Landscape as teacher

November 16, 2023

The landscape can either be a benefit or a hindrance to your development.

If you are seeking personal development in your photography then it’s best to work with the landscapes that seem to keep your creativity in positive flow. If a particular landscape keeps on showing you new things, or you find yourself enthused whilst there, then keep going back. You won’t be repeating yourself. Instead you’ll be honing what you do.

I’ve been very fortunate to find several landscapes that have been my teacher this past decade or so. Bolivia is one of them, and in this little 30 second video you can see how my photography has evolved over the time I have been visiting this landscape.

I think it might be easy to assume that this video just shows my own evolution as a photographer. Well, it does show that I have become more aware of luminance and removing distractions or fine messy detail in my work, and there is also a focus on reducing scenes down to an abstraction now. But this is not really the point I wish to make today.

Instead, I wish to make the point that my evolution as a photographer could not have happened on its own. I am aware that working in landscapes that resonated with my aesthetic, is one thing, but some landscapes just keep on giving and giving for each of us. We just need to find those which do and keep working with them.

Bolivia has been my teacher for over a decade now. I have so much to thank it for. I have had several epiphanies in my time there.

I like to keep going back again and again to the landscapes where I feel I have a connection or a relationship of some kind. There is more to do and more to uncover in my photography if I do.

By going back, they can become a yardstick with which to ‘notice’ changes in what we do. I do not use the word ‘measure’ or ‘evaluate’ because I think a certain judgement of whether our work is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ is to be avoided. For me, it’s more about just tuning in to where I feel I am, and how much I may have moved.

Going back again and again allows you to do this with your development in your own work. I appreciate that this may be an extravagance for me with regards to Bolivia, but you may have found a landscape that is in your own country that can afford you to go back repeatedly. If so, then I would advise you to continue going back.

Graduated Luminance conveys atmosphere

November 14, 2023

As a dyed in the wool Scot, I grew up in wet cloudy weather. It is part of who I am. I think it is also why I tend to gravitate to landscapes which offer similar weather to that of the Scottish highlands. I’m just most comfortable in overcast locations where rain is a predominant feature.

A few days ago I encouraged you to go out in bad weather. Because I have found over the years that working in inclement conditions offers soft light and atmosphere due to the constantly changing light.

But I have had to learn that there are many different kinds of ‘good light’. The first few times I went to the Bolivian altiplano I encountered a cloudless place that was full of colourful beautiful light.

It was a revelation at the time for me that a place that on the surface ‘had no atmosphere’, no diffused far away hills, no changing light scattering across the landscape, could be so enticing.

The landscape was dry, and the air was empty of any particles to cause diffusion and ambience in the scene. Well, at least that is how it appeared to me at the time because I was used to working in inclement conditions.

But I have found over the years of repeated visits to Bolivia and also the Puna de Atacama that these landscapes offer a blank template with which to draw my own atmospheres upon them during my editing. I have learned that graduating luminance across skies and lakes can impart a sense of 3D. When we use graduations - particularly subtle ones that most viewers won’t be consciously aware of, we can impart a sense of ‘glow’ into the work. We imply atmosphere when we go about using graduations carefully in our editing.

I now prefer to go to ‘blank’ places. Although I personally don’t like the phrase ‘negative space’, I like places that have lots of emptiness in them. They give me the space in which to impart a sense of 3D feel to the work in the edit.

Unskilled, and unaware of it?

November 12, 2023

The only thing I have learned for sure over my creative time as a photographer, is that there is always much more to learn.

The dunning-kruger effect describes how realistic we are about our abilities over our creative life.

I show this to point out a few things:

confidence in your abilities is not linear as your experience improves.
You can be very confident but know little. In essence, you think you’re better than you really are. I believe this is a protection mechanism at the start of learning something new. Otherwise we would all quit.
You can be low in confidence when your ability is high; although you are creating good work, you’re more critical of it.
Few of us get to ‘expert level’. Despite us all wishing to get to this level, the real fun is in the journey of exploring where our creativity will take us.

In my view, I am always looking for balance in my creative life. I am always hoping to attain a level where I can objectively be right about what I’m doing. The truth is, I have brief moments when I feel I can accurately evaluate my output, and that is where we should all be. If we are growing, then we should have periods of being lost as we find ourselves in new territory.

As someone who is a ‘teacher’ (I prefer guidance instructor), as I often find myself just giving folks permission to try out what they didn’t know they already knew, I’m aware of the different levels in participants handle on their own abilities.

I’ve met folks who lack a lot of confidence and yet their work is really good,. Conversely. I’ve met folks who think they know more than they actually do. I think the later is very common, because in order to not give up, we have to think we’re doing better than we really are.

It can be a little frustrating dealing with someone who’s opinion of their abilities is out of step with where they truly are, but that is the nature of progress: we start off by thinking we know more than we actually do. It is only with experience that we realise how little we actually knew when we first started out.

With regards to my own personal development, if I’m honest, I am always discovering how little I know. Every year I look back at older work and realise ‘man, I thought I really knew this, but I still have a long way to go’.

This should be for all of us - our norm. We should always be looking back at our earlier work and thinking we have done better since.

Photographing Atmospheres

November 11, 2023

The conventional view is that we take photographs of subjects, and all we need to do is work on where to place them in the scene to get a good composition. Light is often considered an important part of the scene, but rarely considered the most essential element.

Coming to a place where there are no definite subjects ; no iconic mountains, no iconic trees, no iconic views to photograph, can lead those who fall back on using ‘subjects’ to feel lost, and be lost.

It takes a lot of time as a photographer to come round to thinking about light as the most essential ingredient in landscape photography. Yet that is what it is: it’s the most important element of our images.

The insecurities will lurk for some time that ‘I don’t have a key subject in the photograph’, as one works with landscapes that have no key compositional subjects. One will flounder around feeling unanchored and uncertain.

I would advise that this is something that needs gotten over. But I think will only come when you are accidentally caught in bad weather and manage to come home with a shot that has so much atmospheric content, you’ll wonder why you never went out in bad weather before. Often it is these unplanned moments that cause us to have an epiphany in our photographic development.

Scottish light is often changeable light as one weather front after another races over the Scottish landscape. This is its strength. Not its weakness. The Isle of Harris in Scotland has atmosphere because of this.

The island does not really have much in the way of ‘iconic’ subjects to use as an anchor in one’s photographs. It is a lesson in learning to let go of ‘looking for a rock for the foreground’ as one cannot find much in the way of subjects to place in the frame in the conventional sense. It is a lesson in learning to work with the elements, and dare I say, get used to getting wet as you pursue those fleeting, yet very emotive atmospheric scenes you encounter.

I love shooting in rainy weather. I have discovered over the years that I will find more interesting images when I shoot at the edge of storms, or in what many will consider a bad weather day.

The most important element in a picture is the quality of the light. Light is affected by the weather systems we encounter. Of the mix of rain and sunshine we encounter. Of windy days that tear up the sea in to many white horses we encounter. Of streaking clouds that blur across our camera’s frame.

We paint our imagery with atmospheres. Not subjects. Atmospheres.

When what is outside frame influences what is inside the frame

November 7, 2023

Preamble - this is a post that was originally published back in October 2020. I am finding much value in digging back through this blog.

This little area of Hokkaido is rather special to me. There are many rolling hills with bunches of copse together. When I am here, I am always striving to isolate groups of the copse with maybe a few single trees around them, but it’s so hard because there are often more complex, less attractive aspects of the landscape trying to creep into the shot.

‘To me, what you leave out of the frame is often just as important
or more important than what you choose to leave inside the frame’

As simple as this shot may appear, it took quite some effort to do, because I was constrained by a large forest just outside the bottom area of the frame. I found I had to go higher and higher up a hill to get enough clearance, and even then, in order to completely remove the unwanted forest, I had to settle on this composition:

Due to the large forest (just outside the bottom part of the frame) being so close to the little trees, I couldn’t give the trees enough space below them. This forced me to push the two little trees towards the edge of the frame.

At the time of capture, I remember thinking ‘this is a little unusual’, as everything in the frame of interest is really bunched down at the bottom of the frame. Can I live with it?
’

‘I think all you can do is make the shot,
and leave the pondering for another time’
(we are best being editors when at home)

I think all you can do is make the shot, and leave the pondering for another time. And indeed, as I’ve lived with this image over the past two years I’ve grown to really enjoy it. To me, those little trees are so keen to be part of the copse. But they’re almost being pushed out of the scene.

So sometimes it’s ok to put subjects at the very edge of the frame. Sometimes it’s ok to create tension. I just think that it has to look like it was intentional. Otherwise most viewers will assume it’s a bad composition.

I would also like to add that by being restricted to composing this view because I was trying to avoid what is outside of the frame, I was forced to create a composition that is / was outside my normal habits or comfort zone.

Sometimes (if not all the time) restrictions and limitations are a good thing, and encourage an attitude towards innovation.

Grads and Feathering

November 5, 2023

Preamble: this was originally posted in February 2020. I'm reposting it here, as it's still relevant today.

When you place a grad right in front of the lens, it becomes softer, and more diffused. Consider what happens when you place a hard-grad in front of a 50mm lens:

Let’s think about this some more. In the illustration below, I show where the barrel of the lens is in relation to the actual filter that you have placed in front of the lens:

Not only are you using a small portion of the actual filter, but consider that the filter has been placed up close to the front of the lens and that the lens is focussed much further out than where the filter is. So the filter will be quite diffused as illustrated in the diagram above.

Filter gradations become more soft as the focal length increases

When you zoom-in, the filter graduation becomes softer. Let’s look at how the hard-grad is now working with a 70mm lens:

The hard-grad is becoming more diffused, and less effective as we ‘zoom in’. In essence, you are zooming into the graduation or ‘feathering’ of the grad.

As you go down the focal lengths, gradations become more defined

When we go down the focal lengths, we are essentially ‘zooming-out’ of the gradation of the filter. So it becomes more defined. However, there is still a degree of diffusion because the filter is in-front of the point of focus of the lens:

So we’ve learned that:

Hard-grads aren’t as hard as we think they are.
Hard-grads are always diffused more than we think they are going to be.
The diffusion or ‘gradation’ becomes softer as we go up the focal lengths (zoom in).
The diffusion or ‘gradation’ becomes harder as we go down the focal lengths (zoom out).

Soft Grads are very soft

For years, I always thought soft grads would be more suitable because I wouldn’t see the sudden line of the gradation, but I often found myself pushing the soft-grad all the way down, in a futile attempt to affect the sky. In my view they're too soft for most applications.

I’ve come to realise that soft-grads are only useful for when I want very soft gradations over the entire scene and that they are of little use for when I want to grad the sky only.

Consider these illustrations:

At 50mm, soft grads just apply a very gradual change across the entire frame. I find them mostly useful for images of large expanses of water or other subjects where there is a gradual change from ground to sky of around 3-stops.

Let’s consider if it’s any better if we go down the focal lengths to 24mm:

It’s slightly more defined, but still very soft.

Feathering

What we have seen is that hard grads, as well as soft grads have a degree of ‘feathering’ to them. The transition is gradual even for hard-grads.

This means that placement isn't so critical.

If you are finding your placement is bad, is more likely that you are using a grad that is too strong, rather than your problem being bad placement.

It also means that the grad isn't going to bite into mountains on the horizon so obviously, as the effect is too gradual to be noticed.

For those that do find their mountains are darkening down too much, I would suggest that it’s not the use of grads that is often the problem, it’s usually down to one of two things:

The wrong strength of grad is being applied (I’d say this is mostly the case)
The subject matter has very dark mountains and the grad has been placed a little too far down in the frame. Our eye tends to adjust and ‘not see’ the effect after a while, so when re-composing, always ‘wiggle’ the grad to see where it’s placed. Often times, it’s much lower than you intend it.

Conclusion

Firstly, grads don’t work the way we thought they do.

Hard grads are much softer than we think they are.
Placement is less critical, so long as we choose the right strength
Soft grads are very soft. I’d choose medium or hard grads over soft-grads for most of my work.
As you zoom in, grads become more diffused
As you zoom out, grads become more defined

With regards to point 4 and 5, I now own a set of Lee Filter medium grads alongside my Lee Filter hard grads (not all filter manufacturers make different degrees of gradation - hard, medium, soft). When I zoom in, I use the hard grads and when I zoom out, I use the medium grads. You may want to go one stage further and buy a set of very-hard grads. They will come into their own for focal lengths above 100mm.

6. Lastly, but most importantly, grads are more feathered than we assume. They don’t bite into the horizon as suddenly as we assume they do, and if you are finding so, then it’s most probably due to either the grad being too strong. Or it’s been placed too far down the frame. Wiggle it around to see where you’ve placed it. Often times our eyes adjust to the placement and we can’t see where the grad has been positioned. By wiggling it, we allow our eye to re-adjust to where the filter has been placed.