The Lalibela Cross

One of the reasons why I decided to go to Ethiopia, was because I watched a television programme by Dan Cruickshank called 'Around the world in 80 Treasures'. In this program, Dan goes around the world looking for some of the most sacred of items which are not so commonly known to exist.

For instance, he goes to Ethiopia to search out the Ark of the Covenant, which turns out to be held, as many Ethiopians believe, in a small hut with an iron fence around it, and looked after by one guard.

In the TV program he also goes to Lalibela to see the Lalibela cross, a 7kg gold cross which dates back to the 12th century. It is an Ethiopian heir loom of significant importance.

I went to Lalibela for Meskel, a festival which happens once a year, known as the festival of 'finding the true cross'. Ethiopians are orthodox Christians and Lalibela is their own Jerusalem.

So I thought I'd show you a photograph of the Lalibela cross, held by the Deacon of the church of Bet Medhane Alem.

It was a real privilege to be allowed to photograph the cross before the ceremonies of Maskal - it is perhaps the first and only time in my travels that I've ever been given such privileged access to something of such significance to a nation.

Amateur Photographer of the Year

Last week, I left my Assynt workshop and headed back to my Dad's to get my own car, only to find that he'd left me a news paper cutting on the drivers seat. The cutting contained an article about a workshop participant of mine winning the "Amateur Photographer of the Year award".  I looked at the mug shot and knew instantly that Dudley, a participant from my November Harris workshop last year had won the competition and had been featured in the Herald news paper.

Dudley is a very memorable fellow indeed as I discovered on the Harris workshop. Each morning he'd 'bag' the front seat in the van so he could subject me to many funny stories of his 'growing up years and the special relationship he seems to have with his Dad.

Anyway, I got in touch with Dudley to ask him about the competition and also to ask if I could put his winning photo up on this very blog, along with some blurb from him. I've copied the email verbatim for you - It was very nice to hear that my workshop had made a difference to him, but I do remember sitting in a cafe at the end of the trip and telling him that there 'is a landscape photographer inside you'.  Up until the trip, he'd been shooting studio portraiture so it was interesting for me to see how well he did at landscapes throughout the week, even though it appeared that most of the time, he was more interested in taking photos of the group rather than the stunning beaches of Harris.

Anyway, thanks once again Dudley. I love it when I see people get a real buzz out of their photography, and if I've helped them in any way, that really makes my day.

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Hi Bruce,

This is the one. At my open house event it was the image that had most attention in terms of time spent viewing and comments. The most popular was the wide view of a Harris beach with rollers breaking.

Blurb? After attending your Harris workshop in 2009 I spent ages staring at the images I came back with. I said at the time that I felt that the course had made something click inside me and, after subsequent field trips alone, I realise that it was true. I went to Eigg and stayed in that musty caravan that I think all photographers should stay in to get into the atmosphere of the place. I was on the beach at dawn, I slept, read and fed the chickens during the day and was back on the beach for dusk. I don't remember how I came across your website Bruce but I devoured it for months and was incredibly envious of the world you had seen while I was in bed. I was excited when I saw that you had started to do workshops and I signed up for the Outer Hebrides trip to Harris and was so pleased with whole trip. I'll never forget that week. The image below has been voted winner of the Classic View category at Landscape Photographer of the Year 2010. Awards and accolades don't make a photographer and I know I have a mountain to climb to achieve consistency but I'd like to tribute my award to you for being my inspiration. So Bruce, you are my landscape photography hero, mentor and, I hope, friend. (even if I talked your ears off before dawn on Harris!)

Ethiopia

I've been a bit swamped lately, and I've only just literally started to work on my Ethiopian image this afternoon. But I'm a little troubled. My Nikon Scanner's software isn't supported anymore and I can't get it to work on Snow Leopard, so I've had to resort to buying Silverfast. Talk about clunky. Talk about confusing. Talk about being able to screw up a scan so easily.

I used to work in Software, and I know it's easy to make a hash of stuff (hey, I was never that great a programmer), but the user interface could really do with an overhaul on their software and more importantly, so could the workflow. It's rubbish.

Anyway, here's the very first test scan I've done. I think it's going to take me a few weeks to get to grips with scanning on Silverfast. It's always painful for me having to learn new software, get used to the way *it* wants to work, rather than it working the way *you* want it to work.

Hope you enjoy this first taste of my new portrait images from Ethiopia. I have no idea what is in store at the moment because all I have is a big box of negatives all sitting in their sleeves at the moment, and a cumbersome way of scanning them on a Canon 9000F to see what the digital-contact-sheet holds.

Mentors in life and everything

Over the past two years I've been working very hard at establishing a photographic workshop business. This posting is not really about this, but I'll let you know that things are going very well despite the media trying to push us all into a double dip recession. I surely shouldn't be doing so well in the current climate, but in actuality, I'm doing pretty well and the business and my repeat client list grows by the day.

But the reason that things are going so well is not down to one thing, but a combination of factors. Yes, you've got to be a good photographer and yes, people have got to want to come on a trip with you because they like what you do. But you also have to provide some value for them and that means teaching them something about photography and hopefully they will go home a much better photographer. I feel I'm succeeding on this.

But that isn't the sole reason for why I'm doing so well. It turns out that I have an amazing support network of friends and people with experience in areas of business that I have needed advice on. Not only that, but I've also had some clients turn into friends and their background and experience has been invaluable as well as something I've got a lot of deep happiness out of. It's been amazing to find so many encouraging people who have wanted to support me, believe in what I'm doing and want to help me make it all a success.

Being self employed means quite a change in your life. Firstly you are fully responsible for making it work, secondly, you find yourself on your own quite a lot, working from home or in cafes during the day because you need some social stimulus. But you also need backup. Someone to share your ideas with, your fears with and have someone act as a guiding light to show you the way when you can't see the wood for the trees.

I've got one friend in particular that I meet up with each week for a few hours in a cafe. He has been acting as my technical advisor and has managed to help me get my ebooks onto the apple iBooks store, amazons kindle app (coming soon), has helped me with any infrastructure help I've needed - I use drop box to sync all my laptops and computers together with the many documents I access while away on workshops and back home, or in Ethiopia. But he's also acted as a manager, sometimes telling me about areas of my business that need more focus, or has managed to help me turn an idea into reality.

Being a successful photographer does not just require talent. Sure there are photographers out there with no talent who are making a good living. Being successful requires strategy, focus, working with others, being collaborative, open minded (handsome, great guy..... Etc,etc)..... Seriously, it requires working with others. Accepting help from others, delegating things to people you know can make a big difference to your business while at the same time making sure you know they're appreciated.

So I'm not really on my own. Here is a list of the people who have helped me or continue to do so:

Darren - graphic and illustration help Callum - strategist, technologist, ideas generator, sanity coordinator Kathy - business finance advice,instigator of the whole thing - I blame her a lot for me existing as a photographer Liz M - proof reading and ebook advice Michael M - proof reading and ebook advice Mike D - technical authoring advice Peter F - photographic mentor and inspiration generator Sonja - marketing, web design, backup sanity coordinator Clients too many to mention - feedback and ideas support network

So if you're looking for inspiration, want to develop your photography as an art or a business, then you probably don't have to look too far. Often ideas, experiences and a way forward can be presented to you by someone who's perhaps sitting right next to you, or is only a phone call away.

Desktop Themes

I'm intending to offer some desktop backgrounds of some of my more 'simpler' images soon, for use on displays up to 24" at a maximum resolution of 1900 x 1200.

They will be available in 3 different packs of 11 images. I chose the most simplest of images because I felt that they work the best as background images.

So I hope you like my choice of images. It was very rewarding going through my back catalogue of images and selecting those that had a simplistic make-up to them.

Of course, the images of course look gorgeous on the iPad too.

Keep your eyes peeled on my blog and monthly news letter for a future announcement!

Which digital slr?

So if you frequent my blog quite a lot, then you'll know that I'm a film shooter through and through. So much so that I've got two film camera systems - a Mamiya 7II which is my beloved camera for landscapes and a Contax 645 system which is my portraiture camera. I'm in the process of buying a Fuji GX680III at the moment, because I'd like to get closer to my foregrounds, and the only way to do that with medium format, is to use lenses with tilt in them. The Fuji GX680 allows me to control the lens movements, similar to how a Large Format camera operates.

Anyway, I'm digressing here... because I have a question for you!

If you were going to buy a digital SLR, and your criteria was to have something you could use the new Zeiss lenses with (I've just had first hand experience of the 21mm on a Nikon D700 this weekend and it is superb. No soft edges, corner to corner spades of detail), and you wanted to have low noise at high ISO's but you want to keep the price down.... what would you choose?

I ask this, not because I'm 'going digital'. I 'went digital' for 2 years, and then promptly 'went film' with no intention of moving to digital every again. However, I'm finding that on my workshops, it would be great to have something so I can shoot images to illustrate certain compositional techniques.

Torridon Workshop

I'm in Torridon right now conducting a workshop with a group of six. This morning, we went out in one of the most beautiful days I've seen in Torridon for a long time and Hartmut, one of the participants made this image of some of us at Loch Clair (please click on the image for a much larger view).

Hartmut seemed to be much more interested in documentary shots (he was always photographing me during my talks), that I felt perhaps that Landscape was maybe not so much of an interest for him. But I'm very taken with this shot - it's a really nice blend of someone's interest in both documentary and landscape photography.

Many thanks to Hartmut for allowing me to show this image (and not incur any special license fee that he keeps joking with me about).

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Postscript - this was written yesterday, and since then, the workshop has sadly ended. I had a lovely time with the group they were such good company. So without further adieu, here are some contact sheets of the few images we chose to discuss at our critique and edit:

It was a great trip and as usual, the weekends are simply far too short. It's always a blast for me if the folk on the trip are willing to get into the trip and for that, I'd like to thank Fiona, Linda, Hartmut, James, John & Neil for coming along and creating such a nice group environment.

New eBook work in progress

I'm busy writing a new eBook about understanding light and using Stephen Trainors fabulous application 'The Photographer's Ephemeris' to plan a photographic shoot.

I have to confess that it's taken me a while to get the ball rolling on this one. It's quite a task to try and explain just what the differences are between civil, nautical and astronomical twilights are for instance (and whether you should care to know!), but I feel that with some concrete examples of images from my portfolio to back up the maps and sunrise and sunset times that TPE illustrates so well, you should have something to help you get more prepared in future for landscape shoots the next time you head off on a plane to some new, unknown, destination.

I'll keep you posted about how the eBook is progressing, but I feel it will take some time to work on it.

In the mean time, why not download a free copy of the Photographer's Ephemeris, or better still, get the iPhone application from Stephens web site.

Aurora, Norway 2011

I'm very excited tonight because I'm in the process of finalising some plans I have to visit the Lofoten islands, Norway in March 2011. I visited the Lofoten in 2007 in the height of summer and ever since, I've wanted to return to shoot it in the depths of winter.

I'll be going with one of the members of this very blog. Vlad has kindly allowed me to use one of his images to illustrate the Aurora. I'm hoping to finally experience it for myself as it's perhaps the only wilderness wonder I feel that has eluded me so far.

This photo was taken during a 2-months solo trek in south Greenland, Vlad spent 7 weeks in the wild (with extended times of solitude of up to three weeks). Vladimir has some more Aurora shots from Lofoten on his website and many more from Greenland will be online next month at  www.verticalshot.com.

Realm of Vanishing Cultures

As a continuation of my post yesterday about Louis Hebert's project in Nepal, I couldn't help reach into my book shelf and find my copy of Wade Davis' 'Light at the Edge of the World' book. Those of you who know my photography well know that my interests are split between landscape photography and portrait photography of indigenous cultures (I'm just back from Ethiopia for instance where I've just made some photographs of Muskal, a celebration of the Lalibela cross). So sometimes this blog diverts from purely landscape photography to my other interest - that of other cultures.

I bought this book by Wade many years ago, and not only did I find the photographs of the people in it really inspiring, but I also found the text unbelievable. Davis is an Anthropologist and through his work, he has experienced so much. Voodoo in Haiti where people are transformed into a state of zombification, Shaman's of the Amazon, I could go on. It's really interesting stuff and it made me realise just how much there is still unknown out there.

I found this interesting talk by Davis on the TED forum. It's rather rushed, but he does get to the point of what he's about and the photographs are really inspiring. It's making me think about going back to Peru next year - it's been on my list to go back to the Andes and spend some concentrated time there making pictures of the highlanders.

I hope you enjoy Davis' talk and do consider getting his book - it's quite a little journey into another world, not far away from our own.