Your portfolio shapes who you are

I'm just on my way home from Bhutan, where I had a really great trip making some new portraits. Portraits? Yep - that's right. I don't just do landscape images, but when I get the chance, I love to photograph people.

It's been a while though and I've found my mind is bringing back earlier memories of my time in India and Nepal in 2009. I feel very reflective about it as I remember who I was at that time - how I felt about life and the ideals I held at that time. This recent trip to Bhutan has made me think about the implications of my photography with regards to how I live my life now and how I've changed over the years.

Portraits, amassed throughout the years.
Image © Bruce Percy

Every interaction we have in our lives to some degree, becomes a part of us. We are always collating and storing away our experiences. They shape and form our opinions and ideals as we travel through our lives.

In essence, we are our memories. They shape who we are.

I think the same ideal holds true with the work we create. Building up a collection of work over many years is like being in the middle of an unfolding story, one that is being written and will not be completed until we put down our camera for the very last time.

I often rediscover my memories through my older work
Images © Bruce Percy

As I've looked back at my earlier work, I've seen how much I've grown as a photographer. This has been in tandem with me thinking about how much I've learned as a human being from all the interactions I've had with others through my photography.

For example in Nepal I spent three weeks getting to know many of the temple worshipers around the Kathmandu valley, while in Cambodia I met two girls who failed to sell me bracelets for many days until they became indifferent to my presence. It was only then that I was able to captured a photograph of them fishing at the side of a lake. In Japan I stood under a marquee tent and captured a Geisha as she was looking away from me and in Ethiopia I got to know many of the deacons of Lalibela through my guide Muchaw.

I'm sure these experiences have shaped my opinions and outlook over the years. How could they not?

I often think that photography is the act of submission: we give ourselves permission to go out there and enquire, but we also give ourselves the permission to accept what experiences come our way.

Now that I have ended my trip to Bhutan, I am excited to think that my experiences and memories from this trip will shape and help define the work I edit, and that this work over time, will become part of my portfolio but perhaps more importantly, it will become part of me. Because once a new work is born, it is as though it was always here, waiting to be acknowledged and accepted as part of who I am.

When Absence becomes a presence

I’m often inspired by something that someone has said. Today I was listening to an interview with the Scottish poet Jackie Kay where she was asked why she wrote. Her reply made me think very much about my own photography.

Higashikagura, Hokkaido, Japan
Image © Bruce Percy 2015

She said that she is interested when something that is missing in one’s life becomes a presence. This particularly moved me as it reminded me of someone I once knew who told me that their loneliness was all they had left. Jackie concluded her interview with an almost mantra like repeating that ‘absence becomes a presence’. 

And I realised that absence does not equal ‘nothingness’. 

It is so easy to assume that if there appears to be nothing there, that there is indeed nothing there. Nothingness can actually mean something, it can actually be something tangible and possible to read and interpret emotionally.

In the case of photographs where there are lots of empty spaces, these empty spaces often aren’t really empty at all. Instead they often contain meaning in some way to us. And it is the meaning of these empty parts of the frame that intrigue me.

Firstly, let’s get the obvious reasons why empty spaces in a photograph may be important. For those of us who are thinking in terms of composition, space allows us to separate parts of the scene from other parts. Space also allows us to convey a more relaxed feeling in photographs when its used well. But this is really far too obvious and superficial for me and it doesn’t really touch upon the more emotional reasons why I may find space in photographs enormously powerful.

What I love about space is that it often conveys a presence of some kind and there are reasons, routed to how the human visual system works, why this is so. 

Our visual system has spent all its life processing thousands of shapes and tones that are constantly changing in front of us into some meaningful semblance. We are able to work out that certain shapes and tones mean we are looking at a chair or a table for example and that other shapes and tones are other kinds of objects. And because our visual system is always on, it is always striving to make sense of what is placed in front of it.

When our visual system is confronted with nothing, it can't handle the idea that there is nothing there, so it is forced to believe that this is not true. We get an emotional feeling that there must be something there.

For me, this mistrust is an instinctive one. It is  is what gives me the feeling that there is more to these empty spaces than meets the eye. In essence, empty spaces are wildcards, placeholders that say ‘put whatever you want in here’. They give my imagination permission to run free and stirs an emotional trigger in me where I ‘feel’ there is something there, even though I know there appears to be nothing.

Jackie Kay’s comment that ‘absence becomes a presence’ just reaffirms my feelings that these ‘empty spaces’ in my photography actually contain some form of presence and emotional meaning. To assume that space does nothing or conveys no form of emotional meaning would be a terrible oversight on our part as photographers.

When your confidence leaves you

I remember having a discussion with a client of mine many years ago about confidence. She was telling me at the time that I obviously had a lot of confidence in what I do, which was a revelation to me at the time, as I had never associated confidence with the art of creativity until then.

Hindu, Bodha Stupa, Kathmandu, Nepal
Image © Bruce Percy 2009

Since that conversation, I've had many opportunities to think about it and I believe that she was right. I did have confidence in what I do, because I think that I've been very comfortable with the creative-arts for most of my life: I was an arty kid who was always drawing and painting, and as a teenager I was a musician who composed and made up songs all the time. So I don't think I've ever had any fear of trying out new things or experimenting. I guess you could say that the opposite of confidence in the realm of being creative, is the fear of making a mistake. 

These days, I have this little mantra: "each time I pick up my camera, I give myself permission to fail". 

Creativity is all about experimentation, and to experiment we need to be open to anything happening. And one of the possibilities is that we may fail. If I were to go along with the attitude that everything I do must be a success, then I would no longer be experimenting since to experiment means we are trying out things that may or may not work.

This week I am in Bhutan to make portraits of the country's people. I love street photography and close up portraiture of people, but I seldom get a chance to do it because of my yearly landscape workshop schedule.

Yet here I am, suffering from a massive crisis of confidence. I am finding it very hard indeed to make a connection and begin the process of making new people photographs. I am out of practice I tell myself. 'Nothing is any good' I hear a voice tell me in the back of my mind. Another voice say 'It isn't your thing' and I realise that I am going the wrong way with my approach. I need to back off a little, relax and enjoy the trip for what it is. The pictures will come when I least expect it.

Nepalese girl, Baktapur, Kathmandu
Image © Bruce Percy 2009

And this comes to be true. Yesterday while feeling very perplexed by my complete loss of confidence to make portraits of people I find myself approached by an old man on a bridge near one of the Dzong temples. He asks me 'did you find happiness in there?', and I somehow feel as if he's been sent to give me a message. I begin my conversation with him and by the end of it, find I'm feeling much more enthused and relaxed. He has calmed me down. Grounded me when I needed it. 

A few minutes later, another old man approaches me. This time he is a Bhutanese and very photogenic. He has a big smile on his face and takes my hand. I feel encouraged and ask him if I may photograph him. He says yes. Ahhhh I say to myself 'things are beginning to happen'. 

I just needed to back off a little, start to enjoy the exchange and also understand, that the photographs will come when they come. Just like when we meet those important people in our lives, they appear when we least expect them, and they come through no contrivance.

I hope that over the coming days my confidence will grow. I am so out of touch with making people pictures, and I'm quite shy with people in this regard anyway - I recognise that it has always been a difficult thing for me to do and that it is often a slow process. One where the accumulation of images comes over several weeks not days.

So let's see where this takes me.

Bolivian Altiplano - 1 space available

Next April (26th - 5th May), I'm heading back to the Chilean Atacama and Bolivian Altiplano to run a tour there. I've got 1 last space for anyone who would like to come, and I will be closing off this last space soon if you are thinking about it.

What I love about this landscape is that it's all about light and colour. It is a place for those who love minimalism not just in terms of structure of objects in the frame, but also in terms of simplification of colour. I feel  this landscape is first and foremost about colour, and secondly about composition.

The Siloli desert, Bolivian Altiplano.

It is also quite an adventure to come here. The landscape is vast, empty and remote. We travel by Land Cruisers with a Bolivian guide and drivers. We head out each morning before sunrise, often driving over the largest salt flat in the world to get to our locations. Our drivers navigate in the dark by referring to the distant volcanos on the horizon, as there are no obvious roads to speak of.

The altitude is high here, but I've been running the trip here now for more than five years. So I've had plenty of time to tune it to ensure that we acclimatise well.

If you like an adventure, then this is for you. 

The proof is in the print

I've been working on my images for next year's exhibition (I know, it's a long way away, but I really need to utilise my free time - which is in short supply, when I have it). 

Despite having a calibrated monitor which I feel gives a very close representation of what I might expect to see on my prints, I have found that the only way to truly spot errors or inconsistencies in the tones of my images, is to print them and leave them lying around my house.

This does not mean there are any short comings in my monitor, nor any errors in the calibrating or profiling of it either. In fact, any issues I notice in the final print can often be seen on the monitor if I go back to check. This suggests a few things:

1. The human eye perceives electronic images differently than printed images

2. To get the best out of your work, you really need to print it.

I pride myself in having a tightly calibrated system as you can see below - my Eizo monitor is so well matched to my daylight viewing both, that I seldom find prints 'way off'. But this doesn't get round the fact that once I see an image in print form, I may find that either it's tonal aspects aren't as strong as I thought they were. Going back to the monitor to look again, I will find that the print has shown me problems in the work that are visible on the monitor, but somehow, I only became aware of them once I saw them in print form.

Daylight viewing booth and verification test print to confirm monitor is actually calibrated! (it's the only way to confirm calibration and profiling).

As much as I think that *all* photographers *should* print. I realise that many of us don't. Now that we live in the digital age, it seems as if printing is becoming something that many of us don't require. We edit, we resize for the web and we upload.

But if you do care about your work, and wish to push it further along, then I can think of no better thing to do than print it out. If you have a calibrated, colour managed system, then any problems you see in the print are most likely problems that you somehow weren't 'seeing' on the monitor. It is a chance for you to 'look again' and learn.

I've gained so much from my printing. I've realised that my monitor can only be trusted up to a point, and that if after reviewing prints I further tune them to give me a better print, I also improve them in electronic form also. But mostly, I'm teaching my eye to really see tonal inconsistencies and spot them more easily in the future. And that's no bad thing indeed, as photography is after all, the act of learning to see.

Last remaining Deluxe copies

I've just found 4 remaining copies of my Iceland 'Deluxe' edition, which I had thought had sold out a few years ago. This is the version of the book that comes with three prints of the beach at Jokulsarlon - so they can be framed as a tryptich. Perhaps a nice christmas present for somebody (perhaps yourself? !)  :-)

Deluxe edition comes with 3 prints that can be framed as a tryptych. 

Preface by Ragnar Axelsson

Release Date: 1 November 2012
ISBN 978-0-9569561-1-8
Hardback, Cloth, 30cm x 28cm. 
64 pages with 45 colour plates.

First edition. Limited to 1,000 copies.

This book encapsulates all of Bruce's nocturnal photographs of Iceland made between 2004 and 2012.

The book has a strong nocturnal theme. Mainly a monograph in nature, it is interspersed with entries from Bruce's journal with thoughts that deal with his experiences of shooting the icelandic landscape in subdued light.

The book can be seen as a photographic day, shot over many years with the opening presenting us with late evening shots. As the book progresses, we move into the small hours of the summer night, where there is no night at all. The book concludes with winter shots made during the fleeting sunrise and sunset of the shortest days of the year.

This book comes in four variations:

• Standard Edition
• Signed Edition with Jokulsarlon Ice Lagoon Print (60 copies).
• Signed Edition with Selfoss Waterfall Print (60 copies).
• Deluxe Edition (book with 3 special Ice lagoon prints, 50 copies).

The prints are 7" x 9" in size, printed on A4 Museo Silver Rag Fine Art Photo Paper.
The have been printed signed and numbered by Bruce.

when the light draws you nearer

We all need an element of mystery in our lives, whether it is through books, music or art. Mystery is a space in which we can lose ourselves and conjure up our own personal thoughts and feelings. It is a place-holder, a space that no one can dictate to us what we should be thinking or feeling. It is ours to own.

I remember reading an article by the late Galen Rowell (he died in 2001 before the digital revolution really took off) describing a day when we would have so much control over our images that we may be too obsessed by having detail right down in to the deepest of tones in our work. His concern, if I remember rightly, was that many images would lose any sense of mystery. As he pointed out in his article, humans have always seen mystery in darkness or areas of the landscape were it is impossible to define shape or detail. Our primal instincts tell us that dark places can be full of unknown dangers and that we must be careful. I think that when we look at images where there are lots of dark tones, with almost no definition, we tap into that primal instinct.

I really love playing around with the full tonal register available to me. Sometimes my images are deliberately very bright while other times the images are consciously very very dark. It's something I feel I'm still learning to flex my visual muscle with, but at the back of it, is Galen Rowell's article from 2000 reminding me that shadows convey mystery.

Something new in the familiar

I've often felt that the biggest limiting factor in my own photography - is myself. It's not the scenery, it's not the weather - it's me. 

Isle of Harris November 2016, Lumix GX1
(I use a small Lumix GX 1 for composition illustration purposes during my workshops) 
Image © Bruce Percy

This is not a post about putting myself down. It's more a recognition that if something isn't working in the landscape, it's unlikely that it's the landscape's fault, but rather my own limitations to 'see' something beyond my own prejudices.

How often have you heard someone, or yourself say 'it wasn't happening today', or 'there's nothing here'. These kinds of statements say more about us than they do about the landscape, even though the language infers that the landscape didn't provide. A better statement to hear is 'I didn't see anything' or 'I find this place difficult'. With these statements we at least indicate that the problem lies within us, not the landscape. But they still have a degree of suggestion that the landscape may not be providing what we want. And there is the rub. 

Having to get past our own prejudices requires us to accept ourselves. We must see our own blindness, and we must also recognise that it is *never* the landscape's fault. It is our own.

If we cannot see something, then we should ask ourselves - what is it that we expect to see? And if we have any expectations, are they something we should entertain, or put to one side?

My own feelings on this matter is that we are often full of self deception. We go to bed full of expectations for the next morning, hoping the sunrise shoot will provide us with what we have already envisioned, or seek. But really, the landscape has no knowledge of us, or what we seek. It is just what it is, what it has to be at that moment in time. Our will or expectations is an illusion. It is our idea that somehow, we have control over what we want the landscape to be.

I often feel that photography is really a leveller. It tells us this: 'the landscape will be what it wants to be, and we have to adopt an open mind to see the beauty in what it is providing us with. Any expectations we had, any pre assumptions about what we hoped it might be - are our own issues to deal with.

Isle of Harris November 2016, Lumix GX1
(I use a small Lumix GX 1 for composition illustration purposes during my workshops) 
Image © Bruce Percy

This past week, I've been on the isle of Harris - a small island in the outer hebrides of Scotland - my home land. It is a landscape and island that I have been coming to since 2009. I feel I know it well. Yet, this week one of my participants has found a new place on a beach I have been to many times. I am excited because I have found new things here, but I am also reminded that I have been here many times before and didn't see what was in front of my eyes. 

Being a good photographer requires a large degree of humility to accept when one is wrong.  I thought I knew this island (I don't), I thought there was nothing new to find here (there is), I thought I couldn't be surprised after so many visits here (I can).

That's what I love about photography. It's really a metaphor for life: when you think you know something or someone, or some place, the chances are - you really don't. It encourages me to be as humble as I *should* be. Life is more surprising that I think it it is. Places surprise me all the time and offer up new compositions and new views that I had not thought possible. If that's just the landscape talking, then what about people? Should I cast my preconceptions aside? Because let's face it - if  a landscape can offer up something surprising, something new that we had not seen on previous visits, then anything, and I mean *anything* is always possible. 

Photography has taught me so much. But one thing it has repeatedly done is tell me to 'open my heart to the future'. It is often in the unexpected, the open ended possibilities of what might be,  that we often grow.

Longevity through Ambiguity & Suggestion

There is real danger in overworking an image to the point that the viewer has little chance to attach or develop their own sense of personal interpretation to it.

Hokkaido, Japan, December 2015
Image © Bruce Percy 2015

As a beginner, I was blinded by strong colours and contrasts and looking back, my eye was not tuned to appreciating subtle shades or hues. Everything had to be obvious, and for want of a better word - loud.

I feel that it has been a long journey (that is still in progress)  for me to begin to appreciate the finer and more subtle nuances of the art of image editing.  This has lead me to believe that the appreciation of the more subtle aspects of image 'reading'  tends to develop at the same time as our photographic eye develops. Where once I had to work at seeing what was really in front of my camera, so too, I overlooked the more subtle shades and tones of some of the finer imagery out there.

Without wishing to offend anyone, or take sides, I do feel that this is one reason why we sometimes see such heavily edited work on image forums. Sometimes the approach works well and we know the executor has a deft hand at the dramatic, but sometimes it is simply because the photographer is still learning to balance between what should be spelled out to the viewer what should be left to suggestion. With the later, I may be left feeling that the photographer behind the work is simply trying too hard. None of this is judgemental, but instead, I give this as an observation to how we start when we are new to photography and how our sensibilities alter and hopefully become more acute as time goes on.

We all, I believe, go through different periods of visual awareness. And there is really no short-cut to arriving at a sense of refinement.  For instance, in my own case, you wouldn't have been able to convince me a decade ago that what I liked may have lacked subtlety. I just liked what I liked.  Nowadays I may balk at what I did back then, but I realise I had to go through the growing pains (and still am) of learning to understand what makes a good image and what makes a great print.

Indeed, there is a place for everything. In music we have pop bands that are more like an audio bubblegum, and at the other end of the spectrum we have some music that some or perhaps many of us would find impenetrable, or just downright hard to listen to, let alone understand. And some music is instantly disposable while other pieces can become real growers that embed themselves into our lives.

I think the proof in one's own photography is in the staying power of the images we create. If we can make images that still resonate and work for us a few years down the line, then this would be a great achievement. The ultimate achievement however, is to create work that we are still proud of many decades later.

I think the only way to do this, is to try to build in some kind of depth to the work, a subtlety or perhaps deliberate ambiguity. It is through suggestion that the story can always be changed or reinterpreted as the years go by.

If your images are too forced, or lack any kind of space in which to allow the viewer to reinterpret them, then they may fail to have the longevity that you seek. But If your images do have room for further growth, through the use of subtitles such as delicate use of shade & colour,  then you may be on to something great

Hasselblad Cable Release Adaptor

If you have a Hasselblad V series (500 series) camera, and like me, find that you cannot get a cable release that will fit the body when using a short lens (such as the 80mm), then I thought it would be nice to let you know that it's possible to get either an L or U shaped adaptor from this company:

The website shopping cart system is a bit complicated to actually try to buy anything, but I've seen the U shape adaptor and it's perfect for the Hasselblad 500 series of cameras:

http://www.xn--drahtauslser-djb.com/SITE/PAdapter.html