Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

After convincing myself that I need to be a lot more focused when out photographing, I decided to test myself by removing the ability to roam around and not going out to capture ‘good light’. This is just an exercise in composition (and still learning how to take LF pictures). The location I chose is one that I have been to previously near Ingleton which is in a farmers field (sorry Mr Farmer), here is the shot from my birthday last year.

It’s a good job I wasn’t going out looking for good weather as we’ve had nothing but near 100% fog and cloud cover for the last few days. It was also -2 degrees when I arrived and didn’t warm up much either. I managed to stick out the 3 hours although at one point I’d lost feeling in my knees, the fingerless gloves came in handy too.

The location is in the middle of classic limestone pavement country and it has a single tree growing out of the stones. All of the stones have been weathered in various ways and one of my pictures (inspired a bit by Paul Strand) was a simple abstract of this weathering.

I was mostly looking for compositions that didn’t include the classic ‘single item in foreground and a few leading lines’ but did suggest a three dimensional depth but used bold shapes and combinations of items to create structure. The first two compositions (seen below and at the top of this post) were intended to use the bold structural shape of the left hand rock to focus attention onto the tree but also onto the other stripe of grass. I liked the way that the colour of the grass changed to browns in the background. It would have been nice to have some feature at the top left hand of the first picture as that is where my eye tends to end up. The second is a less well structured composition but I like the plant life huddle up in the crack between rocks. The plant life can be seen in the first picture hiding in the jumble of rocks.

The next picture was as I was looking for well shaped plant life to provide a subject for ‘portrait’ style shot (i.e. the plan on it’s own, composition given by the shape of the plant and the rock it sits on or between). The moss was crested by a small patch of frost which made the whole a little more interesting. It was very tempting just to centre the ‘droplet’ of moss but I wanted to ensure that any lines in the surrounding rock didn’t pull attention away.

The final picture’s curves were the striking feature that grabbed my attention and the shapes of the lichen was a bonus. Getting the two rock shapes to nest well together and to ensure that there was enough background (the tree and stalks in the background right should be in focus in my LF shot).

Overall the exercise was enjoyable but I would have loved to have had better modeling light and at last some cloud structure with gaps so that I could play with shading of foreground/background. As it is, I’ve got some places to go back to now and I got to spend half a day thinking about composition.

Well this seems to be what they’ve been doing over on David’s blog over the weekend. I came to it late on today and having looked at the book and thought ‘and?’ I decided to take a deeper look to see if I was missing anything.

The discussion seems to be about whether Mr Wright is using a different visual language and that the apparent lack of compositional and technical ‘style’ is an artistic affectation, and if so of what kind, or whether he is attempting to make transcendent landscape art but misses the mark in some way.

I think the artist deserves to be listened to so I read through Harry’s blog on the Times website and also looked through his websites and book output to see if there was anything I could glean.

The first thing I noticed is that on his book covers and on his website, the featured images that have been chosen are the most visually compelling pictures in a typical landscape style; i.e. Luminous light, composed (loosely), etc. This sort of implies that there is at least a concious filtering of his images after the fact that fits with a real attempt to create traditionally ‘beautiful’ images. (of course this could be a cynical choice of images to try to draw the average punter in?).

Given this, why are so many of the images so banal? Reading through the blog, it is often said that (paraphrase) ‘I stayed in a location for a couple of days to absorb the environment and then took a picture right next to where I was parked/camped’. This doesn’t seem to leave much room for choosing a view. With a 210 lens on, it’s probably only possible to point in 8 different directions.

However he then goes on to say that in some locations he spent time finding a location, asking locals where the best views were and even going to the the top of Meall Na Cuilce overlooking Loch Coruisk to get the final shot of the tour.

If it weren’t for this, I could start to understand his stated influences of Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Neil Young and Paul Strand. The only one of these that really gives a hint at a minmalist viewpoint (the only explanation that springs to mind) is Thomas Struth’s work but that is mostly about the viewers perception and social commentary. Neil Young is, I think, the singer thrown in for some trendy music references (Bob Marley is mentioned amongst other music references). Cindy Sherman is obviously post modernist but not in the context of the landscape. As for Paul Strand, I don’t see any of his empathy with the communities in which he is taking his pictures.. Mr Wrights pictures are more reminiscent of Stephen Shore (or even Richard Misrach), which at least match with the look of the images and tallies with his mention of Thomas Struth, but this misses the mark in the fact that Shore was always about the human element, not the pure landscape and that Shore and his recent crop of modernists (Gursky etc) were/are very knowing. I get the feeling (and I may be wrong) that Mr Wright’s images are produced out of Naivety rather than a knowing commentary on something.

Mr Wright, on his blog, answers a question about his influence.

hcw
The camera I use gets more detail across than any camera I have ever used. It gives a relevance to everything in the frame. This allows the photographer to use it with great confidence, knowing that the final print will reveal more (not less) than you were able to take in at the time. The more I go on using the camera the less I worry about the detail and this lets me concentrate on the bigger thing; the feel of the whole place, the ‘sum’ as you say.

This just suggests that he’s enamoured of the ‘resolution’ as in “Who cares about the subject matter – look at the detail” or “As long as I’m pointing in roughly the right direction, the camera is bound to pick up what I’m seeing”.

HCW:

What do I look for? That’s difficult to say, because as you get closer to taking the picture it varies. The night before I might decide where to go, and that’s based on a bit of weather, where I was the day before, what someone’s told me etc. But the most exciting bit is walking from where you have begun, knowing that the chances are that you about to get swept away by what’s out there. The key I suppose is not to anticipate it all too much, and to try not to do what you have done before.

But how does this happen if he only takes pictures next to where he started. Nothing is really adding up to a consistent view, style or even goal.

To paraphrase a couple of quotes from Mr Wright. “I select the spot from where to take picture: a promontory where I feel the view has been important or admired; bend in a track that has a sense of significance; crossing points of track and stream giving a sense of convergence not just of transport but of ways of living and history.” – This does sound good but doesn’t really tally with random pictures of hedgerows (however nice these seem) or beach scenes with little beach and a lot of sky, or a scrap of soil, etc.

Overall I don’t get a sense of any consistency. I see a photographer that can see beauty and occasionally capture it but who very often misses or confuses the experience with the realisation. This is not to say that he is a bad photographer, but he doesn’t rate as a ‘great’ photographer in my opinion, despite taking some pictures that I really like (as seen below..); But for every one of these there is a picture that does nothing for me at all.

My conclusion is that Mr Wright is a very good marketer (someone even adds fake reviews and ratings to his Amazon books) and has obviously hit a nerve with critics and at least one publisher, I think because of his similarity to the modernists mentioned above; but he doesn’t really know what he wants to be and this shows in the book and through his writing. He’s either a savant modernist that I don’t understand or just happens to have hit this zeitgeist through a naive (and I don’t mean this as an insult) approach to photography.

Either way this is not the landscape photography that I really enjoy, even though I may enjoy individual pictures. I should add that there is something in some of the pictures that works in the way that it totally removes the photographer from the process; a deadpan, minimalist view of the landscape that leaves the viewer to do all of the work. If Mr Wright were to focus on this and develop this style, focusing on how to achieve a refined version of what he appears to do accidentally I’d interested in seeing a sequel.

Note: Some of the images initially used to show HCW’s better style are now password protected and so have been removed.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been following and contributing to a blog post by David ward about taking photographs (or not).

The comment thread drifted off into a discussion of David’s photographic influence and whether he is influenced mostly by modern art. I don’t want to comment about David’s actual influences but a point was raised that abstraction in the landscape only really became popular in the 20th Century with post impressionism.

Now I’m far from being an expert on the subject but I was sure that I had seen many 19th Century art that was non-figurative and wasn’t trying to fit in with accepted norms for what was then mostly a commercial enterprise (i.e. most artists were in it for the money .. sort of)..

The artists that immediately sprang to mind were the Japanese woodblock genius Katsushika Hokusai whom most of you will know from his famous tidal wave and also his many illustrations of mount Fuji but is also a master of composition and simplification (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 also see Hiroshige). Other artists were obviously Turner and Whistler but I wanted to find out where the links were and who else to think about. Reading around a bit I discovered Gustave Courbet whose Wave and The Grotto of Loue are classic photographic style compositions. It turns out that Gustave was a fan of and was influenced by photographic vision. The link between Hokusai is also confirmed in that many impressionists were obsessed with these recently imported artworks (especially Monet, Degas and Toulouse-lautrec).

Looking at all of this, it seems that the birth of modern art was midwifed by photography and graphic art. The first allowed a gestalt perception and the latter gave the grounds with which to break with tradition, to show that there are no bounds and that different environment can create different perception.

Once this started happening, photography and art walked hand in hand for many years, probably until the 1920’s, 30’s or even 40’s – surrealism lived with photography for instance (at least a common law relationship).

Anyway this was mostly me wanting to record my thoughts outside of David’s blog..

I also found some earlier landscape art which doesn’t fit in with this post but is of interest Carl Gustav Carus and Caspar David Friedrich (and possibly Claude Lorrain are well worth looking at for an observational viewpoint. And whilst I’m at it .. Klimt’s forests remind me of Mr Burkett.

Over the last few months I’ve been asking myself a question that is particularly difficult to answer. Why do I take pictures? The obvious answer to a lot of people is because I enjoy it and I’ve been told I produce things that people like when I do it. But this doesn’t really satisfy me as an answer because it doesn’t say what it is about it that I enjoy and if the reason I do it is so that people can tell me I’m good, I feel particularly shallow.

So now I’ve got a few more questions. What do I enjoy about photography? Apart from my own enjoyment, what am I trying to acheive?

Well this gets a little closer. I started off taking photographs and enjoying it before I showed other people so it can’t be to do with that – or was I expecting or wanting to impress other people – the joy of anticipation perhaps. Oh dear..

Let’s take a couple of thought experiments. If I were to carry on photography but I could never show anybody else my work, would I still do it. Gosh! That’s a tough one. I think my answer would have to be yes. I actually enjoy the process of taking landscape photographs. Starting with the location and ending with an interpretation that I think captures my intentions is a complex puzzle that I get a ‘buzz’ out of solving. The buzz is even more exciting but also more frustrating because there is no one correct answer and there is also no way of saying whether the answer is correct.

So I like puzzle solving. Solving the puzzle also means learning what the puzzle is; What the pieces do and where can I put them. This means there is an ongoing learning process to solve the puzzle. Hang on! Learning the puzzle also means knowing how to judge the answer better. The obvious conclusion from this is that depending on how you learn to understand the puzzle can affect your conclusions on whether the puzzle is actually solved. In other words, my great solution is actually wrong in somebody elses eyes.

This leads to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter what I do as long as I learn the puzzle in a way that lets me solve it. This is obviously not right… There must be something I’m missing.

Whatever I say about not caring about what people think about my pictures it isn’t totally true. When I’ve solved my own puzzles in a particularly satisfying way, I really would like to share this. I want to say “look – here’s my solution!” and I want to share it with people who go “Wow.. although I have a different solution personally, I know enough about the puzzle to admire the way you’ve solved it” or “Hang on – here is a bit of the puzzle you might not have thought about – does that change the way you perceive your solution”..

So now we have start to put together an environment of shared understanding of what the puzzle is. The general public (sorry general!) have a personal understanding of the puzzle that they have inherited/developed without thought and some of my solutions might also look like some of their solutions.. Some people have spent their whole lives looking at different solutions and have developed a language to describe them that I don’t understand myself (I think they are called critics) and then there are a whole lot of people who publish ‘Solve your puzzle the easy way’ books with lists of simple solutions that look complete (I think they’re called editors and writers).

What I have to decide is how many different types of person (and hence puzzle types) do I want to satisfy. Some photographers manage to produce work that satisfies many, many different people understanding of the puzzle, even puzzle afficianados (Joe Cornish seems to have hit a few of the core puzzle fundamentals but does so whilst also satisying some of the deeper understandings).

Dumping that metaphor, what I’m getting at with the puzzle is a combination of many things.. There are visual configurations that are pleasing to the eye; there are structures that can lead the eye around a picture; there are types of texture and light that are associated with warm fuzziness (a technical term I think). All of these are aspects of photography that invoke our hindbrain. These are shared visual triggers that can evoke emotional reaction. A photographer that wants to control the reaction to their pictures needs to understand these fundamental concepts. We can think about these concepts as the grammar of language. If we use the grammar correctly, we will always produce sentences – whether they carry meaning depends on the right words.

Then there are more complex visual ideas that rely on a shared visual language. Some of this shared visual language is innate (like some of the ideas mentioned in the last paragraph) but some of the ideas are learnt through exposure to photography/art. Fine art is drenched in these metaphors and allusions. With photography the availability of language is more limited. With landscape photography, I’m still looking for a beginners dictionary.

What I want to achieve at minimum is to express my feelings when I’m out in the landscape. What I’d like to achieve is to be able to control how I express my feelings through photography – how to transcend the basic grammar of beauty and be able to communicate a message that whispers long sentences rather than shouting one liners.

What I also know is that I’ll never reach my goal because as I learn more about the way this visual language works, I’ll expect more of myself. I wrote a footer on my profile on a photo discussion site about 18 months ago that said ‘Tim Parkin – Happily Unsatisfied’. I wrote it quickly from the top of my head and then thought ‘How sad does that sound’ .. over the last 12 months I’ve realised that being unsatisfied is not necessarily a bad thing.. Small doses of satisfaction are good but to be completely satisfied all of the time, I don’t think I would enjoy it.

So .. why do I take pictures? I take pictures to express something; to myself, to understanding colleagues and peers. I take pictures to learn how pictures work. I take pictures to understand what I see and how I can transform it. I take pictures to learn about the world; to learn about myself; to talk to other people about the journey I’m taking..

I’m hoping that as I get further down the journey I can more eloquently express myself too

Sometimes you really don’t want to go out even though you really want to photograph. On Saturday we got up 5.30 am ready to make a little pilgrimage to Gordale Scar, a location chosen because I had a certain composition in mind and I’ve never got a particularly satisfying shot from their. The morning was that combination of dampness and cold that seems to eat into your bones even though you know you’ve coped with icy conditions ten time worse. When we were close, it was pretty apparent that we weren’t going to get anything particularly impressive, and we’d be lucky if we got some light, however the river was in particularly high flow and the waterfalls should be pretty impressive.

And impressive they were! Unfortunately, with the rain included, the whole of Gordale was one great big waterfall… I’d brought my waders to see if I could get up to a higher level in the waterfall and indeed I could but the amount of flying water meant that I couldn’t spend much time composing (or checking focus .. hmmm). The result showed the possibility of potential at some point… I need to go back and spend more time…

On the way out I wanted to try an angle I’d previsiualised (but it didn’t look like I wanted – at least not with the light as flat as it was) and so we went over to Janet’s Foss, slopping along with my oversize waders on (for which I got justified wierdo stares). Janet’s Foss is pretty impressive but spectacularly dull with no light, not greenery (or orangery) and when it’s flowing so big that there is no subtelty. The other direction, down the river, looked a little more promising and is probably the only shot that I’m happy with from our little trip.

I really need to spend more time at a location though and Charlotte has very kindly said that she’s happy to sit around in one place and pass the time. What an understanding wife

Light and Land are a company who many of you will know that specialise in photographic holidays, mostly landscape, in the UK and beyond. I took part in a Hebrides special in April of this year which I thoroughly enjoyed which resulted in my foray into the world of LF. They held a ‘discovery’ day this month where many photographers attend to meet the tour guides and watch presentations on photography.

I went down to the hotel in Reading a day early because of the long drive and also because I was hoping to have a chance to talk to other photographers, generally an enjoyable if obsessive bunch.

On the Saturday I spent most of the afternoon in the lobby of the hotel making the most of the free wireless access in order to catch up with some web development work on the This World website (which is just launching – check out http://www.this-world.com) and also to make a couple of tweaks to David Ward’s website. Whilst I was doing this I saw Baxter Bradford and had a good chat about websites (he’s currently developing his new site), using reversal film to increase dynamic range (some great example shots he has) and digital raw conversion programs (and a company that specialising in removing 5D antialiasing filters).

Later on I had a chat with Nigel Halliwell, whose photography I admire, and Paul Gallagher, a black and white photographer that I had only just found out about through seeing his pictures in Developing Vision and Style (a light and land book in association with David Ward, Joe Cornish and Charlie Waite – plus lots of great contributions from other photographers). The conversations were suitably geekily photographic as expected. I also had the opportunity to introduce myself to Charlie Waite, who graciously agreed to chat about a project I have in mind.

The night ended late and the morning wasn’t far behind. The day itself was a wonderful mix of old faces (most of the Hebrides course were their, Gerry Gavigan, Phil Staff, Jane Goodall, Melanie Foster) and people whose names I’d only seen in print (Roger Longdin at lunch) and some of the ‘glitterati’ (Joe Cornish, Ben Osborne, Niall Benvie, etc etc – most of the Light and Land tour guides apart from Duncan McEwan in fact). I said hello to Eddie Ephraums whose talk on book publishing made me realise that this could be the most effective way of reaching a wider audience and potentially selling pictures – a home made book or even a digitally published one should be straightforward but I think the appropriate project is needed first.

The talks that most moved me were Joe’s and David’s .. Their search for a path even at their stage in their development is something that is both reassuring and humbling in some ways. They are very different photographers in many ways but I get the feeling that Joe admires David’s persistent focus and I imagine that he feels tethered by his ability to create instantly attractive pictures where sometimes this instant beauty clouds the consistent depth in his compositions.. What is certain though is that they both strive to make their photography mean something to themselves and are not happy to just create pretty pictures. I love to see both of their repertoire develop and feel privileged if I can help one of them reach a wider audience.

Charlie’s talk was also about the uncertainty that photography brings and the fact that progression/change is more important that achievement. Satisfaction seems to come from responding to challenges, either external or more importantly internal.

Looking around the stands was certainly interesting and I was most impressed by the Paramo gear and will probably be making a purchase of a new waterproof and possibly a gilet.

Finally, I got to meet with Charlie Waite who was the gentleman you would expect. I would highly recommend getting his ‘art of seeing’ DVD, the man is just as you see him.

Overall, I was very impressed and would like to thank David and Jenny Ward and the Light and Land crew for putting in so much effort.

OK so I only realised quite how much I love water, geology and rolling landscapes when they are all miles and miles away. Newark may not be the flattest place in the world but it’s flat enough to have nothing much but topsoil and slow flowing water.

I was at my Parent’s in Law to meet up with my Julia and Stuart, friends of Charlotte’s from University/School, and wanted to get some photography (I feel lost if I can’t take pictures) so went out looking for subject matter. The only things I could find on the OS map were small copses so we went for a little walk. No LF work and the two were taken in their back garden. The first picture is a foxglove which was thriving in local Pheasant breeding wood.

We went to Whitby to check out some locations today. It wasn’t the best weather but it’s always good to know an area a bit before you have the real opportunity to take photographs.

Well with 40 gusting 50 winds and lots of sand around, the chances of me getting my large format camera out were minimal. However, I did take some 5D snapshots and scouted out the type of photograph I would like to take. The last time we went to whitby, there wasn’t a lot to see and I wondered how people could possibly take the beautiful shots I had seen (especially Melanie Foster‘s!).

This time I started to see the possibilities.. You see it’s all down to sand movement. Although the rocks around Whitby pier are beautiful, most of the time you can only see the tip of the iceberg. However, around stormy weather and with a receding tide, tonnes of sand can be removed, leaving the textured and coloured rock for all to see! The enemy of great shots however, are students.. In this case 1st year Geology students who were swarming over the rocks and sand like flies.. (I shouldn’t criticise them as Geology is an amazing subject).

There were parts of the beach that weren’t completely wrecked and I managed to take the couple of shots you see here in the 15 minutes spent on the beach before the rain came back again. Off the fish and chip shop and then a quick drive to sands end (mmm…. groynes!!) and check out the access road to Saltwick bay (people were fishing! nutters!) and then back home..

A little research on the Internet came up with the results mentioned earlier in that the best time to go would be as a storm surge is working it’s way up the North sea and just after a high tide.. Theres a couple of dates in December that look promising!

The previous day I played around in a small copse near my Brother in Law’s house.. Nothing to write home about, but obviously enough to blog about.. End result here..

You may have seen my previous posts about the BlackJacket which is a ‘high tech’ dark cloth for large format cameras. Since I’ve been using my black jacket on the ebony for some I found that there was still some light leakage around the sides of the groundglass caused by the ‘neck’ of the BlackJacket not fitting flush around the bellows. Also, the velcro on the inside of the neck that the BlackBag attaches to is both fairly weak and also not positioned particularly well for the layout of the ebony. In order to fix these I had to get the needle and thread out and also buy some new velcro and some elastic material.

The first photo shows the extra velcro I have added to the inside of the neck that will hold the BlackBag :-

The velcro has only been connected on one edge as this makes it easier to grab and lift towards the ground glass. You can see the positioning better in this photo :-

The second picture shows how the BlackBag fits onto this velcro :-

It might even make sense to replace the velcro on the bag as the ‘hook and loop’ type velcro isn’t as strong as normal velcro.

The next picture shows the addition I have made to the neck of the BlackJacket to allow me to make the neck more light tight.

This allows the closing of the neck as below :-

Using this makes the whole shebang considerably more light tight and isn’t much extra effort to use and my Ebony feels snug as a bug in a rug..

One of the most surprisingly useful gadgets that I purchased before our holiday in Scotland was a Gnass Quickload holder. This is a pouch that holds the quickload holder itself and upto 40 quickloads. It has a hook at the top and is intended to hang off your tripod when you are setting up and taking your shot. Having seen one in Jack Dykinga’s book and not trusting myself with lots of bits of sheet film and notes etc., I ordered the item from America (paying almost as much in postage as I did for the item itself). Despite having to wait over two months for the item (and phoning Justin Gnass a couple of times to remind him, both of which he said they’re just going out of the door) I was and am still very impressed. I should add that Justin was very polite and apologetic on the phone but it seems he’s not the most organised person in the world and although I don’t think he’s intentionally dishonest, he could do with being more open about timescales for delivery.

Anyway, back to the item itself. It’s made out of a strong nylon fabric and is very well stitched. It has two main pockets and a little pocket to hold the top of the quickload holder (as seen in the picture below).

I keep my quickload holder in the top pocket and the bottom pocket contains my quickload film and notepad and pencil. The pockets are fairly deep and I can move up to 15 quickloads up to the top pocket as they are taken.

The design of the holder is such that when it is closed, there is a velcro front flap that closes the whole unit. This does a fair job of keeping everything together. As can be seen, when the unit is opened, the two pockets are staggered to allow easy access.

This makes it a nice fit next to my camera and BlackJacket in the camera bag.. Anything that helps my workflow during the planning and taking of pictures is a welcome addition to my arsenal.