by Bruce Percy
What does landscape photography mean to you? Is it a verbatim recording of a scene, captured for posterity, or is it something more?
In this podcast, I use a few select images from my Scotland landscapes to illustrate what landscapes mean to me, and why I chose to shoot them the way I did.
Would you be interested in coming along on a photo workshop, lead by me in Scotland next year?
I’m currently investigating it, and would of course love to hear any ideas/thoughts you may have. Perhaps there is a particular place, or you would like to come on a short trip, say a weekend course instead of a week long one?
Anyway, let me know as I’m open to suggestions and any thoughts you may have.
Looking for inspiration, I found it in the warmth and friendlyness of the Cambodian people.
This Podcast deals with capturing images of people. I use five images from my Cambodian portfolio as examples and dissect them. There is less focus on the gear involved, because quite frankly, it makes very little difference. I try to show you why each photo (for me) works.
Wandering the Icelandic landscape during the nocturnal hours led me to understand what a wilderness landscape really is.
If you want an insight into the thoughts and feelings I had whilst in Iceland making images, then I’m pleased to tell you that i have just completed a new podcast about it.
My podcast is now being published in iTunes, so if you have an iPod and iTunes, then you can subscribe to my podcast series by going here.
I’m currently working on some further podcasts. In the pipeline as I type, I have one on my experiences whilst shooting in Iceland. And I’m also putting together one focusing on the aesthetic choices, and thought processes I go through whilst shooting portraiture in Cambodia.
But perhaps there’s something in particular you’d like me to cover? If so, Let me know.
A photographic Journey through one of Patagonia’s spectacular national parks.
I thought it would be a great idea to put a podcast together with my thoughts on photography. I’ve just completed my first ‘episode’. This one is about Patagonia. I should stress that I use the term ‘episode’ loosely, as I currently have ‘tentative’ plans to produce some more.
I just bought a whole pile of audio recording gear - a neat flash recorder, and a couple of microphones. I have a background in post audio production so this is nothing new for me. But what is new, is combining audio and dialog with my photography.
My intention is that when I travel in future, I will record the surrounding places, whether it is the windswept pampas of Patagonia, or people praying in some east Asian temple somewhere. My hope is that I can produce further podcasts about my trips, which should be richer than this podcast as I didn’t have any source material to use.
Should you wish to subscribe to the podcast, you can do so via any of these feeds:
My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-c4762b09cb54f070c0e25c0cbdeaa9ac}
I hope you enjoy it, and perhaps I’ll get my act together and start to produce some more.
Photography as you probably know by now, is a bit of a passion for me. But one thing that I tend to gloss over is my passion for travel.
It just so happens that I get a big kick out of combining both of them together. There is the obvious fact that going somewhere exotic and new fuels my imagination and provides an easy way to motivate me as well as focus my efforts.
I’d like to ask you: what motivates you to take pictures? What was it that made you get into photography?
In my own case, I had a bit of a crisis in my life in my late 20s. There I was, a serious musician (well, I thought so anyway), trying to write music. I spent all my hours writing and producing music, and then one day, I just had enough.
It was burn out.
I felt I needed to get out and see some daylight. Smell the flowers and just ‘enjoy being’. I’d always been interested in certain photographers, but only from the aspect of being a viewer. It was only when I went on a trip somewhere that I got bitten badly. I found that traveling really opened up my life in many ways. The chance encounter with someone, the cultural differences between there, and here.
Being able to come home with memorable images was my initial intention when I took my camera with me, but now…. well, I think the motive has been blurred so much that I’m unclear if I travel now to make photos as my main objective, or whether the process of photography is used to heighten my travel experiences. I suspect it’s a little of both.
Let me explain a bit further. It’s all very well going somewhere to see a new country or culture, but when I have a camera with me, the whole dimension changes. My visual awareness becomes heightened and I see things that I probably wouldn’t notice just being a general onlooker. So in that way, photography is a device I use to heighten my travel experiences. It puts me in situations that I wouldn’t ordinarily be in as an average tourist. Getting up for sunrise, being in some remote part of a national park in Iceland at 3am, just me, a camera and my own thoughts for company, for example. This certainly adds another dimension and richness to my traveling experiences.
But on the other hand, I love photography. It’s true that you don’t have to go to exotic places to make great photos. If you are creative enough, it’s possible to make great photos anywhere, anytime. But it has to be something that stirs an interest in you to make the images in the first place. You have to find something that gives you ‘drive’. Travel really does this for me. Being in an alien landscape, or immersed in a culture that is very different from my own heightens my awareness and inspires me in such a way that it feeds my photography.
So for me, travel and photography are one and the same.
It’s really important to find something that can drive your photography, and you will usually find that your photography will probably have a direct impact on it too.
So in your case, what is it that drives you to make pictures?
Some places hold a spell over me, and I just have to return because I feel that I haven’t fully explored all the photographic potential that is there.
Easter Island is one such place for me, and I’m pleased to announce that I will be returning in 2009 (March 22nd to March 26th) to conduct a photographic workshop. I have aligned this trip to coincide with my annual workshop to Torres del Paine in Patagonia.
This is a very special trip that I have set up where each day gives a lot of concentrated time at many of the best locations, and of course, I’ll be there to share thoughts on photography as well as discuss techniques.
Easter Island has to be the most remote place I’ve ever been to. The island is small, taking roughly about half an hour to get from one side to the other in a jeep. During that half hour early morning drive, I would pass an abundance of archaeological treasures, volcanoes, wild horses and silhouettes of the famous Moai statues. I was always aware of the pacific ocean on my travels, as well as the wide open sky. The clouds race over Easter Island’s landscape creating shifting patterns of light and dark.
Please feel free to view the itinerary and if you have any questions I’d love to hear from you.
My photographs from the recent Patagonia workshop are now online here. I love Patagonia, it’s barren, unforgiving, dramatic, contemplative and hard.
You can work hard and come home with nothing, and then sometimes, just to show you that it has its own mind, Patagonia will give you a gem or two.
Once in a while.
But every photographer I speak to who has been there, says they want to go back. I guess it’s because each time you visit, you see a different face to the landscape and when you do get a good shot, you can’t help feeling you’ve been rewarded.
I love small independent companies that spring up to fill the gap where the large corporations just seem to mis the obvious. One such company that I really like is Really Right Stuff. They make excellent tripod heads as well as custom plates to fit your camera.
I use an Arca Swiss style tripod head/clamp. It’s the most effective way to secure the camera to a tripod. It’s quick, and it’s robust. I have no time to spend screwing plates onto the bottom of cameras and I am unwilling to have a plate fixed to the bottom of the camera if it has the potential to swivel off. The basic plates you get from Arca Swiss are enormous, clunky and they swivel off the bottom of the camera. Really Right Stuff’s plates are specially molded to fit the particular make of camera that you are using. So they become a slightly added feature of your camera, whilst at the same time, don’t get in the way. Oh, and they’re light too. But most importantly, they don’t swivel of the camera. So they’re very, very secure.
I have the L type plates attached to my cameras. So it means I can quickly rotate the camera from Landscape to Portrait mode in a matter of seconds.
One thing that I have found issue with though is the quick release clamps that Really Right Stuff are making. The levers on them are simply too long, and they get in the way if you have a filter holder attached to the front of the lens. It becomes a real hassle to take the camera off the plate, because the lever is obstructed by any ND filters I’ve got on the camera. So I’ve had the lever on each clamp I own machined down to a smaller size. It now means I can mount and dismount the camera from the tripod head in a matter of seconds, whilst not having to take the filter holder off the end of the lens.
Gear should just ‘work’. It should be transparent to use. If you’re having to mess around with it too much, then it’s getting in between you and the photograph. Get familiar as much as you can with your gear and try to remove any obstacles that you can. Photography is an emotional response to your surroundings, and there’s nothing like having to fidget with some gear that isn’t simple to really kill any inspiration that you are feeling.
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