Why I photograph the Highlands of Scotland

I have often thought that what we show others in our photographs, is really an insight into how we feel within. One may assume that when we look at photos of a landscape, they are just that - photos. But if we ask ourselves ‘why did the photographer choose to visit this place in the first instance?’, then the pictures take on a deeper meaning. And if we ask ‘why these particular compositions?, then we may find our curiosity is piqued.

Isle of Rum, Scotland 2022.
Photographed on Fuji Velvia 50 film, pushed quite hard in the edit. Hence the film grain, which I find particularly pleasing.

 I have been attracted to the more wilder landscapes of Scotland for many years, and I’ve had to give it some thought as to why these places attract me. I think each landscape we fall in love with is personally relatable in some way. We either see something of our childhood in it, as I do with the Scottish Highlands, or we see a longing for something. I have a hunch that my family holidays as a young boy left an impression upon me. Both my parents are highlanders, and each summer we would leave the confines of our new town home for the highlands. The contrasts between new town dwelling and vast highland plains with shifting light was, and still is, stark. When I am in the highlands, I feel I am a Highlander, and my city-lifestyle is all but a faint memory. I feel a timelessness here and perhaps a deeper connection to my family’s history.

 But coming here to visit, is a different endeavour to that of coming to photograph. A beautiful landscape does not guarantee a beautiful photo. Good photographs have to be earned. With the shifting light, constant threat of being rained upon, and of being blown away by fierce winds, the highlands are challenging, but when the elements conspire to produce a good, if not great photo, then favourable results can be extremely rewarding.

 A photographer’s work is never done. Each visit just confirms that there is still more to uncover. More mystery to be solved. In a way, I find this inspiring, and also surprisingly comforting as well. Each time I have visited a landscape and produced a few images I really like, they are often far different from anything that I had hoped for, or envisioned. This illustrates that there are many more surprises up ahead for us all as photographers. So much potential is still waiting for us to explore and uncover. And many mysteries waiting to be peeked at, if not entirely solved.

And it is with this final comprehension, that I believe we should all revel in the anticipation of what images lie in store for us.

 

Make the landscape your own 3

One of the ways we can make the landscape our own, is to photograph locations that are lesser known. Of course there is always the skill in photographing well known places in an original way to consider. But I think the best way forward, to find your own voice, is to go to places that are less obvious, or perhaps personal to ourselves.

Over the past six or seven years I have shied away from spending time on social media platforms because of the glut of images that are being uploaded each day. I do not say this with judgement of others: do as you please of course. But for me, I would much rather find out about a landscape or a location in a more organic way.

Finding out about places this way, alleviates me from being overwhelmed by photos of it. Because I am aware that the more photos I see of a place, the more difficult it is to see it ‘my’ way.

About eight years ago I sat in a hotel in San Pedro de Atacama, chatting to a couple from Brazil. It was new years eve, and they had turned up on a Harley Davidson tricycle. Tassels included :-)

During our chats, they told me about Lençóis Maranhenses national park in Brazil and about how beautiful it is. When I returned home, I decided to look it up, and like most places I try to research, I rarely see well executed landscape photos: the default seems to be standard tourist shots. This goes to confirm my view that most of the world has not been photographed well, if at all.

It took me a few years to get round to going to Lençóis Maranhenses. I never seemed to have a gap in my schedule and I felt I was taking a chance on it, because the photos I had seen of it were not that inspiring. I had to ‘see beyond’ what was being shown to me and imagine what it might be like if I tried to shoot there at sunrise and sunset.

Visiting the national park, I found it to be more photogenic than I had imagined. In fact, I thought it was amazing and captivating in a way I could have only hoped for.

This to me, is an organic approach to finding your own landscape: going with your own hunch. Taking action from a conversation, or a cue from something you saw somewhere.

But perhaps the best way to make the landscape your own, is to work on places that are personal to you. Over the years that I have been photographing Iceland, it has become a very deep and personal relationship for me. I first visited the country in 2004. It is now almost 20 years since I first went, and I am confident that my relationship with the country has only deepened as I have kept returning.

And when I have returned, I always seem to find new places that resonated with me. Such as the interior. I had a hunch for a while that it might be my kind of thing, and so I started to go into the interior about 2015.

I feel some of my best work has been made in this landscape, and in terms of ‘making it my own’, I think the landscape here has defined me as a photographer in many ways.

I feel there’s far too much following others in the landscape photography world. We are social by nature, and we tend to follow the herd. In making the landscape our own, we have to be more independent in our seeking out places. Because that is how our photography will ultimately be defined.

Eigg Workshop

Just home from a week away on the isle of Eigg here in Scotland. I would like to thank everyone who attended - they came from far and wide - Seattle and near Sydney Australia.

It is always a real honour to think that folks would like to come this far to spend time working with me on photography. Such a lucky person I am.

Many thanks to David Estape Izquierdo for sending me this image of myself and Ron MacDonald on the beach at Laig bay.

I am finding the workshops at the equinoxes quite physically demanding for myself - long hours from 5:30am till around 8:30pm each day, and as much as I love coming to Eigg, I am aware that this year, and 2024 will be my last with groups here. I wish I could run the Eigg workshop during the winter when sunrise and sunset are more easy to handle, but due to the unpredictability of the weather, and therefore cancellations of ferry crossings, it’s too much of a risk. Hence why 2024 will be my last year on Eigg.

Thanks to everyone who came this week. There were a lot of jokes, and everyone was very good fun. I don’t think I’ve been with such a die-hard ‘hard-core’ group of people in terms of using all the available time to make images.

Make the landscape your own 2

One of the ways we can ‘make the landscape our own’, is to edit the images with our own ‘aesthetic sensibilities’. I believe that each of us has our own sense of artistic-taste as to how pictures should be edited. We also have our own visual-taste as well.

For many, although these attributes exist, they are still relatively unknown to themselves. I think it has taken me a very long time to find out what my aesthetic style is, and it has only surfaced as I’ve worked over many years on my portfolios. And explored pushing the edit in terms of luminosity adjustments.

As part of my yearly programme, I have often run a digital-darkroom class - the focus being the edit. What others call ‘processing’, which in my view makes a very creative part of finding out about your own style and aesthetic sound as though it’s just something you throw at the software to pump something out that is a bit more polished. When in fact, editing is just as huge a part of the photographic life-cycle as fieldwork is. Get good at interpreting your images, you get good at being a better photographer.

The image above, is a massive departure from what I originally captured. The edit was not done to ‘save’ the image, but instead to bring out key elements of the scene and quieten others. Editing in my view is not only highly interpretive, it is a highly creative endeavour, and one that is a life-long, never ending effort to master.

Which seems to go against the grain of what I have experienced with most workshop participants whom have chosen to come on my editing class. Until my class, most have been rather careful with their edits, with only the most subtle of soft adjustments, often to make the image as a whole more punchy.

In my view, editing is where the score becomes the performance as Ansel Adams coined. Image capture is one thing, but how you bring out elements in the frame, while quietening other aspects of the scene is your passport to your own style, and what might set you apart from everyone else.

I think the other aspect of trying to make the landscape your own, is also to try to capture scenes that are rare. In the instance of my picture of the isle of Rum above, I have rarely seen temperature inversions of clouds painting along the horizon like this. Having been coming to Eigg for over 14 years now, I feel I am often looking for something more than what is usually on display here.

Indeed, I am in general often ‘looking for more than what is there’. To dig below the surface of the usual. I do not say this to imply that I succeed at it. Far from it, but I am just always hunting and seeking to find something in the landscape. I think you know what I mean.

If you’re able to achieve this, then I am sure it contributes to making your images more unique.

In a world where everyone is publishing beautiful pictures these days, we should all be looking for something that allows our images to be set apart from everyone else’s. I do not mean this in terms of being competitive. I do not think I am so. I am just keen to produce the best work I can, as I get great personal satisfaction from feeling I have found my own coal seam to mine.

Editing, and image interpretation will give you so much to learn about why your images work, and where areas of them do not, should also give you a passport to making your work more cohesive as in working towards portfolios or sets of images. But to make your portfolios stronger, and therefore your visual style stronger, you have to be more discerning about what you choose to publish.

One way of setting your images apart from the crowd is your editing aesthetic, but so too, is what you choose to publish, and if you can find unusual conditions where an image was made, this will only contribute to your own voice.

make the landscape your own

I’ve just update the website with some new portfolios, and to also round up the presentation of the main page, I’ve added in two portfolios that have been absent from the site for a few years as well.

I’ve been thinking and dreaming of making some new images of Eigg for a long while. I have not had time until the past year to revisit, and to make some new compositions.

I find it very interesting to consider the question :

“would I have made these shots 10 years ago?”

to which I know that I wouldn’t have.

All the experiences that I’ve had shooting in the black deserts of Iceland, the minimalist snow areas of the Fjallabak nature reserve of the Icelandic interior, and also Hokkaido, I see in these new images of Eigg. These places that have taught me, and where I have grown, have fed right into the way I chose to approach editing this work.

You can never go back to where you once were. Well, you can, but you don’t go back the same old person you were back then. When you go back to old places, old friendships or relationships, you always bring with you the experiences you’ve gathered in the time you were absent.

Looking at my new images from Eigg, I’m reminded of something my dear friend Stephen Feinstein once said to me, whilst standing on the very beach that features in these photos:

“Bruce, you seem to make the same image, no matter where you go in the world”.

I know :-)

It put a smile on my face too :-)

I told him “I’m going to take that as a compliment”, as I’m sure that is how it was intended. I believe what Steve was telling me was:

“you manage to make the landscape your own”.

Which is the highest compliment I think I have ever received, for it is what I think we all aspire to do with our photography.

The Edge of Things part 3

Edges don’t have to be visual. Working at the edge of something could be a personal limit of some kind. For instance, I’ve been coming to Eigg, a special island in Scotland for over 15 years now, and I think I am looking for something more than what is presented to the typical visitor.

Isle of Rum, shot from Eigg, April 2022. Fuji Velvia 50, 120 roll film.

We have a relationship with the landscape. We talk to it through our camera. When we are trying out different compositions and thinking about how the landscape looks, there is really an inner dialog going on.

We also have sub-relationships with particular landscapes we’ve gotten to know.

Like all relationships, how we interact with a landscape has an ebb and a flow. I think that the more we go back and visit a friend we know, we either settle into a usual groove or pattern of discussing the same subjects, or thought patterns. This can be very similar to how we interact with a landscape we’ve gotten to know well over many visits.

As much as I feel we should never ‘strive’ or ‘push’ to improve on what we do, as any kind of force is just…. well it’s just force (an effort to go against what the universe is presenting us with), there is sometimes this need or feeling to look beyond the obvious.

To see if there is something new that you can find in an old relationship.

I would perhaps qualify what I’ve just said by saying that rather than ‘looking’, I think we should ‘feel’ or be ‘aware’ of a change within us as we find we now need different things from a familiar relationship.

Eigg is an old friend. It has taught me so much. I’ve seen it twice a year for 14 years now, and it has had so many different faces, yet because I was running a workshop, I never really had the time to make my own pictures (as this should be the case). So I have started to venture there myself this past year and plan to go back next year on my own as well. Because I ‘feel’ there is something more beyond the obvious, and because I feel there is a change within me in terms of what I think it has to offer.

So I do think working at the edge of something can be non-visual. Sometimes it’s as simple as realising there is room to find something beyond the edge of what we currently know of a place.

The Edge of Things Part 2

Sometimes it’s advantageous to not have any context. To allow the viewer at first glance to wonder what it is that they are looking at.

This is another visual-exercise of ‘brain looking for something beyond the edge’. In this case, hunting beyond the edge of context. It could be that the photo was taken high above the ground, looking down towards clouds and sea. Or it could simply be a frozen body of water with water slowly forming ice underneath its surface. Without any contextual clues we leave this element to be decided by the viewer.

Besides, why does everything need to be explained and spelled out for the viewer? Surely lack of context is a form of ‘hunting beyond the edges of what is there’, because these kinds of pictures are more about what we left out, rather than what we left in.

My frozen body of Japanese water has no land in sight. I am not aware of land in front of the camera, or to the sides. As far as my mind’s eye is concerned, this scene stretches out to infinity at either side of the frame.

I am left with no alternative but to seek for more than what is shown. To go beyond the edge of the picture frame and imagine what lies beyond.

Photographers are always drawn to the edge. Sometimes it is the edge of a coastal region, or the edge of a cliff, but often times, we are drawn to what is beyond the edge of the picture frame.

The edge of things

Why is it that most landscape photographers are drawn to the edge of landscapes?

Coastline is perhaps the most obvious example of this, but often times I find myself wishing to be where I cannot. Either by being three or more feet into the water, or three feet beyond the edge of a cliff, it appears as though we are always hunting for the unobtainable: a view or vantage point that is beyond the scope of reality.

I think the same is true of my, and many other’s draw towards empty places. I do not think we are drawn to these places because of their simplicity (well, it may be a factor). Instead, I think we are drawn to these empty places because there is a seeking of something more than what is there.

In visual psychology, the brain is always constructing our vision. We innately construct our reality, pattern match, make sense of the shapes of objects and put them into a meaningful arrangement in our mind’s eye. With empty spaces, the brain finds itself hunting for a conclusion which cannot be reached: when there is nothing there, we find our mind’s eye trying to see deeper, trying to see something when there is nothing.

I think this draw to the edge of places and to empty spaces is one and the same. It is a hunt for ‘more than reality’; to look for something more, something that lurks below the surface of our everyday existence.

If it were at all possible to ever find this ‘more than reality’ we seek, then it would be just beyond the reach of normal places and spaces because it is where our reality ends and our dreams begin.

Enlightenment has it's own rhythm

I’ve often thought of myself as a slow learner. Sometimes, in order to really grasp a concept or an idea, I find that I need some space to let things simmer for a while. It may be weeks or months later before I realise that I seem to be comfortable with the idea of concept I’ve been trying to learn.

Initially I had thought that I would enjoy podcasts and audio-books, but I’ve come to the realisation that they are like runaway trains of thought. There is never a pause, a space or gap in which to stop and think about what I’ve been hearing or learning. Of course there is a pause button and I could of course choose to pause when I want to, but I think that natural forms of conversion tend to have natural pauses, and audiobooks, and podcasts do not.

My little audiobook that I was listening today, started to feel like it was a rollercoaster of ideas. I was underneath it all, feeling as though I was being pummelled with more ideas and thoughts than I could handle. I hit pause, and have come away to let the ideas I’ve been hearing about sit for a while.

In my view, progress in your photography does not come in a linear fashion. Progress spends most of its time appearing to plateau with no visible perception of change. The changes in general tend to happen behind our backs, in a more underground, hidden sort of way. I have often felt that I am the last to know that my work has progressed. Everything else around me has caught up with the fact except for me.

And so, putting the brake on now and then, or going down into a slower gear is part of the process. Rome wasn’t build in a day sort of thing. In my view, progress often isn’t obvious to the person who wishes it. It tends to only be visible when we compare with what we were doing a year or two ago, or perhaps even more.

Further thoughts on linear profiles

I’ve been thinking about linear profiles again.

I’ve known for some time now, that the human eye does not see linearly. Our eye compresses the highlights, and I would say that the visual response we ‘see’ is comparable to ‘gamma corrected profiles’.

Let’s turn this around the other way: there is a reason why I think RAW converter profiles are gamma corrected: they are trying to mimic what the human eye sees. Cameras do not see the way we see, so there is a reason why gamma corrected profiles have been at the cornerstone of RAW conversion for many years.

Let’s revisit Linear distribution of tones and Gamma corrected distribution. I would assume that since a digital camera ‘sees’ Linearly, that any RAW converter designer has to reinterpret the linear response and give us a Gamma Corrected Distribution.

With the latest craze in Linear Profiles for editing, I can appreciate that highlight data is more spread out and thus there may be finer control of tones in this region of the histogram, but its benefits are to the detriment of shadow and more importantly mid-tones which are compressed down towards the left.

Again, if it were me, I would be choosing a Gamma corrected distribution profile in RAW, but using one where the contrasts and minimal (such as Neutral) and then decreasing the contrasts further by using the sliders.

For the past year or so, when I’ve been discussing my own workflow on my workshops (I scan my images as flat as possible, with reduced contrast and shadows and highlights well within clipping range), many participants assume this is the same thing as using a linear profile. Let me make this clear: it isn’t. It’s not even close.

I would say that my workflow is closer to using a gamma corrected profile, but reducing the contrasts even further as a starting point.

My main argument with the traditional approach - the Adobe school of thought where they wish for you to get the blacks, highlights correct in the RAW before you begin work is not how I do it. I avoid this, because what you are essentially doing is punching up the contrasts globally across the image. It is a blunt approach to fine editing. I would much rather start with the basic ingredients of the image rather than a cooked image. To get to the basic ingredients, choose a gamma corrected profile with the lowest contrast, and then reduce the contrast further.

I am looking for a file that is malleable. A file that has had the blacks and highlights punched up to final results gives me no leeway to decide where the contrasts and emphasis of visual attention should be.

Work with soft RAW files. But beware, as far as I can tell - they are not the same thing as linear profiles. Linear profiles compress the shadows and midtones, to give us more room to edit the highlights. But most visual information we pick up is in the mids.

Just my thoughts.