I have a featured article in this month’s edition of the UK magazine ‘Outdoor Photography’, including a nice cover image of one of my images.
The article is all about working with winter scapes and understanding dynamic-range and how the human eye is unable to see absolute luminance.
We’re only here for a short while. And we all want to spend our time wisely. So the question we should all ask ourselves is this:
Q. do we cover as many places as we can, or do we focus our efforts on a few places and try to get to know them as best as we can?
This essentially boils down to these two options:
Spread ourselves thinly and visit as many different locations as we can, and hope that the work we create during our brief time there will have depth to it.
Concentrate ourselves to a few locations and focus on trying to build up a portfolio of work over a number of years of these places. The sacrifice is that you see a lot less of the world than you would if you chose option 1.
If there is an answer to this, then it’s maybe a bit of both options above. And something else: your drive. Although we may try to be logical and objective about what we should do, the truth is, we should respond to where we want to go from an emotional level. If you feel a pull to go back to a certain place again and again, then you should entertain it. Don’t thrown out a location simply because you’ve been only once. Repeat visits will give depth to your work and help you gain an understanding of a place that isn’t possible in one visit.
It really depends what kind of photographer you are. If self-development isn’t that important to you and you just enjoy being there and visiting / touring the world, then I think repeat visits aren’t of much interest for you. But if you are, like me, someone who wants to try to create work that is beyond the obvious, that is less derivative, then you have to find a few places that you can concentrate on and use as ongoing-projects.
I have learned so much from repeating places. I have also seen these places define my style. That’s something that I think is often overlooked: the kinds of landscapes you choose to photograph contribute to your style. Similarly, if you are going to certain kinds of landscapes, you should, after a while, see relationships between them. Common themes or aspects to them that will help you find out who you are as a photographer.
I’m not so interested in capturing ‘nuggets’ of work. Having 2 nice photos from one place, and 30 average shots doesn’t work for me. I’ve learned that it’s very hard to create outstanding work of a landscape in one shoot, one visit. A ten day trip to a location out of an entire lifetime is but a fleeting view of a place. Not a problem if you just enjoyed your time there and didn’t have any aspirations to create great work, but if you do, then you have to make that location a feature of your photographic-life and keep returning. It’s the only way to delve deeper, and to build up a strong set of images. That’s what I do.
I can’t stress how important it is, to find a place to call home, and to be grounded there every once in a while.
For the past ten years I have been living a nomadic life of sorts. I’m actually only really away for about 1/3rd of the year from my home, but it doesn’t feel like it, because there is always an adaption period - a settling-in time of around two weeks once I return from some extended travelling before I fully feel at home.
I know that for many of you, the idea of travelling around the world all the time must seem like a dream come true. It sure beats doing the usual 9-5 and the routine of living in the same place month in month out, year in, year out. I once too, like you, romanticised about being free from the 9-5 job so I could go travelling.
But what I had not envisaged at the time of those dreams was the dislocation that comes with it.
I feel as though I have two lives: one on the road, and one at home. Like a split personality, each one of these lives takes a week or so to settle into, and when the trips are very elongated the adjustment gets so entrenched that it makes returning home a very hard adjustment. This is why I now prefer to travel for short durations - a week to maybe 9 days at the most is all I can really handle, as it prevents me from going full-adjustment. It’s short enough that I can still hold on to who I am when I’m at home. I will add, that this means I am usually travelling with half of my head and heart still grounded in my home-life. It’s important for me not to lose sight of it.
I can’t stress how important it is to feel grounded. We all have to have a place that we can call home. It’s a tug of war, because all photographers are wanderlust, nomads at heart. We desire to be away when we are at home, and desire to be at home when we are away. It’s a constant sea of adaption and one which I am always trying to find balance in.
The thing is: I LOVE photography. It is something that burns deep inside of me. I can’t let it go and I know that the images I create mean a lot to me in a way that I simply cannot convey to others. That is what drives me forward all the time, despite my reservations about all the travel I do. But I am always seeking an inner balance. A place where I can feel settled within myself, and at the same time, still go adventuring. I think that the truth is: some people like me, just never really get there. It’s part of the parcel of what makes me do what I do.
With that all in mind, I wish you good balance in your creative and working lives. As my great grandmother used to say ‘everything in moderation’. And as a friend of mine added ‘including moderation’ :-) Live your dreams but remember to touch down once in a while. It’s good for you :-)
Metaphor - ‘to transfer’
Isn’t photography all about metaphor? The simple fact is that an image, a collection of abstract shapes and tones are used to represent something else.
Photography is not literal, we do not photograph what is there, but instead photograph what it means to us. Photography is interpretive, from the moment we feel or see something to how it is viewed, everything about it is metaphorical.
Askja, Central highlands of Iceland, Sept 2018
I don’t shoot the black deserts of the central highlands of Iceland to document them. I’m not bothered about the historical or ecological aspects of my subjects. In fact my subjects are never really the point of my photos. It’s the interpretation that is the point, because the interpretation is all about a point of view. That’s what photography is all about.
All of us, each and every one of us who are keen photographers take images not because of what the subjects look like, but because of what they mean to us. What we saw in them, and why we saw what we saw. Making images is about conveying to everyone else ‘this is how I see the world’, and has little to do with the actual subject at hand.
Thinking about my interpretations, you may then wonder ‘why does Bruce shoot black deserts?‘ Ah, well therein lies the real question. I can only answer it by saying that I love mystery. I find vast, black empty spaces deeply enigmatic. For some reason, I’m only interested in photographing a place if there is some kind of atmosphere or mystery about it. Something that is undefined, hard to grasp. You could argue that I’m a romantic at heart, and that is why I go to these minimalist, abstract landscapes.
In previous blog entries I’ve coverer the idea that minimal landscapes aren’t really minimal. The human mind can’t accept ‘empty’ images. Our visual system goes into over-drive to convince us that there must be something there, even though there isn’t. I like this. I love that my brain can’t accept an empty canvas and wishes to see more than what is presented. It allows you to conjure up in your own mind what you ‘think’ is there.
I think all landscapes have multiple layers and a good, maybe great photographer, is one who is able to dig below the obvious, below the surface of the literal, and show us metaphor.
Some of the most defining, important periods of our lives are seldom recognised as such at the time they are happening to us.
The same can be said about our photography.
I have found some of my images to take on a life of their own, that I had not envisaged once I’d completed work on them. They have become placeholders for personal memories of special times in my life.
Perhaps it’s because 2018 is now closing, and a new year is rapidly coming towards me, that I am so reflective.
Our photographs may be enjoyed by others, but they never have the same personal meaning to others as they do to us. They are highly personal documents and rightly so.
I’ve been thinking that as I continue to go on with my photography, that I may look back at my body of work in a few decades from now, and think ´those were the golden years´. After all, each artist has many different periods of creativity throughout their lives.
Regardless of the quality of the work, perhaps each year is a golden year anyway? After all, we make special memories all the time. Experiences are, after all the only thing we’ve really got.
We are our experiences.
With that in mind, I wish you great image / memory making in 2019. Treasure it while it is happening, because all of our experiences are rare: they only happen once, and seldom do they happen again.
All the very best for 2019.
I believe that photographic work becomes stronger if there is a concept behind it. Concepts can be whatever you want them to be. There are no rules. There shouldn’t be.
I have a dear friend from Massachusetts who tells me ‘You know Bruce, you seem to be able to go anywhere in the world and take the same photograph’. He is of-course right. But I do hope it was intended as a compliment as I think it is. I think what Steve was telling me was ‘you have a style’.
But there is more to this than meets the eye. I do like to focus on certain concepts or themes, and it is not unusual for me to shoot the same scene in numerous variations. I even publish these variations in the same collection. Which leads me to another interesting comment I sometimes hear from viewers : ‘what is different between these two shots?’. The answer should be plainly obvious to us photographers: they are compositional variations. Rather than just picking one to publish, I sometimes can’t decide, as I feel each variation has something to say its partners do not.
Repeating themes in the work also makes the work thematically stronger. The work becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
But the trick I feel, or the talent in working with themes, is in finding them to begin with. It takes a rare eye to be able to see a theme in something that others may pass over as mundane, or in the case of some of my more recent Iceland images, landscapes that look quite close to being man-made quarries.
Themes can also go beyond a body of work, and leak into adjacent projects. You may find over time, that you have a propensity to steer towards certain subjects, or tonal responses. Again the trick, or ‘talent’, is in recognising this in yourself and your own work.
I feel that all too often photographers don’t ask themselves ‘why’, or ‘how did I create this?’, or ‘why did I create it?’. Too many of us are just busy making pictures without joining the dots, without recognising themes or variations in what we do.
We are missing clues that can help drive us forward in what we do.
We have to keep returning to the landscapes we love, so we can get better at shooting them.
Returning time and time again allows us to dig deeper below the surface and to familiarise ourselves with how the landscape works.
On my first visit to Hokkaido, I was lost. The landscape was nothing like I had imagined. Lost in pre-visualised ideals of what I thought I would see, I learned that turning up to a landscape with any preconceived notions does not help.
Hokkaido is not this simplified fairytale minimalist place I had imagined, but is instead a densely industrialised island that requires a lot of time and effort to find great compositions.
I came home from this trip thinking that I may not return as I doubted I got any decent shots from the trip. The ones you see above were, I felt, handed to me rather sparingly. Or more precisely, happened because these were the few moments when I let go, and worked with what Hokkaido was presenting me with, rather than it conforming to what I wished of it.
As I’ve continued to return, I’ve learned that the landscape is never the same. More specifically, if there is something I feel I missed on a previous trip, it’s rare that I will be able to capture it on a further visit. I never see the same conditions present themselves more than once. Instead I find I just create a set of images that add on to the ones I shot previously. Landscapes offer up something new on each return visit.
I’ve never understood it when someone says ‘Iceland’s been done’. A landscape is never done. Perhaps the conventional view has been made several times, but it is never done. A statement like this says more about the photographer’s limited knowledge than it does anything about the landscape. Nothing is ever the same. We may go back hoping to capture that elusive shot we missed the previous time, only to find that we are being offered up something new instead, and it is our skill in working with what we are presented with, that is key.
There is also the aspect of learning from a landscape, which can go a long way to helping us improve our own photography. Spending time with the same place will show us more about who we are, and how we approach our craft.
We should banish the thought that returning allows us to get more pictures. Sure, of course this may be true, but to think photography is about quantity rather than quality is to forget oneself.
I think we often think of the landscape as an inanimate object, something that we view, and if it doesn’t offer us anything, it is the landscape’s fault, not ours. This is really an upside down view of what landscape is and what it does for us.
Landscapes tell us more about who we are rather than what it is. If we can’t ‘get’ a landscape then the problem most probably lies more with us than it. The landscape is what it is. It has no knowledge of what you want it to be, and in doing so, it teaches us to be more willing to work with what it offers. Any preconceived ideals we hold, constrain us more than it constrains the landscape.
Returning time and time again, offers us a chance to learn. It offers us a chance to understand that the landscape has many sides to it, and the skill is in us working laterally, going with what it presents us with, rather than forcing it to work to our own ideals.
Returning time and time again, also allows us to dig deeper, to hopefully assimilate and build upon what work we have created in the past. Good photography is all about putting the effort in and returning time and time again. It is like mining for gold. We never know when the next great image may come, and they will only ever come if we are out there. As the adage goes ‘if you don’t go, you don’t get’, and of course ‘f8 and be there’ also springs to mind.
We’re always changing. Developing or regressing, fluctuating even. But all of these changes accumulate to ultimately say ‘you are different now’.
Perhaps the start of my ‘colour reduction’ phase in my own photography.
When I look back at my earlier work, I see that it had a lot more colour in it. I’ve been discussing my ‘progress’ with a friend of mine today and I was explaining that for me, composition comes in three layers that are all inter-related.
Structure
Luminance (tone)
Colour
When we all start out, we all work and focus on structure. The placement of objects in the frame. Indeed, I think that most of us think that composition is ultimately about where we place subjects in the frame.
2018-2017
2017-2015
2015-2011
For me, it took about maybe six years or so, before I started to realise that the luminance, or tonal properties of my subjects also affected the composition. Indeed, I think that tone and structure are interrelated. You can’t just place objects in the frame by thinking about structure only. I’m sure you will find that the reason why some arrangements of subjects in the frame work better than others is due to their luminance / tonal qualities. So these two layers of composition are connected.
The last stage, is colour. Yep, that’s right - although colour is where most of us start, and we are often delighted with our red-sky photos, a picture washed in garish colour soon becomes tiring for those that are developing a sensibility towards colour as a contributing factor to compositional success.
I think that all good colour photographs still work, when you strip the colour out. Open any colour photo and turn it to black and white. Does it still work? Are the tones there able to support the image without the colour? Good photographs will still work without their colour component.
For me, I feel I’ve been on a quest the past four or so years to quieten the colour in my images. I worked on structure in my compositions for a long time, then I was thinking about luminance and how it related to structure. These days, I think I’ve been reducing down the colour and in sense, have been playing with ‘how far can I reduce it?’.
One needs to find the boundaries, to understand the terrain that they are working in, so they can then let loose where they need to go.
Colour is a vital part of composition. Too much of it, or too many colours can cause the viewer’s attention to be thrown in many directions at the same time. But to a beginner, lots of colour seems exciting, attractive. It just becomes a little tiring after many years when you realise that by reducing colour or de-saturating certain objects in the frame allow others to shine.
Want to get better at colour composition? Take an art-class. Photography and composition are no different in a camera than they are on a canvas or piece of paper. It’s not a problem if you can’t draw, forget whether you need to learn to do that. An art class will give you the understanding of how composition works, structurally, tonally and with colour.
When you travel, do you cut back on the size of tripod you can take with you? Do you leave behind your most flexible, sturdy tripod, in exchange for one that is more flimsy, lighter, and less flexible?
I can appreciate there are times when a lighter tripod is the only way forward. You are going trekking, or there is some physical limitation to the tour you are on which means a bigger sturdier tripod is impractical. But flight baggage restrictions shouldn’t be one of the reasons why you leave your most sturdy, and perhaps tallest tripod behind, and turn up with a more limited option.
My tripod is the one on the far right. It may seem overkill, and I may not use it’s full height all the time, but when I do need it, I’m really glad I have it. Especially when I’ve spent $$$ to go somewhere. Getting the photos I want is important and limiting myself by using a more limited tripod makes no sense, unless weight is an absolute critical issue for you.
For me, having a really tall tripod is critical. Cut back on the height and you cut back on your options.
Let’s think about this. When we travel, we travel to make photographs. So our no.1 concern should be to have the best tools with us. Cutting back on you tripod due to weight restrictions means you are cutting back on your photographic options. I’d argue that you can get that tall tripod in your luggage, and that you can carry it along with your other luggage, if you’re just more selective about bringing what you really need, rather than all the other things that you hardly use at all.
You are traveling to make pictures, and a tripod is essential in allowing you to get the best pictures you can. One of the best choices of tripod for me has been to bring one that allows me to extend it higher than my own physical height.
If you’re wondering why I need a tripod that goes up to 9 feet in height, then read this old post about tripod choice. I explain why having a tripod higher than you are is a very flexible, and important decision to consider when buying a tripod.
I’m in south Korea right now, and I’ve brought along the tallest tripod from Gitzo. It has a maximum height of 9 feet, and so far, I’ve used it at full height due to some walls and barriers that I’ve had to work around. This would not have been possible if I’d opted to bring along a lighter, more economical tripod.
I just think it makes no sense to cut back on your tripod and choose something lighter, when the main reason why you are travelling is to photograph. Your tripod should be the first priority when thinking of packing your bag. If the bag isn’t big enough for a solid tripod, then get a bigger bag. If the weight of your luggage exceeds the restrictions, then keep the tripod in, but lose some other things that are non-essential.
The last thing you need, is to find that you’ve spent thousands of dollars going on a trip of a life time, only to find that you can’t quite get the shots you want, because your tripod just needed to be a few feet higher, or more sturdy in some windy places.
The tripod I am travelling with right now is the Gitzo Systematic Tripod Series 5 6S G. I’m loving it and I don’t intend to go back to a smaller, lighter one, unless it is for practical reasons such as trekking long distances etc.
What is a landscape, other than scarified lines and mutable elements?
What if the sea is nothing but texture, like rough concrete? A place that your eye feels a dryness as it moves across the page.
What if the land is nothing but scarifications, fractures and abrasions? The land itself has become un-land, and is nothing but difficult textures and rough edges?
Abrasive places have beauty as much as any traditional landscape. What one may define as ‘quarry’ in an attempt to convey a sense of ugliness and deem a place as un-beautiful, lacks the comprehension that landscapes, even difficult ones, are beautiful.
