatic drill crowding my thoughts. I've despised overhead lighting for many years, for this very reason.  Likewise, on overly sunny days I may have the blinds lowered in my home to give the degree of visual comfort that I emotionally require.

This sensitivity to light, is something I try to imbue in my photographs. I think all visual artists should.

Tanizaki's book allows me to embrace this - I know now that shadows are beautiful and used carefully in one's work, they can add depth as well as mystery. They also give me space for my imagination to roam free.

As a visual artist, I understand that my surroundings are important to me, not just because they are the subjects of my photography, but because the qualities of light they possess influence it in ways that I was never truly aware of, until I read this book.

Many thanks to Jeff Bannon for recommending this book to me.