Using tonal relationships to connect the inside with the outside

I think there are a lot of parallels between the world of photography and that of the world of painting.

I found this video today on YouTube which I felt has just as much validity in teaching us photographers something, as well as it's intended audience of painters.

The video deals with the art work of Winifred Nicholson. She was a beautiful painter of still life's that she painted from inside looking out. I've enjoyed her work for many years since I first found out about her while on the Isle of Eigg here in Scotland. Winifred visited the island several times and made many paintings whilst there.

Candle, Isle of Eigg. Painting by Winifred Nicholson (1893 - 1981)

Anyway, I digress a little. In this video we see that Winifred was very clever in allowing us to know that she was painting from inside a house looking out, but manages to avoid showing us the window. But more interestingly, as she developed her style, she started to incorporate the inside of the house into her paintings, but she did so by managing to make the inside feel 'related' to the outside. She did this by clever use of tonal relationships.

In her earlier work, the quality of light within the house is different from that of outside - thus creating a divide. As viewers, we do not feel so connected with the outside. Whereas in her later work, she was clever in making the quality of light and tonal responses inside and out similar, therefore relating the two, and ultimately bringing the outside into our viewing space. 

I've been thinking about tonal relationships for a long while in my own work, and I find that when I make two objects in the same frame tonally similar - they become highly related. Conversely, when I make two objects in the same frame tonally dissimilar, they become less related. 

Well, this video illustrates this point very neatly, particularly in the last image where we see that Winifred uses a couch inside the home as context - something for us to begin from, and then through the similarity of light and tone inside and out of the house, invites us to reach outside the house where the outside feels like an extension of the inside.

Although it's discussing paintings, I think there is always much to be learned about photography through the world of painting. I hope you get something from this short video.

Driving the Salar de Uyuni

I've been in South America for the past six weeks. Today I am flying home.

One of my Photo Tour participants - Geoffrey Van Beylen, kindly sent me these videos of us driving the Salar de Uyni salt flat after an early morning sunrise shoot in the middle of it. 

The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world. In the video you can see that we are spread into two Land Cruisers, and that we are heading for a volcano (Tunupa) in the distance. As you watch the video, the volcano doesn't get any closer, despite appearing to be rather close. It's about 30KM away from where we were in our cars. It's easy to get confused by distances in Bolivia.

Here is another one showing the deserts that we have to cross. The distances are large and the roads are often just tyre marks in the sand often. I wouldn't recommend trying to navigate these places on your own. I am often surprised by the knowledge that my drivers have of the areas. They know these 'roads' well, despite the landscape often consisting of many criss-crossed markings that have no road signs and no indication of where they lead to. 

I'm personally surprised that Bolivia is not on the 'map' for most photo-tour / landscape-workshop participants. Most folks haven't figured out yet that Bolivia is really 'up there' in terms of scenery and photography.

The Salar at dusk, Laguna Colorada at dusk and the Salar again at dusk, but this time shot from an island in the heart of the salt flat.

I also spent some personal time after the tours back in Bolivia for a week exploring more of the landscape and making some new images. I found some very surprising locations that are not on the general tourist trail that are very worthy places to visit and I felt I made some new images which I hope to include in a new book I'm currently working on.

As with all things, I tend to find that I go back to a place to 'complete' what I felt I missed the last time, only to find out there is a whole lot more. It seems that I could spend years working on a book of the Altiplano....and it would be tempting to do so. But I now feel I need one or two more trips here to finish off what I started back in 2009. Yep, I've been coming to Bolivia for quite a while now. The quality of the light here at sunrise and sunset is like nowhere else that I've been so far.

As part of my time here in South America, I also visited a new place - the Argentina side of the Altiplano, which at the moment is even less well known than Bolivia is, but is just as impressive, and different. This particular place has a landscape that is not unlike the central highlands of Iceland in my opinion, and also many other strange and wonderful locations. Perhaps that book on the Altiplano is going to take much longer than I had anticipated..... and I feel I need to go back to this region as well. So I'm already hatching plans to do so within the next six months if I can.

So much to explore, and so little time.... :-) But I feel I've found 'my landscape', a place that I have room to grow as a photographer. The world may be getting smaller, and sometimes it may feel as though everywhere has been photographed to death, but in reality - we haven't even scratched the surface of what is out there.

I had a great time with my groups in Patagonia and Bolivia. Many thanks to all whom spent time with me (including you too Brian ;-)

Patagonia 2015

I'm in South America right now. I've been here for three weeks so far, and have another two weeks to go before I head back home to Scotland.

I've been sent some wonderful images by Bill Filip, who participated in my Patagonia tour this May. In the image below, you can see myself (right) with another fellow participant - Carl Zanoni with the reflection of the Torres mountain range reflected in laguna Redonda.

The mountain range is approximately just over 9,000 feet high, rising out of the Pampas from almost ground level. I think this image conveys the scale of the place.

Image © Bill Filip, used by special permission. Carl Zanoni & Bruce Percy at the edge of laguna Redonda, Torres del Paine national park, Chile

I have to pinch myself sometimes. I'm so extremely lucky to get to visit Patagonia every year or so, as part of my workshop and tour schedule. If someone said to me that I would have to give up doing what I do, and head back to a 9-5 office job, I think I might just jump off the nearest bridge.

Patagonia has become one of my many homes from home. It is a place I've got to know since my first visit there in 2003. I know it extremely well, and each time I manage to make it back out there, it's like getting re-accquainted with a dear friend.

Each landscape I get to visit, has become an indelible mark on my emotions and memories. Iceland too has become a home from home - I've been going there since 2004, and likewise, the Lofoten islands has a similar place in my heart too, as I've been going there since 2007.

The more I return to these places, the more I get to know them and the more I recognise what it is that makes each and every one of them stand apart from each other. I love Patagonia with all of my heart. It is somewhere that I feel I am at home, even though it is roughly half way around the world from where I reside in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Many thanks to Bill Filip for allowing me to reproduce his fine image on my blog