A new year is approaching, and I’m hoping to enter it with an updated photographic identity, including a re-imagined website. Part of this refresh is the inclusion of this blog, in a way, a kind of fluid, ever-changing behind-the-scenes about me page. The problem is, I’m finding it challenging to write primarily because I worry about what people might think. Hopefully, this will become easier. Ive been a professional photographer for a long time, so I should have some knowledge and insight, and therefore something interesting to say, right?
The images here are from a trip last winter to the Scottish Highlands, a week spent living out of the Land Rover, timed to slightly more wintry weather than I would have preferred. It may seem strange, but I don’t see myself as a landscape photographer but more as a photographer who needs to be in the landscape. In a time when the state of your mental health is vital, this is what I do for mine, and the more remote and wild the location is, the better.
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The actual process of taking a photograph is hugely important to me. I will delve deeper into the gear I use in future posts, but for now, my camera setup for these trips is simple: a medium-format digital back mounted on an ALPA STC body with a 40mm wide-angle lens. The restriction that a single angle of view imposes simplifies any decision-making about subject and composition.
I am a big believer in getting it right in camera; cropping, anyway, always seems to me like I’m fixing a poor decision or I wasn’t looking hard enough. I’ve now realised I’m basically doing everything possible to decrease my chances of getting a shot. Thankfully, I’ve also realised that the emotional connection I have with the landscape is as essential to me as photographing it, and that it fundamentally shapes the mood I want to convey. Hopefully, the viewer will feel a little of the emotion I experienced at the time—well, that’s the aim.
These trips are not without the pressure of potentially returning home empty-handed. I’m limited by family and work commitments, and there is also the financial investment. When I’m able to go, it’s not necessarily the best time, which can be a little frustrating. Rightly or wrongly, I also head off with a specific picture in my head of what I’m after, a mixture of Victorian landscape painter Sidney Richard Percy and John Claridge, the photographer who first inspired me to become a photographer.
The image here is a fine example, a freezing night in the Land Rover, a night approach in blizzard conditions, and an hour waiting for sunrise in the hope there might be a break in the weather. Unfortunately, a week of freezing temperatures left the waterfall a trickle. Luckily, I’m not there just for the photography.
