People and stuff..

Robert Adams got it right, at least for me, when he said; "No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film." I have been places where at first would seem there is nothing going on, when in fact there is an abundance of photographic possibilities to be had, a case of less is more perhaps.

Often, places you would think would have oodles of content, like a busy city, are in fact the least likely to turn out the goodies. One word I would use in this respect is ‘clutter’. Making sense of the chaos is a challenge, and none more so than a street full of people and stuff.

Personally I will take a desert, or an empty parking lot after a good nights sleep any day..

Hold your breath and count to three.

Dark, Foggy, and Nice..

My photography can be split into three sections. 1. Fine Art, whereupon I make nice images using a large camera and tripod. Usually a single image pondered over and produced as a large print for display. 2. Project work, made up of a series of images, usually environmentally charged and made over a long period. 3. Work with no particular reason other than the joy of making photographs. The latter is usually in between other work and almost always using a single camera and lens. The freedom from using a large camera and tripod can feel quite liberating, as does pushing the boundaries of the camera. The shot above is a good example using a 35mm lens, wide open, at night, and hand held. I have been making images like this for forty years now and the feeling never quite goes away…

Well that happened..

Almost half of my life has been spent living in America. It was not something I planned, it just sort of happened. Looking back now, I seem to have always been on the move, never really settling in any one spot, always a tourist. Thinking about this as a photographer, Marcel Proust comes to mind and his quote,

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." But if I believed this, I would never have left England.

For me the real voyage of discovery is not to follow anyone else.

The joys of suffering..

Somewhere in Middle America, 4.00am.

I would say fifty percent or more of my work is made at night, and by that I mean either late in the day when the suns gone down, or early in the morning before the sun comes up. The shorter days of winter make this a little easier time-wise, but then you have the chilly willy aspect, which at times can be troublesome. Last year I spent six months of the winter venturing out at 4.00am to make pictures of urban scenes around the Middle America. The act of going out in sub zero temperatures with a large film camera was a horrible experience, but as is often the case for me, the work I produced made it all worth while. I remember a similar feeling way back in the November of 2006 when I decided to parade the Northern Coast of Scotland with an 8/10” camera while recovering from spinal surgery. I think I shouted at the landscape every day and cursing the day I was born, but the resulting work, North Shores, turned out to be one of my most successful.

There’s nothing new about suffering for ones art. You want to tell the world you were cold, hungry and needed the loo, but no one really cares except maybe the artist.

If the photographer lies, photography dies?

Iceland, 2023, (unedited, scanned negative)

When photography was first invented people questioned if it was real and like a tragedy, we deny it, question it, and then have to except it.

As hard as it is trying to imagine how it must of felt seeing a photograph appear out of nowhere, all we have to do is look at an AI generated ‘human’ to get what I think is a similar feeling. AI makes us question if what we are looking at is real, just like early photography.

Presently, as a photographer, I can spot an AI generated face quite easily, often because it’s too perfect and looks plastic (not unlike people who had had too much filler injected into there face). But most non-photo people cannot, just like they couldn’t tell when an image has been heavily retouched.

What I struggle with is the fact that one day we may not be able to tell the difference between what is real visually real and what is not. (I’ve always believed that beauty in life comes from its imperfections and all one has to do is switch off and go outside.)

Like it or not, photography has always been a lie. From the moment we look through the lens, we move, focus, focal length, and adjust to alter its reality. Today it has never been more important to be honest about our photography, and by that I mean how we got the image in the first place. Whether film, digital, AI, or a composite of ten images, truth in photography cannot come from the final photograph, its just a photograph. The truth must from the photographer. If the photographer lies, then photography dies.

Easier, not better.

“A very instagramable image”

I read on ‘the gram’ last week a very fine segment from a photographer friend of mine;

“Since the age of invention, technology has made photography easier, not better. “

The backlash was fantastic in that it upset so many, why, because it's true.

It may have been the same friend who also stated that, ‘everyone calls themselves a photographer these days’, another quote I totally agree with, in fact he may have got it from me. But let’s get one thing straight here, photography, as a job, is not a profession, it is a trade. As a photographer (making money from your craft), you are providing a product and a service. So if you made a deal to get paid to make photographs for a client, you are a professional photographer. If you make images for yourself, be it a project, a gallery, a book cover, or simply for the joy of it, you are a photographer. If you use your phone and take pictures of food or your cat while trying to obtain as many likes as you can on Instagram so you feel special, you are not a photographer just like I am not an interior designer if I rearrange my furniture and put up a new lamp.

The sad part of all of this is that standards as to what is a professional service, and product, have go astray. What people consider acceptable today is a far cry from the days when something needed to be re-shot because it simple wasn’t good enough. The likes of Photoshop, which was intentionally to enhance and refine, is now used to correct and re-create. But this has been going on for sometime and possibly started when someone dropped litter on the studio floor. Rather than pick up the litter, it was removed later in Photoshop.

Not better, just different.

The Great Wave. Gustav Le Grey 1857 (two negatives)

North Shores, Doyle Le Blue, 2006 (color neg 8/10”)

Lake Tahoe, CA, 2016 (Digital)

It’s difficult knowing where to start with the touchy subject of photography and technology. This time last year I wrote a whole thesis on the subject with an emphasis social media and got so involved I printed the 12,000 word manifesto and gave it to my students for reading (whether they read it or not remains to be seen..)

Technology was the beginning of photography in the age of invention, the process itself created by scientists, chemists and rich fella called Talbot, a man who could not “draw for toffee.” Today we dress up digital photography as a new way of thinking and being creative, but really it is just a pixel rehash of what has gone before. For example, the old age issue making the sky darker in a landscape photograph due to the ground often being so much darker was tackled in a number of ways; Either, using two negatives, like Gustave Le Gray ‘The Gray’ long ago, or much later, a graduation filter. Or better still, wait for some weather. Today of course we can add digital filters or burn in the sky, or if you are really lazy, and a numpty, add a pre-shot sky by someone else because no one will know unless you tell them (which you won’t). It’s the same old toot, just done in a different way.

The accidental tourist.

The image above is from work so new it does not yet have an official title, hence The Accidental Tourist which I use whenever I cannot place an image in a particular series. For the past couple of months I have ventured out whenever a storm begins to brew, often chasing the storm clouds and looking for some foreground subject matter. Its an exhilarating event, even without making a photograph.

Over the years I have learned that the best images are often at times we would not normally venture out, bad weather, late at night, early in the morning and so on. I am not suggesting that one goes out with a camera during a tornado (although there are those that do), but when the sky begins to bruise in the middle of the day, its often a good time to make a move.

The Desert.

Mojave, 120 degrees, 2020

In all my years of shooting, the desert remains my favorite place to visit, in particular the deserts of the west. The Mojave is hot, and Death Valley part of the Mojave, is the hottest place on earth, a place frequented during the Fridays project. The Sonoran (my latest project) however feels way hotter. But this heat debate is not me simply getting older and therefore feeling it more. Death Valley may have the highest recorded ‘air temperature’ (134.f), but the Sonoran has the hottest ‘ground temperature’ (177.4. f), which basically means you can fry eggs on the rocks and it will burn your skin right off.

Of all the elements I have found the high heat the hardest to work in. Besides almost bursting into flames, you get sweat in your eyes, you cannot think straight, and everything you touch is hot, including the camera. Add a bit of wind and we are are talking; a-dust-covered-sticky-white-hot-Brit.

Technically, despite what some may think, shooting film has not been a problem in this intense heat, you just keep it out of direct sunlight. Digital on the other has been a little temperamental affecting the focus and various functions within the camera including picture preview.

I am still not sure if shooting in extreme heat can look like extreme heat in a photograph. Cold is easy, just add a little frost on a cool blue morning, but shooting at the hottest part of the day really doesn’t look hot and nether does sunset for that matter.

A world without color and the magic of Monochrome..

Paris, France, 1996

Midwest, 2023

Much of my time as a teenager was spent in my bedroom- which had been turned into a darkroom- trying to perfect the art of the black and white print. Considered by some as a strange teenage lad, I would spend the days under a makeshift safe light, an empty red Brylcreem pot with a bulb shoved into it. Shutting myself away for days on end the smell of fixer never quite left. The enlarger, a fabulous construction made up of a large baked bean tin and half a tripod served me well and was even used later to make contact prints when I opened a commercial darkroom in North London in the 90’s.

It wasn’t until a few years ago I returned to black and white photography, a combination of finding my old leica (and getting it fixed) and a trip along Route 66 from San Francisco to Chicago (both images here were made with the same camera). I soon realized the joy of monochrome never really went away, it just lay dormant for a while while the photography world panicked over digital.

Seeing the images appear as they do in a tray of developer is still a magical moment for me and I often find myself venturing out with that old camera loaded with black and white film.

Notes on favorite photographs.

My Tree, Eden Valley, UK 2023

Photographers always get asked if they have a favorite photograph. As commonplace as this may seem, its always been an odd thing for me and a bit like asking someone who’s your favorite child, or actor. But for photographers and artists the answer is not a simple one. Often it depends on what mood you're in, or what you are working on at the time. The image above is a good example of my current favorite image. It has nothing to do with the slightly moody sky, or the rule of thirds, or even the visual appeal of the image, which although nice is not a breath taking low angle super dooper dramatic scene. This particular image is all to do with that gnarly tree; When I was a boy I would go for long walks with my father and our dog. We would always stop at ‘My Tree’ where I would climb up the knotty branches and dangle like a monkey while our dog run around chasing rabbits. I never questioned the fact that the tree stood alone in a field and was over 700 years old. After the death of my father I made a special trip to ‘My Tree’ and made this image. It was probably one of the most emotional moments of my life captured in a photograph, and therin lies one of the true joys of the medium.

And so after twenty plus years working in a gallery market I can safely say that, ‘my favorite will never be your favorite.’ And then there is the photographers favorite…

'A photographers photographer’ was a term often used back in the days when I was printing for clients in my little North London darkroom, but it something you don’t really hear now. (Personally I blame the over-saturation of the digital market and online content, but I am sure it still exists.) A photographers photographer often referred to work that was more than just a visually stunning image, there was something more. These images had meaning and depth, but often you had to really look at the image and not just swipe at it as we might with so many of the fruity, colorful, hyper-real images of today. Thanks to today’s digital online platforms, it’s easy to find a photographers photographer. There the ones with the least amount of followers..

On starting projects

Trona, Mojave, CA

Fridays Rainshadow

Imperial Sand Dunes, AZ.

The Deserving Oasis.

Photography projects tend to begin in many different ways. My Friday’s Rainshadow started by sheer chance after a trip to the Mojave Desert where I just happened to have a 617 camera I was trying out. The panoramic format added a new dimension to the images and gave me a different way of looking at the landscape. For part two of the project, The Deserving Oasis- an exploration of the Sonoran Desert, things have been a little less straight forward. Like a writers second book deal, there is more pressure and higher expectations, especially after obtaining a grant/ advance. One issue I have encountered is the feeling of the work is not good enough. With the Rainshadow work, It didn’t really matter at first what the images were of, in fact I spent six months shooting work I would never show, it was all over the place.

Projects always take time to develop and mature and it is only when we revisit places over and over that we start to see patterns develop and a vernacular is created. Its certainly not something that can be done in a day. From past experience I am pretty sure I will feel differently after more time spent in the heat.

In this day and age people always want things finished so fast which I find quite sad. A sense of urgency Is never a good thing.

Who doesn’t like nostalgia?

Grannie McGregor. 100th Birthday.

It is safe to say that the older we become the more nostalgia fills our everyday.

Personally I love nostalgia and often wonder how I could photograph nostalgia without the passing of time.

It’s hard to imaging what early pioneers like Stephen Shore were feeling when then photographed a 1970’s Cadillac, in the 70’s. It certainly wasn’t nostalgia. If we did know what would resonate nostalgia later in life, then we would all know the future and then some.

In photography nostalgia often gets a bad rap, whether choosing to shoot film just because you like the way it looks (nostalgic), or by using a digital sepia filter app in an attempt to recreate some past experience- like when your grandfather wore a suit during a visit to the beach.

We may not be able to look into the future, but we can certainly look into the past, albeit with rose tinted vintage spectacles.

Despite making my first photographs some 40 years ago, I still do not consider any of those early attempts as being nostalgic. Even the image I made of my Grannie MacGregor on her 100th birthday (when I was just 15 years old) doesn’t really resonate a warm fuzzy sense of well being, to me she just looks old.

The Importance of bad photography.

A day by the river. Cumbria, UK 1976

Never is a photograph more important than after the death of a loved one. Those forgotten family outings in the form of faded album snaps can suddenly become precious, although the idea of the family album has now been replaced with this thing called iPhoto.

It was this necessity of having a photograph of a loved one for the fear of forgetting them that drove the photography market back in the mid 1850’s. The only difference today is that those finely detailed mirrors with memory, the daguerreotype, have been replaced with digital screen savers.

After the death of my father, even as a photographer, I wish I had made more photographs of him, in particular more photographs of us together.

Of course, even without a photograph, we do not forget, but still, the importance of photography at helping us to remember has been with us for 180 years. What intrigues me is that this kind of photography never has to be considered any good. In fact it could be the worst image ever made because it’s all about content, and not the actual photograph. As long as it bares some form of resemblance, anything goes.

A photograph may fade or become lost, or a photographic moment missed, but the permanent record of loved ones will always be in our mind for as long as we can remember. Therefore, do we actually need photographs in the first place.