All about projects

Projects are like finding a new friend.

A relationship which can be great at the start with perhaps a difficult middle period and then a common understanding of limitations and finally acceptance. We often have high hopes for new work at the beginning so what seems initially interesting then becomes less so once we gain some objectivity through time. Still our lockdown projects are part of who we are so I always allow time to look back on them with affection. Take time to reflect on your previous work, enjoy looking at the images and learn from them.

Make your lockdown projects locally and concentrate on one geographical area.

This is not the only thing you should do but it’s a good one. Ideally as you evolve both personally and as a photographer, you’ll approach it in different ways revealing many facets over time. Learn to embrace the more mundane and ordinary at first glance.  It can sometimes take quite an effort to overcome your instincts but the advantage is you can make it yours. Check out John Gossage’s The Pond. Here you can see a highly artistic mind at play delighting in the small details. The images are mostly grey and of nondescript places but you’ll get the strong sense that he’s in control of the frame, and of course he had the central idea in the first place which is the tough part.

Choose something that is non iconic and perhaps from the outset not easy to photograph. Think with intent about what the right approach is for it. This may be specific and unique to each project.

The first is an absolute must in my book. Icons can still be on your agenda but understand for you why they are. Can you still personalise the image-making. Choosing a photographically challenging location is partly for the masochists among us. It requires being aware of and working around our ‘baggage’; the need to always get a photo and the kind of image we think we should get, both of which we should keep in check, although not dismiss. Pressure is good and images which relate to our project plan are also good but not at the expense of enjoying the process of seeing. You need to balance looking and seeing.

Have more than one project on the go. The dips and slack in one will be offset by the other(s).

This allows a natural flow around blocks and short attention spans. I have found this to keep the demons at bay, if like me you need to have photography as a constant companion. Also lockdown projects over a sustained period will allow some reflective time which will feed back into time on location. It’s really not a sprint. The best work viewed by people who can articulate why they think it is, more often is produced over months solidly in the field or over years of occasional trips.

Seek visual consistency throughout a project.

I can get to know more about a photographer through their image selection and sequence building. I’m interested in how they see. Consistency in framing reinforces that understanding. The subjects can vary as can the location but still ‘that’ frame on the world shines through. Choosing a variety of formats, aspect ratios and lens choice within one project can make this more difficult, so simplify your set-up and approach. Then in another project you can change these to something else. Occasionally in sequences by photographers I see many visual ideas all going off in different directions. It’s a personal challenge to filter these down, to develop fewer but in more depth. One benefit of formal study is mentoring which can help feedback and facilitate this self critiquing.

What makes a good amateur photographer. 

During my 10 years both guiding and tutoring nearly 500 workshop guests I’ve understood that the more inquisitive and open the individual is to listening to new ideas and absorbing these, the more interesting photographs are made. Begin to search out image makers for reference and take a course with someone whose not in your knowledge orbit who offers to you, a new way of seeing. Creating a personal project, one that gives you pleasure and you have a strong connection with, is the first stage. From there, you can choose to open this up to a wider audience including peers. To do this successfully I would suggest contextualising your work and understanding where it sits alongside similar image making. Landscape images are ubiquitous of course and without human interest they need to offer form as mentioned. To do that you need to continually personally strive to push the combination of composition and subject in new directions.

Concept and projection.

Ideas are the life blood of the art world and concepts are an inherent part of this. But a football coach’s tactical plan will work only as far as the other team’s interference with it. A successful concept or project formed away from the field will need to evolve and develop once up and running. Too often newly qualified artists or photographers have an acute awareness of concepts, but with imagery that feels contrived and lacking exciting form; it’s not form first but an intellectual rationale that shines through. More typically I see photographs where the photographer has imbued an image with meaning generated via feelings or memory that has been concocted post location and one that the image does not communicate except in their own mind’s eye. The tension between achieving some kind of concept whilst maintaining interesting form is the preserve of great photography.

When one project seems to be drawing to a close begin a new one.

It’s really important to offset the feeling of impending emptiness through having nothing to photograph. If you’re working on one or two projects then start to look for a third. Even having the idea that this will become a reality, without immediate access will help to offset any gloom. Hope is worth a lot. We can mull over possibilities in our mind. Eventually, it’s almost certain the project produced will bear little relation to what you imagined, which is fine.

Form is paramount

What is form? The combination of aspect ratio, perspective and framing relating to the geometric shapes, lines, shadows etc., in front of us. The landscapes we work with are often chaotic.  I see excellent work that can distill this towards simplicity but much less where form is up held throughout a sequence of images. It’s really about showing that you as an image maker are in control. Essentially as a viewer, that’s what I look for in a photographer. 

Dissonance and harmony interspersed throughout a sequence without any sequential progression or understanding of their place will knock back appreciation from the more studious onlooker. Learn to see what your shadows are doing and of course every area of the frame counts, even the parts that appear empty. Form is not solely based on how you compose, it’s about what’s in front of you. 

On straight photography

I like it for the interpretation of space. Our mind connects elements in a scene in the way the camera does not and bridging that understanding is one of the key challenges. The virtues of straight photography is tapping into spatial connections and working with the limitations. Straight P. is not representational photography. The photographer is leading us to an understanding of place or time through careful framing over a sequence or lifetime of image making.

In need of a narrative

The following article was published in OnLandscape magazine earlier this year.

If you’re reading this then you’re probably a disciple of the quest to explore nature in all its forms; hiking, discovering, conquering and escaping into mindfulness. We would argue there’s a human need for photographing in these places. We want to sometimes tame them and idealise them, set ourselves a compositional challenge and bend the location to our will. It’s about unearthing something unseen, to create surprises, offering a wider acknowledgement that our own way of seeing is unique to us, that we are different.  Although perhaps that’s not quite enough.

Last autumn I visited Spain, once again in search of wooded scenes making use of the autumnal colours. It was on my list of photographic things to do; always looking for a less well known location and places that challenge me as a photographer. I found the experience enjoyable and intense at times, which is an ideal state. The subsequent set of photographs produced was also satisfying. However, once the images were in a set, I felt something was missing. Whilst interesting and perhaps pretty, they did not convey to me anything other than the natural forms I had recorded, however skilfully. There was no narrative. There were no layers of meaning.

Mystery in photography is often seen as a sign of artistic endeavour. The more we can ask the viewer to seek an understanding of the image, the longer the image is in their presence, the more successful the photograph. With this in mind, some photographers seek to obfuscate their photographs through processing hoping that this will give them artistic credibility (harking back to Pictorialism perhaps). They imbue mystery, believing it will offer meaning. It’s the wrong road and one which I suggest you shouldn’t take. Look at the work of the masters such as H.Callahan and E.Weston for guidance on this issue. 

Instead, layers of meaning arrive through consistency (across a project) and clarity of vision and by having images that offer more than the natural forms before the camera, however much they are beautifully rendered. Images need metaphors; they need to reach out beyond the physicality of the scene. Just the other day with this thesis in mind I was passing a walled in sector of land with an open metal door somewhere along it. Behind it was a small 600 metre mountain. The meaning was clear to me. A door to the wilderness, to adventure. The door set against the mountain. My second thought was how could I create an image of this which had a heightened sense of framing and composition, one that was visually rich and had aesthetic beauty but was obviously not of a beautiful scene.

Just as listening to music that is clear and well recorded gives us a greater appreciation of it, likewise an image that is gracefully composed of something less than elegant or less outstanding is not only more visually rewarding, it conveys more meaning. The photographer has both drawn our eye to their constant theme and the complexities within which we as the viewer can make associations from. It’s a challenge of course. Combining aesthetic beauty within ordinary locations is not easy. It means no longer looking for the obviously outstanding but having the mindset and compositional completeness to impose a personal set of rules on any given location.

New landscape photography (NLP) is a term for a methodology that uses a narrative to approach the everyday often via the framework of a written statement. The photographer imbues meaning within the sequence through the combination of image, text and explanation. In doing so, the concept is held high whilst compositional brilliance is diminished and the obvious appeal of individual images by virtue of beauty is both less apparent and less desirable. Moreover, there is a concept and consistency to framing that points to an intellectual appreciation. 

Where NLP often fails to move me is exactly in the compositional shortcomings many images display. There’s a passivity to the framing and camera position. Always taking a detached view (camera position) of a subject or location as a modus operandi doesn’t necessarily develop viewer experience. Concept shouldn’t negate aesthetic beauty. It’s just that the subject itself is not initially or transparently appealing. 

So what is the way forward? There are two approaches I would suggest. 

The first is to conjure an emotional feeling in the viewer which connects with a universal experience. I believe whilst image interpretation is indeed subjective, there is shared co-existence and the palette of human experience can be quantified. I should make the point that this is less about the feelings the photographer has in their mind. I’m not a subscriber to the school of present emotions being important to how the viewer connects.  It is of course, all about seeing and recognising, not the emotional state of the photographer. There are some landscape photographers who are able to open up layers of meaning in this way but they are few and far between. If we look at the images of Thomas Joshua Cooper in his ‘West’ land series, he offers us the palpable feeling of standing at the end of the line, a frontier with the great unknown beyond; the trepidation or the promise of hope for the vast emptiness despite our understanding of what we know to be there.  It’s a universal feeling to be at land’s end and connects with our own childhood experiences. Another photographer I would consider part of this tribe is John Blakemore. His images of wooded scenes instantly convey the feeling of being windswept and free.

The second path is about reframing your approach to landscape photography and developing a more conceptual approach, focusing less on single images but instead on the series where a complex narrative can emerge through similarities across the set. Steering this course will mean maintaining compositional awareness without seeking the individual brilliance of a single image. The team aesthetic should be paramount. Moreover, conventional image beauty might well mask some of the narrative one wishes to communicate.  More of an intellectual exercise than the first, it’s about considering the less obviously pretty and neglected locations that offer a back story and potential narrative. Perhaps they are closer to home and so you can get to them regularly. Paul Hill eloquently spoke about having a resident’s perspective during his On landscape conference talk in 2018.  

To develop a narrative, you’ll need a thesis, a methodology and to keep a journal to develop ideas. Finding meaning in your images comes through insight, reflection and scrupulous editing of your approach. The project will be unique to you and highly personal. Think about your framing at all times and your proximity to the subject. Can you draw some consistency across them. 

I should point out that I’m not advocating dispensing with excursions into nature’s finest landscapes. The pleasure and mindfulness is essential for some of us and the compositional benefits of training your eye will provide a great foundation for future work. But these trips abroad and into the wilds of your home country should perhaps include a desire to see beyond the obvious and to think about how framing directs the viewer towards metaphor and meaning. Moreover there is surely the struggle to convey meaning within more spectacular locations as many of us cannot connect with wild and remote places. I admire the best imagery from Iceland but cannot derive much meaning, perhaps because it doesn’t relate to my experiences. I would imagine there’s an element of cultural approximation to this, with audiences from further north reading images differently.

For both approaches keep a sense of visual refrain in your kitbag.  Sometimes an image thrives on less is more and by not showing the subject or scene in its entirety. However, I would say that clarity of vision is a bigger tool. We also like to be intellectually challenged as well as visually sated. This is something that the photographic landscape community could introduce more into their work. It’s partly why the art world in most cases, rarely accepts straight landscape photography. There are simply not enough embedded ideas, either visually or conceptually. I would argue one should strive for both. There is also the curse of repeating an aesthetic. Again I would reference Paul Hill and how a particular landscape look has become a commodity. Instead his work from the 70’s offers division within his landscape framing. It looks radical compared to current approaches in composing landscape imagery.

So to recap.

Closed photos

These are images which offer one viewing. The better ones of these will provide sustained viewing because of appreciation of light, composition and visual awareness. These images are interesting to look at but are short on layers of meaning.

Semi-open wonders

One-off images that often inspire a shared or universal emotional response in us. They sustain repeat viewings as they connect with some experience we’ve had or they remind us of something through the quality of light and/time of year/or a classic movement in art. For pure landscape forms, this is a great place to be but it requires a lifetime’s work to make a portfolio.

Open photos 

Imploring the viewer to return again each time bringing their own changing perception and seeing new understanding in the photos. They have layers of meaning which offer more than artistic values. They express ideas, concepts, humanity or connect the viewer to historical art and movements. These will most likely contain elements of the urban and man-made and evidence of human interaction. They are also open to interpretation and can be metaphorical. Photographers worth looking at here include; Toshio Shibata, Joel Sternfield, Steven B. Smith and Jem Southam.

You may well have noted from what I’ve written, the absence of a potential key element in developing a narrative which is people. You should keep an open mind about this. The land, landscapes, can also offer the connection to humanity. Land is rarely untouched, unmanaged and there is overlap that provides rich material for meaning yet our framing often denies this. 

When there are no rules in composition

In Spain I became more interested in using trees as a device to frame, in some cases two trees with a subject between them. In previous times the differential contrasts between the darker foreground bark and background forest highlights would have been impossible to balance. Now with modern sensors and dynamic range, the once fatal compositions are available. This means that as photographers possibilities open up as to what we can compose. Now you can free yourself from mainstream compositional structures.

Why a visit to The National Gallery is useful

As a young teenager a school trip visit to the NG in London seemed a worthy thing to do. The paintings were old which was the important thing about it. As an 18 year old, a second visit was in mind of art movements and styles particularly contrasting brush work as well as varying types of lighting within scenes. Think of Turner. It was only in October this year when suddenly I made the connection with a scene in front of me that took me back to that visit. Whilst there was no one thing about what was in front of me that resembled any particular painting, the quality of light; the direction it was coming from, the intensity and the colours the light helped to lift reminded me of how some masters used to understand suggestion with light and not entire revelation. You can see my image in the Spain Autumn gallery half-way in with the river in the foreground. Why I like the photo and why it reminded me of old paintings is the scene in modern landscape terms is compositionally quite weak, the abstract graphical approach is absent as indeed it was for the master painters who were interested in light and scene formed within a framework of romanticism. Instead it suggests and offers a subtly that is out of step with most photographic landscape ‘in your face’ imagery. To experience the wilds of Northern Spain’s forests join me on a Landscape Photography Tour there.

Using reflected light

In landscape photography no one set of weather conditions works for all scenes and locations. Photographers will often balk at sunny days and superficially this is true; direct sun can wreak havoc. The locations I have visited this year in Switzerland and Spain both required different lighting. The Swiss rocks series benefited from diffuse stronger lighting enabled by clouds moving over the sun. For the forests in Spain filtered light would have worked for some locations but for others not. Deeper forests and trees need light penetration to lift the scene so sunrise and sunset do not work for me as within a valley setting those times offer too little light. Instead I worked with the brighter light of the day in the hours surrounding s&s. In essence I was looking for the light reflected back from the other side of the valley onto the scene I wanted to photograph. The quality of light is softer and warmer and offers a different quality. Learning to work with the light that’s available and tailoring your photography to suit will lead you to becoming a more complete and happy photographer.

The parrot and the mermaid

Mindfulness is a direction that’s gaining some traction in photographic teaching; the notion that connecting with the environment around us in a deeper way can bring emotional wellbeing. In a busy urban setting, the ability to step back from the pace around us and see the everyday for its small details of light, simplicity and beauty is a useful psychological tool and a necessary state for the photographer. Within a landscape, zoning out from mental clutter and being in the moment requires effort. Some photographers talk about their emotional state as a major contributor to their photography but I believe the opposite is true. It’s about responding to the location using present senses and leaving emotions temporarily to one side. A state of emptiness for an over active mind is a good base to begin with but increasingly the creative intellect takes over. An internal monologue starts to develop where scenes are processed and judged for photographic potential. Through intense scrutiny compositions reveal themselves and entice, what I would call mermaids, often in the form of dramatic lighting, or colour. Every photographer I imagine, has their own triggers. They are of course a trick and resisting the path to them requires an intellectual effort so hence the parrot which is the constant voice that drives the photographer away from shiny cheap shots that fail to offer photographic potential towards stronger successful images. Where mindfulness is less about success and results and more about exploring in the first instance, the parrot and mermaid are both two forces that live in the moment drawing on the photographer’s wealth of creative experience.