Paper & Pencil - Grasleysufjöll

I know I had to go elsewhere before I came here.

If I had reached this landscape years ago, I doubt I would have known how to approach it and I would have struggled with it. Everything I have done with my photography has been a stepping stone onto other other things. For me, when I look at my recent work, I always see hints of the past and of other experiences and places that have contributed to take me to where I am now.

Grasleysufjöll, central highlands of Iceland
Image © Bruce Percy, March 2017.

Things happen through connections, be it emotional ones or physical. I've been following my 'art' with my feelings for many years simply going with what feels right. Every once in a while an exterior influence comes in and leads me somewhere new. Had I not been looking for a professional guide to help me get access to some of the less accessible, more remote areas of Iceland, I doubt I would have come to the central highlands in winter time. It was after all his suggestion. I had no idea just how photogenic this place could be. The conversation went something like this:

'Bruce, there is a landscape here that I think you would like,
but it is costly and difficult to get to.
It is a white canvas of black brush strokes, very minimal, I think you would like it'.

And he was right. But I couldn't have done it without him and to this day I would still have no knowledge of this place if he hadn't mentioned it.

The central highlands of Iceland in the depths of winter time, is somewhere few go. Those that do are in convoy and are most probably only locals heading into the mountain cabins for some winter get togethers. There are no roads as everything is under several feet (or metres) of snow. Driving here requires skill, even as an experienced 4W driver, the skill required is above most 4WD skills.

I have some lasting memories of this trip into the central highlands and perhaps the most impressionable one is of how I took the photo you see at the top of this post today. I was literally standing on the top ridge of a mountain that my guide drove up on to. One minute we were in the valley below and I said that I liked the outline of the faint mountains and a few minutes later his car was driving up the slope to get me there.

When we arrived, the entire landscape was a white-out, with only a few impressions of black volcanic rock poking through the snow where they had been weathered by some recent rain and wind. Indeed, when I made this shot, the snow was blowing over the dark ridge you see in the foreground and the background mountains were coming and going with varying degrees of visibility.

The scene was etched into my mind not just because of how graphically strong it was, but mostly because my guide had taken a perverse pleasure in being able to take me anywhere. You see, for most of the year you are not allowed to go off-road. If you depart the main roads, even in the highlands, there are heavy fines involved because you will be eroding the land. But if you come here in winter and there is deep snow everywhere - then you can go anywhere that you car can take you (and can't take you, as you may find out!).

I don't think I've ever stopped a car and gotten out on a mountain ridge before. Nor have I encountered a scene like the one you see above anywhere else on my travels. Sure, I've been to many winter places with lots of snow, but I have never seen such an abstract and minimal landscape such as this - ever.

Our vehicles on a mountain ridge, suspended in space.
Image © Bruce Percy, March 2017

Different Perceptions, a Different loudness

I've often thought of photography as the act of 'paying more attention than usual' to my visual world. Rather than just glancing everywhere, I spend more time studying and watching how light affects and modifies objects around me. I look more.

But I've come to realise that photography isn't just about increasing visual awareness. We may believe that we are just honing and developing our visual awareness, but other aspects of our consciousness are also being heightened. In particular, I seem to be more sensitive to intrusive sounds in my environment than I used to. I'm sure I noticed them on a subconscious level in the past, but these days I seem to be more conscious of them. What was once quiet, is sometimes now too loud, aurally as well as visually.

But it's not just in my auditory and visual awareness that I seem to be more conscious these days. I also seem to be more aware of the levels of noise within my thoughts.

Take today as an example: I have a body of new work to edit, yet somehow I cannot find the peace within my mind to begin editing. I just 'know' that today, and indeed this week isn't the time to work on them. All I know is that I need a certain space in which to edit this work, but simply marking off some free time in my calendar isn't enough. I have to be feeling it as well.

If I'm not feeling it, I'd much rather go and do something else and leave the work alone for another day when I will have the proper emotional tools to work on it properly. But this too, depends on my level of awareness to figure out when there's no point in working on something because i'm either too tired, or just not in the right frame of mind to work on it.

We are all bobbing along on a sea of varying levels of perception and awareness. Some days I find I'm less sensitive to what is going on around me while other days everything can be too much. Visually, aurally and emotionally. I'm either in the right space to work on something or I'm not.

I've been saying for a while now, that improving one's own photography is sometimes about developing visual awareness, but that's only a tiny part of the story. Improving our photography is really about developing our awareness of everything around us and as well as what is going on within us. Photography isn't just about what we saw, it's also about what it meant to us and what it means to us now, and to do our intentions justice, we need to know when we've found the right levels of quietness within ourselves to bring the work to completion.

The Photographer's Ephemeris 3D

If you don't use the Photographer's Ephemeris application, then I would strongly urge you to look into it. I use it all the time to figure out the sunrise and sunset times wherever I am, twilight times and also for figuring out where the angle of the sun will be during certain times of the day.

Stephen Trainor, the app designer will be releasing a 3D version of it soon, which incorporates a 'Google Earth' like view of the terrain so you can see how the light will fall on certain areas.

You can find out more about the current 2D version of TPE from the link below. It runs on most portable devices:

Where do we go from here?

Recently, I've been giving a lot of thought to how much my photography has changed over the years. I feel that it is only in the last two or three years that there has been a distillation, a fine-tuning of ideas and style into where I am now. It's as if everything came into sharp focus for me around three years ago and everything before then was a slow gradual journey, one where I felt things were changing but I didn't know where they were going.

It's only now that I feel I've reached a point where things have become easier for me. I now have better confidence in myself and trust myself more in how I am developing as an artist.

Trees in a snow storm, Hokkaido, January 2017
Image © Bruce Percy 2017

A creative life has these moments, or plateaus perhaps, of feeling that you've arrived at some level playing field where you can bask in some form of creative comfort for a while before the next (sometimes difficult, other times just natural) adaption occurs. Because growing requires change, and although I know and believe that change is good, it can also be a time of great uncertainty.

If I look back at Ansel Adam's work over his lifetime, it is clear that he, like many other artists, he had a very creative period and then things started to tail off. By the end of his life, he was perhaps more a curator of his legacy. His skills had developed so much that he was able to go back to his iconic work and produce bolder, deeper prints than when he first started out.

My 3rd book is about to be published soon, and it has given me pause for thought. Is this the final mark of a period of great growth and creativity for me? Will I look back on this book in years to come and say 'that was my most creative time?' 

I am aware that I have done so much and witnessed so many wonderful things over the past eight or nine years since I went full time, that I feel it may be unlikely I can perhaps top that for a further similar duration. I am older, I feel different (i.e not the same way as I felt when I started out eight years ago), so things have changed, and indeed, are always changing.

I believe that each artist or creative person reaches a point in their own development where they are at the summit of what they can do. It's an inevitable point to reach in one's own creativity but we must continue to move forward with an open mind to see if there is still mileage in the road ahead.

Indeed, there have been many moments where I felt I could go no further, only to find that the period of contemplation was either brief or lasted for many months or years. I've had periods in my creativity where I have felt I had nowhere else to go, yet looking back I see now that I had only just started.

Contemplative moments are good for us. Thinking about where you've been and where you think you may be going are healthy thoughts to have. You just need to believe in yourself that things are going to change and understand that progress is not linear. There will be times and even long spells of inactivity, times when you feel you have nothing left to say, only to find that you are now entering a period of great productivity. Being open to whatever may come, and accepting that you are on a journey that has no fixed course is the only way to be.

Learn to live in the present and understand that everything you are doing or experiencing is transient: it will not last. That goes for periods of little or no productivity, and for times when we reach new summits in what we do. Regardless, thinking about where you are and understanding yourself at this present moment is good for a healthy creative life.

So today  I'm left wondering 'where do I go from here?' And I can't wait to see what's up the road ahead.

Colourchrome book update

The printing of my 3rd book is now underway.

We've taken advanced orders for 240 copies of the 300 edition run, and I think the book may sell out before I even get to my exhibition date. So if you were planning on coming along to the exhibition and picking up a copy then, perhaps best to buy a copy online. It will be shipped out on the 2nd of August.

There's something deeply satisfying and very powerful about seeing a project come together that started out as an idea. What was once just a single thought becomes a real thing. That's very empowering.

Pareidolia

I didn't see the bear for a long time, and then once someone showed me it, it was a few years before I saw the seal. Can you see them?

Pareidolia - a psychological phenomenon in which the mind responds to a stimulus by perceiving a familiar pattern where none exists. Common examples are perceived images of animals or human faces - Wikipedia.