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Musings on: geotagging photographs

Geotagging: adding location information to images

This item is prompted as much by my wanting to hear people’s opinions on the subject of geotagging images as it is by my own thoughts on the subject. That’s actually true of most of my articles – feedback and comment are always very welcome – in this case, however, I’m really somewhat ambivalent on whether it’s a good or a bad thing. More precisely, I’m entirely convinced that it’s a very useful thing to record location information within each image captured, but I’m somewhat equivocal on whether it’s necessarily a good idea to publish that information when uploading to services such as Flickr.

Why record location data in the first place?

I have no qualms about doing this. I use a tiny, on-camera device (Foolography Unleashed) which communicates via Bluetooth to a small GPS receiver attached to my camera strap. Every image file – give or take a few where the GPS receiver has failed in its task of determining where it is – therefore contains very precise information on where the camera was at the point of capture, including altitude. I see this as no different from having date and time set correctly in the camera, and similar to adding information to the file later along the lines of ‘storm’, ‘limestone pavement’, and any other keywords which might help me find groups of similar images at some unspecified future date; it’s all potentially useful information about what’s in the file. Along with all the exposure, camera and lens information, this is collectively termed metadata.

Using all these bits of metadata together, I can search for a whole string of terms and find, for example, every image I have which features a hawthorn tree, on a stormy day, and taken in the evening (there are more than a few of those!). Conceivably, I could use the embedded location data from the GPS to add ‘in North Yorkshire‘ to the search, to take a fairly trivial example. In practice, I’ve not gone so far as to catalogue things in such a way that the GPS data could be used in that way, but it’s possible if you really want to; and if the file has the information in it now, it’ll be possible to do it in the future, should you decide that this would be a ‘useful’ thing to do….or just fun perhaps. I do add tags describing the location roughly, in words, but I don’t yet use the GPS location. I would if it was trivial to set up, but it isn’t!

At this point in time, then, the GPS data isn’t useful for searching, at least not for the vast majority of people, but what it does do is provide an exact location; very useful indeed, should I wish to revisit a composition or show someone where to go to find the subject I’ve used in an image. It’s also entertaining and informative for people viewing tagged images on-line; at least, I like it, and I’m confident that I’m not the only one! Many software tools – Google Earth, several of the file importing utilities, and most mapping software – recognise embedded geotags and will conveniently display the site where the photo was taken on a map. Flickr’s most recent major change, for example, placed a location map prominently on the main page showing where the camera was positioned, and it does this automatically using the GPS geotag in a digital file, if it exists.

I think this is immensely useful. I’ve travelled around various distant parts of the World, and being able to open an image and view its precise location on a map is invaluable. Well, it’s certainly very interesting, and it may be invaluable in some cases where I want to return to certain places. A particular, recent example comes to mind: I was in Chile and took a 4×4 trip into Bolivia and across the Altiplano. This is a vast area and my sequence of photos was very helpful in showing me where I’d been when I returned home. Not only that: I shall be returning and will be able to find a couple of compositions I would like to improve on. Yes, perhaps I’d be able to anyway – probably, in fact – but with the geotags, I know I’ll be able to find the locations.

To summarise:

capturing the location data in the first place is, to me, an unequivocally good thing.

And the problem with this is?

Some would say “none whatsoever”. I think, but I’m not entirely sure, that those ‘some’ would currently include me. The main argument against geotagging is that, once your image is out there on the web, complete with rather accurate positional information, anyone can find it, nip over to wherever you took the photo from and copy the composition. And ? Is this really a problem? To be pedantic about it: does the problem outweigh the benefit to you, as the photographer, of being able to locate the site again at some point, or illustrate the location to friends, easily, on a map?

Clearly, to some people, this problem does outweigh the advantages. I know at least one photographer who removes the location data from their files before uploading them anywhere, citing fear of plagiarism – and that’s entirely fair and reasonable – but is it seriously an issue? And how about the arguments in favour, such as ‘helping the photographic community’ by letting them know where a good location is? What about simply providing added interest and entertainment to on-line viewers who would like to see where the image was taken?

I can certainly see the argument that, if a particularly good composition is uploaded with location information, there may be a flood of photographers heading there to copy the image; but, in reality, I suspect that the classic locations already suffer from that, and the more esoteric ones probably won’t attract people anyway, since they’re not likely to be right by a handy lay-by or car park (otherwise, they’d already be known about and swarming with photographers….). This is, however, the line of reasoning which has prompted me to write this article. Since my images do, for the most part, contain accurate geotags, a couple of people have suggested that I strip that data out before releasing them into the wild. I haven’t, as yet, since I assessed them and decided that none represented anything remotely close to a ‘unique find, to be closely guarded‘ – I’m not entirely convinced that anything would, but I am open to persuasion.

A few secondary issues

I’m not going to dwell on this, but there certainly are other arguments for not uploading geotagged photos to public web sites. In the same way that any data thrown out onto the web can tell third parties all sorts of things about you, uploading images with embedded time and place information clearly says “I was here at this time” – there are all sorts of reasons why that might be a bad idea in some circumstances. Equally, there are many situations where it really wouldn’t matter. I’m not considering these non-photographic concerns here; it’s up to the individual photographer to consider whether publicly stating their own geographical location has any possible downsides.

What do you think?

I’m genuinely interested in what you think about this. Is there some compelling argument against uploading geotagged images that I’ve missed here? Yes, as above, there are numerous secondary reasons why you might not want to say “I was here then”, and even more for avoiding stating that “I am here now” (as people somewhat unwisely do all the time in tweets and other social media updates!). Ignoring those, however, since they’re not strictly related to the photograph, and confining this solely to the idea of revealing the location of the photograph, rather than that of the photographer, here are the questions I think need answering.

Is there a problem beyond the ‘risk’ of plagiarism?

Is the problem one of creating ‘honey pots’ in new locations?

And, if plagiarism is the only real reason for not geotagging, then why is plagiarism itself perceived to be such a huge issue?

My answers would currently be: ‘no’, ‘not likely’, and ‘not bothered’, respectively, to those questions. I’d be interested in yours, either as comment or email. After all, if I become persuaded not to upload geotagged photos in future, the sooner I start stripping the data, the better.

And, just for the sake of putting a photograph in here that will act as the icon on tablet devices, here’s a geotagged image from somewhere. Anyone who wishes to duplicate it is entirely welcome to try….
'Painted desert'

Musings on: anthropomorphism in landscape images

This item was first published in Issue 17 of the on-line magazine ‘Great British Landscapes‘; so, if you read GBL and this looks familiar, it is! I’ve added an addendum, immediately below the last image, covering a couple of points which were raised in the comments over on the magazine.

“anthropomorphism (noun): the attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to an animal, or object”

Seeing ghosts?

I keep seeing human behaviours and emotional states in photographic subjects which I know full well are not human and don’t have such characteristics; trees, rocks, clouds, that sort of thing. In other words, I’ve recently been anthropomorphising images wildly. Obviously, I know I’m merely projecting these human characteristics, and I’ll assert my confidence up-front that it’s not just me sliding into early dementia here: Flickr and the like are awash, judging by the comments, with ‘malevolent‘ weather systems, ‘brooding‘ mountains, ‘dancing‘ streams, and generically ‘moody‘ examples of just about everything. Beyond that, people have historically named features and built folklore around them: the countryside is littered with named rocks and trees, and Scottish mountains often translate as body parts. It’s apparent that people like to see their landscapes in terms of human characters, and the starting point of this article is that I’ve come to think that anthropomorphism helps in appreciating images; but does it help in creating them too, or could it?

I’m not talking about animals and birds….

To define the scope of what I’m musing about here: it’s obvious that shots of animals behaving, or appearing to behave, like humans are engaging, eye-catching and have an emotional impact – after all, we can readily project our own emotions onto the subject and thereby feel that we identify and empathise with it, making the image more appealing. As simple examples, think ‘happy dog’ or ‘playful kitten’. Apart from anything else, those projections may well, on some level, be entirely reasonable; the dog may well be happy and the kitten may indeed be feeling playful. But what about landscapes? I’m not taking much risk of argument (I hope!) in asserting that a large rock doesn’t actually feel like a ‘guardian of the cove‘, or whatever! Nonetheless, even for non-sentient objects, does anthropomorphising make landscape images more accessible to the viewer; more alluring? Does an image with which we can create an emotional connection, or whose subject’s motivation we can imagine that we understand, whether consciously or unconsciously, help the image itself, in the sense of making it a better photograph?

Before leaping into whether, and how, this habit we have of seeing things as exhibiting our own characteristics is useful or good, I’d better briefly define the primary rationales for anthropomorphising ‘stuff’. It seems generally held in psychology circles that there are three principal reasons for our doing this:

Projecting our own behaviour onto things is an attempt to understand them. Essentially, this is a typically child-like habit which we largely grow out of when we realise that the World really doesn’t quite work that way. This is mostly applied to things which actually look human to some degree, often featuring eyes, ears, arms, etc. Think dog and kitten again.
Seeing things as human in order to provide a connection with them, to develop empathy. Consider people ‘sharing‘ a quiet, contemplative moment with their favourite tree. This is more the realm of literature than visual images, though I’ve certainly seen images in which people are supposedly ‘enjoying sitting with the tree / flowers / rock / stream’; the very words ‘sharing‘ and ‘with‘ imply a connection both ways.
Attributing motive, intent or emotion to objects as if they were human. This is, I believe, the most interesting in the context of photography, or any other visual art; at least, it’s the one we’re using most obviously when describing images in human terms. Again, think of those ‘angry‘ storms, ‘marching across the landscape’.

So, whilst anthropomorphism is simply attributing human-like characteristics to any non-human objects, I’m writing about landscapes only here. I’m not talking about animal and bird behaviours: I’m considering assigning emotion, intent, motivation, thought and other distinctly human features to various aspects of a landscape image. This does include trees which look like people and mountains with faces, but it applies to weather systems as well: think ‘threatening clouds‘, ‘menacing darkness‘, ‘joyous light‘ and all those other fundamentally human emotions which we project onto landscapes.

What’s the value in seeing trees, rocks and weather as human?

Here’s an image by Tim Parkin where the two trees look very much like legs and feet, standing in the water. I see this mainly as an example of the second type of anthropomorphism, but it has elements of all three if you start imagining the body attached to the legs, and perhaps the purpose it has in being there, even where it might be going, in that I see the legs as being braced, ready to move. I’m convinced that this vision of the subject as having near-human purpose makes me engage more with the image.

“Conveying emotion is key…”

…an oft-quoted, and paraphrased, piece of advice for making effective landscape photographs, and not necessarily one which requires any anthropomorphism whatsoever. It’s perfectly possible to have an emotional response to a scene due to association and memory, but eliciting that sort of reaction in the viewer is, from the perspective of the photographer making the image, pure luck. Whilst I may have an emotional response to a particular view of a particular hill, based on my past association with it, or even to a completely unknown hill which is reminiscent of something, you, as the viewer, may not, so the photographer has no real control over your response.

More interesting, at least in my view and from the standpoint of aiding composition, is the idea that we can use archetypes to deliberately induce an anthropomorphic view of the subject. Those archetypes can be very wide-ranging and depend not only on the subject itself but the way it’s used compositionally. Imagine a large rock on a beach:

photographed close up on a sunny day, with its bulk dominating the frame and the breaking waves in the background, it might be imagined as an impassive sentinel, casting its gaze out over the sea; keeping watch and confident in its role;
photographed from above and behind, on a stormy, dark day with waves forming the majority of the scene and the rock shown as small compared to the enormity of the ocean, it could be seen as a beleaguered guardian, apprehensive and about to be overcome by the power of the ocean.

Both those examples, whilst arguably fanciful and exaggerated to make the point, are typical of how we collectively describe features of landscape images. Sometimes it’s subtle and non-specific: ‘moody‘ is rather imprecise, for example. Sometimes it’s very pointed: the image below, by Duncan George, is of an abandoned hide on the Blackwater estuary. Duncan says that it “looks out over lonely salt marsh.” Whether or not I’d have seen this image that way without the caption, I don’t know, though I suspect I would, but, having read the caption, I’m unavoidably thrown into imagining myself standing there, not beside the hide but as the hide, surveying the bleakness of the scene – and yes, feeling lonely! On one level, and ignoring the technical aspects of colour, texture and detail, this is just an old wooden shed on stilts on a rather banal, flat landscape; adding the emotional overlay and identification with the hide’s situation (or predicament!) gives the image a great deal more impact, engendering a sense of isolation and abandonment. To my eyes, that emotional and situational identification with the hut helps the image a great deal.

Another example is the following image, which Bruce Percy has kindly allowed me to use, of Olstind, a mountain on the Lofoten Islands of northern Norway. Bruce describes this mountain, in his ebook on Lofoten, as looking like an old man with a beard, perhaps wrapped in a nice, warm cloak, and talks about how he began to see the mountain as a presence whilst there, one to be engaged with. This anthropomorphic interpretation of the scene illustrates Bruce’s emotional engagement with the composition and with the surrounding landscape, and also conveys more interest in the image to me, as the viewer. It makes my whole experience of studying the photograph more involved and empathetic, both to its creation and to the end result.

Olstind, by kind permission of Bruce Percy

Back to naming and labelling then?

In each of the above two examples I drew their anthropomorphic quality from their names or captions initially, though of course I don’t know whether I’d have felt similar emotions had I seen just the images and no accompanying text. It’s obvious that words are not essential, that we as viewers can project human thoughts and emotions onto landscape elements without either being told to do so or told what those projections should be; but perhaps the use of words links the creating artist to the viewer and assists the process of appreciating their art?

Compose with anthropomorphism in mind?

I think visualising and creating compositions with anthropomorphism in mind may be a useful technique in creating the ’emotional engagement’ so often cited with reference to images of all sorts. And whilst engendering anthropomorphic feelings for the subject in the mind of the viewer is clearly easier with some subjects, and landscape photographs are certainly not amongst that group, it’s undoubtedly possible and potentially a very powerful tool in helping the viewer to engage with the finished image.

Perhaps, however, rather than seeking to deliberately construct an image with the intention of inducing the viewer to attribute emotion to weather, rocks, trees, bodies of water or mountains, it’s most effective to simply allow oneself to see things that way during composition and hope that the resulting image will produce a similar response in people looking at the finished item, as I know Bruce did with his Olstind photograph? Whichever of those two approaches you take, I have written before about the potential benefits of naming and captioning images and I still think it’s useful. If anything, this idea of using a caption or name is reinforced by the idea that we can pass on the anthropomorphic view we had when capturing the image.

At this point in my development as a photographer, all of this is very much just speculation. I’m not remotely suggesting that every image should, or indeed can, use anthropomorphism, either in itself or via associated titles and captions. What I am putting forward is the idea that doing so may well be, surprisingly often, a means of creating that much sought-after ’emotional engagement’ between the viewers and the resulting image, and that it can therefore be a useful tool in composing images. Anthropomorphising something can make it seem more understandable and predictable: we ascribe intent or intelligence, even purpose, to the objects in the frame and this helps us in our basic wish to make sense of, and connect emotionally with, an uncertain environment. People’s need to use anthropomorphism to interpret and accept their surroundings is a long-established one, and using that seemingly inherent trait must surely be a useful tool to landscape photographers.

My notes for this piece included whether or not actively treating subjects anthropomorphically is a good or a bad thing, and I’ve failed to think of any way in which it’s bad. So, I’d welcome comments on any of the above, including whether you think this is generally either positive or negative, both from the perspective of the photographer and from that of the viewer.

Oh, and I just remembered that I called by most recent image ‘Talon’, as described in my previous article on being aware of the ‘right kit’ – and at the time I wasn’t even thinking consciously about this subject!
'Talon' by Mike Green

Addendum
Following a comment over on Great British Landscapes, I’d like to clarify a couple of points.

Firstly, I don’t see using this technique – if such it is – as a way of invariably ‘telling a story’. Yes, it can, and if that’s what you as the photographer are trying to achieve then this may well help with directing the viewer, as may the use of captions and titles. That’s not to say that we should do that for every image though. That leads on to the second point, which is that many images probably don’t lend themselves to any anthropomorphic interpretation, and that’s perfectly reasonable. I’d estimate that fewer than 10% of my images were seen, by me as the photographer, in this way, and I’m happy with that. That’s not to say that people looking at them haven’t interpreted them anthropomorphically of course.

Essentially, what I’m suggesting in this article is that we should recognise the potential for this way of reading an image, and consider both whether we want to compose to emphasise this, and whether it’s important that the viewer understand that intent. It may well be the case that, having recognised the anthropomorphic content in a composition, we might seek to eliminate it in order to avoid distraction from our non-anthropomorphic intent when the image is viewed. That last observation, incidentally, falls into the category of ‘why this might be a bad thing’; it may well be that I don’t want viewers to see a human form in a rock!

I’m convinced that people in general have a strong, subconscious tendency to seek to see images in human terms; being aware of this proclivity on the part of both ourselves, as the photographer, and of our viewers, should be something which can help us in producing work which avoids or includes anthropomorphic interpretations, depending on the result we are seeking.

Musings on: ‘photographic tools’

Every tool, and all the time?

I’ve written a number of articles in the last few months discussing various tools we can use when making photographs. More precisely, I’ve written about the various tools I think I can make use of, in the hope that other people will find these thoughts useful and so that I can refer back to them at some unspecified point in the future (and perhaps laugh, though I hope and expect not to….!). This item is by way of clarification, since I’ve had a few emails asking questions in the general realm of ‘is it possible / desirable / necessary to use all of these things for every image?‘. In short: no, definitely not! Whichever of possible, desirable and necessary the particular instance of that question contains, the answer is an emphatic and unequivocal no!

And tools are?

I’ll firstly recap on some of the ideas I’ve covered in previous musings which are relevant here as ‘tools’, a term which I’ll define below.

In no particular order at all:

planning particular shots;
researching an area;
tilt-shift lenses;
the Photographer’s Ephemeris software;
naming, captioning and categorising images;
putting ‘meaning’ into images;
choosing your companions for shoots;
choosing the ‘right’ weather;
how much to post-process;
Google Earth ground level view for visualisation;
and seeing subjects as having human characteristics – anthropomorphism – my next article

To reiterate the implicit point: all of the above are tools. For some items, such as tilt-shift lenses, that’s perhaps obvious. In the future, I may write articles discussing other pieces of equipment, such as filters and post-processing software, and those are unambiguously tools, in the sense of ‘photographic equipment’ – but, in this discussion, I’m including the more ephemeral ‘approach-based‘ items as tools too. For example:

researching an area thoroughly, getting to know possible compositions, and planning when to go there, in terms of time of day, season and weather.

I find it convenient to categorise all those possible activities as tools, in the widest sense. Whether they’re physical items, aspects of technique, software, or simply ways of approaching the creation of a new photograph, thinking of them all as tools is, to me, a useful way of seeing things; it enables me to consider which subset of these items from my metaphorical ‘bag of tools’ is appropriate for a given day and a given photographic intent.

Mix and match!

Viewed in that way, the question of whether to use all these things for every shot becomes clearer. In the same way that a tilt-shift lens is neither essential nor useful for every image, the more abstract tools don’t need to be used every time either. Conversely, I don’t see anything wrong with combining any or all of these tools in the creation of a single image; it all depends entirely on what you’re trying to achieve and what you find to be both effective and enjoyable. I’m sure that, were I to try to make use of all of the above list on every image, I would begin to find this whole ‘making images’ thing more than a little laborious. Quite apart from that, it’s obvious that it’s not even possible to use every piece of photographic hardware I have available in the creation of every image – I choose what I believe to be the most appropriate selection for the job; the same principle should apply to the more liberally defined tools, such as planning and seeking to make an image ‘mean something’.

Sometimes though, when I’ve pre-visualised an image, whether of a real place or of a type of location which I’d like to find and use in a photograph, the pure logistics of getting myself there with even a chance of creating the image I’ve imagined mean that anything I can do to maximise the likelihood of success is a good thing. I have limited time for photography and I’d rather throw a few more ‘tools’ into the mix and produce an image I’m happy with than simply amble out to some location and hope. Not all the time though – wandering hopefully is intrinsically enjoyable; not every outing has to have a goal beyond ‘look at things and hope to see compositions‘. As with most activities, it’s a question of establishing some kind of balance between excessive planning and analysis, and aimless meandering in random places and conditions.

Sometimes, using no tools at all can produce tolerable results

And finally, here’s a gratuitous inclusion of an image which involved no planning, no mechanical or metaphysical tools of any kind, other than the camera and the lens mounted on it at the time, and which was shot in an impromptu break of less than a minute at a border crossing between Chile and Bolivia. I confess, however, that when I go back there next year, I do already have a plan for an image from the same place, for which I shall employ two or three extra bits of camera kit and for which I’ve done a degree of software-based pre-visualisation….. In my defence, I find playing with the whole gamut of ‘tools’ to be good fun, and for me that’s currently what photography is entirely about!

'Twin volcanoes'

The article I was originally planning to publish today is first appearing in issue 17 of the on-line magazine ‘Great British Landscapes‘. I’ll also post it here in a few days – after all, part of my intent in writing this blog is to record my developing thoughts on photography – but, in the meantime, here’s a link to the magazine article: Anthropomorphism in landscape photography.

Musings on: being aware of the ‘right kit’

The camera doesn’t matter: really?

After nearly two years of making images, I’m convinced that it’s the photographer who creates a good photograph, not the camera. Composing the image by choosing complementary subject, light and point of view, and then processing the capture to best effect; these are the things which make a fine photograph, and consequently many types of image may be captured well with the whole gamut of camera types, albeit with differences in what the capture can be used for (size of print, primarily). Of course, there are a few clear, general exceptions to this: large format cameras are not exactly ideal for fast-moving sports; mobile ‘phone cameras are not the best tool for photographing underground (I’ve tried this; it was not a great success…. particularly not for the ‘phone in question).

Somewhere between ‘the type of camera makes no difference‘ and ‘the camera cannot be of type X‘, however, there are certain pieces of equipment which can enable an otherwise impossible shot. I’m prompted to write about this due to a recent experience where I realised that I could now make an image which I first attempted nearly two years ago, purely due to the acquisition of a particular item a few months back.

I’m talking about tilt/shift lenses here; not in the context of making toy-like images of full-sized objects, but in their ability to move the plane of focus to somewhere other than parallel to the film/sensor plane. For anyone not familiar with the opportunities afforded by camera movements, one important effect is that achieved by tilting the lens, relative to the back of the camera. Doing this produces a focal plane which can be placed conveniently where it’s needed, rather than parallel to the film or sensor. In the case of landscapes, the most obvious usage is to produce sharp focus from somewhere beneath the camera, right out to the far horizon. In fact, this plane also has depth of field around it, as with a normal lens, except that this depth is wedge-shaped, diminishing to virtually nothing close to the camera and increasing to ‘a lot more’ at infinity.

Exactly where the plane of focus is, and how it behaves, is explained in several good articles on-line about how this all works, so I’m not about to write another one. For details I’d recommend either Tim Parkins’s description in issue 12 of the excellent ‘Great British Landscapes’ on-line magazine, or the Cambridge in Colour article on using tilt/shift lenses. For the purpose of this article, the key point is that my 24mm tilt/shift lens enabled me to place a plane of focus from a point about 300mm below the camera to a point about eight miles away, something I could not do before I bought it and which was essential to the composition I wanted.

And my particular problem was?

To backtrack a bit: I live in the Three Peaks area of North Yorkshire; this is karst landscape, formed by the erosion of limestone by the climate. i.e. it rains a lot here, there is a massive layer of limestone exposed on, or just beneath, the surface of the dales, and limestone dissolves in water. One of the major, visible features of karst landscapes is limestone pavements: great areas of limestone with deep cracks called grikes and blocks of ‘pavement’ called clints. When I first took up landscape photography I saw the obvious potential of these dramatic features as subjects and spent some considerable time walking the pavements looking for interesting formations. One that I found, the one in this image, is up near Ribblehead viaduct on the edge of a small outcrop of pavement imaginatively named ‘Middle scar’, it being in the centre of a line of three such scars. Having found it, I spent, without exaggeration, several hours, on more than one occasion, attempting to make a decent composition from it. I failed miserably (and the misery was real; I was very, very frustrated!).

'Talon'

The composition I was trying to achieve was the one above, but I couldn’t get it to work at the time. Whilst I had a wide range of focal lengths available to me, I simply couldn’t find a combination of tripod position and focal length which kept this striking rock feature as the dominant, main subject whilst also having a depth of field great enough to include both the rock, 300mm away, and distant Pen-y-ghent, one of the Yorkshire Three Peaks, eight miles away. The best I could do was to use a very wide angle lens: this gave me the depth of field I wanted, but left the talon-like feature as a diminutive series of runnels in an expanse of horizontal limestone.

At the time, I didn’t understand how this could be done. In fact, with the kit I had then, I’m now sure it was impossible. What was needed was a camera with movements; either a large format camera or its poor relation, a tilt/shift lens on my SLR. At the time, I did make a few images with the ‘right’ foreground, and I convinced myself that the blurred hill was ‘just fine’; except that I didn’t really convince myself; I never liked any of those images! At the time, I wasn’t diligently recording possible future shots and forgot all about this frustrating and unsuccessful early foray into photographing limestone pavements, and about that interesting feature. And then I bought Joe Cornish’s new film ‘With landscape in mind‘.

This was an excellent purchase and I thoroughly recommend it. It’s a fascinating and beautifully filmed documentary account, narrated entirely by Joe Cornish, of a week in his life of making images. For me, it’s particularly good as several of the sites used are relatively local. Most pertinently, one of the images in the film uses the ‘talon’ feature, which had slipped from my memory. Joe captures an image using that same piece of rock, though differently from how I had sought to use it and in considerably less time than I spent when not capturing what I wanted, I’m sure! Needless to say, I was out on that scar the very next evening after watching the film and was finally able to produce the shot I’d envisaged many months ago. Understandably, I was very grateful for the prompt to return and also rather relieved, comparing my shot later, that they use the same two major features but are otherwise distinctly different images.

A broader point

Returning to the beginning of this item, I can now see that having a broad knowledge of the type of facilities various cameras and lenses can offer is important to avoid restricting creativity. Perhaps it’s not restricting creativity precisely – I wasn’t prevented from thinking of the image when I didn’t have the necessary piece of kit, I just couldn’t make it – perhaps it’s more a case that it’s necessary to know what’s available, in terms of equipment, in case it should ever be needed. In my case, I didn’t know that cameras with movements existed at all, let alone their purpose; and then later I didn’t know that tilt/shift lenses existed for SLRs. By the time I knew both those things, and had such a lens, I’d forgotten about the composition.

So, my lesson learned is to continue to read widely on equipment, largely so that I’ll know what might fit the bill when I next find that I need ‘something different’. I’m just hoping that whatever that item is won’t one day turn out to be a large format camera and film, as I discussed in an earlier piece on the lure of large format.

Musings on: photography as art, or not

“Photography is not art…”

What a ridiculous statement!

I’d never, to my knowledge, noticed anyone expressing this opinion until I moved from taking mountaineering snapshots to making photographs for their own sake. Now, since I read a fair few books and on-line magazines on photography, variations on the theme seem to crop up all the time. OK, so not as much as ‘which is the best sensor / lens / film / software?‘ – the prevalence of those debates is in a whole different order of magnitude – but pretty frequently nonetheless. I’ve been resisting the impulse to express a written opinion on the topic for a few months now, but here I shall succumb to that inevitability, and I’ll do so largely to record what I think now, as a relative beginner to photography, in order that I can revisit this and see if my views have changed at some unspecified point in the future.

I shall judiciously avoid attempting to define what ‘art’ might be, but definitions are always handy and one of the best that I’ve found, at least in terms of being comprehensive – though ironically not in its art or poetry – is the opening statement on ‘Art’ from Wikipedia. The following is a selective quotation:

”Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items … in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, photography, sculpture, and paintings…. Generally, art is made with the intention of stimulating thoughts and emotions.”

There are a few important aspects to that definition, but I think the last sentence is especially pertinent, and it conveniently allows for art to be not fully defined by the activity itself; rather, it’s a combination of the activity and the intent to ‘stimulate thoughts and emotions‘. In that sense, my images of various mountains and ice-falls don’t qualify as art – which is entirely reasonable, fine and most certainly true – but my ‘for their own sake’ images do. Whether or not they’re good art is another question, but I certainly arrange the objects within them and intend that they engender an emotion, or perhaps a thought or two; I may fail to do that, but the key thing, from the perspective of fulfilling the definition above, is that I try.

Based on the above, it’s entirely obvious that some photographic images constitute ‘art’.

I really cannot see how it can be reasonably denied that a subset of photographs are ‘art’. Perhaps it’s more revealing to look at this from the the opposite viewpoint? I think that the whole question arises since so many photographs are clearly not intended as ‘art’; they’re intended as recordings of a time and a place; a stimulus for memory or a mechanism for sharing an experience with people not present when the photograph was taken.

When such a vast quantity of photographs exist as do now, it’s easy to forget that a minority of them have been created not as mere recordings but for a completely different reason: as ‘objects to stimulate thoughts or emotions‘. What I’m suggesting here is that the predominance of photographs which were never intended to be ‘art’ tends to conceal the fact that this small minority of photographs certainly are intended as such, and the Wikipedia definition above implies that this intent itself is sufficient to qualify the result as ‘art’, whether they be good or bad examples of it. (Clearly, ‘art’ may be simultaneously a record, but the simplistic division helps [me] in seeing where the argument that photography is not art might stem from.)

Technology dependence…

The real elephant in the room here, however, is perhaps the perceived highly technical nature of most photography: its machine-dependence. Yes, some photography can be very simple to create, technically, but it’s never as intrinsically simple as mixing various coloured liquids and arranging them on a piece of drawing material with brushes; after all, starting from nothing, it’s necessary to first build a camera, which I’ll suggest is more problematic than creating paint and a brush. It appears that some people will never accept something which is so fundamentally reliant on non-trivial technology – the camera – as ‘art’.

This technology-dependence, combined with the ubiquity of cameras, also contributes to photographic art being seen as at best a second-rate art form. The usually-unvoiced argument would go something along the lines of “I can’t paint, but I can use a camera” or “I’m not an artist, but I can take a photo; so a photo cannot be art”. The fatal flaw in this argument is, of course, that most people don’t use a camera to its fullest potential since they don’t try to, in much the same way that most people cannot use a set of paints and brushes to their fullest potential either, though they’re for some reason aware of their lack of skill with the paints and don’t attempt to. The camera, however, is a means of recording things, as well as a creative tool, so the majority of people do use them, just not with the intent of creating art! Famously, ‘familiarity breeds contempt‘, and people in general are very familiar with cameras.

‘Photographer’ is a tool-centric label…

A last point which I suspect strengthens the ‘not art’ opinion: people who make art using a camera are almost invariably called ‘photographers’; an accurate but not entirely helpful label. People who paint on canvas, or paper, or whatever medium they’ve chosen, tend to be called ‘artists’; and, when they’re labelled as ‘painters’, there is usually an extra adjective or two added in there to make it clear that they’re not painting the surfaces of buildings (unless they’re ‘graffiti artists’ or painters of frescos, of course!). The ‘photographer’ label is akin to calling people using brushes on canvas ‘users of paint’ or some such wildly general and prosaic term – unhelpful and misleading in the extreme whilst still, undeniably, accurate. Avoidance of apparent pretension makes it more or less unavoidable that we use the term ‘photographer’ rather than ‘artist’ when describing ourselves, but it’s unfortunate that it’s such an unequivocally tool-centric word. Some sculptors form their work by beating metal into artistic shapes: are they usefully described as ‘hammerers’? I think not!

The camera is merely a tool, just like a paint brush…

In conclusion to this first record of what I think about this supposed debate: photographers with artistic intent must arrange their images by choosing their viewpoint, matching it with complementary light, including or excluding subject matter through choice of lens and framing, and then must process the resultant capture, whether film or digital, to suit their vision and intent in making the image. To me, all that seems to tie in very well with the above definition of ‘art’. The observation that a camera may be used, and predominantly is used, with no consideration of any of the above simply shows that the camera is merely a tool, and that not all tools always produce art – it depends on what they’re used for, how they’re used, and by whom. Conversely, art may be produced with any number of tools, and those include the camera.

Incidentally, the unfortunate tool-centricity of the word ‘photographer’ is why I, after much internal debate resulting from the strong dislike of categorisation I expressed in an earlier article, chose to prefix ‘photography’ on my portfolio site with the words ‘fine art’. It is perhaps, as yet, an aspirational label, but I concluded that I preferred to err by appearing overly-ambitious than to define my endeavours purely on the basis of my use of a particular tool.

And finally, yes, I’m entirely aware of the irony of seeking to refute the ‘photography is not art’ argument whilst also objecting to categorisation… My only defence is that it’s a different sort of category, and that I did say that some categorisation is useful! Nonetheless, please do comment on any other contradictions which I may have missed.

Musings on: increasing your ‘photographic luck’…

“You were lucky to catch that shot!”

I’ve heard that said more than a few times since I started making ‘serious’ photographs, mostly from – and here I’m continuing an entirely tongue-in-cheek gripe from my last blog item – non-photographers. More specifically, non-photographers who have cameras and don’t often ‘get lucky’ in the same way that they perceive that I do.

In recent months, I’ve adopted the approach of not arguing the point, preferring the “Yes, didn’t I” response to “Well, no, I did lots of preparation…..”. The trouble is that the type of preparation I’m talking about here is not the specific planning I discussed in my last article on using The Photographer’s Ephemeris and Google Earth ground level view to pre-visualise compositions. That’s a possible, and very useful, aspect of preparation, but not the whole of it, and it’s the part which is quick and easy to describe:

“TPE tells me where the Sun and Moon will be, and Google Earth shows me what the view is from any given point”;

done; simple; and it doesn’t usually engender a great long debate, unless the questioner is genuinely interested in the implicit how part of that statement. Conversely, trying to explain what I’m discussing here, the wider factors which go into being prepared to make a photograph, can end up in…… let’s say ‘a degree of contention‘.

I think the contention arises since what I’m essentially going to argue in this article is all about probability and statistics – not literally, this isn’t a mathematical treatise of any kind, but that’s what it amounts to. In summary:

if I prepare better for a photographic opportunity which may arise, the likelihood of my making a half decent image when that opportunity does arise goes up considerably. Put another way “you make your own luck”.

At its most reductive level, the old adage that ‘the best camera is the one you have with you all the time’ clearly comes into play: it’s much more likely that I’ll ‘get lucky’ if I always carry a camera. I don’t, and I know that reduces my opportunities, but pretty much everything in life is a compromise and I’m not yet ready to start carrying my backpack of kit at all times.

Understand your equipment as well as possible

That point does lead to the first and most obvious element of ‘being prepared’, however; the technical element. There’s little point in having a camera capable of capturing good images and failing to learn how to use it flexibly. More accurately, and returning to the probability idea: if you do learn as much as possible about how your equipment works, what it can and can’t do, when and how to use which filters, and all the other things which make up the technical side of photography, then the chances of getting all those technical details right, even in a rush, when the fabled opportunity arises are considerably raised. Often, that moment of stunningly fine light lasts just that, a moment, or a few seconds; fiddling around with camera controls for any longer than strictly necessary is likely to lead, as they say, to disappointment. Personally, I don’t find the whole ‘how to drive a camera’ thing terribly interesting. Important: very much so. Interesting: only in the way that any complex piece of kit is interesting – it’s not what making images is about (to me, that is – but each to their own!).

I’m not ranking aspects of preparedness; I think that all the elements I’m writing about in this item are important for improving the odds of ‘getting lucky’, but I do think that familiarity with the equipment – camera, lenses, filters, tripod, light meter; everything – is fundamental. To veer dangerously close to mathematics again: it’s a necessary but not a sufficient requirement, and it’ll increase the probability of success.

Maintain a list of compositions

Another – not the second, just another – element is having compositions in mind ready for when the light is either ‘good’ or ‘right’, depending on whether you’ve also worked out what the ‘right’ light will be for a given composition. This is a big topic. It covers a range of time, in terms of preparation, from seconds to months, or even seasons. At one end of the scale, I like to look around an area for compositions before leaping into getting the camera out; there’s little point in waiting for stunning light and then frantically hunting around for something to put in the frame. What that means in practice is that I will sometimes scout a location and not actually make any exposures. More probably I’ll take a few shots as reminders, even if the light is uninteresting. That’s where the longer term comes in: I’m gradually building up a set of notes on things that I think may be good compositions, given certain lighting conditions. The idea is that I can revisit those areas at the appropriate time of year, or when a particular weather pattern is predicted, and know exactly where to go. In theory, it means that I can hurry to a pre-planned composition and get set up as soon as the weather deigns to do what I’d like it to, and having several of these ideas ready means that there’s more chance of at least one of them fitting the weather on any given day. Again, it increases the probability of being lucky.

Naturally, that sort of preparation is easiest for local subjects. There’s a particular composition I have in mind in the Cairngorms, but I’m not about to drive hundreds of miles on the spur of the moment when the met office predicts a certain weather pattern which will suit it! That said, I’m currently working on – and when I say ‘working on’ here, what I mean is that I have decided to do this and will shortly get my act together and start – I’m currently working on making a list of possible compositions in the area of Scotland I shall be visiting in a few months. I’ll be using TPE and Google Earth for this, as well as my existing knowledge of the area and OS maps for access routes and timings. The intention is to arrive knowing where to go in response to a variety of weather conditions, both at different times of day and at those points when the rain slackens off and the midges aren’t too active.

To reiterate the main theme of this article, whatever level of compositional preparation I actually do, whether it’s on the obsessive end of the scale or the ‘here’s a list of a few ideas‘ end, it will increase the probability of coming back with worthwhile images from a trip. Clearly, in any distribution of probabilities, there is the potential of returning with ‘nothing’ – I would like to make that as unlikely as I can, in advance.

'Unexpected sunshine'

Revisit good compositions

On a related facet of preparedness: whilst visiting a place once, working out some compositions, and then pre-visualising the weather that would suit them is a good technique, it’s even better to simply revisit those places, if possible, and see how the weather affects the scene. I used to be very disappointed if I went out and failed to capture a ‘keeper’; now, whilst I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I don’t care, I’m much more relaxed about it. Considering the image above, for example: I’ve been to this site numerous times – it’s very local to me – but that’s the first time I’ve bothered to photograph it as it’s the first time the light was at all interesting for that particular composition. I’m fairly happy with this image, but I shall undoubtedly go there again, and I’m sure I’ll use a similar composition in the hope that the lighting will be sufficiently different for that to be worthwhile; ideally, it’ll be better in some way, of course. Again, having discovered and practised a composition which is pleasing, at least to me, I shall increase the likelihood of eventually using it to produce a great shot by photographing it in varying weather and at different times of year.

Stand around and do nothing for a while

Considering the probability of success in the time frame of minutes or hours, rather than days or seasons: if the weather is changeable, or it’s getting towards sunset, I’ve taken to working on a composition, getting everything as ‘right’ as I can in terms of framing and technical aspects, and then just waiting for the light to change. I enjoy just being outdoors and in a beautiful place, whether I’m already very familiar with that place or not, so I’ve never so far considered it to be a great hardship to simply stand or sit awaiting a change in the light. (As an aside, this particular behaviour is the one most likely to produce a certain degree of discontent on the part of anyone you’re with who’s not also attempting to make photographs, as I discussed in an earlier article!)

Of course, the whole ‘waiting around doing nothing’ thing can be more of a challenge in various forms of inclement weather, but it’s still worth it. The image below was taken at sunset, or ‘mid-afternoon’, as it might be called. It’s a good example of a few of the above approaches to upping the probability of success. This tree is close by and I’d photographed it a few times. On each occasion, I imagined that it could look very good in snow; so, when we actually received a little, I took myself up there with the hope of making this precise image. As may be obvious, it was rather chilly up on the scar that afternoon; minus 12C in fact. Had I not been familiar with my kit, my fingers would probably have become even colder, whilst setting up for the shot, than they did. Had I not pre-visualised and planned the composition, then I’d have spent time wandering around on what was extremely slippery limestone pavement – it’s not the easiest or safest surface to amble across when dry and warm, and it’s even less conducive to extensive exploration when covered in snow and ice! As it was, I was able to go to exactly the right place, having readied the camera with the appropriate lens and settings back at home and having not wrecked the snow by walking on it, looking for the right spot. Setting everything up took under a minute, followed by roughly an hour of standing still, becoming progressively colder as the light changed. I’m rather fond of this shot, and I sincerely doubt that I’d have made it without all the luck-inducing preparation.

'White Scar winter hawthorn'

Get out there, even when the weather looks vile

One final thing is worth mentioning, mainly since I’m very susceptible to this particular problem and am working on avoiding it. Planning in advance to go somewhere, knowing that there is a usable composition, particularly when the ‘somewhere’ in question is a long walk up a hill, helps to avoid crying off due to unappealing weather. The banner image at the very top of my blog is a good example of that. It was raining heavily when I set off and I had to really force myself to get up on the scar, knowing there was a tree up there and hoping for some kind of dramatic light to occur as the various storm fronts passed over. It did occur; I was ‘lucky’. That said, I was lacking in every other area of preparation for this shot. It was the very first image I took after I’d bought a ‘proper’ camera and set out to deliberately make photographs; so in many respects I really was lucky on that occasion.

I’d have been even ‘luckier‘, however, had I already learnt how to use the camera, bought a tripod, examined the area in advance, and not been shooting hand-held jpegs on full automatic…. There are better compositions of this tree and, if I’d prepared for luck, this would have been a better shot. Still, maybe the next time I’m fortunate enough to experience light like that, it will be!

I haven’t even mentioned here that this sort of preparation can help with inspiration, but this article is already quite long enough, so I’ll save that topic for another possible post. As always, I’d welcome your thoughts and recommendations for other things which can increase the ‘getting lucky’ factor in making landscape images.

Addendum/edit

Tim Smalley has a very nice piece on his blog covering some of the same ground as this. Definitely worth reading: Forget about the camera for a minute