What can be done when you know what can be done..
I was recently asked to choose an image and say a little something about it, explaining why I chose it, and, what it meant to me.
Taking the time to talk about a single image is very different than talking about a series or a project because you can explain in detail exactly how you felt at the time rather than just a particular overall mood.
This image, made 20 years ago in Perthshire, Scotland still resonates with me despite loosing its public appeal in a market full of over retouched ‘perfect’ images. The fact that this is one single exposure shot on 10/8” film with no manipulation or retouch what so ever is a testament to what can be done if you know what to do.
Someone once told me that this image was too perfect to be shot on film. Another told me if they won the lottery they would buy a copy (a line I really hate). I even had someone tell me they wanted a copy so bad, but they could only pay me in installments, which they did. But in the 20 years of living with this image, no one ever asked; What is it about ?
In short the image is about working through adversity. At the time of making, I was recovering from spinal surgery while paying homage to my Grandfather (a Scottish Artist who made a trip around Scotland on foot in 1952). It was a physical and mental challenge with adverse weather and a four minute exposure to create what you see here. Of course, no one needs to know all this, but its good to finally say it..
The Accidental Tourist.
Red Car, Nevada, 2000
As a photographer there will always be those images that don’t fit into a series. But over time, these random images form their own project and the random-ness becomes something else other than just ‘Misc’ images. The Accidental Tourist series began some 25 years ago when I first stated making trips to the States. My earliest images from the series were made on a Mamiya 7 medium format film camera, then my ‘snap shot’ camera along side an 8/10”. Fast forward 20 years and you have a body of work that looks at America through the eyes of a Brit. Whats interesting is that jumbled together you really cannot tell if an image was made twenty years ago, or just last week.
Despite feeling very different about America now since those early days of film when I would take random road trips, the way I see things photographically hasn’t changed at all.
Battle of The Dunes.
Kelso Dunes, March 2025
As still and simple as my work may look, it has always been quite physical. I often find that images that appear to have been made just by stepping out of the car, are in fact the ones that took the most effort. Using my recent image above of the Kelso Sand Dunes in the Mojave, I hiked for about an hour to find the right spot, (and an area not covered in footprints), just in time for the magical light. As it was a little chilly and my physical level not half bad for 52, I reached the summit cool, calm and collected. A most beautiful sunset and another hour later I was in complete darkness, great for a bit of ‘Astro Photography’, but not so great for getting back to my truck. This was certainly not the first time I had been alone in the darkness with no cel phone signal in a landscape I was not familiar with and experience has always told me to stay calm and think a little. The mountain I had used as a location point was no longer visible, and I had not taken a compass reading for years, but the answer was simple; I had spent an hour avoiding areas with no footprints but in turn had created my own set of prints. The fact that the footprints were not in a straight line was another matter, and I somehow ended climbing up several more sand dunes. After a good hour I was convinced that I had gone completely in the wrong direction and would have to make some kind of sand-cave and stay the night. Sweaty and feeling totally out of shape, I stopped, turned around, and the truck was right in front of me. Having won the battle of the dunes, I emptied the sand from my boots and drove off triumphant before getting completely lost trying to find the freeway…
A cup of Trump. Mojave 2025
Despite having a skill-set for photographic printing from an early age, its always been a love hate thing for me. If an image is good, then printing can be a joy, if its bad, its like picking a scab. Early on in printing you used to visualize the end result and print until you got there. The problem these days with digital is that the image is ‘always there.’ You shoot, its there on a small screen, you print, its there on a bigger screen. Before the onset of digital, the joy of a large C-Type color print appearing (chemical color process from a negative) carried with it a different feeling from a digital print.
Despite digital color printing being more efficient, it lacks the satisfaction of a wet process and often with no sense of completion. Shooting film has the same effect as you have to wait to see the final image often unsure if you have it or not.
Technology has always made things more efficient, but that doesn’t always mean better.
Just there..
One of the joys of committing to a photography project are things that happen that cannot be repeated which often add weight and good talking point. I guess its a bit like a wedding in that respect, but I have a hard time putting the word wedding and photography in the same sentence. Weddings should have their own title, as should engagement and baby ‘photography..’ (Please don’t call it ‘social documentary’, a title that also makes no sense to me, its either documentary or its not!)
Most projects start with a response to something like a landscape, a person or object, or perhaps and event. But looking at photography in this way can ruin the surprise… I would like to say that the image above had me jumping out of the car and scrambling for my camera. But there I was already set up and exposing , camera on tripod, shutter open. All I could do was enjoy the moment..
Looking at The Empty Landscape.
Mojave, 02/01/2025
After all these years I still get asked, ‘why are there no people in your pictures?’ My answer is always the same and something I learned from the late, great, Lynne Cohen. ‘If there were people, where would I put them!’ Placing a person in a photograph, in particular a landscape, no matter how small, makes the photograph about them. Who is that? Why are they there? etc.
Photographing what people leave behind can tell us just as much as if they still there.
Not better, just different.
Messing about with long exposures makes me realize film still has advantages for night photography over digital, in particular the wide-latitude in exposure and control of highlights. On the digital side, the quality is quite remarkable, but speckling and noise at times can be an issue. In-camera noise reduction can leave images a little ‘soft’ and can loose a detail (not good for big prints), something that can be tackled in post when shooting RAW files. Of course others might chip-in and tell you something else, but basically whenever you push any camera to the limit there will be some side effect, film or digital.
Many of the technical aspects I come across are only noticeable once you get past a certain print size. When I first started it was large format for a large print (not the romantic notion of slow photography). These days its a large digital sensor. Simple really, but try telling that to the masses.
Just passing through.
I done a little interview last month, nothing fancy, just a short Q and A on Instagram, so with my tiny following, a very small deal. I did enjoy answering the questions though. It started with, when did you make your first photograph, what was your first camera, what inspires you etc. But what was really interesting was reading an interview with the same people, but from a younger artist. The first camera was digital, influences were from pintrest and images online (no books, old photographers, exhibitions etc), and photographers were all younger and splattered all over Instagram. To me this speaks volumes because in my opinion the only way to know what good photography is, is to look at what has gone before. Pioneers of photography that worked with old techniques and what they had, pushing the boundaries and showing us how good they really were. These days, anyone can manipulate a photograph to produce what they want, be it a stormy sky that wasn’t there, warm light, or removing various distractions. But back in the day you would never have said, ‘I’ll take that out, or add that later in post.’
I get the sense that young photographers today are not living in their work, they are just passing through, and that’s without ever leaving the house.
In the name of Art?
Desert Fire, Mojave, 2024
Back in 2005 I was traveling across America in an old Dodge Truck with my 8/10” camera looking to make my mark in the photography world when I received a call from my agent in London telling me there had been a flood in New Orleans and if I would go and photograph it. I have always been interested on photographing places that have seen better days, for example my Salton Sea work, but this was different. People had lost their lives, their homes, and the situation was still very much in flux and something a Photojournalist (remember those) needed to cover, not a fine art photographer. I refused the offer, much to the annoyance of my agency as I was not uncomfortable with the situation.
Reflecting on the ongoing LA fires, I feel the same way as I did about Katrina. No matter how dramatic things may appear photographically, I would never consider it an option for a photograph. I want my work to evoke an emotion, maybe happiness, calm, or even sadness, but never one of horror. My hope is that fine art photographers don’t do what they did during Katrina and descend by the dozen in the name of art..
MOJAVE
A place in constant flux with surprises around ever corner, the Mojave still calls me most weekends. At 47,000 square miles there is always something to photograph. And so the quest continues..
“The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California.”
John Steinbeck. Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)
To the desert we go..
A new year along with an upcoming new location. Having spent the past thirty year traveling around, a move out to the desert seems like an obvious choice for a landscape photographer such as myself. Having spent hundreds of hours in the desert, my hope is that I will finally absorb my surroundings and produce my finest work, or at least that’s what I am hoping for.
Always room for a bit of Mono..
Sonoran Desert, 2024
In the US as early as the 1930’s the likes of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evan’s took to the road in what could be seen as the first photograph road trip. Since those days of big awkward film cameras and large wooden tripods, photographers have continued to travel across the States with their cameras with the likes of Stephen shore and Joel Sternfeld bringing an aesthetic vision clearly seen in much of today’s ‘road trip’ photography.
My first American road trips were done with a 35mm camera loaded with black and white film with a deep red filter to increase contrast, a common technique in the 90’s. I still take the 35mm film camera on all of my trips loaded with black and white, often making a snap or two until the film is finished, an enjoyable throwback to a time when photography seemed more straightforward.
The jump from black and white 35mm up to 5/4” color was a revelation for me, but there will always be room for a bit of monochrome.
It was a good year, sort of..
Its been many years since I spent Christmas ‘at home.’ Or at least the home I grew up in. A trip abroad, a friends cabin in the mountains, a road trip across the States, and so it goes. Most Brits, for some reason, will choose this time of year to spend time with family despite never seeing them for the whole year and then wonder why there’s fallout. But wherever I may be, Christmas for me has always been a time to look back at the last year and see what I have actually done.
One thing that always rubs me up the wrong way is when photographers, usually famous, you know the ones, talk about how you only make 12 good images a year, or one good image a year (well which is it). A daft concept in that it depends how often you go out and shoot, and of course its all very subjective. Anyway, work wise, this year was a good one, but as is often the case, not because everything was hunky dory, far from it. Times of adversity often brings out the good stuff..
Winter of My Discontent.
It was a dark time when I made the series, Winter Of My Discontent. It was November of last year and I spent the month going out early AM with my 6/12 panoramic camera. loading one roll of black and white film I would make 6 images before first light. These images have a very different feel to all of my other work and reflect a period in life that was filled with much loss. The immense cold and darkness only added to the feeling of isolation and once again photography became a coping mechanism.
I have often said that, ‘no one goes out on a warm sunny day and comes back with a meaningful photograph.’ I think this series backs up that statement nicely.
What do you know.
Tree Fire, Mojave desert, 2024
Many moons ago there was a photographer, Patrick Litchfield. He was the official photographer for the Royal Family so Americans will have no clue as to who he is. But he was the man and the only thing we had in the north of England in a time before the internet. He had his own TV series and each week he would announce a photographic challenge. Week one was to go out and make photographs within one mile of your home. He called it shooting what you know. I held onto this method so much so that I returned to my hometown some years later to shoot The Flowery Room project as part of my Masters.
Despite this mantra, as a photographer, like many others, the temptation is always to venture out and fine new things, rather than following in the footsteps of Proust;
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.”
Absorbing oneself into a place is sometimes the only way to produce the best work. Its the difference between living somewhere or just passing through. But fundamentally, It all goes back to shooting what you know..
A Parody of Nature.
El Mirage, 2024
Since my first photograph I have photographed the Urban Sprawl. As much as I love nature and being outdoors, I have no interest in photographing its purity (I should note here my pet hate of photographing natural scenes and then manipulating them into something over worked, over saturated, and utterly pointless.) Given the choice, I would rather photograph a rusty old car, than a beautiful old tree, but more so, I have always been fascinated at the attempts made to make something man-made look natural, a parody of nature if you will.
Warm and Fuzzy.
Jim’s Junk. Mojave 2024
I put together a book edit for my Junk Yards of the Mojave project a few months ago and had forgotten how much I like it, in particular this image.
Who would of thought a photograph of a junk yard could give you that warm fuzzy feeling.
The project itself took a long time to get going. The main challenge was finding the good junk yards, often in the middle of nowhere. Then you have to try and get good compositions in what can appear at first as a big mess, and of course the light must be warm and delightful.
And then came the wind..
This time last year I witnessed my first Extratropical Cyclone. Basically a very cold (-40) day where you don’t want to go outside for any reason. But the photographer in me said I might just get a couple of good shots and so layered up and ventured out into the arctic. Things didn’t actually feel that bad at first, and then the wind blew. I managed to get this shot just before my eyeballs froze.
Time warp..
Sometimes it can feel like my work is stuck in a time warp. I work the same way I always have, with only the camera changing over the years. I have never felt the need to move with the current trends, and doubt other seasoned types have either. In fact I think it would be the biggest mistake..
These days its all about the process of photography and the actual going out and making of photographs. In fact, sometimes it doesn’t even matter if there is an actual outcome, a photograph. But it wasn’t always like this. Early on in my picture making, if I came back empty handed I would be overcome with a strange feeling of loss. Strange because there was nothing actually lost in the first place. As my mother would say; “You cannot loose what you never had.”
My days of trying to produce a masterpiece every time I pick up a camera are long gone now, but that’s not to say it won’t happen..