Wishing all my readers a prosperous, creative and happy 2008...

May you all have great light, make amazing images and contribute to the discussion here on Oceans of Instants!

Long time no post...

Where did two and a half months (since my last 'serious' post) go to?!? Perhaps I'm just having a senior moment... but, no. I do recall. Since I last visited you and the other reader I have been engaged in various projects for Light & Land as well as finishing off work on my next book Landscape Beyond.

The text for this was finished back in August but the final image selection and layouts weren't completed until late October. I'm relieved to say that it has now gone off to the printers – though not as relieved as the tireless Eddie Ephraums who has done a sterling job despite my interference/involvement in all stages of the process.

So, how do I feel about my new baby? Well in some respects I think that I'm still too close to it to judge properly. I'm reasonably pleased with the images but don't feel that I can really judge the text yet. I think that this book is more personal than Landscape Within and I felt more outside my comfort zone than when I wrote LW. I owe a big thank you to Eddie for the inspiration for the book. When he and I first sat down to talk about my "difficult second album" he asked me to name the three attributes that I felt essential in the creation of a great landscape photograph. I surprised myself by instantly responding, "Simplicity, mystery and beauty." And a book concept was born. Of course the tricky part was writing the text...

The images used were largely already made. I like to approach the making of a book with a set of images from my 'library' rather than shooting to illustrate the text. I find that this suits me for a number of reasons. Firstly, I'm not the most prolific photographer and the idea of making a set of images to order is frankly very scary. Secondly, because the images aren't meant to be literal illustrations of the text but to stand as works on their own there really isn't the need to shoot specifically to fulfill the brief. For me, the words and images work together and separately, they are interleaved but distinct.

The inspiration for each of my images comes from the circumstances of its making rather than from some grand plan. In fact I find it more or less impossible to make anything other than bland illustrations if I have an external structure imposed before I make an image. Some might see this as a weakness: it means that I feel unable to work on image series. I tend to feel that my photographic work to date is in a sense one very large series charting my explorations in photography. There are many examples of artists having periods working on the same or similar subjects (Picasso's Blue Period is perhaps the most famous) and I do this too. I make series inadvertently (and each image is widely separated in time) because I have a 'weakness' for certain subjects such as ferns or windows. I often worry that rather than working through my approach to a topic I might simply be pointlessly repeating myself. Yet, just when this feeling gets really strong I usually find some new approach and reveal something new to myself and hopefully whoever views the images. Perhaps I should go away and think on this some more...

In between work on the book I've made two trips across the pond to visit the Canadian Rockies in September and Montana & Wyoming. Both were reasonably successful photographically (the image above was made at Biscuit Basin in Yellowstone) and I'll write more on them in future posts.

"Art, huh, what is it good for?"...(Part Two)

Following on from my last post on Art it seems appropriate to discuss a question posed at a recent talk I gave. A member of the audience asked, "Do you feel that it's your duty to lobby for protection of the environment through your work?" From her manner I think the enquirer was probably expecting a resounding, "Yes!" but I'm afraid that I disappointed her.

A deep love of the natural world is fundamental to my photography but I don't think that it's my job to act as a crude propagandist through my images. I'm happy to write or talk about respecting the creatures around us and protecting the future of our planet and, more than this, to follow this up (as imperfectly as humans do) by trying my best to "do my bit". But for me this debate doesn't have a place in my images, at least not in any unsophisticated and obvious way.

It seems to me that I was also being asked the question, "Why do you only make positive images of nature?" Well one strong reason is that I don't believe that making negative images of environmental destruction is going to change anything. Negative imagery is a turn off. Apart from a tiny minority of committed people everyone else looks the other way. They don't want to see bad things and adopt the visual equivalent of the fingers in the ears "La, la, la I can't hear you" pose.

A subtext of this question is an accusation that by making positive images of the natural world I am somehow complicit in the destruction that goes on everyday. I don't think so! This is a kind of "If you're not with us you're against us!" argument, a bullying attitude adopted by the radical tendency of many different political movements including the environmental one. I refuse to be bullied.

The word "duty" in the question is telling. Who or what do I owe a duty to? This question goes to the heart of the relationship between the public and private persona of the artist. In the minds of some there should be no separation between the public and private realm for an Artist; the Artist should live their Art. From this standpoint, since I am a lover of the natural world, it is my duty to proselytise; to convert the great unwashed to my point of view, to get them on-side in the crusade. Actually I think this is what I'm doing, but in a subtle way.

I make positive images and I refuse to apologise for that. The natural world makes me feel positive and that emotion is one of the prime reasons for me making images. I am convinced that positive emotions are much more likely to effect change than negative ones. Seeing something as beautiful is much more likely to motivate somebody to fight to protect that thing than seeing something as having already been despoiled is. It's simple human nature that negative images cause negative reactions. They cause the majority of viewers to withdraw from the debate because they feel the battle is already lost. Rather than causing an uprising, as the propagandists would have us believe they do, negative images are just too depressing and cause the majority of the populous to run and hide.

Portraying something in a positive light isn't necessarily denying that negative things are happening, it may be a denial but it doesn't have to be. Life is more complicated than that! I'm not advocating support for an apologist position, such as that of Nazi sympathiser Leni Riefenstahl. By making positive images of nature I'm not being an apologist for the governments and multi-nationals who are raping our planet. Saying that something is wonderful absolutely isn't the same as saying that it's OK to destroy it. In Riefenstahl's case she was praising the Nazis, the agent of destruction. If we transferred her position to landscape photography it would be like me praising a particular company or government that was implicated in an environmental disaster. It would be like me making heroic images of chain saws and earth moving equipment – that's not something you'll ever see me do!

The original question belongs, I think, to the Marxist tradition of seeing Art's role in quite simplistic terms as a kind of supercharged propaganda. I'm absolutely certain that Art can be deeply affecting on a personal level but I'm not convinced that it can work effectively as a means of changing the world on its own. Picasso's painting Guernica is probably the most famous piece of 20th century art inspired by a political will to protest, in this case against the Nazi bombing of a Spanish village. Did Guernica change the course of the Spanish Civil War to any significant degree? I don't think so. Visual Art is a weak tool when used against guns. The pen might be mightier than the sword, as Edward Lytton wrote in 1839, but I'm afraid that images aren't a match for armaments. Partly this is because it's just too easy to look the other way and partly it's because of a deeper philosophical problem: there is no consistent interpretation of a single image, no language in common between the artist and the viewer or even between one member of the audience and another. The message in Art and photography is too unfocused without written words, a caption, attached. The message is literally ineffable.

The visual arts can lend their weight to a debate but they're never going to be instrumental in causing a political u-turn. The will needs to be present already.

I want to show my wonder at the natural world and to explore notions of vision and perception through my images. I am not interested in creating images of the natural world whose sole purpose is to act as a polemic, I'll leave that to those who are more suited to it. Part of being an artist is about being true to oneself. If we force ourselves, or even worse are coerced, into producing Art to fit somebody else's agenda that work can only ever be third rate. Great works spring from the heart of the Artist, they are not imposed from outside. Saying that I don't want to make propaganda doesn't make me any less worthy as an artist or as a human being. That's a nonsensical argument; it's like accusing a plumber of being a bad person because they don't want to be a prima ballerina. If you're moved to make polemical work fine, if you're not that's equally fine. Art is big enough for both approaches.

How do we compose an image?

Apart, that is, from the obvious route of following some "rules" or re-visiting a "template" from one of our earlier images – we've probably all done this, in fact artists throughout history have re-worked particular ideas. What, I wonder, is the deeper mental process, or processes, that lead to us realising that we've found a composition? I don't claim to be able to make a definitive answer but I want to open a debate.

I think we've all had the experience of visiting a location and not seeing any obvious compositions but then suddenly being struck, almost as if one had been physically smacked between the eyes, that HERE is the picture. Sometimes this is an instantaneous reaction, often there is a process of assimilation of the salient forms which suddenly seem to coalesce before your mind's eye into a decent composition. Sometimes it doesn't strike your companions at all.

The image above, of Vikspollen in the Lofoten Islands, was made when I travelled there with a tour group in 2005. Sunset is very late in August in the Arctic Circle and the group had been having their evening meal and watching interesting light develop to the west of the islands. We had had very mixed conditions with only one decent sunset so far and everyone was champing at the bit to get out and make an image in some glorious late light. This dearth of sunset opportunities had led the group to an expectation of the kind of image they were going to make.

As we drove the 10 or 12 miles to our "sunset" location the cloud began to build in the west and the earlier promise of golden light was extinguished. A sense of disappointment settled over many of the group. They had had a fixed notion of their chosen photographic goal and its likely outcome and now realised that this was not going to be achievable.

The problem was that they were no longer open to the opportunities that still presented themselves. It wasn't going to be glorious but it was mean and moody and this might make an equally powerful image. Wandering around the foreshore I came across this striking boulder, covered in white lichen and perfectly positioned at the apex of converging grooves in the mid grey granite. These suggested an exaggerated perspective (recession on steroids!) leading the eye through the image nexus of the contrasting white boulder – the single, discrete element linking the miniature graphic landscape of the foreshore to the distant greater landscape. But I didn't consciously think about how these elements related to each other prior to making the image. I just knew that it worked, I instinctively and immediately recognised the possibility for a strong composition. How? More on that in a moment, first I want to relate the reaction of various members of the group.

I showed the boulder to two or three people who all failed to see any potential for an image; stuck, as they were I suspect, in frustrated sunset mode. It's apparent to me, then, that the first essential part of the process for finding a composition is opening one's mind to whatever possibilities are around you. Minor White wrote on the state of mind of a photographer creating an image, "the lack of a pre-formed pattern or preconceived idea of how anything ought to look is essential to this blank [creative] condition. Such a state of mind is not unlike a sheet of film itself - seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second's exposure conceives a life in it. (Not just life, but "a" life)."

Having set the essential precondition for finding a composition it's time to return to the "How?" question. It seems inherent in my earlier description of how compositions seem to suddenly, and almost unexpectedly, arrive in our mind's eye that the "How?" involves largely unconscious processes. I recently read a book entitled Blink by thought provoking journalist Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell's basic premise for the book is that humans make "illogical", instant, snap decisions (how apt in the context of this discussion!) seemingly on the basis of very little information and that these judgements, made in the blink of an eye, are often better than those achieved through rigorous logical analysis of a situation. It occurs to me that this is how we make our best compositions. Edward Weston wrote on how we compose that, "Such rules [of composition] and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection..." And I feel that whilst some of this "reflection" arises from a conscious appraisal of completed work, both our own and that of other artists, the most important part is subconscious and never spoken or even overtly recognised.

Gladwell explains that these instantaneous appraisals are based upon a sub-conscious sorting of a mental database of facts acquired over our lifetime. I like to imagine that when I'm searching for a composition part of my mind is flicking through hanging files in an almost infinitely deep filing cabinet draw, of the kind beloved by cartoonists (but perhaps that's a personal problem of mine!). Most of the files get rejected – their contents are inappropriate for the compositional problem presented to me at that moment. My subconscious mind flicks on, at an enormous speed and all hidden from my conscious mind, picking out this file and that until it has assembled a group of scenarios that relate to the lie of the land in front of me. Now comes a blending, a synthesis. Still at the subconscious level, my mind selects a part of this file and blends it with a part of that, mixing a tiny portion of a third or fourth and so on. There's a whiff of alchemy or magic about this, indeed adepts have often been credited with almost paranormal insight. But I don't believe that anything magical occurs. The more you see – the more you truly look – the more "files" there will be in your mental filing cabinet and the easier it will be to find images.

One final thought, the fact that the compositional process is hidden from our conscious selves makes many artists uneasy, and especially photographers who's practice is rooted in hard technicalities. These individuals often seek solace in the concrete notion of compositional rules but this is an illusory comfort. Rules bind the user, they don't allow them to find their own road but fence them in. The greatest images almost always defy categorisation using the rules of composition, they're to be found in the great uncharted land beyond the fence.

The T-shirt winner...

At the tender age of 46 I've finally won a photography competition (the first and, so far, only competition I've entered) at choose-film.com.

I've very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it's deeply satisfying to be patted on the back and told that one has done well, especially as in this case the 'award' was received as a result of voting on the site by my peers. Artists of all flavours are deeply insecure creatures driven to some extent by their egos. Self-criticism is a vital part of the artistic process but it's a tricky balancing act that can lead to us all attacking our own work as worthless. Inciteful external criticism is always valuable and can help us to avoid the deep lows and achieve new heights both in our mood and in the quality of our work.

On the other hand I'm philosophically opposed to the basic concept of photo competitions. Photography, like all art forms, cannot be judged in an absolute way. Photography is a matter of taste. How one feels about an image is just that, a feeling. It cannot be categorically stated that one image is better than another. The work of one great master, such as Ansel Adams, cannot be said to be better than that of another, such as Edward Weston. They are simply different.

Achnahaird Salt Flats

Continuing the winter theme from my last post...

I'm often asked by workshop participants to give them the secrets of good composition, "What are the rules?" they ask. In reply I usually paraphrase a comment made by Edward Weston, "To consult the rules of composition before making a photograph is a little like consulting the law of gravity before going for a walk. Irrelevant!"

For me the very best images always break the rules, they surprise the viewer with a new way of seeing the world. What intrigued me about this view was that the fabric of the landscape appears to be almost wafer thin – a tear in the fabric allows us to glimpse sky below and beyond the surface of the ground. Visual ambiguity in a photograph can not only be arresting but also adds a sense of mystery. Humans have evolved to seek early resolution to visual problems and where this isn't possible an image will hold the viewer's attention for longer – think of the work M.C. Escher such as the hooded figures ascending a neverending staircase. So, rather than seeking to describe the landscape in a way that is instantly understood we would do better to try and confound the viewer's expectations. Rules are never going to get us to this point!