World Citizen

I've never strayed into talking about politics on this blog, and I hope that it stays this way. However, with an aim to being apolitical, I've come to find that my life these days is one as a 'world citizen'. I do so much travelling and have met so many wonderful friends from far and wide, that I have come to one conclusion: we are all the same. 

In the next eight months, I will be in the following countries:

Argentina
Bavaria - Germany
Brazil
China
France
Greenland
Ireland
Iceland
Japan
Romania
Russia
Scotland
Switzerland

All photography related of course :-) And before you judge me: I know how privileged I am to do so much travel these days. I am aware that my life has changed so much that my eldest sister tells me 'you come home for a holiday Bruce', to which I think she may be right.

Anyway, as much as I think a sense of nationalism is important - it's good to be proud of the country or region we come from. We should remind ourselves that the world is rapidly becoming a smaller, more local place. We are all world citizens, if not by travel, then at least in spirit.

All landscape photographers share a love for the landscape, and we do not discriminate with where beauty is situated. I see similarities in the landscapes of many countries to each other and the more I continue to travel, this just seems to become more commonplace. The same is true with the friends I have met over the duration of my travels. I have friends from Trinidad / Tobago to Egypt and Russia. All started out as participants on my workshops and tours. All lovely people and we all share the same passion: landscape photography.

Landscape photography has no borders. It is for those who have a world-view. In fact, I believe we are world-citizens in our outlook, simply because of what we do, even if we may never get out of our own country (or region) to make pictures elsewhere. It is our wonder for the landscape that unifies us.

Gitzo Giant Tripod GT5563GS

Since 2013, I've been using a tripod much taller than I am. I am six feet tall, and my present tripod has been the Gitzo GT3542 XLS tripod, which is over six feet tall. I've written about why I think the height of a tripod is critical to my compositions in a previous post on this blog. You can find it here.

Having a tall tripod is one of the most important criteria for me when choosing one (also, no centre column is important too!). Landscape is seldom flat and there are often times when a standard tripod is fully extended, yet does not reach my eye.

But the problem of tripod height is more critical than simply being able to have the camera at eye level while being perched up high on some slope, or whilst standing on some rock. Tripod height is a critical yet often forgot about component of composition.

Although tripods do not help us find compositions (really, you should go hunting with your camera in your hand before setting up your tripod, otherwise you will become locked-in if you attach your camera straight away), tripods excel at helping us fine-fine compositions. Their purpose is not simply to keep the camera steady. I often find that a composition can be greatly improved by some slight adjustment of the tripod placement. Hand-holding does not work because we tend to wobble the camera around while thinking about what we're photographing. Having the camera attached to a tripod allows us to take our eye away for a rest, and then reconvene. It also allows us to study the composition with 100% of our effort, because the tripod is keeping the composition steady for us.

However, when it comes to trying out slight variations of a found composition, tripods are rarely adjusted in height above our eye-level. Sure, there are times when we will compress our tripods down the way - below our eye-level so we can get closer to foreground subjects, or to compress the mid ground in our compositions. But rarely do we extend the tripod so the camera is above us. And we're missing out on so much by not utilising the space above our heads.

In the age of digital capture, shooting from above head height should be a cinch. We now have cameras with adjustable preview screens so we can compose from above our heads and still see what we're doing. This vantage point should offer up something quite new from the usual 'shoot at eye level'.

My current tripod is a Gitzo 3542XLS. It extends above six foot, so it's taller than me, and I've used it fully extended many times, either because I am on a slope, or standing on a rock and require the tripod to stay at my full height. I've even shot my camera from above me without seeing what the composition is, because I've known I needed more separation between objects in the frame that my normal height won't give me.

This week I've bought a new tripod. The Gitzo GT5563GS. It is a series 5 tripod, and is the tallest tripod that Gitzo offer. It has a height of just over 9 feet tall ! Even with my existing tripod - the GT3542XLS, which is taller than I am, I still find myself at times wishing for more height than it can offer. So this is why I've chosen to go for such an extremely high tripod.

The downside of going for such a taller system is the weight. It is 50% heavier than my existing 3542XLS model. So I'm a little uncertain as to whether the new Giant Tripod will work for me in the long term, and like any review of a new item that I've just bought, it's simply too soon to know for sure if the tripod is going to work out for me. So I will be sure to let you know how I get on with such a large tripod over the coming months, as I feel that at least a year or so is the only way to truly get to know a product well. Anything less is not sufficient.

If you are looking for a new tripod,  do think about buying one that is taller than you are. You won't regret it as I am always finding compositions that wouldn't have been possible with a tripod that only comes up to my eye level.

two parts of a whole

Over the past month I've been returning to Ray Metzker's 'City Still's' book, sadly out of print because Ray is no longer with us, having passed away in 2014.  The book is a fascinating study of form and tone.

Ray was a master printer, who could use his darkroom techniques to help bring forward the graphical elements in everyday street scenes. 

Image © Ray Metzker. This is really a study of vertical lines and two or three discreet tones.

Metzker also had the talent to spot graphical elements in the everyday at the point of capture, and to work with them later in the darkroom. He was no 'post' processor - I doubt very much that anything he did in the editing stage was an afterthought.

I really abhor the term 'post-processing' because it encourages us to think that our editing may be something we do 'afterwards'. It encourages us to think of the two tasks of capture and edit as unrelated. They shouldn't be.

With Metzker's finely printed work, it's clear to me that he saw his edits at the point of capture. He knew how far he could pull and push certain tones in his darkroom, and this propelled him to go looking for tones and forms that would work within the parameters of his darkroom skills.

Image © Ray Metzker. I've never been so captivated by a car door before.

Photography is sometimes about making the viewer reconsider, to think again, to look at something in a way they may have never done before. Who would have known that the curve of a car door could be the focal point of a photograph as we see above?

Nor would one expect to be so enthralled by the coat tail and side lighting of clothing of anonymous passers by, as in the photo below?

Image © Ray Metzker. When has the coat tails of a jacket appeared to be so beautiful to the eye?

The people in the image above are not important. We cannot see their faces and we do not need to know who they are, because the photograph is not about them. It is instead a study of form and tone, and Metzker uses the interplay of frozen people's clothing to bring us to certain forms. His printing approach is to subdue almost everything in the photo, and to give high relief to the highlights on the clothing. It is as if Metzker saw this kind of form and tone as an ongoing symphony in his everyday encounters, and I'm sure his darkroom work informed his choices when he was out shooting.

So I would ask of you, what do you see when you walk around your town? Are you seeing beyond the obvious? And if you are, how much of what you see is graphical?

To my mind, Metzker saw the graphical in the everyday. I sympathise with his ability to abstract the normal into a beautiful photograph because this is what I aim to do with my landscape work. I'm not interested in the verbatim. I'm much more interested in finding graphical forms and tones in nature and bringing them out in the printing / editing stage. So much so, that I go looking for them in the first instance.

I'd hate to think I am still doing things as an afterthought, as this is really the approach of a beginner. Instead, I would like to think that my capture and editing have become two pieces of a whole,  an interrelated activity where one informs the other, as they should.