Amateur Photographer Magazine

Last week I was interviewed by Amateur Photographer magazine, for a 4 page spread / interview on Torness for their April issue.

Torness is an incredible landscape. Man made, fractious in appearance, it's pretty much the opposite of what I tend to shoot. But surely there is more to landscape photography than wilderness? Not that I'm slighting the wilderness. It's beautiful, but sometimes I feel I should be pushing the envelope in my own work and trying something different.

Well Torness was just that, and I'd felt I'd come up with some compelling images. So I submitted them to Outdoor Photography magazine here in the UK. Not because I feel that OP would be appropriate, but because there's very little choice in who I can submit it to. I wasn't surprised when OP rejected my article about Torness and the photos. The editor was keen on the pictures, but in their words they 'couldn't get anybody to pick it up'. I've always felt since that rejection that my images did not fit the narrow guidelines of the magazine.

So it was with surprise that Amateur Photographer magazine got in touch. They weren't interested in any of my other images, just the Torness ones for the exact reason I felt they were worth publishing - the were 'a little bit different from the usual early morning landscape work'.  Please don't misunderstand me, I don't feel that the Torness images are highly original. If I were honest, I'd say that I was let loose with a new 5D digital camera and fell quickly into making images that were influenced by Michael Kenna's work, albeit in colour.

Anyway, the article should be out in April at some point. I haven't seen any of the text for the interview, so I will be interested to see how I've been represented. The girl in question who interviewed me did a great job with her review of my site, so i'm hopeful for a good outcome.

Workshop Review

For those of you who would like to get an insight into my workshops, Norrie who participated on the January Glencoe trip has written up his account on his web site. You can find it here. Needless to say, it's a good review and it was very nice of Norrie to get in touch with me to let me know about it.

I love doing the workshops. It's great to be able to pass something on, and see someone 'get' it. I particularly like Norman's processing of this image - it looks very natural. Some digital images can be over-processed. The green rocks in the foreground by the way, were really that vibrant - I brought them to the attention of everyone on the trip that weekend - what the camera sees and what we see are often not the same thing.

Holy Land in Crisis

The reason I got into making podcasts was because I was inspired by a podcast I saw by Jake Warga. He's an independent reporter. I was intrigued by Jake's podcast. There was a great story, good production values and good photography too. I've always been interested in reportage, and so for me, it felt like Jake had shown me how to combine my photography with a story.

I've been talking to Jake for the past two years now. He's in Patagonia at the moment, and he's approached me about doing an interview. I'll let you know if something comes of it.

Anyway, I'd love to show you some new stuff by Jake. I've just been on YouTube tonight and found these. I think they're great. It's interesting stuff.

I know that many of the visitors to my site are interested in Landscape Photography only, but I personally feel that most of us start there and progress to other forms of photography. I love portraiture and reportage. I'd love to do some reportage at some point: to tell a story. Perhaps later this year if I manage to make it to Ethiopia (next place on my list). Until then, why not watch these two podcasts to see someone weave a story with some excellent audio and photography:

India's People Podcast

India was captivating in many ways. In this podcast, I try to convey how overpowering India's culture is and how it affected my approach to portraiture photography.

Please click on the image to play the podcast

Now that I've had some time to reflect on my trip to India and to re-charge my batteries, I'd love to go back. I think we need something to challenge us, to surprise us from time to time and in that respect, India succeeds hands down.

I'm really quite surprised to discover that it's taken me just over a year to get round to putting this little podcast together. I think there was a lot going on for me last year and a lot of travel. It was so satisfying going back to the audio recordings I made whilst in India and listening to them with fresh ears. It took me right back. I'm hoping to record more ambient sound for future podcasts..... it's a much more enriching experience to have sound as well as photos. Perhaps even video at some point, but I feel that involves quite a bit of a leap in technique. For the time being, I'm just going to stick with iMovie for my basic slideshows and an Audio recorder (Sony PCM-D50 which is great by the way) and of course, my photography for the substance to my podcasts.

Apple's Aperture.... worth another go?

I've been stung a few times in the past, and as the saying goes 'once is bad judgement, twice is a fool'. This is in relation to buying into a promise that a product will do what it says on the tin, only to find that it doesn't live up to expectations. Apple's version 3 of Aperture has just hit the shelves. When Aperture 1 came out, I was a big fan. I liked the approach, the philosophy behind it, but the performance of the software (the more hardware you throw at it, the more it consumed) along with the number of bugs in it really left me feeling short changed.

Then version 2 was announced I had high hopes that they'd fixed the performance of it. But they hadn't. They'd covered up some of the cracks with 'fast preview' buttons for example, to make it appear that the software was working fast. The only thing was that my CPU was getting hammered all the time - just even by opening it up.

So I did what I didn't want to do: I moved to lightroom, which I felt at the time (and still do) had poor library features and a clunky interface. But Lightroom is fast, it will work on any piece of hardware and even my old G5 is very happy playing ball with it. So I've come to love Lightroom, besides the interface and the poor library features, it does what it says on the tin, and it does it really well.

I feel Apple had a chance back at version 1 of Aperture. Lightroom was still new and a bit wet behind the ears too. But it's perhaps too late for Apple to convince all those but their existing customers to give Aperture 3 a go.

I'm no longer in the market for a Raw Converter program but I am in the need of a good software library, so I guess my pondering over Aperture is a bit moot. Lightroom and Aperture both have similar issues with dealing with large film-scanned images - they don't perform well. But this is mostly irrelevant for photographers these days as the number of film shooters is really in the minority now.

Wanted

I've been trying to find an L-bracket, made by Really Right Stuff, for my beloved Contax 645 camera, but can't get one. Really Right Stuff stopped making one, but I haven't stopped using film cameras, so I'm now pleading to you all - if you've got a Contax 645 camera and you have the RRS L bracket for it - please sell it to me!

Podcast : Harris & Lewis

Now available under the podcast section of my web site, I've a new podcast about Harris & Lewis. Confusingly, Harris and Lewis are the same island. The south part is called Harris while the north part is called Lewis.

Please click on the image to play the podcast

I've been twice now - first in May 2009 and then back in November 2009. It's an hypnotic place and the light last November was stunning. Dramatic, changeable and moody. I hope to get back to putting some new podcasts together. I'd like to discuss Assynt and Skye too, perhaps talking about the efforts that I go into making a trip and staying out there for a concentrated time. Until then, I hope you enjoy this little podcast!

Glencoe Masterclass

Hi All, For those of you who have decided to come on the Glencoe workshop this March (but haven't told me yet!), now is the time to let me know of your intentions.

The dates are March 13th to the 17th and more information can be found here.

And a nice sexy gallery of images can be found here also.

Photographers Etiquette

I've been a bit busy of late, so I've not had much time to blog..... This weekend past, I spent my time in the company of eight lovely people whilst doing a workshop in Glencoe. It was a really nice weekend and I had a lot of laughs with everyone.

Anyway, the reason for this post is about photography etiquette. Have you ever had the experience of setting up your tripod some place (and the landscape can be really big) only to see someone far off approach you and then mussel you out of your location? Well, during this weekend I had a classic example of that. I'd been setting up this shot - I found a tiny bit of ice on Rannoch moor and was busy showing Iain in my group the benefits of getting down really low for this composition when another photographer turned up and walked right in front of me and set their tripod up.

It was unbelievable. It was like we weren't there. Out of a big landscape like Rannoch moor, this person had decided that the very spot we were standing on was where they wanted to be, and without even asking us, just walked right in front and set up their tripod.

I've had experience of this many times before. I can recall one time being in Milford Sound, New Zealand, making a shot of Mitre peak. The landscape was deserted and I'd chosen a location off the beaten path. Standing in the middle of a river leading out to the coast, another photographer turned up and promptly set up their tripod next to mine.... almost invading my body space, and then eventually, right in front of me.

It's like going into a deserted cinema and choosing a seat, only to find a second person comes into the cinema and decides to sit right in front of you (and they're usually tall too)  :-)

Last year in Bolivia, I had the same experience with a photographer while I was making a picture of the stone tree. The landscape was deserted and out in the distance I saw a jeep racing towards the landscape. When the jeep arrived, this guy got out, came right over to where I had my camera and asked 'how long have you been here'. And then he promptly set up his tripod at the exact height, with the exact composition, right in front of me.

I'm sure there is good reason for their behaviour and it is this: It is the belief that if they see a photographer set up in some place, he's probably there with good reason. You wouldn't of course, go into an empty restaurant would you?

So suggestions welcome as to how to deal with photographers who think nothing better of stealing your location right from under your feet.

A poke in the eye perhaps?   :-)

Taj Mahal - a photographers approach

I'm in the process of writing a book. It's pretty short really, around 20 pages, but it deals with 'approach', how we interact with a landscape.

Judging by the title of the book, you may be forgiven for thinking it's all about making images of the Taj Mahal, and you'd be right, as well as wrong. The book touches many things involved with approach. How we interpret what we are presented with and how we deem to capture what we see. So as much as it is about the Taj Mahal, I'm really using that location to illustrate some aspect of how I make my images.

I aim to have it completed in a week or so, and i'm going to distribute it through one of the eBook publication sites. Do any of you have any experience of them and which ones you prefer or think I should avoid?