Book has shipped

I’m so pleased to finally ship my new book ‘The Sound of Snow’. I was very happy with last year’s production ‘Hálendi’, and this year’s production is up to the same quality.

I had always planned to do this book on Hokkaido, but I thought it would be a few years before it was out. I had not anticipated that a pandemic would halt my workshops, and send my business into nose dive.

The sound of Snow was accelerated, because I had the free time to work on it.

I have been very fortunate to have a large portfolio of images to rely on, and although producing a book does not make me rich, it has helped contribute to keeping me afloat. I am aware that for many of my workshop participants, they do not understand the economics of my business model, but suffice to say that I wasn’t sure I could get to 18 months of lockdowns, travel restrictions, and still be here.

This book has become more important to me than I would have ever thought. So I would like to thank those of you who bought a copy.

I have also received some lovely emails this week from some of the buyers of the book who have now received their copy. This is just great to hear, as each book project is always fraught with problems. When the book finally arrives I am always holding my breath to see if the production quality is up to what I had asked for, and this book is certainly there.

Comments so far:

What a beautiful book! Just wanted to say thank you for your obvious efforts in compiling such an inspirational book. Beautifully thought out and presented. Wonderful attention to detail and in my humble opinion, your best book so far. Excited to hear about the retrospective!

Neil Brayshaw

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New book arrived today and the printers have done a great job - beautiful photography and publication.

Euan Ross

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Hi Bruce hope you are well just to let you know i received you latest book today and must say the pictures are beautiful and really like your minimalist capture.

David Gaunt

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Just to thank you for the safe delivery of my book. Absolutely over the moon with it! 

Charlie Robinson

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Dear Bruce,

Your book arrived yesterday and I love the pictures, especially considering the conditions you must have faced. Thank you also for sending it so well packaged – much appreciated 

Best Regards,

Chris Chate

Iceland Air

So Iceland air cancelled my flights earlier this summer, with no explanation and offered me a ‘credit voucher’, and in very small text ‘ask for a refund’. I went through the ‘ask for a refund bit’, but found the website took me in a loop which took me back to the voucher acceptance stage. So I tried to contact them via their online chat thing - it doesn’t work. A month later it still doesn't work. So then I tried phone - waited over 40 minutes and gave up. Then I found a contact form, which I asked them for my money back. This was a month ago. I received nothing.

So today I finally get through to their staff on the phone and they tell me I accepted the credit voucher, which apparently has an expiry date, and once accepted, a refund is no longer possible (why not?). But I disputed that I had accepted the voucher. I never went anywhere near accepting it. And they’re not refunding me.

Last year on the way home form Iceland at the start of the pandemic (this was around March), instead of taking me back to Glasgow they dropped me off in Heathrow London. This was apparently for my own safety. My connecting flight home to Glasgow was via London city which is at the opposite side of London from where they dumped me. And I was supposed to pay for this myself and claim it back.

I will never use Iceland air again.

Retrospective

I’m acutely aware that if one has an audience, that audience are always one step behind you. One of the best ways to illustrate that point is with my photographic books. Books are always based on the past. They can never be an illustration of where you are right now.

In my own case, the last three books I’ve published have been planned for about five years. We knew we were going to do Altiplano, Hálendi and then Sound of Snow. In that order.

This had always been the plan except the last two books came out rather quickly because I had the free time this past year to focus on the design of them. Had it not been for the pandemic, both Hálendi and The Sound of Snow would probably still be vapourware, and so when they would have finally become physical objects, the images within them would be even older than they are now.

This is just a ‘placeholder’ image. This is not the design or intended cover of any retrospective book I end up making.

So in this way, photographic books are always historical. They are a statement of past events.

I am now up to date: the cupboard is now empty of ‘completed projects’.

Which brings me on to thinking about a retrospective. A book that will cover the last decade or so since I ‘went professional’ for want of a better term.

I don’t just want to do a book that has a collection of images only. I’m more interested in telling a story.

So I think the book will try to convey the development and progress of my imagery over the past 10 years.

I’m very aware that certain landscapes have been teachers. And that in order to photograph one kind of landscape, I had to do my homework elsewhere first. I could not have known how to approach the black deserts of Iceland if I had not photographed the Altiplano of Bolivia first. Similarly, I could not have known how to develop my photographs in winter landscapes had it not been for working on luminosity / tonality in the black deserts of Iceland. My Japan imagery was built on top of my experiences of working in the vast black deserts of Iceland. And so on…..

So this is where I think I would like to take such a book. A chronology of epiphanies perhaps. As I often think that if one is developing, there are often times when we hit a new level of awareness, where things come together and begin to make sense.

Thinking this way, and realising that the whole thing is a path of progression, I can’t help but come to the realisation that every point that has come before, has been taking me to where I am right now.

Dream logic

David Lynch understands the intuitive aspect of creativity. He also understands the unconscious aspects of his audience, and how they respond when watching movies.

I think good artists intuitively know how to create work that has room for interpretation.

In a nutshell

All you need to know about creativity:

Trekking in Iceland

I’m in Iceland right now. I just completed walking the Lauavegur trail for the third time. It's been really good to come back to Iceland for my own mental health, and to take some weight off the constant Media pressure about the pandemic. Life, I was starting to forget, continues it seems.

So here is a picture of my tent on the second night of the trek. And before you ask, no I didn't put the stones around it it. They were already there 👍😊