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‘Zip’: commended in Landscape Photographer of the Year 2011

I’m very pleased, and distinctly surprised, to be able to say that one of my images – ‘Zip’, my first Howgill Fells capture – has been commended in the 2011 Landscape Photographer of the Year competition (LPOTY, to avoid my having to type all that again).

My surprise is due to the fact that everything I’ve read about photography competitions suggests – well, usually states – that they favour rather more obviously appealing subject matter – things like sunshine, warmth and a view; or morning mist. I’m sure I’ve described the origin of ‘Zip’ before on this site: it was supposed to include mist, if not the other three items. Instead, I had a hard frost to work with; yet this turned out to be much more interesting – at least, it was to me, and also, it would seem, to the judges.

Are competitions a good thing?

I have to admit that I was a little reticent about entering in the first place – I’m not entirely convinced that any art can be meaningfully compared in a competitive sense; the process clearly involves a high level of subjectivity. Having said that, I was also sufficiently self-aware, when I was deliberating about making a submission, to know that I’d be very flattered to receive any kind of recognition in the competition. So, I was unashamedly pleased to be short-listed and am delighted to have an image in the 2011 book, displayed at the exhibition at the National Theatre during December and January, and in the Sunday Times magazine feature on 23rd October 2011. I was also reticent as I felt slightly presumptuous, as a relative beginner, in even thinking of submitting an image – fortunately my ‘what the hell’ instinct kicked in there…

One of my motivations – OK, perhaps I should say self-justifications! – for entering LPOTY was that I hoped to be encouraged, if I was fortunate enough to have any degree of success, to make more images. Right now, typing this a couple of days after receiving the email saying that ‘Zip’ was ‘commended’ and would be in both the exhibition and the book, and a few hours after seeing it in the Sunday Times, I’m definitely feeling inspired anew. With autumn here and winter not far off – my favourite times of year, especially for photography – feeling encouraged and inspired can only be a good thing!

It’s easy to be cynical about any competition which necessitates the comparison of any art form – and I assure you I can be pretty cynical about all sorts of things when I want to be – but there’s no denying that they:

draw attention to things that most people wouldn’t otherwise hear about, see or read;
provide great encouragement to those people who are fortunate enough to meet with the judges’ approval;
encourage people to enter the art, whatever it may be; to ‘have a go’.

Without doubt, this success means that I do feel greatly encouraged to try to produce more good work and I’m very happy that I decided to enter!

On the off-chance that any of the judges are reading this: thank you very much!

And to everyone who’s provided constructive critique and encouragement to me on Flickr et al in the past year, many thanks; it’s really very much appreciated and has helped me a great deal.

I’d better stop there!

Musings on: deleting images too soon

I deleted the image below – several times.

My usual practice, after copying the captured images from a memory card to my computer, is to flick through the files and delete those which don’t work, or which have technical flaws which I’m unwilling to accept. This one just looked bland, as did the five other versions I’d taken in quick succession as breaks in the cloud allowed sunshine to sweep across this valley. They all experienced the delete key and both, duplicated cards were formatted when I returned the SD card to the camera.

A few weeks later, thinking over my Scotland trip, I recalled spending a couple of hours standing by the side of the road near the Rannoch Moor end of Loch Etive and imagining a gently-lit composition which highlighted the multiple triangles I could make out in this basin beneath Ben Starav and Glas Bheinn Mhor. I remembered visualising the image above – the raw material for which which I’d repeatedly deleted the day after capturing it. Considering it after so much time, I found it hard to believe that there really wasn’t something worthwhile in one of the captures.

Fortunately, several aspects of my file protection set-up cater for ‘deliberate, over zealous deletion’, rather than mechanical failure, accident, or software issues. In this particular case, every ingested RAW file is copied to two internal drives on my laptop, one of which I work on – deleting ruthlessly – and one of which I never touch, but which is itself copied to several other places on my network.

I’m glad I do this!

This may not be an especially spectacular image, but, having experimented with various DxO processing options for it and finally produced something quite similar to my visualisation, I do now like it, and I’m pleased to have stress tested the ‘idiot operator’ provisions in my backup strategy too.

Either don’t delete anything, or make sure you put an ‘I changed my mind’ solution in place

Let’s leave aside whether you like the image in question; that’s not the point. I like it, and you may change your mind on some of yours too. I’m sure we all capture the occasional image which, at first glance, is inadequate in some way, but which proves worth working on sometime later. I urge you to think of a mechanism to make sure that you can!

Of course, one reliable solution is to simply not delete anything, but I find it useful in my work-flow to reduce the RAW captures to a manageable few in the folders I’m working on; so, for me, deleting is good. That said, it’s fortunate that I foresaw the flaw in this approach some while ago and put in place a mechanism to avoid the obvious problem with this method of working.

I’m not saying that any of this is terribly clever – I’m merely suggesting that if you haven’t allowed for ‘over-zealous deletion’ in some manner, by making copies of everything very early on in your work-flow, do consider it. You never know when you might want to revisit an image-capturing session and make really sure that there was nothing in it worth working on.

An alternative to multiple, ideally automated, backups is not to review images too soon after capture. I know many people like to leave their files alone for a few weeks and then view them with more objective eyes. In this instance, the RAW files fell way short of what I’d envisioned and I more or less deleted them in a fit of pique; perhaps, had I left them a few weeks, I would have been more generous?

Whichever you do, make some provision to enable yourself to rectify the sort of initial mistake I made!

For anyone interested, I’ve written a page describing my overall work-flow and file protection set-up (also linked from the menu bar at the top). If you’d like to comment on this little story, and perhaps argue that I was foolish and ‘got lucky’, please feel free, though I may at least attempt to refute the suggestion with the view that working out the sort of foolishness I might be guilty of in future, and guarding against it through automation, ameliorates the fault to a large degree…

Musings on: the problem with multi-tasking

When I first started making photographs in what some people would call a ‘serious’ manner – going out with intent to photograph, rather than merely having a camera with me to capture memories – I took my camera and all my photographic kit with me every time I went out walking. I’ve stopped doing that, and this article is about why, and in what way that’s a good idea from the perspective of my future photography.

This post was inspired directly by a very good article from Richard Childs on his WordPress site; well worth a read. Richard’s post led me to recognise that I’ve been modifying my behaviour in capturing photographs over the last few months. It’s about – I’m paraphrasing wildly here – the disadvantages of combining two things:

the enjoyment of being out in the countryside;
and the enjoyment of making images.

As with so many combined activities, each can reduce enjoyment of the other. In particular, for me, going out to make photographs can definitely detract from certain aspects of the experience of being up a hill or mountain, or wandering in an area of woodland. Richard offers a solution to this problem and I have a slightly different one. That is, I do at the moment. Over time, everything changes and no doubt my current approach may evolve further.

Why doesn’t combining the above work well for me?

A considerable part of my enjoyment in the outdoors is being very aware of everything going on around me: the sounds; the change in wind direction and speed; signs of weather systems moving in or clearing; and the landscape being revealed as I move through it, whether due to change in position or change in the weather. I could list more, but I’m sure you get the idea: I have found that I like to feel involved and part of the landscape, and to do that well I need to be aware of everything that’s happening.

This sounds great for photography! After all, if I’m so aware of my surroundings, then I am presumably more likely to notice potential compositions. That’s true, it is good …. for photography, but not for walking and the whole outdoors experience; and hence, perhaps, in the longer term, not for photography either if it puts me off going out walking as much.

The problem – well, my problem – is that I do notice things, and then I stop, for a long time, work out a composition, then wait for the light to do whatever I think it might be going to do… All perfectly fine, except that if I have any kind of objective other than capturing images – getting to the top of a series of hills on a circular route perhaps – I either don’t have time to stop for long enough to make a good job of the composition, or I choose to do so and then don’t have time to finish the walk….

The image below, for example: I remember the immediate area around this small water flow in great detail, but I have near-zero recollection of approaching it, what the weather was doing, or how the surroundings looked. Given that this is in the valley between Buachaille Etive Mor and Buachaille Etive Beag, at the top of Glencoe, a spectacular setting, that seems a bit of a waste in some respects, though I was pleased with the image.

Now that’s not necessarily a problem on the odd occasion, but when it’s repeated on every walk – and that is what was happening to me earlier this year – it starts to mean that I’m not really doing ‘decent’ walks any more, I’m doing truncated versions of them. Great for photography, somewhat less so for the whole ‘going for a planned walk’ thing. Not only that, but in order to cater for unplanned images, I feel that I need to take all my photographic equipment with me. That adds weight and means that I plan shorter walks, another detriment to the walking part of the day.

And then there’s the disconnection from the landscape which I suffer when setting up a shot and concentrating on the photographic part of the combined activity: I lose the all-important awareness of what’s happening around me; my experience reduces to the image I’m making at the expense of everything else. After such a combined walking and photography trip, what I recall tends to be the composition and capturing of images, not the walking. Over time I’ve found that every trip has that photograph-biased character and that I’m not appreciating being out in the countryside quite as much as I used to.

So, I’m clearly not great at multi-tasking; fair enough! That said, I have a strong suspicion that many people aren’t, that it’s not just me. Yes, I can do multiple things at once, but I’m pretty sure they all suffer in comparison to giving each my full attention, and, by observation, I think this is true of the majority of people. Take the example of watching television or listening to a radio programme whilst reading or writing an email, if you’ve done that: did you miss bits of the programme, or write less coherently than usual in the email? If not, congratulations. If you did have that problem, think what it means for creative activities such as photography, or meditative ones such as walking. To me it implies that something will inevitably be lost from either or both experiences.

My take on this is that over time, were I to carry on like this, my ‘being outdoors for the sake of it’ activity would be diminished by the urge to take photographs, I’d start to resent the intrusion of photography into walking, and then not only would the walking suffer, but the photography would too, in that I’d do less, or hurry things. Since I want to do both, I had to come up with some kind of plan to avoid that happening.

A simple solution?

To address the issue, I’ve adopted the approach of not taking the camera equipment on things which I deem as walks. Conversely, I’m actively thinking of the walking part of photographic outings as merely the means of getting there, so my trips either have the objective of taking photographs, or of doing a good walk, but not both – it avoids later disappointment!

Of course, that’s a little absolutist and what I’m really doing when on ‘proper walks’ is making mental notes of places which I think are worth re-visiting with a camera on a dedicated, photographic outing; but I don’t spend any time working out the composition – I just note it as having image potential and move on, or return to watching the landscape and weather unfold for its own sake, rather than with the objective of capturing it in a photograph. I’m not about to completely divorce ‘going for a walk’ from taking photographs, but I am going to make sure that I make at least some outings purely for the sake of being out there, and don’t allow the photography to take over completely.

Do read Richard’s article for a subtly different take on this. I’m not convinced that what he proposes would work for me, but, fortunately, everyone’s different. The main point here is to ask yourself whether more specialisation (‘go for a walk’ versus ‘go out to make photographs’) is a good idea or not; whether the net effect, to you, of combining two activities is to enhance them both, or whether one adversely affects the other (and it can be either way around!).

It’s something that I’m sure is worth thinking about. The more things I do in all sorts of areas – not just photography and walking – the more I feel that I achieve more rewarding results when I concentrate on doing one thing at a time and doing it well. Incidentally, this series of thought ties in directly with my earlier musing on who to go out making photographs with, in which I reached similar conclusions on a different aspect of combining activities.

In summary: it would seem that I’m doing the same with my approach to all aspects of making landscape photographs as I endeavour to do in my actual images: simplifying.

Addendum

Julian Barkway has near-simultaneously published a blog article on a related theme which is also well worth reading. It brings out another facet of this area but is also, essentially, about not letting the making of photographs spoil your enjoyment of being out in the countryside. Clearly, this is a popular theme and one which it really is worth having a think about from your own perspective!

Musings on: an absence of sky

For several months now, I’ve made practically no images with sky in them. Only today, whilst flicking through my Flickr stream, have I noticed that. Interesting. At least, it’s interesting to me; in part due to the whole ‘failure to notice the trend’ aspect.

More significantly, I think it demonstrates that sky is far from essential in landscape photographs. Yes, many people, when they hear the term ‘landscape photography’, imagine a large vista: something prominent in the foreground; something pretty in the middle distance; and perhaps some hills or mountains against a dramatic sky to make up the top of the frame. Nothing wrong with that: I like, and make, photographs of that sort too, but for the moment I seem to be drawn to make what are often, it seems, called ‘intimate landscape photographs’. More precisely, or perhaps less precisely, I’m making images which, whether of a detail or of a large part of a scene, are abstracted from reality to some degree by the omission of sky, and by composing and processing for patterns, rather than for representation of the scene.

I’ll sidestep the exact definition of ‘intimate landscape’, which tends to mean relatively small things, from what I’ve seen and read: I’m talking here simply about excluding the sky. The image above certainly qualifies as an ‘intimate landscape’, and I couldn’t have included sky even if I’d wanted to – the camera was pointing down to make the composition, quite apart from there being a wall of rock behind it. The shot below, however, could easily have included sky as a portrait format composition, but it added nothing and spoiled what I hoped would be a slightly claustrophobic and ‘dark’ feel to the tree, the fence, and the converging lines centred on the trunk.

So why is excluding the sky often good?

I’ve been in Scotland, the Glencoe area, for the last couple of weeks. Without doubt it’s a fabulous place, one of my favourites (though I think the open spaces of the far north-west of Scotland are better still). Everywhere you look there are dramatic mountains and wonderful, panoramic views; yet I didn’t include sky in a single frame! I’ve been trying to work out why this was, and the following are my ideas to date.

I was there on a walking trip, not a photographic one, so I didn’t have the time to wait for light, nor to get to places suited to the ‘big vista’ style of shot whilst by myself.
The ‘big’ landscapes, the ones with dramatic sky, tend to rely on just that: lots happening in the sky. It was grey and overcast on most days. Lovely, even light, but no drama.
Without late or early light on the hills to emphasise the colour and contours, photographs tend to rely on pattern, and if that’s the case, what’s the point of including a grey sky, or of including a sky at all? (I was not alone, and photographing at dusk and dawn tends to be a wee bit intrusive in those circumstances!)
Summer: now that’s a big issue. There was a hint of autumn about, but essentially the landscape was green and grey, vegetation or rock – not too thrilling really. Once autumn gets going, multi-coloured landscapes can draw out shapes and patterns on hillsides – the colours can be patterns in their own right. At the moment, there’s simply too much green around for my liking.
As soon as sky is included, there’s a constraint. The inclusion of sky imparts an unavoidable feeling of ‘representation’, to me; it removes the idea of abstraction and imposes a “this is a picture of a landscape” feeling on the viewer; certainly, it does to this viewer.

That final point is the major item to me: sky can be useful, even essential, but it shrieks ‘picture!’. That’s not to say that absence of sky avoids the idea of ‘picture’, but it certainly can do so. I’m more interested in creating images which convey how I feel about the landscape, or how I see it, rather than in representing how it truly looks (something of a challenge in any case, in a two-dimensional image). I think I’ve written, in a previous article, that I like abstract art, and I feel that my attraction to form and pattern, whether created by water flowing in a stream or by clefts in hillsides (or even by clouds, potentially…..), makes including sky with land, in the conventional manner, decreasingly appealing to me.

Considering the other points, excluding sky is a rather good technique to avoid the issues associated with many of them. In particular, on a dull day, or at least one with a grey, evenly luminous cloud cover, the fact that everything is uniformly lit is a distinct benefit in this type of ‘no sky’ image-making. The colours can be successfully drawn out or muted, as required, in post-processing, as can the tonality, via dodging and burning, to emphasise existing shapes and patterns. When using this approach to post-processing, it’s far better to start with a neutral, evenly lit capture than one which is strongly influenced by the light and constrained by the need to produce a ‘natural-looking’ sky. Dull days are great for this: they provide an even, low contrast illumination which allows the camera to capture lots of detail and gives huge flexibility, during post-processing, in deciding how that detail is best used.

Necessarily greater creativity, and more likelihood of unique images

Another very strong argument in favour of the ‘zero sky’ approach is that it’s more likely to produce unique images. Everyone sees the details in a landscape differently, whether those details are the juxtaposition of a couple of rocks and a piece of heather, or whether it’s a pattern on a hillside. Seeing things differently leads to capturing different compositions and making more varied images from them – this can only be good! The image below, repeated from an earlier post, is a good example I think. The skyline is just above the top of the frame, but the sky added nothing to the shot. In fact, I’d argue strongly that the sky would have ruined this, taking away from the graphic, pattern-centric effect of the sweep of the waterfall and the multi-coloured, right hand slope.

Of course, I’m not remotely advocating that sky should not be included as a principle. All I’m really saying is that it should only be included where it adds something to the final image, or where the goal of the image is to be representational. For the moment, I foresee the majority of my images only including solid or liquid subject matter; equally, I foresee that current preference changing over time and according to circumstances….

For more, arguably better, examples of excluding sky – which are certainly not ‘intimate’ in any way – see my previous post, a couple of the images in which are on a very large scale but feature solely ground and water.

As always, I’d be very interested to hear your views on this, whether supportive or contradictory.

Musings on: Google Earth visualisation (and the need to pay more attention!)

If you’ve been reading this web journal in the last couple of months, you may have seen my previous item on using a combination of Google Earth’s ground level view and The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) to visualise compositions prior to going to a location. This is another recommendation for playing around with the former, even when you know a location relatively well, or think you do.

The following is a shot planned purely with my recollection of having been to this spot before, without a camera. Returning to make it did, however, create the opportunity for the others in this post.

CautleySpout: detail 1

I’m planning a trip up to Glencoe and Rannoch Moor at the moment, a place I know relatively well, but only from the perspective of climbing there in winter a few times on routes like Curved Ridge, on Buachaille Etive Mor, and the Aonach Eagach ridge. So, having a scan around with Google Earth and using TPE to plot some times for possible capture sites seemed like a good idea. Whilst doing so, I noticed a few views that, whilst I must have been in a position to see them before, I’d not recognised as having photographic potential. In my defence, I’d not looked for possible images before….. even so, I was surprised at just how little I knew the area visually. Perhaps I spend a lot more time looking at my crampon and ice axe placements than I imagine I do (and, quite possibly, that’s not at all a bad thing!).

The Howgills again

This recognition led me to wonder whether I’d been equally lacking in observational acuity in other, supposedly familiar, areas. In short: yes, I had.

I’ve been intending to make the image at the top of this item for several months now, as part of my project to photograph the Howgill Fells; what I hadn’t been intending was to make the other images shown here. That was essentially since I didn’t know – more correctly, I had never noticed – that they might exist. Fortunately, I spent ten minutes with Google Earth before I set off and found that the unexciting valley up which I intended to walk, at the head of which lies the waterfall, does have some vantage points with ‘big picture’ potential.

Some crinkly land

Google Earth capture

This Google Earth screen capture is of a crinkled area on the south side of the valley. Yes, I could have seen this (just about!) by looking more attentively whilst walking up the path to the falls, but I hadn’t – not in several visits. This area is only five minutes from the parking spot, and I’ve been focussed, previously, on the head of the valley and the cascade itself. Also, and importantly, it doesn’t look like this from the path; it looks like this from a point a few hundred metres up the hillside to the north, over very wet ground on this occasion. I only went up there because I knew it had potential, from ‘technological visualisation’; otherwise, I’d have stayed on the considerably easier ground of the well-hardened path.

Crinkled land

Once again, I’m impressed with the degree of accuracy of the ground level view representation of the terrain. It’s not identical, but it’s remarkably close – note the tree and wall at the bottom right of the frame in the computer-generated image and the actual one! Yes, the runnels are not perfect, but the general cross shape is pretty clear in the Google graphic; more than enough to see that there was ‘something there’. I’m very pleased with this since it’s a microcosm of how the whole Howgill Fells range looks from the air; uncannily so, in fact.

Cautley Spout

The crinkled area was the first thing I noticed in my brief planning period at home. The second was more significant. No doubt there are many fine images of Cautley Spout from a distance; however, I’d not seen any and had assumed that the watercourse must be difficult to ‘use’ well in a composition. Rotating the Google Earth view around 90 degrees at the same, elevated point the previous visualisation was made from, I saw the following.

Cautley Spout

Not terribly exciting perhaps, but I like graphic patterns in landscapes, and I thought I could see potential for an image. The waterfall is the vertical part of the sweeping crease running from the top left. The dark area to the left is some black, craggy rock, and I knew that I would find the concave hillside on the right striped with assorted heather, bracken and rocks. Knowing this, I thought I could make a worthwhile composition from this point, or somewhere nearby. The result was the following two images.

Cautley Spout

Now, I’m not claiming that any of these shots are especially good, but I’m happy with them. I’m particularly pleased since I’d more or less written off the idea of including any images of ‘Cautley Spout from a distance’ in the project. At the very least, these provide some context to the more intimate landscape shots I’d initially gone to the valley to capture.

Incidentally, for some context, the very top photograph, and the one immediately below this text, were taken in the bowl just above the obvious, large, vertical drop in the centre of the image above; somewhat alarmingly close to the lip, in fact. I wasn’t entirely happy with the light in the valley that evening, so I may well go back and make similar compositions for the final images to be included in the project. If I don’t, however, these are effectively ‘bonus’ shots which I only discovered through technological experimentation. Clearly, I’d like to think that I’d have noticed them without technical assistance, but who knows!

The very last shot had no technical help though; I made it largely to demonstrate just how wet it’s been around here recently, as can be seen from the standing water amongst the bracken. It also illustrates that my camera does do colour other than earth tones :-)

Cautley Spout

A wee bit damp

In conclusion: once again, I do unreservedly recommend examining what can be done with Google Earth and, in particular, ground level view, but my main, personal learning point from this is that I need to:

be aware of possibilities all the time;
look around and envision scenes as photographs;
and yomp up hillsides to change the perspective, and to see if an otherwise insignificant feature presents something more enticing from a higher vantage point.

Seems to be moderately hard work, this landscape photography game…. !

If you’ve used Google Earth to plan shots, I’d be very interested to hear comments on your experience, and any tips!

Note: Google Earth screenshots are copyright Google, unsurprisingly.

Musings on: aspect ratio as a creative choice

I have a list which I add to whenever I think of something I might like to write an article about. Items on that list come and go, either since I get around to writing the piece, or because the subject no longer seems interesting, or perhaps because I’ve come across so many articles on the same topic that it seems redundant to add to the wealth of material ‘out there on the web’. ‘Aspect ratios’ has been on the list for longer than anything else at this point; it was one of the items on my very first list in fact, and it’s neither been written, nor deleted from the ‘to do’ section.

I was wondering why that was.

It’s not uninteresting: the shape of an image is a significant factor in the finished photograph.
It’s not as if there aren’t many articles on the subject: indeed, there are short books covering nothing but aspect ratios.
It’s not that the existing articles and books aren’t informative, useful and well-written, or some permutation of one or two of those three factors.

Rather, it’s because, whilst I’ve read a fair few articles on the subject, none of them so far has closely matched what has come to be my view on aspect ratios and how they can be used in making images. (The usual caveats apply….. I’m developing as a photographer, and I entirely accept that I may become fixated on some specific aspect ratio as my work develops….but, right now, the following is what I think!)

Why is the debate on choice of aspect ratio often so contentious?

Many, though not all, writings about aspect ratio choice verge on the evangelical: ‘x:y is the best’ or ‘x:y is best for subject matter A, whereas m:n is best for subject matter B …’, etc. I’ve been intrigued for some time as to why there is such heated debate – I still am! To me, the arguments seems relatively uncontentious. More precisely, it seems that it should be uncontentious; obviously, there is much contention, however!

A possible explanation for the ferocity of some views on this subject is that they derive from a personal attachment, on the part of the photographer expressing the view, to a particular camera system or format. For example, it’s only natural that a photographer who solely uses a square format camera, such as a Hasselblad, will tend to ‘see’ potential subject matter in that format, and grow to prefer such images. My question is:

should our vision be driven by the hardware we use to make photographs?

I think not: that’s the wrong way around. The final image should be whatever shape is best for that image, not determined primarily by the shape the camera decrees. Of course, this is why some people carry multiple camera formats. Good plan, though not essential, as I’ll discuss further down this item.

There is also the argument that consistency of shape can make for elegant layouts in books. Absolutely! There’s something very pleasing about a photographic book which contains images in only one aspect ratio, whether that be simply square, or whether it be a combination of x:y and y:x. I’m not seeking to argue, here, that collections of images don’t benefit from some degree of regularity in their aspect ratios, either simple repetition of identical ratios, restriction to a very few ratios, or use of consistent ratios for particular elements of the layout. This applies whether it be a book, a web layout, or hung in a gallery. The header images on this site, for example, are all 7:2 (near enough): awkward, since I don’t have any images in that format, but the consistency is more important than the individual image shapes; the images, in this case, are very much subordinate to the overall presentation of the page. They’re thus all crops – more on cropping images further down, too.

Is there a ‘best’ aspect ratio, in general?

Neither of the above points – the first being a prosaic, hardware-based explanation, which I refute, and the second being an aesthetic rationale for sets of images, which I completely endorse – addresses the idea of the ‘best aspect ratio’ for individual photographs in general, however. It’s that question which tends to get a lot of attention and assertive debate, and it’s that which I’m most interested in musing on here.

Yes, wide, or very wide, panoramic format is well-suited to mountain ranges.
Yes, tall, thin images are relatively restricted in what they can be applied to (though they can be excellent for some landscape subjects, to emphasise depth and the idea of a metaphorical ‘slice of the World’).
Yes, most certainly, 5:4 and 4:5 tend to be great all-purpose ratios. They provide balance, avoid too much space between compositional elements, don’t emphasise one dimension over the other too much, and are often ‘easy on the eye’, in that it’s easier to scan around the frame’s content in all directions.
And yes, square is excellent for not imposing any imbalance and for giving a literally neutral frame within which to compose.

Each of those, however, is an example, in my opinion, of a rule to be broken (as with so many supposed ‘rules’ in photography). To take a common and extreme example: square images, where the lower small fraction contains a mountain range, or similar long, thin subject, and which might be seen as a natural panorama, can be very compositionally strong if realised as squares, perhaps with the bulk of the frame filled with dramatic clouds – such compositions can radically change the balance of the finished image, compared to the obvious choice of a panorama, not necessarily making them better, but making them different.

To put it simply: I emphatically don’t think that there’s a ‘best’ aspect ratio, in the general sense.

Aspect ratio as a compositional element

And that brings me to the thesis of this article. Ignoring considerations of the eventual layout of a set of images and the constraints, or aesthetic desires, which that may impose, I see the aspect ratio of the finished image as a compositional element in its own right, just as the subject matter, colours and tonality within the frame are.

I’m suggesting that it’s more useful to put the shape of the eventual image on a par with everything else in that image, and to ignore the aspect ratio the camera naturally supports. If that means stitching multiple images for a panorama, or cropping a third of the image to make a square from a 3:2 camera, that should take precedence over retaining more information for the sake of it. Photographers often talk about the reductionism inherent in creating images – the exclusion of some parts of an image through choice of lens and camera position – I have no issue with additionally changing the shape of the image, if it will aid the achievement of that exclusion and create a better-balanced end result.

Are there aspect ratios which should be avoided?

Beyond that, I also don’t see the need for sticking rigorously to a standard set of aspect ratios. Yes, there is perhaps some degree of natural balance in 3:2, 4:3 and 5:4, etc., and there is merit in starting out with one of these supposedly ‘natural’ ratios; but, both when composing and when editing an image, I’m happy to crop and end up with something which is other than the above (11:8 or some other, more complex, fraction, for example). Provided the end result has overall balance within the frame, what is so magical about the natural ratios?

The one exception to that principle, or willingness, is due to the fact that human brains are rather good at seeing squares. Put the other way around: we’re very good at seeing ‘not quite square’. The few images I’ve composed, or cropped, such that they’re ‘nearly, but not quite, square’ have always had something of an edgy feeling about them, to me at least, and I try to avoid that as it’s a distraction when viewing the images. I prefer either ‘exactly square’ or ‘no doubt about it – that’s a rectangle’.

So, the point here is?

In summary, what I’m advocating here is:

Don’t let your camera dictate aspect ratio.
Treat the ultimate aspect ratio of the image as part of the suite of compositional tools you have available, along with light, objects in the frame, colour and tonality.
Compose with the final, intended aspect ratio in mind, and either use whatever camera you have which comes closest to what the composition requires, or crop; not only in post-processing, but also in your visualisation at the time of capture.
Don’t introduce the question of ‘is that actually square?’ to the viewer – ensure that images are either square or not-square.
Don’t be afraid to ‘throw away’ up to a third of the image. Once again, the ultimate balance of the composition is the critical factor, and there’s plenty of image information left after one third is cropped. That’s true of most digital cameras of 12MP or more, and certainly for film.
Overall, it’s probably true that that some aspect ratios, in most situations, tend to work better than others. Most of my images seem to be gravitating around 5:4, 4:5, and square, at the moment; but I’m consciously trying to consider what the best choice is for each…. And that’s the key point:

rather than thinking “I’ll use 5:4 as that works well”, think “what would be the best aspect ratio to use here?”

In the interests of keeping this relatively short, I’ve deliberately avoided discussing all the pros and cons of various aspect ratios more then peripherally. There is a wealth of on-line debate available which does just that, and much of it is useful input to composition, but I think it needs to be seen in the context of aspect ratio choice being just another aspect of compositional technique, not the absolute right / wrong, or best / worst dichotomy that so often seems to be hiding beneath the surface of the discussions.

I’d welcome comments on this viewpoint, vociferous and evangelical, or otherwise, particularly if they point out crucial features of any particular aspect ratio which I haven’t mentioned (that being most such features, obviously).

Musings on: ‘recognition’, inspiration and creativity

Inspired by some modest ‘recognition’, I’ve been musing on the way that recognition (of my work) leads directly to inspiration (to make more) and, possibly, to creativity – to ideas for new images.

The old ‘who do we photograph for?’ debate

Of course, this could easily stray off into the much-discussed territory of ‘for whom do we make images?’ My position on that, at this point in time (!) is that I’d make images just for myself, even if no-one else ever saw them; a position which seems to be the default, at least for amateur photographers, and particularly for those who concentrate on landscapes. I freely admit, however, that it’s very pleasing when other people, especially those I’ve never met, like what I’ve produced. Such comments have greater credibility than those from friends and family, with no overlay of the commentator being naturally inclined to be positive. So, to avoid the huge debate around ‘for whom…?’, I’m going to go with ‘for myself and anyone who’s willing to look at them’ for the purposes of this article.

My immediate inspiration

The inspiration for this piece comes from a coincidence. Firstly, Tim Parkin asked me to be interviewed as ‘featured photographer’ in an issue of ‘Great British Landscapes’ magazine (GBL), and that issue has just been published. Secondly, at about the same time, I learnt that one of my favourite images has made it onto the short-list for the Landscape Photographer of the Year 2011 competition (or LPOTY, in case I feel the need to write that again!). For me, as a newcomer to ‘serious’ photography, both those endorsements of my work are very flattering, and I can say with complete certainty that neither was expected.

I don’t want to exaggerate the significance of either instance of recognition; I do realise that many photographs are short-listed for LPOTY, and also that numerous photographers are interviewed. What I’m interested in here, in this article, is the degree to which this twin, external recognition has increased my inspiration to make more images. It’s had a considerably greater effect than I would have predicted, if asked, a couple of weeks ago.

The short-listed image is ‘Zip’, a dawn capture of interlocking spurs which I discussed in my earlier article about the Howgill Fells of Cumbria. That particular image was the original inspiration for what is now a project to make at least twelve shots of this interesting and unusual area. At this point, I have only four ‘keeper’ images, with another three compositions planned and awaiting an opportunity to capture them, and I was losing momentum a little for all sorts of reasons: time of year leading to the ‘wrong’ light; no mist; too much travelling with work; and general lack of time to make what are non-trivial trips to the locations. Now, with that image and another from the Howgill Fells project appearing in GBL, as well as the competition short-list, I suddenly – and it really is sudden – feel thoroughly inspired to do some more planning and get back up to Sedbergh, with its rounded, wall-free fells, to move the project forward.

Does inspiration directly boost creativity?

I can’t fix the mid-summer light, of course, nor the perpetual, featureless, blue skies which we’re ‘enjoying’ when I’m in the country, but that leads to the second element of this recognition-driven inspiration: the simple fact that I now feel [re-]inspired on this project has led to my visualising two further images to add to my list. Neither of them are in any way related to those I’ve made already, other than being of locations in the Howgills, but the sheer fact of the first image from the project being externally recognised seems to have been enough to ignite the creativity which had been somewhat absent for the last few weeks.

Perhaps it’s entirely obvious that recognition – compliments, to use the non-euphemistic term – is inspirational? Expressed at its simplest and most direct – “Hey! That’s good. You should take more” – recognition is naturally something which should, and does, inspire. The more interesting and unexpected revelation, however – to me at least – is the degree of creativity that this type of thing can lead to.

I’m sure this observation could be useful. What I mean by that is that recognition may be actively, even consciously, used as a motivator for inspiration, and hence as a means to enhance creativity. Whatever the reason, prior to writing this, I was busy making notes recording the various ideas I’ve had in the last day for new photographs in the Howgills project – a good result since I had been feeling that I’d somewhat run out of steam and lost enthusiasm for it.

Inspiration may come from repeated comments on a common theme

Lastly, and I think most importantly, one of the explicit reasons why I was interviewed for GBL was the typical ‘look’ of my photographs; they tend to be credible landscape images, but relatively muted and reliant more on shape, texture and form than dramatic, saturated colours. I suspect that the same is true of the selection of ‘Zip’ for the competition short-list. A few people have suggested in the past that I visualise landscapes in a relatively unusual (abnormal?!) way, at least in terms of colour, and this apparent double-confirmation of that idea has made me feel very inspired to show others ‘how I see’, by means of photographs. Whether or not it’s true that my images are atypical is another question, but I intend to work on the basis that it is, and I hope to draw inspiration from that…

As to why we all see things differently: it’s well-established that human vision is a combination of:

the manner in which our eyes react to light intensity and colour;
our brain’s interpretation of those visual inputs.

I think that this interpretation is experientially determined to some degree. For example, people who have always lived in alpine areas don’t generally react as positively to snow-covered, dramatic mountains as they do to other types of landscape. I’ve spent a very long time in high mountains, and I love being in such places, but I’m accustomed to them and now find that the barrenness and vivid colours of deserts have more conscious impact on me. Put another way, albeit a little strongly: ‘familiarity breeds contempt’.

It follows, I think, that everyone, to varying degrees, will notice different aspects of a landscape and react differently to its shapes, colours, textures and juxtapositions, depending on what they’re most used to. If we take the above as true, and combine it with my images being, supposedly, atypical, then I’m very much inspired to create more and hence to attempt to show people what I’m seeing when I look at a landscape. With a bit of luck I may inspire someone to see things in a different manner and themselves be inspired…

And the learning point is?

As I said above, it really is a revelation to me how constructive, in terms of creativity, positive feedback of this sort can be. I’ve not entered any competitions before; maybe I should attempt more? Naturally, I can well imagine that the inverse, negative effect on creativity – when an image falls at the first round hurdle – may also occur; but there’s probably no harm in being optimistic – at least I hope not!

Ambitious, certainly, but I’m going to stick with it as an idea until proven otherwise as I’m finding it a great boost to my creativity!

Addendum
Thanks to Colin Griffiths for pointing out something I neglected to make clear in the above. I’m not remotely talking here about deliberately making images which I expect people to like, irrespective of whether I like them – I’m sure that would stifle creativity more than engender it. I’m simply suggesting that we should take advantage of the creativity inspired by occasions when people happen to indicate that they like some piece of work and that perhaps increasing the opportunity for those occasions to arise is a good idea.