Proofing off, and on

I’ve just completed the sequencing and ‘grading’ of the images that will be in the Hálendi book. I feel I’m getting closer to the completion of the book.

two-pages of the book as they are intended to be laid out.

I just need to proof the work now, and make sure that what I am seeing on my monitor holds up when it’s printed. I’ve been a little bit delayed in doing this for the simple reason of running out of ink for my printer late last week! Seems it’s impossible to buy ink for next day delivery here in the UK and I can only assume it’s because I’m using an older printer.

Proofing, as the name suggests, is about simulating how the images will look once printed on the paper of your choice. It’s really useful to help you figure out if there will be any significant loss of contrast, colour or anything in your interpretation that is critical to keep. The reason why you may lose something while printing is because each paper has a reduced contrast ratio and gamut of colours. So something will get lost in the conversion.

Since the contrast ratio of a piece of paper is much smaller than what a computer monitor can display, some images may not transfer well when being squeezed down to work on paper, and compromises will have to be made to allow the image to be acceptable to you.

Every device out there has its own physical limits to the gamut (range of colours) it can reproduce. Colour management is often more about managing how you deal with out-of-gamut colours as you move from one device with a large colour gamut to one with a smaller one.

This is where rendering intents come in. Intents allow you to chose how ‘out of gamut’ colours are treated. You essentially get to choose how the compromise is made. For example, one rendering intent says ‘any colour that is easy to transfer over with no change, do it, but any colour that is outside the gamut of the new device, move the colour to the nearest available one’. You have a options and the best way to work out which rendering intent to use, is to proof the image on your monitor and flip through all the rendering intents to find one that gives you the closest match to what you hope the image will look like in print.

Truth is, rendering intent should be chosen on a case by case basis per image + media combo. One image may print well on one paper but less so on another. Experimenting (in proof mode) with different rendering intents per image on your chosen paper will give you the best compromise. You may find that one rendering intent does a better job at giving you a closer rendition of what you intended.

Proofing is important because it allows you to cut out a lot of guess work. You essentially see the image as it will look once printed - on the chosen media, while saving on paper and ink.

Proofing off. Note the whiteness of the paper.

In the image above, I’ve got proofing switched off. When you edit your work, you should always work with proofing switched off. You are editing an image which is neutral of any medium you print it on.

When you come to print it, that is when you should make a copy of the master file and perhaps name it for the paper of choice it’s intended to be printed on. Then while proofing is switched on for your duplicate file, make adjustments that are relevant for the paper you are proofing under.

Proofing on. Note that the colour of the paper is now duller. This is the proofing simulating the paper colour.

The image above illustrates what may happen when proofing is enabled. You can now see that the whites of the border have dulled down a lot (to simulate the colour of the paper). I notice the two images have less ‘presence’, but after a few seconds my eye adapts and I start to believe that the images look as powerful as they did with the proofing is switched off. This is key.

The eye is highly adaptable, to a point. We’re also extremely poor at judging relative colour. Have two slightly different prints and place them in separate rooms, and walk between both rooms - I doubt you will notice any changes in the images. But side by side - that’s when you’ll notice colour differences. So the eye is easily fooled.

Most of the time when you proof, the images should still stand up, even if it is now being simulated on a less contrasty, less dynamic medium. But occasionally I find some aspect of the image that is important to me becomes lost. In these cases it’s either that you’re working with the wrong medium. Certain papers excel at colder / whiter images than others. A warm paper will smother snow scenes for instance. So you need to experiment and find the right paper with the right gamut for your image, or try to make adjustments (with proofing switched on) to see if you can regain what you lost. I usually find the solution is in the former option. Not all image work well on all papers so paper choice is critical.

In the case of my own proofing this week for my book, I have no choice in paper. I am using a proofing paper that gives me a reasonably close rendition of what an offset press can do. So I’ve found one or two of the images has required a lot of work to get it to sit well on the page.

Pages 68 & 69

Tonight I’m working on print evaluations of the images for my forthcoming Hálendi book. It’s a lot of fun just seeing my images in print, or in the example below, showing the page layout.

Seeing these two images is a reminder of why I love to go into the interior in the winter time.

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Equipment failure and work arounds

It is an inevitable fact that your camera gear is going to malfunction at some point. Especially if you keep on travelling the law of averages simply mean that at some point something is going to go wrong.

A few weeks ago I travelled with my Ebony field camera only to discover that two of the lenses were broken because the shutters had failed. I also found that one of my film backs wouldn’t wind on correctly, and just wound the film all the way through the back.

I’ve had many other incidents where lenses have given up on me (usually due to a screw becoming loose while travelling on unsealed road). I’ve also had the occasional mishap where the entire camera body as slipped out of my hands only to drop into a river (completely unsalvageable), or drop onto some ice and the prism smash.

It’s inevitable that at some point, things are going to go wrong.

I usually travel with spare items. When I travel with my Hasselblad outfit I tend to carry two bodies, three film backs and some overlap in lenses. Or to put it another way - if you take two wide angle lenses such as a 20mm and 24mm then you’re at least covered if your 24mm fails. I also make sure I travel with a duplicate standard lens.

The way I see it, is that there are certain ‘core’ focal lengths that you need to cover for failure. For me that’s the equivalent of a 24mm and 50mm. So in my Hasselblad medium format system that equates to 50mm and 80mm. I always go with two 80mm lenses and I double up on the wide angle with a 40mm and 50mm. Both are useful in their own ways but they can also work as a substitute for the other if one fails.

I also travel with two light meters, several cable releases and even a spare ball head, and also a complete dupliate set of ND grad filters (stored away in a small Pelican case in my main luggage).

Having backups is necessary, but you don’t have to exactly duplicate things as your camera bag may just become unwieldy. So if you’re keen to double up, you just need to think more along the lines of maybe cheaper, less sophisticated (or pricey) items to carry as backups, and hopefully lighter and smaller.

You may think ‘that’s completely out of my budget’, but the truth is - if you’ve spent a few thousand dollars on a trip somewhere, it’s going to hurt pretty badly if you get there and find you can’t make any photos because your camera is dead.

One other way to get around this issue, is to travel with friends who have similar setups to yourself. Got a Nikon camera and your friend also has one, then you can share lenses.

I can’t state how important it is to have a back up for your gear. You don’t have to spend a fortune doubling up on everything but you do perhaps need to think about backups for the more critical components (camera, main lenses you tend to use), and a cheap ball head.

Ultimately, you will never be 100% failsafe. That’s just life for you. But by having the spares, you will have peace of mind.

One last thing - if you are travelling with backups, best travel with a 2nd small camera bag (I stuff my spare bag in my main luggage - usually filled with clothes) so I have a 2nd bag to put my backup items in. Storing your backups in the same bag on location is just asking for trouble, and if say your bag gets stollen or trashed, than not only does your main system get trashed, but also your backup items as well.

So here’s how I pack for going away:

1. My main luggage has inside it a small Pelican case with my resin filters (not glass as they will break) in it.

2. My main luggage has my main camera back inside it - either flattened down, or if I can’t do that - I fill it with clothing so it become part of the luggage space of the bag.

3. My tripod + two ball heads are in my main luggage

4. I travel to the airport with a trolley bag with all my camera gear and laptop in it.

5. For film, I store it in a small ‘personal item’ case that I am allowed to carry onto the plane along with my main trolley bag.

The reason for having the trolley bag, and also the main camera bag is that while I am on location shooting, I put my spare items in the trolley bag, and port all my main camera items into my camera bag. It ensures that all my backup items are in a separate bag - in the car, so they are less likely to get damaged along with my main items if an accident happens.

Page Sequencing & Balancing

A few days ago I began work on proofing the images for inclusion in my next book. As suspected, I’ve found loads of issues with the images once printed. Some of them it’s to do with the blacks and white points of the images, but also, clipping that is incurred by the reduced gamut of the paper I’m proofing onto. I am finding I am having to calm the higher tonal registers to allow the image to sit on the page without any flat-wall-clipping occurring.

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I knew I would have a challenge ahead of me, in terms of sequencing the work. In the proof snapshot you see above, I spent a lot of time matching images to each other so that images on the left and right page compliment or sit well with each other. For me, this is about choosing the right images to begin with. Then once I have them sitting next to each other (I use View / 2-up vertical in Photoshop to view two images side by side, I can notice if there are luminosities that jar between the two side by side images, or colour casts - perhaps in the blacks that work against each other. For instance, one black desert may have more blue in it while the complimentary image that is to sit on the opposite page may have more of a reddish black. These things can sometimes be ‘tuned’ to sit better together and other times, I just find that the image doesn’t work when its colour balance is tuned away from its current colour temperature.

To me, this is ‘mastering’. I am trying to get the entire set of images to sit well together, and for that to happen, it’s never really about subject matter, or geographic location. It’s all about whether the tones and colours (or perhaps for some of you, monochromatic tones) that matters. Images have to sit on opposite pages in a way that they work together as a set. But the work also has to flow through the book as well.

I’m really enjoying this process. Images that I thought were nice, become something special when I print them out and notice further adjustments and enhancements. It’s like putting the icing on the cake.

Printing is indispensable in really getting the best out of your work. And it is giving me a lot of confidence in knowing the work is as good as it can be for publishing in my forthcoming book.

Proofing has begun for next book

Printing is the final stage in finishing your images. If you don’t print, you are trusting your monitor 100%. I’ve learnt that even if my monitor is very tightly profiled and calibrated correctly, I still can’t see certain discrepancies in the image until it is printed. And once I see it in print, I am now able to notice it on the monitor also.

Two images from the forthcoming book, printed on Epson Soft Proofing paper.

So each time I come round to preparing images for a new book, I print every single one of them. I’ve done this now for the last two books and it has allowed me to get the best out of my work. I have often found just about every image needs some further work to tune it as best as it can be. For me, that extra 5% or 10% is crucial because I think printed images are more exposed, more vulnerable to inconsistencies than a computer monitor will show.

Screen grab from my computer monitor. I’ve got the proofing switched on to simulate the Epson Soft Proofing paper.

Through this process, I have also learned to ‘interpret’ what my monitor is showing me. I now understand that shadows and highlights and hues in those areas are more obvious in the print than on monitor (yes, I’ve profiled and adjusted the black point of my monitor). I have also learned that colour casts become more visible in print than on the monitor.

I think most importantly for me, is the luminosity or ‘dynamics’ of the print that I’ve noticed more in print. The eye is adaptable, and after staring at a monitor for too long, the eye adjusts and you start to believe things that aren’t true. We can convince ourselves that a duller luminance is brighter than it actually is. For instance, what you may interpret as white in the image may actually turn out to be around 50% L: a mid-grey tone. Printing out helps you recognise if the image is as vibrant as you think it is.

So a few weeks ago, I asked Neil Barstow from Colourmanagement.net to build me a custom profile for the Epson Soft Proofing 205 paper. This paper is a pretty good standard paper to convey what the images will be like when printed on an offset press.

I printed the Verification test image that I bought from him, and compared it with the proofing switched on in Photoshop.

I’m really pleased to have a ‘standard’ to print to. I can evaluate my images for offset printing.

One final thought: when you send your actual files to the printer for printing, I always send a printed copy of them. You can’t get more truthful than a hard-copy and I think it is always prudent to give this to your printer, as it means that you can avoid any possibility that their colour management is different from yours. They should be able to match the offset press to your hard copy prints.

Visual blind spot

Yesterday I reposted an old blog entry about viewing images upside down. The main benefit of looking at your photographs upside down is that it forces your eye into areas of the frame that you rarely visit.

You see, I have found that we all have a predisposition to walking through the frame a certain way. In my own case, I often walk through an image from left to right, but depending on the compositional content of the picture I will either start from bottom-left and end up at the top-right, or I’ll start at the top-left and end at the bottom-right.

Left to right walking

Red marks the areas where you may be blind if you tend towards scanning images from left to right.

Left image: left-to-right scanning from bottom to top.
Right image: left-to-right scanning from top to bottom.

In each ‘walk’ described above, I essentially ‘blank out’ the red regions of the image. In other words, if I walk from bottom-left to top-right, I spend very little time in the top-left and bottom right areas of the picture (see diagrams for a clearer illustration of this).

Until I turn them upside down that is.

That’s when I find that my eye is now forced to roam into regions of the image that I didn’t when I first walked through it.

Right to Left walking

Red marks the areas where you may be blind if you tend towards scanning images from right to left.

Left image: right-to-left scanning from bottom to top.
Right image: right-to-left scanning from top to bottom.

Over the years I have been teaching workshops I have found that out of a group of six participants, two-thirds of them follow the same flow that I have whilst walking through an image. They start bottom left and end top-right, or if the subject demands it they start top-left and finish bottom-right.

With my ‘theory’ in mind,
how does your image tend to scan the image above,
when it is the right way up, and when it’s rotated 180º?

Blind Spots?

I’ve come to the conclusion that regardless of whether my ‘theory is correct’, we all have visual blind spots when we look at an image. It may be due to how the composition is constructed, but the fact is that we spend more time in certain areas of the image than other areas, and those areas we don’t spend time in - are areas we often don’t visit.

This is a handicap of sorts. Because it means that we are visually blind to certain areas of the frame. This can affect us whilst outside composing our photographs and also while editing them.

So yesterday, I suggested that if it’s at all possible to review your images upside down, you should do so. It’s simply because our eyes tend to walk through an image a certain way, blanking out regions of the photograph that may be problematic to other viewers. By turning the image upside down, your eye is forced to enter into regions of the image it wouldn’t have done if it were the right way up. And by doing that, you are forced to notice things about the image that you were originally blind to.

You are effectively seeing the image anew, and you are being forced to confront areas of the picture that you were perhaps weak at working with at the time of capture.

We are all visually blind. I like to think that photography is the pursuit of learning to see again - of noticing the things we have a tendency to pass over. Turning images upside down can aid you in working around your visual blind spot.

Try it for yourself

With all of this in mind, try it with your own images. Ones you are happy with, and ones you are not so happy with. You can learn so much by rotating them. Do you notice things you didn’t see before? If you do, then think about why that is. Perhaps you have some blind spots when you walk through an image.

The Benefits of seeing Upside Down

I’m in Turkey this week with my view camera - I own an Ebony SW23 medium-format film view camera. Whilst looking through my older entries in my blog (which I recommend you doing sometime, as there’s now quite a lot of information here as I’ve been writing it for over 10 years), I found this article. Which I felt I would like to re-post today.

—-

Originally posted on May 5th, 2014

A few months ago, I re-entered the world of the view camera. It was a decision based on a few things.

Firstly, I'd been finding that I needed perspective control over some of the landscapes I've started to shoot over the past year. Buildings, and tall features in nature were causing me issues where I felt that the subjects began to lean backwards or converge together. Using a camera (or lens) with perspective control would alleviate that issue.

Upside down, and right way up

However, one of the challenges of using a view camera is that of composing upside down. I've found that rather than it being a hindrance, it has been beneficial in teaching me to notice things in the frame that I wouldn't ordinarily see at the point of capture.

One aspect of the human visual system, is that once we learn what an object looks like, we tend to keep it for reference point later on. This happens with everything that we see in our daily encounters. For example, when learning to read, once we know what some particular words look like, we no longer actually 'read' them (in my mind, this is tantamount to not seeing them). We simply scan past them. Take this sentence for example. Try counting the number of 'F's in it (please count it once):

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

How many 'F's did you count? Most folks tend to count three. There are actually six. The reason why you probably got somewhere around three, is because your mind has learned to 'scan' words such as 'OF' - you don't actually read them. Instead, your brain passes over them because it learned many moons ago that it's really laborious to read words like this all the time.

Another example to consider is that of a room you know so well. Once the ornaments and furniture have been in place for a while, you tend to pass over them with your eye. But if someone comes in and re-arranges something, or changes something, you'll more than likely pick up on the change when you enter the room. Rather than having to 'see' everything, as if for the first time, each time you enter the room (which would be really exhausting on your visual system), your eye tends to pass over familiar objects.

Now, photography is really the art of being able to enjoy the subtleties and nuances of familiar objects. Like taking a still-life art class, where we are asked to look at a vase of flowers and draw it, the act of making pictures is really about noticing the details of things we take for granted.

In terms of photographic composition, when we see a objects we are familiar with, such as trees and mountains, we tend to pass over them quickly. This leads to issues where we don't notice compositional errors in our pictures until we are home staring at them on our screens.

But what if the image is turned upside down? Do you still pass over the tree in the frame below, or is your mind thrown into a state of trying to work out what the object is?

Upside Down & right way up (again)

Turning an image upside down breaks our ability to pass over items within the frame easily. In an attempt to understand what we are seeing, we pay more attention to the shapes and tones of the items within the frame. Looking at the two examples on this page, I would like to suggest that when you see the upside down image, this is exactly what is happening in your brain. But when you look at the image the right-way-up, you're now back to scanning familiar objects such as trees, mountains, sky, etc.

So turning an image upside down allows us to abstract the composition down into form and tone.

I guess you may be asking - well how can I use this, if I don't have a view camera like Bruces? I'll let you into a secret - I don't just use this feature with my view-camera - I also use it when I'm editing images at home in Photoshop. It's hugely beneficial to rotate my images 180 degrees - because it allows me to notice flaws in the composition, or to see things that I wouldn't notice otherwise. The interesting thing about this is that once you correct the things you're not consciously aware of, the compositions tend to become much more relaxed and easier for your brain to take in.

So if your camera has the facility to turn your preview image upside down - it might be worth using it from time to time. Set up your composition and then flip the image 180 degrees to look at the frame and see if anything you didn't notice before pops out at you. Additionally, it's worth doing the same exercise with an image once back home and behind your computer screen.

Turning your images 180 degrees is a bit like having a workout for your visual-muscle. Perhaps it's something you might like to consider whilst out in the field, or at the very least, once back home and editing your work.

To be pain free

I decided many years ago that this blog should just be about the creative arts - photography, music, whatever I think is worth talking about from a creative perspective.

I therefore chose to avoid the following: too much of my own private life, political leanings (yes, I do have them), and anything else that I think may not be appropriate for a photography blog. You all come here after all, for your love of photography.

But I am going to break my rule today by telling you that for the past 11 months I was in so much pain that I started to really worry that something very bad was happening to me. Last November I woke up with bad neck pain that seemed to stretch down into the shoulder blades of my back. It didn’t go away and after weeks of it, I realise it wasn’t going to go away. The pain got worse, and then I found that I had weakness in my left arm. I had already been suffering pain (which I assumed was arthritic) in my left hand’s middle two fingers.

Well, things just got worse. I started to have lots of headaches that reached behind my eyes. Each day was the same: I’d wake up in a lot of pain, and as the day went on, it would subside. Only to find the pain-reset button set to FULL the next morning.

I went to two Osteopaths. I went to two physiotherapists. I went to my doctor and was scheduled for an MRI. Six months later I was still in a lot of pain and I now had such weakness in my left leg that I was convinced that I had some kind of tumour or something and that my days were numbered. I was already suffering from periods of feeling very despondent about it all. There was no end in sight.

I suffered the worst pain I’ve ever experienced for 11 months. I said very little on my workshops and tours but it was hard going dealing with it.

I am glad to report that I am now 100% pain free. It has all gone, as quickly as it had arrived 11 months ago. And I wish to share with you what the underlying problem was. It was my teeth. It turned out that I grind and clench my teeth while sleeping. I’ve apparently been doing this for years, which explains the stiff neck I’ve had for a very long time. I just needed a mouth guard and some massaging to remove all the tense muscles.

I had to find a dentist that worked with TMJ (jaw dysfunction). My original dentist referred me to my doctor. My doctor was clueless and sent me for an MRI. One of the osteopaths had warned me that she thought my problem stemmed from my jaw and that I may have to look for a dentist as most of them are pretty useless at diagnosing TMJ.

I sought out a dentist that specialised in TMJ after reading about neck pain on Google. As I say: few dentists can help you but I found one who made me a custom mouth-guard to wear and confirmed I was grinding my teeth. She also suggested i go for regular head-massages to help relieve the tension in my jaw. Which is what I did.

I think the massages helped, but they didn’t cure. The mouthguard made no difference at first. But I think the combination of the two made all the difference. It took about 2 weeks before all the pain subsided.

I feel as though I’ve been given a ‘get out of jail’ card. The dread of living the rest of my life in the pain I was in has been lifted.

And I am better than I have ever been. The slightly stiff neck I had for maybe 10 years has gone. As well as other slight ailments. Seems I was suffering for a long time and didn’t know I was putting up with some pain.

I am now 100% pain free. I’ve never felt better.

So I write this with one intention: if you are suffering similar body pain. Something in your neck that you think is either a pinched nerve, or pain in your arm (nerve pain) or weakness on the side of your body : it may be your jaw that is at the heart of the problem. Seek a dentist out that specialises in TMJ and ask them to check if you are grinding your teeth.

I am pain free.

But no thanks to most of the specialists I went to see. I had to persevere.

I spent a fortune trying to find out what was causing my pain, and I had 5 health specialists unable to help me.

What fixed me was eventually a Thai masseur and a dental mouth guard.

I just feel it’s so easy to get lost in one’s pain and not see a way out of it. Seldom do we hear the success stories, of someone who found a solution and helped. For me, I was left in the dark. Google searching told me about a lot of overlapping conditions that could cause what I was suffering but few articles or forums gave me hope. If someone got fixed, they went silent.

So I hope this post today may be of help to someone. Just one person. And it’s worth it.

Isle of Eigg Workshops for 2021

Isle of Eigg, Scottish Highlands

£628.50

2025, April 7-12, Price: £1,895
2025, September 8-13, Price: £1,895

Initial deposit: £628.5
2nd Deposit of £628.5 due six months before workshop start date

5-Day Photographic Workshop

Introduction

The small island of Eigg contains perhaps one of the most dramatic and photogenic beaches in Scotland: the Bay of Laig & the Singing Sands. With abundant geological features on each beach and the isle of Rum as a perfect backdrop, this location is a dream for any landscape photographer.

We spend all our time on two beaches, which are in walking distance from our accommodation. One is sandy while the other is rocky. To get the most out of this workshop it is best if you are comfortable working on rocky beaches. This trip is suitable for anyone who has regular fitnessand can walk with their camera bag and tripod for up to 30 minutes.

Date: Select Date April 7-12 2025September 8-13 2025

Add to cart

I’ve just listed two more Scottish workshops for 2021 on my workshop page. I will be going back to Eigg (it’s a favourite place of mine that I have been running a workshop on for the past decade). The island is small, we spend all of our time on mostly one beach (which is highly photogenic).

We have private rooms, in small cottages but some of the bathrooms are shared. Eigg is a small island of around 85 people, eight miles long. So there are no hotels, nothing to spend your money on, and as such, it gives a unique Scottish highland experience.

To enjoy this trip, you should be fit enough to walk for 30 minutes over uneven and boggy ground with your camera bag and tripod. The beaches are rocky in places. To get the most out of this trip I would suggest you need to be comfortable being on rocky beaches (some previous clients have not been). We spend our entire time on just two beaches, both highly photogenic.

Re-interpretation

Before I begin my article today, I’d like to make a few points very clear:

1. There is always a trade-off. When you gain something, you lose something.

2. Sometimes we like something because we’re attached to how it is.

3. The two images below, I don’t view one as better or worse. And hopefully you should get beyond this point also. ‘Like’ is a personal preference. It has nothing to do with the validity of an image.

I have just recently chosen to go back to some of my favourite landscapes in Scotland in 2021. Partly it is because I would like a change: It has been many years since I photographed my own home country, and I feel that there has been a big change in my style of photography over the past few years. I’m curious to see how I will approach / react / and photograph, since I am aware that I am looking for different things now.

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This is the original image, shot circa 2009, in the Assynt region of Scotland. It is not of Stac Pollaidh, as many people assume.

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This is a re-interpretation. I did it, just to see where I may end up based on my current tastes / aesthetics, etc. I realise I’ve learned so much in the past 10 years, so I was curious to see how I may re-interpret the same image.

Well I’m sure you’ve already studied the two images above : both from the same film-scan and reached your own view of which you like more than the other. This article today is not about this. I am not going to say ‘this image is better or worse because of…..’. Instead, I just wish to discuss some other aspects.

Point 1. Familiarisation makes it hard to see it any other way

I personally love the original image, but I’m really not sure how much of this has to do with familiarisation. We become set / stuck in our ways the more we live with how things have been. And this is just as applicable to our older work. Attempting the re-interpretation image has forced me to think about whether I’m attached to the original image because it’s good, or just because I’m overly familiar with it now.

Point 2. How radically different an image can be through editing

Editing / post-processing (I abhor this term personally), is a highly creative place to live. I have never believed that the work is to ‘get it right in camera’. And I’ve always enjoyed the editing / interpretive side of my photography. It’s interesting to know that an image can be edited in many different ways. Editing is an art, it is a skill. It is a life-long endeavour in learning to see what was in the image and bring out the main motifs. Editing isn’t done by learning Lightroom in a few weeks and that’s it. It can really take you places if you don’t mind departing from what was there at the time of the capture.

Point 3. How much I have changed

I don’t know if I have it in me many more to do deeply saturated colour work. I’m wondering if I may return to it in some years to come, but I’m certainly aware that the original image from 2009 isn’t something that I would do any more. There is always a trade off in your own development. I see things in the original image that I love, but I couldn’t do that now if I tried, because it’s not where my aesthetic leanings are. I’ve lost some aspects to my image making, but I’ve gained also. As I said, there is always a trade-off.

Which leads to my last point:

Point 4. The original capture was made by a different me. Edited by a new me. Perhaps this doesn’t work?

Yep, the guy who made the original shot was the ‘Bruce-Percy-2009’ edition ;-) We shed skin, we move on. I’m not too sure it’s a good thing to return to older work that was created by a different you. Because there is in some way a disconnect. I think I would shoot this scene differently now and I think it would be done differently with an aim to edit it a particular way. These days my editing and composition skills are intertwined. Where I once just went out to make images and then see what I could do with them later on. I think that when I compose shots in the field now, I already know what I’m going to do with them when I edit them.

I think if one wishes to return to older work to re-edit it. There has to be a reason. For example, if you ‘see’ something in the work that you can bring out, or enhance then I think it’s valid to return to it. But if you are trying to ‘update the work to match where you are now’, I’m not convinced it will work.

This is what I tried to do with this image. I attempted to edit it to ‘see what I would do with it now, based on who I am now’. And I’m not sure it’s a success. My reasons are, there are too many distractions in the foliage that I probably wouldn’t have shot it this way. So I’m trying to start on an image that isn’t at the right starting point for where I am now.

Conclusion

It’s fun to go back and revisit older work. You can really learn a lot about yourself in the process:

• How far have you come?

• Would you shoot the work this way now?

• What distractions in the work do you see now that you didn’t see at the time of the original creation?

• Do I want to return to the same places now, that I feel I am looking at things differently?

For me, the last point is the salient one. I am very curious to find out how I will approach photographing in Scotland now that my style has evolved. Will I find some common ground? Will I see new things?

Landscapes can teach us so much about our photography and about ourselves. Find the right landscape in your own development and it can move you forward in ways that other landscape won’t. Returning to a well known place many years later can be very interesting because you will most likely be looking for different things and you’ll therefore see it in a fresh and new way.

I’m aware that my work is always in a state of change. Nothing is ever finished. There should be no rules. Do as you please, return to older work if it’s what you feel you need to do. Re-interpretation can teach us so much. I just don’t think it will always yield better / improved results, but you’ll certainly grow from the experience.