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Four views of Lake Kussharo

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I visited lake Kussharo in Hokkaido, Japan one day last December, on what was a murky grey day. I love overcast days and days when the to most non-photographers the weather would be considered 'bad'.

On the horizon I could see the snow-covered hills that surround Kussharo veiled in mist and low-pressure clouds. The lake itself had taken on a milky greyness to it (light reflected from the grey sky) which I felt complimented the black volcanic beach.

I saw many similarities with this location, weather wise and also subject wise, with Patagonia's Torres del Paine national park. Both possess a stark beauty which only becomes apparent to us photographers once we embrace muted colours and tones. I see a beauty in landscapes when they appear to most as bleak - I hope you do too.

But Kussharo had much to offer with overhanging trees leaning towards the water, and I spent much time roaming up and down its edge looking for suitable trees that had separation from their neighbours like the image below.

I spent quite a bit of time on this tree, positioning the far-off hill between the branches, and ensuring that the branches themselves didn't protrude out of the confines of my frame. I think I have two or three rolls of images (30) shot at this very spot where I experimented with my tripod height until I felt I'd fully explored the compositional possibilities here.

And sometimes removing lake edge trees seemed to be the way to go. I like to try to get as many different interpretations of a place that I can. I think it's easy to get lost in searching for great foreground subjects all the time, when there may be an image there that doesn't require one. 

And just before we left, I noticed some coastal decorations in the water. Hokkaido and indeed Japan, seems to have many coastal defences around its periphery - I'm not sure if they intended for Tsunami defence, or just coastal erosion, but it was interesting to note that a small 'coastal defence' had been put here at the edge of Lake Kussharo.

The weather was rather murky and wet, and my guide had a lot of work with the last image helping me shield the lens of my camera because it was pointing straight into the wind (and rain). But I feel I made a collection of images that have a certain character and feel to them on a day I feel that many people would prefer to stay in-doors.

I often feel that the difference between the impression we get from a photograph and how it felt to be at a location are often quite different. So many times I could be overwhelmed by the bad weather and choose not to go out, only to miss great potential. If I get soft light and a good composition, I don't sit at home going 'yuck - really horrible weather'. Instead I'm often pulled in by the tonal shifts that happen through a picture where soft light played around.

I'm not a fair-weather photographer, because that would be extremely limiting to what I photograph. I made (in my view) four really nice images on a day that many wouldn't consider ideal and I did it not just because of the soft tones present, but because I felt there was atmosphere and mood present, and also, because experience has taught me that these kinds of days are beautiful in their own way.


The undefined line

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Sometimes, what we're really attracted to in a picture, is not the form or the subject, but the contrast between where the subject begins and where it ends.

Kitami , Tanno, Hokkaido, Image © Bruce Percy 2015

Kitami , Tanno, Hokkaido, Image © Bruce Percy 2015

I think that's why I love images where the main subject in the frame isn't so clear. My mind has to 'fill in the gaps'.

These Hokkaido images were made with this in mind. But the editing had to be done carefully. Just like writing a story, I needed to decide on the correct amount of detail to provide. If I had given too much away, the viewer's interest may wane, and if I hadn't give enough away, the viewer may have been confused and lost. 

Kitami , Tanno, Hokkaido, Image © Bruce Percy 2015

Kitami , Tanno, Hokkaido, Image © Bruce Percy 2015

It was interesting for me to shoot these images. I was confronted with absolutely nothing (and I mean nothing). I felt like I might get snow-blindness because I could not discern the sky from the ground and I found that my mind wanted to fill in the emptiness with something.

Just the hint of a tree, and my eye's seemed to latch onto it, like I was clutching at a lifebuoy ring.

Our visual system 'constructs what we see'. This is why we see faces in the shapes of rocks for instance. So when I was working in these empty places, I couldn't help but find my mind was going into over-drive, trying to imagine more than what was there. If you've ever been driving in a white out, you''ll have experienced your mind imagining obstacles that come out of the snow in front of your path.

So with these edits, I wanted to ask the viewer to work a little harder. The first image requires more work than the last one does. I love playing around with different strengths of contrast, not only while I'm editing work, but also at the time of capture. I was well aware that sometimes the trees would come and go, surface and sink behind a veil of snow.

You see, not everything is so clear cut - in art as it is in life, and why should it be? Through concealing elements within the frame, we invite the viewers minds to imagine what may be there - to fill in the gaps, and that's no bad thing at all :-)

Do you filter down (reduce), or build up (introduce) objects into your compositions?

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I'm always intrigued by the journey from the moment I step out with my camera and come up with the final image. It's a filtering down process for many, but for me it's the opposite way around. Let me explain.

Many workshop participants tell me that when they are confronted with some new location, they find it hard to filter it down to one or two main subjects. I remember one participant telling me that they 'start with everything and have to reduce it down to one or two things over a matter of an hour or so'. Certainly, I'm aware that for some - being confronted with some new scenery can make things very hard to distill into a coherent composition. Everything is vying for your attention and it can be hard to give some elements priority over others.

In the main image to this post today, I show you the final image from a shoot in Hokkaido last December. For me, I tend to be drawn to a subject instantly. It's the opposite of the 'filtering down' approach that some of my participants describe. For me, what tends to happen is I see one thing in the distance and I'm so attracted to it, that everything else around it disappears. Let's zoom out from the image above and have a look at the surrounding landscape near it in the image below:

This is exactly what I saw from the side window of my guide's car and I felt compelled enough to ask him to stop so I could go and make a photo of the tree. In fact - if you look closer - you'll see i'm in the shot - making my way across a river bed that was covered in snow, to get to the tree. 

This is exactly what I saw from the side window of my guide's car and I felt compelled enough to ask him to stop so I could go and make a photo of the tree. In fact - if you look closer - you'll see i'm in the shot - making my way across a river bed that was covered in snow, to get to the tree. 

Can you spot the tree I photographed? 

I like to think that if something is worth photographing - is strong enough as a compositional subject -  it will tend to catch my eye. Like window shopping, I often find something jumps out at me. I think this is a combination of visual awareness and visualisation at play. The awareness to spot something and the visualisation to imagine how it could be with other items removed or reduced in the composition.

I often find I start with one object, and introduce others. In the instance of the main image in this blog, I did exactly that - despite all the clutter and confusion of other trees at the roadside, I could 'see' the lone tree sitting on its own, and I knew there was potential. I also understood that I would have very little else in the frame to draw attention away from it once I got closer. I saw all this from the passenger seat of my guide's car and I believe I utilised my visualisation skills in order to 'see' it.

Once I was closer to the tree, I started to think about the surrounding landscape and which elements, if any, I could introduce into the scene. I've introduced the sun into the frame, as this was more a fortuitous event rather than something I'd noticed in advance. I made several shots - some without the sun and some with, because I can never tell at the time whether I'm overcomplicating something, so I like to make insurance shots for later on. I'm convinced I can only do good editing while at home behind my computer, not while on location. But the key point I'm trying to make is that I started with the tree and slowly started to introduce the surrounding landscape into the scene.  

So which way do you tend to visualise your compositions? Are you a 'start with everything and filter it down to a few objects', or do you start with one thing that grabs your interest, and slowly introduce other objects into the frame?

Working out exposure for transparency film

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 I was asked if I'd write a blog entry about how I work out my exposures. Bear in mind this is just my own take on it, and although it works for me, there are many other ways of doing this. So I'm not suggesting this is the only way, or the correct way, but it works for me. Also, before I begin, please know that I am 100% a film shooter. This is how I work out my exposures for Fuji Velvia film only (it's the only transparency film stock I use).

So here goes. Before I discuss exposures, let's do a bit of ground work and cover some basics. Here we go:

  • When you add 1 stop of exposure, you double the amount of light hitting the sensor / film.
  • When you subtract 1 stop of exposure, you half the amount of light hitting the sensor / film.
  • Therefore, exposure is a case of doubling or halving values.
  • Ansel Adams had the zone system (10 zones) which mapped to 10 stops.
  • With Velvia transparency film, the latitude of the film is only maybe around 3 to 5 stops. In those 3 or 5 stops you get 10 zones. So the way I work it out, is I assume that Velvia has a latitude of 3 stops, and that means I roughly allocate three zones of Ansel's system to one stop. I've never found that adding +3 stops to make snow white has every worked for me. It's always a case of adding +1 stop only.

I've constructed a simplified diagram below of a landscape. In it, we have the ground (I've chosen to use this as my  exposure point (18% mid grey) and therefore it has zero stop difference. Everything else in the diagram has it's difference in stops detailed - in comparison to the ground. In effect, the ground is our 'reference' point for everything else in the scene. This is pretty much what I do most of the time - assume my ground wants to be exposed at 18% grey, and work out where everything else is in relation to that, and also how much grad I will require to ensure the sky does not blow out.

With metering, you should also know that the reading you get, is what it takes to make whatever you measured mid-grey (18%). Meter a white door and the reading you get is what it will take to turn that white door mid-grey. Meter a black door, and the meter will tell you what it takes to turn that black door mid-grey. So whatever you point the meter at - it's telling what exposure you need to turn the subject mid-grey, and you need to apply a degree of compensation to it to make it turn out how you think it looks.

For example, if I want a white door to be white, I will apply +1 stop exposure compensation (with Velvia, that's sort of like zone 8 in Ansel's terms). To turn the black door black, I will need to underexpose by -1 stop (turning zone 5 into zone 2).

Anyway, here is the diagram:

Scene as is, before doing anything.

Scene as is, before doing anything.

In it, I have:

Ground, used to set the exposure so there is zero stops difference here.
Sky +3 stops brighter than the ground
Clouds +2 stops brighter then the ground
Black rocks -2 stops darker than the ground.

I've worked out that I want the clouds to appear the same tone as the ground, so I'm going to grad the whole sky by -2 stops, therefore reducing the clouds to the same luminance as the ground, and also reducing everything in the sky by 2:

After applying a 2-stop grad

After applying a 2-stop grad

In the above diagram I have graded the sky by 2 stops. The white areas of the sky are still at +1 compared to the ground and that is fine with me, as I know Velvia can handle this. 

But what you should be asking yourself is whether setting the exposure for the scene on the ground values is correct. Depending on the luminance of the ground, I may wish to apply some exposure compensation to render the ground the way I perceive it.

Bear in mind that when taking a reading, you are asking the meter to tell you what exposure setting to use to turn the subject 18% grey. I've found that the following ground conditions require different amounts of compensation:

  • Sand (+1 exposure compensation)

Although it looks grey in colour or may appear mid-grey, Sand is actually brighter than 18% grey so if I meter sand and want it to come out the way I see it, I have to apply +1 stop exposure compensation.

  • Grass ( 0 exposure compensation)

Grass is 18% grey, so metering it gives me the correct value to render it the way I see it.

  • Stones (+1 exposure compensation to -1 exposure compensation)

Stones vary in luminance. Black stones need to be rendered at -1 exposure compensation while most 'mid-grey' stones require +1. We tend to perceive brighter objects as less bright. So a stone that is brighter than 18% grey is often perceived as 18% mid grey when it's not.

So to set the exposure on my scene, I really need to consider the luminance values of the ground, and I will often use grass as a correct reference point, but if there isn't any available, I know that sand will require +1 exposure compensation.

Applying +1 exposure compensation. Everything is transposed +1 stop

Applying +1 exposure compensation. Everything is transposed +1 stop

In the above diagram I've applied +1 exposure compensation, which means the entire scene has been brightened. This means that the ground is +1 over 18% grey, and the black rocks in the foreground are now -1 stop below 18% grey. The sky is +2 stops over mid-grey which is fine as i know Velvia has enough latitude to record this.

However, I'm now thinking that since I have:

  1. Applied a 2 stop grad
  2. Applied +1 exposure compensation

The grad is not as effective as I would like it to be. Pushing the exposure +1 has reduced the strength of the grad from 2 stops to 1, from where we started. So I'm going to take out the 2 stop grad and replace it with a 3 stop grad:

Replacing the 2 stop grad for a 3 stop grad.

Replacing the 2 stop grad for a 3 stop grad.

So I've left the ground exposure untouched. It is still at +1 exposure compensation, but i have brought the luminance of the sky down by a further stop so it is now -3 from its original position. But bear in mind although it is graded 3 stops, I have applied exposure compensation to the entire scene of +1 which means the grad is only really reducing by 2 stops (-3 stops +1  = -2 stops).

So let's now compare what we started with, and where we needed up. In the two diagrams below, I do just that:

Initial scene with exposure set to the ground.

Initial scene with exposure set to the ground.

Final exposure with 3 stop grad applied and +1 exposure compensation applied to whole scene.

Final exposure with 3 stop grad applied and +1 exposure compensation applied to whole scene.

Before we begin to look at the difference between the initial exposure and the final one, we must first consider how the human eye sees tones.

In a nutshell: we perceive every tone out there as a mid tone. To test this out, if you point your camera at the ground so it fils the entire area of the image and take a shot, the ground should look correctly exposed. The histogram will show you an exposure right in the middle, which suggests we perceive the ground as an 18% tone. Now do the same for the sky - point the camera completely up into the sky and take a picture. It too will look correct even though the histogram is in the middle and the sky is now 18% grey.

We perceive everything more or less as sitting in the middle of the tonal range. In fact, human vision is incapable of seeing true luminosity and we tend to compress the higher tones so we see the same thing.

When I am making exposures, I am attempting to move the ground towards the mid-tones of the histogram and I am trying to move the sky towards the mid-tones of the histogram too.

This is very important and I would read this again:

"When I am making exposures, I am attempting to move the ground towards the mid-tones of the histogram and I am trying to move the sky towards the mid-tones of the histogram too."

If we look at the scene after I've applied my 3 stop grad and added +1 exposure compensation, this is exactly what I've done: I've lifted the tones in the ground by +1 stop and reduced the sky tones by -2 stops. This can be seen in the following histograms:

Original exposure with no grad or exposure compensation applied. Ground is underexposed, Sky is overexposed.

Original exposure with no grad or exposure compensation applied. Ground is underexposed, Sky is overexposed.

After applying a 3 stop grad and adding +1 exposure compensation, I've brought the ground and sky tones towards the middle.

After applying a 3 stop grad and adding +1 exposure compensation, I've brought the ground and sky tones towards the middle.

The histogram on the right is what we should be aiming for. This is for a few reasons:

1) The ground has been moved towards the mid tones
2) The sky has been moved towards the mid tones
3) The scene is now 'balanced' and looks like what we see with our own eyes

But also, here are a few important things to consider that you get with your histogram on the right, and lose with the histogram on the left:

1) You open up the shadow detail. There's more tonal information in the shadows
2) You open up the highlight detail. There's more room for the brighter tones to stretch out across the histogram.

When you don't do this, and end up with a histogram as you see on the left (I call it a double jumper), you get the following problems:

1) You lose shadow detail because all your lower tones are squashed into the bottom left of the histogram and quantisation occurs - many tones become compressed into one single tone. You lose tonal detail and no amount of correction later on is going to recover that for you.
2) You lose highlight detail because all your higher tones are squashed into the top right side of the histogram.
3) You have to do more drastic editing when you return home and scan the films.

So when someone says 'I've got it all in the histogram', this may be OK for digital capture (well, it's not really), but for film it's not ideal at all.. You still go home with an underexposed ground and an overexposed sky. Trying to recover shadow detail in film is a nightmare (and almost impossible with transparency film) and likewise turning down the overexposed sky brings out funky crossover effects.

Balance the exposure in-camera. This is what you have to do. Even if you are a digital shooter this is still what you have to do and I don't subscribe to the idea that digital cameras have 12 stops of dynamic range so grads aren't required. They are still required for the same reasons pointed out above.

Working out exposures in the field for film using a spot meter may sound complicated, but it really isn't. It's just a case of practicing.

I love spot metering my scenes. I also love not seeing what I'm getting. Using film means I have to construct the image in my mind's eye. What I like about this approach, is that it has taught me to really think about what tones are present in the scene. Through practice, I now know that black rocks are hard to record, and that I really need to lift the tones in the ground up towards the mid-tone or above it, and reduce the sky down towards the mid. This is not simply because the dynamic range of my film is limited (it's is a concern, but not the main reason). The reason is that in order for the scene to be truly balanced the way my eye sees it, I need to move everything towards the middle of the histogram. That means reducing dynamic range and shifting the ground to the right and the sky to the left.

Greetings from Hokkaido, Japan

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Left to right: my guide, myself & my friend Sonja

First time for everything. I've never been on the roof of a car before. Getting down was worse than getting up.

First time for everything. I've never been on the roof of a car before. Getting down was worse than getting up.

Delving deeper

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It's good to get to know a landscape. Well.

Cono de Arita, Puna de Atacama, April 2017 Image taken by my guide on his Samsung phone. My films won't be ready until the very end of May !

Cono de Arita, Puna de Atacama, April 2017
Image taken by my guide on his Samsung phone. My films won't be ready until the very end of May !

I've been back in the Puna de Atacama region of Argentina this past week making some new photographs. My first visit here was two years ago. It was only a fleeting six day visit to the area where I felt I was often in the wrong place at sunrise and sunset. Despite being pleased with my first efforts, the experience left me feeling I had only scraped the surface of this amazing place. So many locations were wonderful but I was often there during the middle of the day when the light wasn't good. This is often the way with visits to new places: the first visit is more about finding out what it is I want to photograph and the second visit is about photographing it!

I like to get to know a place well, and repeated visits are the only way to do that. I see photographing a place like a continual learning experience where I hopefully grow in terms of my understanding of the place, as well as in my photography.

Logistics are often the biggest obstacle in getting to photograph a place well. With the Puna de Atacama, the region is vast. So vast in fact that my first visit left me feeling frustrated because in the space of a mile or so, there would be so many locations that would be suitable for the brief 20 minutes of beautiful light at either side of the day. With only 20 minutes to play with before the light would be bleached out at sunrise, and only 20 minutes to play with before the light was gone in the evening, it made choosing locations very tough indeed.

On location in the Puna de Atacama desert, Argentina, April 2017

On location in the Puna de Atacama desert, Argentina, April 2017

So this visit was more about finding those special locations, areas where I wouldn't have to move so much to capture different aspects of the landscape before the 20 minutes of beautiful light was gone. That meant a lot of day-time scouting and many hills were climbed to find vantage points where I would have better luck when the light was good.

Spot-metering the desert in Argentina, April 2017

Spot-metering the desert in Argentina, April 2017

Location scouting seems to be a trial of errors. Working out where the sun is going to be and how it might react with the landscape can be done to some degree with Stephen Trainor's wonderful TPE application, but there still needs to be a lot of walking and climbing done to find those beautiful compositions where shapes in the landscape form the symmetry and balance I'm seeking.

Indeed, standing still in one location that is (hopefully) the best spot I can find, sometimes reaps dividends. With the Cono de Arita (the volcano shot at the top of this post (made by my guide on his Samsung phone), it was a learning experience to see how the shadows of the surrounding mountains interplayed with the salt flat and the silhouette of the cone as the sun dropped behind the horizon.

I believe it is only by spending time, and observing how the light interplays with the landscape that I can truly learn to be a better photographer. To obtain the images I want, I need to put the effort in, and that often means re-visiting a landscape many times over. Indeed, any landscape that I fall in love with will often become a regular part of my yearly photography because it has the capacity to teach me so much.

Upcoming

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Just a short heads up that I am publishing a new book this August. Keep an eye out for an announcement for a special edition. This book is limited to 200 standard copies and 100 special edition copies. More soon.

Colourchrome Monograph

90 pages, 25.4cm x 25.4cm
Published by Half-Light Press August 2017

Book Proofs

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Today I received three proofs for the book I'm publishing this summer.

Here are the three proofs displayed inside my viewing booth in my home studio. More about the book very soon!


Now Taking Advanced Orders

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On Friday night I announced the publication of my 3rd book, which is limited to 300 copies only. Since then, we have sold over a half of the copies. Which is terrific to see and I can only say a big THANK YOU to you if you have supported me and my art.

I love publishing books, and I love putting them together with my friend Darren Ciolli-Leach. Darren is really great to work with. A great designer is capable of listening to what you want, but also of telling you what will and won't work. Putting together a good design takes skill and experience and that's just what Darren brings to the design table for me. So THANK YOU Darren !

I'm hoping to publish more books in this kind of format. I can envisage one strictly about Hokkaido and another about Bolivia.... time will tell. But it's good to have projects to work on and to see where they will take me.

Anyway, if you're wanting to find out more about the book, or perhaps order a copy, here is the blurb for you. It also comes with the choice of three limited edition prints :-)

Colourchrome Monograph Colourchrome Monograph from 35.00 Edition: Quantity: Add To Cart Hokkaido-edition.jpg Iceland-edition.jpg Bolivia-edition.jpg

Photographic Images 2009 - 2017

Exhibition Book

To mark the first exhibition of Bruce's photography, this book covers his work from 2009 to the present. 

The book is laid out in order of tonal range starting with Bruce's serenely minimal Hokkaido images before moving on to the lower registers of tonality by visiting the black deserts of central Iceland. The book concludes with his full spectrum work from the Bolivian Altiplano.

Book dimensions:

  • 10 inches x 10 inches x 0.25 inches

Standard Edition:

  • 40 photographic plates, 170mm x 170cmm
  • Three chapter Introductions regarding tone and composition

Special Edition:

Bundled with 100 limited edition prints  (170mm x 170mm) of following editions:

  • 33 editions with signed / numbered Hokkaido Print 
  • 33 editions with signed / numbered Iceland Print
  • 34 editions with signed / numbered Bolivia Print

 

Edition: Quantity: Add To Cart

Photographer's code of conduct

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I’ve been thinking for a while now, that things are going to change with regards to the level of freedom that we photographers have in the landscape. 

El Arbol de Piedra, Siloli Desert, Bolivia 2016 Image © Bruce Percy 2016

El Arbol de Piedra, Siloli Desert, Bolivia 2016
Image © Bruce Percy 2016

Since I started running tours and workshops in 2007, I’ve seen a dramatic increase in the numbers of general tourists visiting places of interest, which has also meant that there has been a corresponding increase in the number of photographers visiting places. Indeed, my income and business is in a growth sector of the tourism industry: photography workshops and tours are on the increase each year and there is currently no letup in terms of the demand for tours centred around photography. Whether you and I like the badge or not, we are tourists with cameras and although we might feel our aims are different from general tourist, we are still tourists.

In certain countries I have begun to witness levels of strict policing where it comes to what one can do in or around national parks. Chile for instance is becoming increasingly restrictive upon what one can do and they are not alone. Nor do I feel that their approach is wrong: they are simply trying to protect their areas of interest as best they can, because of the increased levels of foot fall.

This protection comes at a cost to the amount of freedom that one has as a photographer.

I can fully appreciate the concerns of the national park services and of other places where no clear demarcation line currently exists. Iceland for example has many wonderful landscapes that do not fall under the jurisdiction of national park protection and are currently wide open to the threats of increased traffic through tourism. Indeed Iceland is having a battle with general tourists who are not ‘outdoor-savvy’. Each year there are deaths at the black beach at Vík because general tourists who have little experience with the raw power of nature are found to be in a place where extreme spring tides are a real threat and have claimed lives. Iceland is in the infant stages of trying to manage the landscape to a degree where it is reasonably safe for tourists to visit, yet allow people the appropriate level of access so that their enjoyment of such a place is not severely impacted.

As it already stands, I am often left feeling that access to many wonderful areas of a landscape have already gone through severe restrictions to the detriment of what I wish to do with my photography. Indeed, even before such restrictions were put in place, I've often been left feeling that most national parks seldom catered for photographer's needs. Most lookout points are 'vista' shots that might satisfy the general tourist but leave a lot to be desired for most photographers. Indeed, I've found that these restrictions can often lead some to breach the limits of what many national parks deem as appropriate behaviour.

This brings me to an issue with the limited design of most access areas for photographers: we tend to over-step these demarcation points in an attempt to gain the photographs we seek. In doing so, we place ourselves and our fellow enthusiasts under the scrutiny of park authorities and tempt the introduction of further restrictions. Can landscape photographers be trusted to abide by the park rules when it is clear that they will leave certain trail areas in the pursuit of an image? This is my contention: many areas of national parks do not give us the freedom to explore, and at the same time, by exploring, we are in breach of park rules. What is to be done?

In the initial days of hiking trails and networks, nature lovers have had to walk a thin line between access and conservation. This should be no different for us photographers. We have a responsibility towards these special landscapes, and if we abuse this responsibility in the pursuit of an image, we risk ourselves and our community in getting a bad name, with further restrictions being put in place. In short: any unlawful behaviour by us hurts us.

Borax field, Laguna Colorada, Bolivia Image © Bruce Percy 2016

Borax field, Laguna Colorada, Bolivia
Image © Bruce Percy 2016

I foresee a time where photographer’s footprints will have increased so much, that we will be under scrutiny for our behaviour and it is only a matter of time. So I feel that the only way to manage this escalation of park rules, is to start to develop some of our own: if hill walkers have codes of conduct such as ‘leave only footprints’, and ‘take out the rubbish you carried in’, then so too must we adopt respectful laws.

Photography has reached an all-time high level of interest. There has never been more people making photographs in nature than ever before. Many of us have come to photography from a passion for the outdoors but some of us have arrived at landscape photography with little in the way of practical outdoor skills or awareness. To these new disciples, they have still to go through a learning curve of beginning to understand that landscapes need to be cared for and that nature is unruly and stops for no one. Respect is the key word here. The pursuit of an image although the intentions may be honest can sometimes lead to the landscape being abused through a lack of outdoor experience and as such it is perhaps time that we assemble a ‘photographer’s code of conduct’, a guide that sets out how one must conduct themselves in the landscape.

I am really writing this an an open-letter. I feel that at some point, in order to maintain our right to access these wonderful places, we need to begin right now to conduct ourselves as ambassadors for our community.

But perhaps it goes much further than this. Rather than waiting for someone to dictate rules and regulations as to what we photographers can and cannot do, perhaps we should be working out these terms before someone else - someone who has little understanding of our passion, does.

Times are changing. Tourism is increasing, special places of interest are seeing increasing levels of traffic, and it is only a matter of time before authorities start to place further restrictions on what we photographers can and cannot do. Our current and future behaviour will have an effect on those rules, and whether we have a good name as a community. 

Go wisely and with great respect around the landscapes you love. Until such time as photography has an accepted code of conduct; a bible of how one should treat the landscape and the others we encounter within it, we have everything to lose.

Thoughts on approaching a location

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Sometimes, you find a location that is so sweet, you know as you approach it, that it's going to work.

The above image was just exactly like that for me.

Below is a 'contextual' image showing me approaching the trees in the landscape. I'd seen this location from a far distance, and felt that a telephoto would not be sufficient to work around parallax issues with the trees. Before I'd even set foot outside of the car, I could already see the potential in my mind's-eye. I had already begun to visualise and dream how the final images might turn out! But sometimes as we approach a landscape, it turns into something entirely different. I am pleased to say in this circumstance, it held up to what I was visualising in my mind at the time I got out of the car.

Context shot, showing me on location in Hokkaido.  Image shot by my Hokkaido guide, January 2017

Context shot, showing me on location in Hokkaido. 
Image shot by my Hokkaido guide, January 2017

Although I love to edit my work and will often depart radically from what was there, using dodging and burning techniques, the final images you see here are pretty much verbatim. The only difference between the photograph of me on location, and my final images is that the sky clouded over once I got into the location, so there was more of a marriage between land and sky. 

My only on-site decisions were more about placement - of where I should be standing to get different vantage points of the trees, and to be observant to any patterns that the trees made (see central image of the three trees at perfect placement to one another). Further, it was also paramount that I remove the background hedge from the shot at all costs, so I spent a bit of time looking for vantage points where the hedge would disappear from view.

I'd like to finish today's post by stating that often as a photographer, I'm tempted to go towards the subjects I wish to photograph. Whether it's the edge of a lake or the edge of a cliff, or get close to the subject. This can sometimes be a real failing because of two points:

1) If you like it from where you are standing, then chances are it's not going to look the same once you get closer. So shoot it from where you've noticed it, before moving in.

2) As you approach a location you like, the elements start to move around and sometimes things get lost or hidden from view. See point 1.

The journey can sometimes become an exercise in 'chasing rainbows'. You think that by getting in close, the composition will get stronger, but as you do approach, the scene falls apart and the subjects do not hold together well. Often times, it's because the best vantage point was from where you started.

I'm glad to report that although I was worried that the big hike in to this location on snowshoes may result in the trees becoming obstructed by hills, or by my being too low to photograph the trees straight on, the location worked beautifully. I knew it at the time things were going well. As I approached the trees the compositions remained in place.

I'm a great believer that when something is working well, whether it be in my photography or in my life, it tends to flow and come together easily. That's exactly how these images happened. It was as if they fell into my lap.

Creative flow (Part 2 of 3)

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Yesterday I asked you ‘what would you do if you had no undo?’

My own views are that creativity is a mixture of part performance and part control:

  1. Performance - free flow, getting into the zone and just going with a flow. Less thinking, more intuition.

  2. Control - noticing things in the performance that you like / don’t like, and tuning the performance accordingly.

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I think there’s too much focus on the control side of creativity, and much less on the performance aspect.

Having an undo is part of the control aspect of creativity. I would like to put forward an argument that by avoiding using the undo feature, you are in the ‘performance’ aspect of creativity. Stop your flow to hit the undo button and you are breaking flow.

I sometimes feel that there is a need to over-produce work, that photographers want to have all options available to them, so that if they make a mistake, they can back up and correct it. But by having this ‘escape option’ available all the time, we’re less likely to just run with where the work is taking us.

If you were a live musician then you would be very used to your performances varying from one concert to another. But when we have endless options to go back and correct what we do, I think we can lose a lot of spontaneity in our work.

But the problem is much wider than this. I think that when we have too many options and a way of backing out, we never really ever commit, or finalise what we’re doing.

I hear too many points of view these days about trying to remove the need to commit to anything for as long as possible. For instance, just recently I heard an argument about not using grads in the field because they are ‘baked into’ the shot and cannot be undone later. It’s a terrible argument because it is trying to avoid introducing mistakes.

We have to make mistakes. Mistakes are part of the creative process. Mistakes allow us to find new directions through the unintended. We can often be surprised by what we’re shown when we do something we didn’t intend to do. Mistakes are part of experimenting. Creativity is all about experimentation, and experimentation means we do not really know what the outcome will be.

Mistakes also tell us that we need to work on improving our technique.

Avoiding any commitment, any final decision in what you do to the very end is, well, just a false view that you have endless options and therefore greater control. Too much control and the performance suffers. Spontaneity is removed and the work suffers.

Creativity is a mixture of performance and control. We need to be loose enough to find new things, and know when to hone and shape (control) what we’ve found. We also need to know when to let go and surrender to wherever the work is taking us.

Creativity is about keeping up a flow in one’s work. That can only happen when we choose to commit, choose to complete, and choose to move on.

I’d suggest avoiding using the undo feature for a while. See where your decisions take you.

Creative flow (part 3 of 3)

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Today, if you have time, I would like to suggest that you pick 3 photos from your recent efforts, and set a time limit to edit them. Just work on them quickly, take almost no care in precision of the work, just let yourself go with whatever happens while you edit them. Rather than applying a lot of consideration just apply the edits broadly.

Accept the following:

  1. Anything you do that you didn’t intend : look at it and consider whether the unintentional is interesting / offers up something you might like to go with. If so, then go with it.

  2. Accept that the work is transient. Disposable even. It’s just a task to see how fluid you can be.

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This is all in the nature of seeing how fluid you can be. How creative you are, and whether the work comes together quickly. Don’t judge yourself too harshly on what you create, just try to see if you create new work, and to see if it offers up something you hadn’t done before.

if we are able to remove any sense of preciousness about what we do, we may be able to tap into a degree of fluidity. Not everything we do is going to be good and we need to get over that. It’s more important to just keep creating, rather than measuring what it is we do. Creativity is fluid, and it ebbs and flows. Some days your work will be average, boring even, other days it will be something else.

I feel we often over judge our work while we are creating it. I think this can lead to stagnation. This is why I think having no undo feature in your editing software may be liberating. It teaches you to just ‘go with whatever happens’, to understand that you are in a performance.

Performances are transient things - they are what they are while they are happening. If you can consider what you do as a performance, one way of doing something for just the moment you are in, then I think you can free yourself enough to let your creativity flourish.

Some things don't sit well, while other things do

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Gut instinct is one of the best tools we have as photographers.

How about you? Do you listen to how you are feeling about something when making a decision, or do you just plunge on regardless? To me, listening to my gut is Karmic. What goes around comes around. If you’re not feeling it, probably it’s due to the idea not being for you. Or it’s simply a bad idea. If you are feeling it, then most probably it’s what you want to do. So you should follow it.

If I could give any simple advice about the creative process, this would pretty much be it.

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The Creative Process

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The Creative Process The Creative Process 9.99

£9.99

Synopsis

I’m fascinated by our relationship to the creative process, and I’ve been writing about it for many years now on my blog. I’ve collated my best entries from the past few years, and fine-tuned them for inclusion in this e-Book.

The text is not a ‘how to’, nor a ‘technically focussed’ set of writings. Instead this e-book brings together many of my thought processes, challenges and aspirations in an attempt to pin down the elusive nature of what creativity actually is.

136 pages

E-book format: Adobe Acrobat
Download format: Adobe Acrobat File

Add To Cart

I’ve been making photographs for over twenty years now, and during that time I have found the creative process to be an elusive thing to describe. How do we define something which at its heart is free-form? 

Creativity should know no boundaries, should have no rules. The results, however they are gained, should speak for themselves.

But how should one describe the creative process? Despite thinking that it is near impossible to do so, I think describing one’s own motivations, thoughts and feelings towards what it is that they do, goes a long way towards trying to pin down what creativity is.

I’ve put together a small e-book of just over one hundred pages, where I’ve culled my favourite creativity related entries from my blog. I often consider this blog a journal of some kind, a way of sorting out my ideas, of figuring out what it is that I just did, and why I did it.

There have been some minor changes to some of the entries to make the english more correct. A few posts have been almost totally re-written in an attempt to gain clarity. It seems that not all my blog posts are as lucid as I’d like them to be.

I hope, if you choose to buy this e-book, that you can appreciate that it is often hard to describe what one is trying to describe. Especially when it is about the nature of creativity.


Reconnecting

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Every once in a while, I lose inspiration, or just start to wonder if I’m really all that interested in photography.

As much as you may be alarmed to read this, it’s nothing unusual. In fact, I think that everyone, no matter how passionate they are about what they love, lose interest, or have doubts for periods of time. If you don’t, then I think you are either very unusual, or just not being honest with yourself.

Graveside Statue, Cimitero Monumentale, Milan, Italy. 2008 Image © Michael Kenna

Graveside Statue, Cimitero Monumentale, Milan, Italy. 2008
Image © Michael Kenna

I have been running a photo business for a decade now. No one really understands how it has been for me. I realise that some people may think that it’s been a great time and Bruce has had a real adventure (they’re not wrong - I’ve had a terrific time!), but the thing is, until you are in someone else’s shoes, you never really understand what it is they are going through.

Take it from me: turning your passion or hobby into your work is a double-edged sword. I don’t refute that there are the benefits that we all think there may be. Sure, I’ve had a great time, sure it beats doing a ‘real job’, sure it’s nice to be able to do photography all the time. But there is another side: the pressure of making an income, the pressure of delivering tours and workshops that customers have paid good money for. Pressure to make sure that everyone feels happy with what they got. That is quite a large-scope to handle, because every participant that comes on a trip with me has their own personal ‘take’ on what they’re looking for, and why they are there.

Anyway, I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m moaning. I really appreciate what I do, and I think it’s amazing that I get to go around the world, doing what I do, and getting to meet so many people from everywhere. It’s one of the most special things that has happened for me: I’ve also met some very special people over the years. Ones I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet if I’d stayed in my IT job here in Edinburgh.

But the fact is, turning your passion / hobby into your living, can, without any will in the world, turn it into some unwanted pressure. Something which, for the most part hasn’t happened to me. But the truth is: it has, on occasion been too much. There have been a few moments when I thought ‘I’m not sure I want to do this any longer’.

For a long while I couldn’t accept these thoughts or feelings. I felt I was being an absolute traitor to who I was before I started doing this. The guy who had so keenly abandoned a 9-5 job for this ‘dream job’.

But these days I don’t feel bad at all when I encounter these feelings. You see, they’re no different from the feelings we all experience. For example, no matter how much we may love our partners, we all have doubts. In my view, we would be very unusual if we never ever had any doubts about who we are with. Then there is our career. If no one had any doubts about the job that they do, or the friends that they know, or the life that they lead, they’d be more perfect and in their lives than not just the majority of us, but all of us.

Truth is: having moments of doubt is healthy. It means you’re ‘checking in’.

It means you’re present.

It means you’re here.

It means you’re in touch with where you are right now.

Life, and art are not black and white. Nothing is.

There is so much grey ground in what we do in our lives. Maintaining the same level of passion for something indefinitely is hard, if not impossible to do. Rather than worrying that it’s the start of the end, it’s much healthier to realise that any doubts or downturn you have is ‘just a moment’. Part of the ebb and flow of life. Just like everything else we encounter.

Anyway, my reasons for writing this today is because I’ve been ‘reconnecting’. Looking at photos that I love, and if you are a regular follower of my blog, you’ll know I’m an unashamedly Michael Kenna fan. So that’s why Iv'e attached the photo above. A statue in an Italian graveyard, photographed in such a way that anyone may assume it’s a real person. Michael is a genius.

I’m thankful for the photographers I love, because each time I feel I’m wondering if I should pack in what I do, I reconnect to my heroes (Galen Rowell, Elliot Porter, Elliot Erwitt, Robert Cappa, Bill Brandt and of course, the special talent of Michael Kenna). By doing so, they remind me why I am in this game in the first place.

By reconnecting every once in a while to the photographer who are my heroes, I am reminded why I do what I do, and why I’m grateful for it.

Hokkaido?

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I’ve got 1 space left for my January Hokkaido tour. I’m a bit surprised that no one wants to come. I realise that most folks don’t check my workshop schedule these days as they assume it’s always full. But I do have a space for Hokkaido this January 7th to 17th.

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Hokkaido Island, Japan

January 7 - 17, 2020

Price: $7,595
Deposit: $2,278

Lone trees & minimalism, the quintessential Japanese landscape

11-Day Photographic Adventure

Learn more

Cloud Inversion, Torres del Paine, April 2019

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I love bad weather, snow storms, rain and fog. Temperature inversions are also pretty neat.

Most times that I am in Torres del Paine national park in Chile, we tend to see a temperature inversion from one particular viewpoint in the park. This year, we saw it happen on two consecutive days, but it is often so fleeting that on the second visit, I almost made the decision to keep driving as there seemed to be nothing special happening. But the clouds came in thick and fast and it wasn’t long before the entire valley below us was hemmed in with a thick cloud.

My guide Sabine and some of the group participants from this year’s Patagonia tour.

My guide Sabine and some of the group participants from this year’s Patagonia tour.

As you can see from the group photo above, the cloud was below us. It acted like a ‘sea’ in some respects. And it kept changing over the course of the hour or so that we were there.

I made a series of shots using a telephoto lens and a 2x converter for my Hasselblad film camera. I had the equivalent of a 250mm lens on, and sometimes I used a combination of 2x and 1.4 converters stacked together to get in close to the peaks of the Cuernos (horns) of the Paine massif.

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Being highly selective on what you choose to put in the frame is of course one of the key points in composition. So too, is what we choose to leave out. It would have been so tempting for me to make vista wide shots of the valley with the entire range peaking out of the sea of cloud, but I chose instead to narrow right into what I consider the ‘signature’ shapes of the Torres range.

I was also attracted to the whispy, flowing s-curved shapes of the clouds as they moved horizontally across the frame. I felt these would add a degree of ‘elegance’ or ‘simplicity’, to add compositional flow to the shots.

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There’s a tendency to dream up in one’s head what I’d like to see. In my mind’s eye, I was hoping for a shot like the one below, where perhaps the clouds would part at such a point and show me just the central part of the signature region of the Torres mountains. I did get the shot, but as you can see - it’s quite grainy. I love this grainy effect, but it’s really caused by me pushing the contrast extremely hard in the edit to try to bring out the mountains. They were very very faint in the original transparency.

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Working in low visibility is advantageous. It’s also a guessing game and can lead to many many surprises.

I often feel that most of us are uncomfortable with images that are vague, unclear, or just lead too much to interpretation. Coupled with that, there is often a tendency to stress the point. If we feel something is nice, we tend to exaggerate it for fear that others don’t see what we saw.

Being able to edit images to still maintain a degree of subtlety is hard. But if you can pull it off, it probably signifies that you’re more confident, less likely to try to stress the point to your audience. You trust in knowing that the photograph is as strong as it needs to be, and that your viewer may not need to be hand-held through viewing it as much as you would have tried to do in the past.

Working with vague, undefined, hidden landscapes is wonderful for this. Besides, I’ve always enjoyed a story that gives me room for my own interpretation.

Sensory addict?

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Music, Photography, Art, anything that involves creativity, is a creative pursuit, and it utilises the same techniques and processes.

This month I’m at home. Which is in itself a rarity. My friends have forgotten my name, my mum doesn’t recognise me and she’s told me if I keep phoning, she will call the police. I’m joking of course, but I do a lot of travel, I do a lot of photography. I work a lot and I don’t have very long periods at home (mostly).

But right now, I’m at home for an extended period. And I’m avoiding photography like the plague right now. I’ve got my man-cave. It’s full of lots of nice music equipment and I’ve been busy working on some new music. I don’t claim to be any good at it, but it’s something that’s been part of me since I was 12 years old.

Roland System 500 modular system Mutable Instruments modular system

Roland System 500 modular system
Mutable Instruments modular system

I remember a quote from Peter Gabriel. He said ‘I need visual and audio stimulation’. I think that sums me up quite well. I need sound. I’ve always needed it. I wonder though, as a keen photographer, how important is sound to you?

My theory is that most of us aren’t just visually aware, or visually-addicted. We’re probably all sensory-addicted. Right? C’mon. Most photographers I know are (pleasantly) nutty. The simple fact that we are fascinated by pixels isn’t normal (but then, what is?). We obviously have an attention to detail. But is it limited to pixels alone? I doubt it.

Is sound important to you?

It is pretty important to me. But what about you? Are you a sensory-addict?

Once more, with feeling

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I’m in the process of text revisions for my forthcoming book. I’ve come to realise that part of the creative process is repetition. Of endlessly going round and round the same material, auditioning it, fine tuning it, re-auditioning it, re-tuning it again, and again. And again.

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There must come a point when the revisions get smaller and smaller, until there are no more revisions left to do. That’s when I let things sit for a while. Forget about it for a week or two, and then - review. Again.

That was the process for the Altiplano book. I think I stopped writing the text about 9 months before it was completed. We had so many revisions, so many alterations due to realising the flow wasn’t quite there yet. We also had translators turning the English into Spanish. It was a long haul.

With the forthcoming book, I’ve been working on the introduction by my guide / driver today. His English is amazing (as all Icelanders seem to be) and his knowledge of his own back yard is second to none. It’s been fun reading about his experiences, and how we started to work together - particularly about the interior tours we do.

I’ve also got some essays that need to be expanded upon. It’s a lot of fun thinking about the concepts for a book.

Oh, and we’re hoping this one might be a hardback this time. We will see.

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