Norway Project

In just over 1 months time, I will be up in the Arctic circle in Norway. My intentions are to shoot the Aurora, but since I've been to the Lofoten Islands before, I know just how beautiful it is there, that if the lights don't make an appearance, I should hopefully come home with a collection of new images showing the lofoten in winter.

So at the moment, I'm busy digging out my four-season sleeping bag - a nice mountain hardwear one which goes down to -20c. Brrrr..... I'll be away for just under nine days - I tend to prefer shorter trips these days. A short duration gives me enough impetus to get focussed and work hard at creating images I'm after. I've often found on other shoots that I come home really run down because I simply cannot stop while I'm there.

I'm also looking forward to Switzerland later on this year - in October. For some unknown reason, I seem to get a lot of Swiss clients on my workshops, and well... they're all so darned nice and I've had so many invites now that it was time to mark a date in the calendar and take everyone up on their invites.

So I do hope to have some new portfolio images to show you this year - landscapes from somewhere that isn't Scotland (as much as I think Scotland is very beautiful).

Sorry for the lack of posting on the blog of late... sometimes there's not really much to say, and other times, I feel there's already too much being said about things like gear, equipment, technique. So I do hope to share some more thoughts by the end of March about my Norway trip.

Gear Gear Gear......

I hate to ask, but I feel I must. I'm looking into the whole inkjet side of printing. My last foray into these murky waters was in 2001. On the advice from Michael Reichmann that the Epson 2000p was a worthy printer to do photographs on, I spent a lot of time and money on a wasted device which suffered from Metamirism problems (blacks looked purple at night and the same blacks looked green in day light).

No doubt this posting will spark a bit of a discussion, but I decided after I had my fingers burned in 2001 to stay away from inkjets.

But things change and processes improve. So here I am in 2011 reconsidering it all and wondering, should I? or shouldn't I?

I get my prints made on Fuju Crystal Archive true photographic paper at the moment. They look very nice and I'm happy with them, but when you get more than one person telling you that inkjets look better than true photographic prints, you can't help but wonder 'maybe they're right'?

So a few weeks back and started to read up on stuff and just came away more confused than I was to start with. So many polarised views especially when it came to calibrating an Epson printer. Yes, the colourmunki is good, but the profiles aren't that accurate (doesn't sound so good to me, I thought), the Eye One spectrophotometer is a professional device but the printer profiling you get with it as standard will only create good as opposed to great profiles (huh?) and then of course I read up about Colourbyte's dedicated print driver (very expensive, but they had a very compelling reason for why it was so)..... and quickly I decided to just simply give up and go and see my local Glicee specialist.

So I'd love to hear your views on it. How have you found the inkjet process? What do you use to calibrate your system? What papers do you like?

Book Progress

Apologies for not posting so regularly of late. I've simply had too much on, which is always interesting because if there's not activity on the blog, it can seem like nothing is happening. But that's simply not true. Today I've had some artwork returned to me from my friend Darren, who is busy putting the press-document together for my upcoming cloth-book. We're still in early stages, but at the moment, I've got the text written (10,000 words) and it's been reviewed by my good friend Michael who has proof read all my public material to date. The text is now away to a Journalist friend of mine who does this sort of thing for a living, so that I can get more issues ironed out with the prose. But I think it's in good shape at the moment.

Darren has kindly put together the artwork and book layout which you can see in this posting. You might notice that the title has changed. With most 'works-in-progress', it's often the way that you start with an idea and things develop and progress and take on a spirit of their own. My initial draft for the book was to use the same title 'Examples - the making of 40 Photographs' that Ansel Adams had for his wonderful book. I always thought that if I were to do a book, I would borrow the title because it's such a great format to illustrate anyone's work. If I had my way, every photographer out there would have an 'examples' book.

But sadly, on reading up about copyright and trademark infringement, I feel, that I may be letting myself in for some trouble. So I've adopted the title you see above, which I think in some ways is more fitting because my photography covers portraiture and travel, as well as landscape photography, and there's always been a sense of adventure in covering all these in my work, so I think I'm (pretty much) sure this is what the title is going to be.

I have a workshop on this Friday in the highlands of Scotland, so I'll be busy getting ready for that, but just to let you know that the first draft of my new eBook 'aspect-ratios' is complete and out for review. I hope it have it released in early February.

Hasselblad + other stories

Today I received a Hasselblad 500CM camera with 50, 80 and 140 lenses for it, plus a prism finder. It's gorgeous. One of my workshop participants from my October Torridon Trip - Lynda, kindly sold me her camera. I've been toying with the idea of shooting square for some time, and now is the chance to do it. I think this will tie in nicely with my forthcoming ebook about aspect ratios, which is nearing completion. It's around 50 pages...... bet you never knew there was that much to write about aspect ratios huh?

So I went to the Parcelforce depot today to pick up the Hasselblad, which incurred no duty on it, but they stung me for £22 vat.... on zero duty. Does that make sense? How does that work?

Anyway, I've just received the first proof-feedback on the text for my forthcoming cloth-bound-book. I'm almost half way through applying the corrections (thanks Michael!) before I send it off to my journalist friend for a further sanity check. I've also had the format of the book contents designed by my friend Darren and we've had quite a few discussions about fonts, colours. I never knew for instance, that there are pantones that are outside the CMYK process - we were discussing the merits of using a silver font for some of the headings, but it's been scrapped for a nice grey font instead.

So sorry if my postings have been few and far between the past few weeks. I was up north doing a workshop, and it's taken me a few days to get some rest, and get my mind back into working on some projects.

I go to Norway in March to shoot the Aurora and there are now some definite plans to go to Switzerland in October (I get a lot of Swiss clients and have made a lot of friends), so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to go there to shoot the towns and the mountains.

Anyway, that's about it for the moment. If you're in Glasgow tomorrow night (Friday) and want to come to see me talk and give a slideshow presentation, I'll be at Inverclyde photographic club around 7:30. Expect images from Ethiopia, Skye and Assynt.

Over and out.

Achmelvich Beach

Last week I had one of the most interesting weeks in a long while. As part of my workshop business, I went to Assynt, a very beautiful and off-the-beaten-track region of Sutherland here in Scotland. It's one of my personal favourite locations. Anyway, I was here with a small group for the week at a victorian hunting lodge which is owned by the Assynt Foundation. As part of the deal I had struck with them, I was running my workshop in conjunction with a writer's group - run by Author Mandy Haggith.

It was an interesting week for many reason. Firstly, as much as I'd anticipated that joining forces with a group of writers for the week might be conducive to the creative process, I had no idea just how similar writing is to making images. It seems that writing involves a lot of investment, more so than I'd anticipated, with the writers not often knowing their characters motivations until later on in the draft of their novel for instance.

I can certainly relate to that, because I often find I'm not really sure of why I go with a composition, or a location until much later. Sometimes I find that there was a story in my image from the onset, but I find it takes me a while to discover what it was and what it was going to end up being.

But I'm often stunned by some of the images that turn up during the week and this image (above) by Paul David fits this category well.

Paul came all the way out from California to spend time with me. He's spent time with Ansel Adams and very much subscribes to my philosophies on photography. But he did sway me a little with his Phase One P65+ digital back. Paul took this image of Achmelvich beach on what was a pretty 'driech' (rainy) morning. It is one of my favourites from the trip because of the conveyed mood and feeling within it.

Surely an image has one purpose. To move us? Images can do that in several ways; by our response to tonality, by our response to subject matter or simply by our response to composition and colour. I loved the muted green tones in Paul's image and also the light-fall-off that his wide angle lens on his Mamiya 645 added to the image.

New Weekend Workshop - Inverpolly

Just a short posting today as I'm en route to Assynt to conduct a week long workshop there. Today there is a fresh dusting of snow here in Inverness and I hear that Assynt is covered in the stuff. We've got a 4WD for the trip, plenty of bottles of wine and of course enthusiasm. One of my clients is turning up with a Phase One digital back, so I'm very curious to see how it performs.

Anyway, due to the popularity of my existing weekend workshops, I've set up a special weekend trip to Inverpolly for this April.

I do this trip as a week workshop in October, but I've decided to do the Inverpolly section of it for a weekend trip with pickup and drop off in Inverness available.

Ok, off now to show a friend of mine how to 'podcast' !

Roots

When I was a young kid and right into my early twenties, I never really thought much about my roots. I was listening to 'Out Of Doors' a BBC Radio Scotland production a few days ago about Norman MacCaig and Assynt. It was of special interest to me because I love the Assynt region of Scotland. It's barren, wild and contains some of the oldest geology known on this planet.

I'm headed there this Saturday to run a week long workshop there, so this is a timely post.

I'd be lying if I said that I'd always loved poetry, but like Scottish music, I find that they are growing on me as time has passes.

I'm now 43, and I find that I seem to have a very passionate bonding for my home land. I've done a lot of traveling over the past decade and I've been to many wonderful places, seen some amazing sights and photographed some very special light. But it's only in the past few years that I've come to accept how Scottish I am, and I now feel I'm embracing my own roots. Scotland it seems, was perhaps the most exotic landscape of them all.

Anyway, listening to this radio broadcast about one of Scotland's most notable Poets and how much he loved Assynt, made me think more about my roots and I wondered if having roots makes you more connected to your landscape?

I know what the answer is (for me), but i'd like to hear what you think?

I've had people on my workshops from India, USA, Holland, Switzerland, Portugal, Poland, Chec Repuplic, Germany, England, Ireland, Canada, Australia. I never really asked them how connected they felt to their own land. But I'd love to hear if you think your affections for your home land make a difference to you and how you photograph it?

First Day, 2011

So thanks to those who posted a reply to my last posting of 2010. I personally feel I've drawn a line under what happened last year and I am now working on new projects, looking towards the future. I've just commenced putting the details together on a new eBook about Aspect-Ratios. I've been forming an outline on it for the past couple of months, and if I were honest, it's been bubbling up for some time due to the discussions that seem to frequent a lot (if not all) of my workshops.

I simply do not feel that a 3:2 aspect ratio camera is a good starting ground for a newbie. If you're going to cripple someone's ability to excel at making pictures, why not give them a camera with a really awkward aspect ratio that doesn't fit how we visualise?

But I digress a little. The main reason for my last posting was to illustrate how 'focussed' we have to be in what we're doing and where we're going with our 'art'. David, Mats, Peter and Phil were very enlightening about where they see themselves going.

But I'd now like to ask you guys - what have to done to start working on those aspirations?

I don't ask this with any sense of intimidation, but I merely point out that if we are to progress at what we do, we have to push ourselves forward.

Like a new years resolution that is often quickly forgotten and we can fall into our own habits, it's a danger to think about what we want to do and then never get round to doing it.  It's great to hear so many dreams, so many plans. Often I don't really quite know how I will reach point B from point A, all I know is that somehow I'll get there, but the only way it will happen is by being driven and taking action.

I do feel that thinking and dreaming about where you want to be next, can only help you get there in the end.

I end this posting today with a very old photo of mine, shot in New Zealand in 2001. I found it while trawling my library for a suitable image for this posting, and I feel it's apt. I have dreams this year to return to Australia to photograph, but I also wish to visit my brother who owns his own motel in Christchurch New Zealand. I stumbled upon this old image tonight and can't help but feel it's highly symbolical for me. Perhaps I am due to return to Australia and New Zealand this summer after all?

One thing's for sure, I often do find that themes, events, places, they all seem to tie in at one point and I love nothing better than to go with the flow of what's presented to me. So I take this finding of my old NZ shot as a good sign :-)