Desert Siloli, Bolivia

The desert Siloli, is a fascinating landscape situated at an elevation of around 4,500 metres on the Bolivian altiplano. I've been to this place a few times now, but I've never seen it quite like this before. As part of my Bolivian photographic tour that I conducted here in June of this year, we were supposed to go to see the stone tree - el arbol de piedra. It is situated in the heart of the Siloli desert. A place that I had ear-marked for some more image making for (hopefully) a forth-coming book.

But the weather this summer was very unusual. June is the time of the dry season, and so there shouldn't be any snowfall at this period in the year. Only it snowed a lot, and I hear it is still snowing - right down the lower elevations of San Pedro de Atacama - apparently the first time it has snowed at this low elevation in 17 years.

I always find it very interesting to note how I build up an anticipation of what I will be shooting - a form of pre-visualisation if you like. It's not something I welcome, as I feel the sense of expectation can get in the way of taking on board what is actually presented to me. In the case of the Siloli desert, I had not anticipated snow there. Nor had I imagined that I would only be allowed 1 hour here due to the weather deteriorating. It would perhaps not surprise you to learn that we spent a cold evening in a hotel with no running water and a snow blizzard outside the door. We were concerned that we may not make it out the next day, despite having two land cruisers at our disposal (we did make it out the next day, although it took a bit longer than we'd imagined).

It was interesting to note the mood of the participants on the trip. Some took the downturn in the weather conditions well, while I could feel morale slip a bit for others. One participant in particular said 'it's part of the deal, part of the adventure'. Something I was very happy to hear. It is the right attitude one should have as a photographer.

Photography should be surprising. We're not in it for an easy ride, and part of the reason we make photographs, is to put us out there in the world so we can engage, and experience life in a way that we wouldn't if we hadn't taken up photography in the first place.

So I thought I would share this image with you. The sky by the way was really like this. We commented at the time that it had an HDR look (of the badly processed variety) about it. I thought it looked surreal.

Silver grey tones abounded the landscape as I ran from one spot to another with my Hasselblad film camera. This is perhaps one of the more memorable shots I made. Being a film shooter, I tend to remember some shots more than others - if it's got something about it - I tend to remember it. I like this fact about film photography - it taught me how to listen to my own feelings and tune in more to my responses to the landscape and use it to gauge the worthiness of what I am shooting.

My new images from the Chilean Atacama, and the Bolivian altiplano are up in my new section of this web site.

Hardbound & Electronic Bound

I'm a big proponent of the hardback book. So much so, that I've released two hard back's in the past three years: 'The art of adventure, 40 Photographic Examples', and also 'Iceland, a journal of nocturnes'. Both were printed to a very high standard, and are roughly about Album size. But I've been thinking for a while now, that we live in a multi-format society. We tend to like to access what we own, when we want to. We like the convenience of having our books and music available to us wherever we are.

So what I've decided to do, is offer both my hardback books with a bundled PDF version. I figure that most folks who want to buy the book, would also like to be able to carry around with them an electronic version of it on their iPad or similar device. I still believe that the books should be bought as hardbacks, so I'm afraid that the PDF versions will not be available for sale separately. If this is bad news for you - then maybe you can look at it as buying an e-book and getting a hard-back version of it as a bonus ;-)

So I'm very pleased to announce that both my books now come with a PDF version along side it as part of the purchase. I'm also additionally pleased to let you know that if you already purchased a copy of one of these books from my site already, we have just sent an email to you with a link to download the PDF version for free.

You can purchase the books here.

Working on some new images

  Just a short post today. I'm entrenched in my home studio, busy working on a massive backlog of images from the Bolivian altiplano and the Chilean Atacama desert.

I thought it would be fun to share with you an image of my beautiful Gepe light-table. I love working with transparencies, and laying them out in a collection like this.

I can 'see' the portfolio coming together a little more clearly when I do this. I'll sometimes pick out the best images from my sheets of Velvia 50 to scan, before I go back and have a bit more of a detailed review of what else is there. It really depends on how i'm feeling. Other times, I'll work systematically through each sheet of film one at a time, until I've garnered all the good stuff. On average, there tends to be around 2 images a sheet (10 shots) that I like, and want to scan.

I  love how transparencies have the colours already 'programmed' into them. Velvia is a highly saturated film, so I tend to work the opposite way to most Raw shooters - rather than adding in the colour, I tend to scan and then decide which colours (if any) require desaturating.

If you click on the image above, you'll see a higher resolution one.

For those of you who have never shot film, or transparencies, you're missing out on one of the most satisfying parts of creating images: that of laying out your transparencies on a light table. There's something about the tactile aspect that I think lends some kind of emotional investment to the work.

As for viewing the images on the light-table, the colours just glow - this alone can provide ample inspiration for the editing stage, and I'll often find myself feeling very excited as a result.

From left to right: Salar de Uyuni, Sol de mañana geyser basin, Pescado Island, Sol de mañana geyser basin, Flamingos at Laguna Colorada, Atacama Chile, Little Italy stone desert Bolivia.

Micro Four Thirds

I've been thinking about writing a post about my little Lumix Micro Four Thirds acquisition for some time, and I'm just back from the Isle of Arran where I used the camera as a teaching aid while running my workshop.

I should start off by declaring that I am no digital shooter. I have been shooting film 100% for the past 20 odd years and I don't intend to alter this in the foreseeable future. The argument is a tired one and I wish not to go there. However, I did see value in having a digital system for use on my workshops, because having one would allow me to illustrate compositional techniques and also show others what I'm seeing in the landscape.

I had a bit of a hard time choosing a digital system. I didn't want to break the bank and get something 'pro', and yet, me being me, I knew any digital system I bought would have to be good enough to do landscape images with. So many of the 'Compact' cameras were not in the running for me. And those that had good quality sensors, didn't feel like they had the lens selection that I would like to invest in.

The Micro Four Thirds format seemed to fit the bill for a few reasons. Firstly, the cost of a basic kit system with the equivalent of a 28-90 zoom lens is very inexpensive. Secondly the sensor size isn't that far away from APS quality. And to make the decision for me, the very small size of the outfit was ideal - I didn't want to lug around a second full-sized system if I am already carrying a medium format film system.

I initially bought the Lumix GF1 a few years ago, but I never really considered that it could potentially be a serious contender for digital landscape photography. It's only since I bought the Lee Seven5 filter system for my new GX1, that I've come to consider that this format is something I would choose, if I were a digital shooter. I think the selection of lenses, image quality, compactness of the format makes for a terrific way forward.

So I thought that I would post some images made from my workshop this week. They were all composed hand-held, with the Lee Seven5 series of hard-grads. There are a few things I would like to point out about the combination Lee filters and also the practicalities of using such a small format. Here they are:

1) I find in general, that the Seven5 hard-grads are too hard. I've always considered that hard-grads are more important than soft-grads, and this is because they become diffused when used with any focal length above 24mm. As you go up the focal lengths towards telephoto, the hard-grads become soft until they become non-effective. If you consider that you are 'zooming into the graduation' as you go up the focal lengths, and that the filter is before the focal plane, then it's not hard to see that hard-grads are in fact 'soft' when used on 35mm systems and upwards. For my medium format system where my wide angle lens is a 50mm, my hard-grad is very soft. I use a rangefinder system so although I can't see through the lens, filter placement has never been a major concern for me, because at focal lengths of 50mm and above, the grad is pretty soft any way. The only time I would notice the grad is when I'm using one that is too strong for the subject matter.

Let's consider what happens when we go down the focal-lengths. We are essentially 'zooming out' away from the grad, and so hard-grads become more obvious. With the Micro Four Thirds format, you are dealing with small focal lengths. A lens that gives you the same field of view as a 35mm camera is half the focal length. For instance, a 24mm lens on a 35mm system is replaced by a 12mm lens in the Micro Four Thirds format. Of course, you could argue that the small diameters of the Micro Four Thirds lenses should alleviate this, but in my experience - they don't.

In summary, I would say that the Lee Seven5 set of hard-grads are very useful on a Micro-Four-Thirds system, but sometimes you might want to use the soft grads a bit more than you normally would due to the lower focal lengths. So buy both the soft, as well as the hard grads for this system.

2) Focussing the micro-four thirds system to take advantage of the hyper-focal for Depth of Field is a pain. The lenses I have really don't like to be stopped down more than 5.6, maybe f8 at times, but even then I saw degradation in the image quality. f5.6 at 12mm is still a lot of depth of field, but I did find I often missed the mark when setting the hyper-focal. I found using the electronic viewfinder a must. It is a focussing aid that you should buy for this camera if you intend to try to keep the lenses from being stopped down more than required.

These two points aside, I would dearly love to know why there is no high-performance sensor - one that is equivalent to something like a D800 in the camera bodies of the Micro Four Thirds format. At low ISO, the sensors in these cameras are perfectly fine, but they get very noisy from ISO 800 upwards. It's not something I miss, as I'm used to working with 50 ISO with my Fuji Velvia film, but I can appreciate that for most digital shooters, having good image quality at high ISO's is something they take for granted these days. I would like to know why this kind of technology has not been put into the MFT format as yet - is it to do with size, price, or even energy requirements? Or is it because the manufacturers think this is a 'toy format'?

For me, I don't think MFT is a toy format. I think it may well be the future. I've enjoyed shooting the Lumix, and composing using the electronic view finder. I'm really pleased I bought it for use on my workshops. It's a great little system, and one that I would adopt full time, if I wasn't the avid film shooter than I am.

A Walk through Nature

As many of you know, photographic books are perhaps some of the most treasured objects I own. I really love them for many reasons, and I've always wondered why not all lovers of photography own them. They not only give us a better experience of someones work compared to viewing it on a website, but also, they allow for a more intimate setting where we can lose ourselves for half an hour or more as the photographer takes us on a journey through their own world.

One such book that I've had the delight of getting to know for this very reason, is Dav Thomas' 'With Trees'.

I've just spent the past few days returning again and again to this book, because it has a wonderful way of letting my mind reconnect with what it's like to be outside, roaming through woods and remote landscapes. It is a beautiful journey where I seem to lose myself each time I pick it up and roam through its pages.

Thomas celebrates the nature of trees as they are. He does not seek to simplify or create an illusion of what is there, but instead works very much with what the trees themselves have to offer. And what they offer is a recognition that even in the middle of one of the smallest and most densely populated countries in Europe, there is always a forest not too far away, where one can gain some space and remove themselves from the existence of every day life.

Thomas mainly focusses on the forests of the Peak and Lake district, but there are occasional entries to places such as Elgin in northern Scotland. What is interesting for me to note however, is that there is a sense of uniformity to the landscapes he has photographed. He reminds me that one doesn't have to go far to find their muse, and I suspect that these locations have not been picked purely because they are within reach of where Thomas lives, but because he has had a life long relationship with the environment he has chosen to photograph.

His book is not simply a celebration of trees, but an empathetic understanding of the undergrowth, grasses and mosses that in his own words are a 'supporting cast for the trees they surround'. I loved this sentiment particularly, because in it, Thomas is telling me he understands that each element in a scene has a relationship to one another not just photographically, but also in nature.

Although the book is a monograph, it is interspersed with Thomas' observations of how trees exist and relate to their surrounding environment. I loved the text, because for me, it echoed pretty much what I saw and felt in his work: a deep fascination for the relationship between tree, undergrowth and moss. Thomas seemed to me very much like someone who has spent time around his subjects getting to know them in all their seasons and different atmospheric environments.

In one such observation by Thomas, he notes that Oak and Limestone are often hard to separate, because they blend in a way where mosses covering the limestone take on an extended quality to the surrounding trees, and he uses this well in his compositions. He is comfortable to show you that both these compositional elements are intertwined, and can be interpreted as one, rather than discreet elements which have to stand apart. That I feel, is a difficult thing to execute well, because forests are difficult subjects at best to produce strong photographs from. And Thomas seems extremely comfortable with this task.

On a more personal note, at times I felt that I was enjoying images that would compliment the work of naturalist Eliot Porter. Whereas some photographers seek drama and mood in their work, others are more content to convey nature the way it is, and celebrate it's beauty for 'just being'. This is what I see in this book, and I think that's why I feel it should proudly sit next to my collection of Eliot Porter books: a high commendation indeed.

On the subject of the quality of the printing and presentation, the book is a beautiful hardbound A3 sized monograph, with a lovely introduction by David Ward. I had the great delight in noticing that even the cardboard box it comes in, is beautifully presented with the same themes as contained on the front cover of the book. It is one piece of cardboard I will not be throwing out, because for me - it is part of the book where packing and content are one concept. I'm a big believer in the collectibility of books, so if you do decide to buy this book, then hold onto the carton as well.

Thomas I feel, is just at the start of a great future. I think he has vision, not only in his photographic work, but also in his message. He knows his motivations well. This is a hard act to pull off for many and I feel that Thomas understands his own sense of aesthetics and along with it, his own vision and style. He has found his own path, and is on a journey, which I feel I understand well, because photography has been a journey for me also.

I hope this is the first of many books by Thomas. It was been executed well, which considering this is his first book, illustrates that Thomas knows his message and  has a strong sense of how to convey it.

For me, It will sit proudly alongside my Eliot Porter collection. As I said earlier; a high commendation indeed.

'With Trees' is available from Beyond Words books @ £40.

And also available directly from the Triplekite publishing in different limited editions.