Ragnar Axelsson

Some wonderful pictures from the chilly north.

 http://www.rax.is/Sidur/Gallery.htm

pictorialism

I don't often use the term landscape when describing photography. I prefer something like 'environmental' or even 'cultural landscape'.  

The term landscape seems to me to be very loaded with connotations from painting,  particularly from the 18th and 19th century, that we are hardly even conscious of. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think the term conjures up a set of assumptions and even a set of locations. In Scotland, typically picturesque locations can be found in places like Loch Katrine in the Trossachs, Rannoch Moor, the entrance to Glencoe from the old road, Laig Bay on Eigg.

Landscape pictures are generally assumed to be have a peaceful, panoramic, scenic and beautiful appearance. (I am making huge generalisations, I know.)

In photography, exponents of this type of landscape photography are Colin Prior, Charlie Waite, Lee Frost, Craig McMaster and many others.  (I should probably include myself too, if that isn't too presumptious.)

I don't under-estimate this style of work at all, but it is not the only way to photograph the natural or the built environment. In the same way that street or documentary photography can be challenging, so can 'landscape'. 
If, as many participants in these courses state, we want to move beyond pictorial and picturesque pictures, then we need to find a way of thinking about what we are trying to do with the pictures.

Triangular models are very useful for helping to simplify quite complicated ideas.

Here's a tool for analysing pictures. It is difficult to decide how to judge pictures. One way is to ask if a picture has these three elements: craft, visual style, meaning.

Craft can be: skill, effort, care, attention;

Visual style is tonality, composition and design, use of colour and an appeal to the senses;
Meaning is content. Does the picture communicate anything?

I boiled this down from an attempt at a definition of art:
"Culturally significant meaning, embodied with skill within a sensuous medium." I read this in a book, 'Art Theory, A Very Short Introduction' by Cynthia Freeland, published by Oxford University Press.

This can be endlessly flexible, with different aspects of the triangle taking on greater of lesser emphasis in relation to each other. Traditional pictorial landscapes tend to be strong on visual appeal and craft, and less so on content or meaning. A news picture may be very strong on factual meaning, but have little craft or style to it.

The skill or craft may involve the lengths you go to in order to achieve pictures at all - access or achieving a vantage point; the meaning may be an emotional content; the visual style may be a challenging, visually discordant one.

It may be that you really don't like landscape at all, or that you find being in such an environment distasteful or disturbing in some way. Well, as my old boss on a newspaper would say: "That's your story!" The photographer Leonard Freed would say that he would have a 'sickness' about something, authority or the police for example, so he would go and shoot a project on that subject. Trent Parke travelled his own country, Australia in an emotionally disturbed state after 9/11 and created some strange visually magical images as a result. Josef Koudelka's pictures of the industrial corners of Europe are powerful, not pretty. I doubt if he liked the places much. Who said "Aesthetic or anaesthetic"?

So a strong, even, negative emotional reaction can be put to use if you can catch on to it, identify, and try to communicate it. Some people draw benefits from trying this that go beyond producing good pictures.

Making the world strange again

 "Making the world strange again" is how somebody (I forget who) described the point of photography.

This could be the manifesto of 'in-Public', the street photographers group, whose members have "the ability to see the unusual in the everyday."

Street photography is the (usually) unposed catching of life, as it happens, in public places. It depends upon two of Szarkowski elements that define photography: timing and the frame. By careful, and often spontaneous framing and split-second timing, the results can be odd, with disparate elements juxtaposing with each other to create new relationships and meanings. The result is an image that is based upon a real situation, but the photograph itself is not real.

http://www.in-public.com/

Street photography historically has a politically leftish, humanistic point of view, often aiming to undermine whatever the dominant ideology might be; and so it makes full use of street signs, advertising, incongruous juxtapositions and so on to subvert their messages. 
An early  example is Andre Kertesz - http://photography-now.net/andre_kertesz/index.html 
who was an influence on the more famous Henri Cartier Bresson http://photography-now.net/henri_cartier_bresson/portfolio1.html
Robert Doisneau http://photography-now.net/robert_doisneau/portfolio1.html 
and March Riboud - http://www.marcriboud.com/marcriboud/accueil.html 
The work of the these French photographers in particular is quite beautiful, and a sense of composition and aesthetics is important, and is made explicit in Cartier Bresson's 'decisive moment'. He was also consciously surrealist in his earlier photography.
In later years, American street photographers such as Joel Meyerowitz reacted against the HCB decisive moment and its elegant composition, trying to make pictures that conveyed the visual confusion and anarchic surrealism of the street, using colour photography before colour was accepted as an appropriate medium for serious photographers. 
The rulebook of photography (not that there is anything like a rulebook) was rewritten by Robert Frank in the 50s with the publication of his book, The Americans. You can often make a correspondence between significant photographers and writers or musicians, and it makes sense that Jack Kerouac wrote the forward to this book, because his own On the Road with its loose, lively beatnik sensibility is the verbal equivalent of Robert Frank's take on America.
Some good newspaper articles about it here and here. "With their murky backgrounds and blurred figures, many of Frank's pictures seem as if they were snapped on the sly to expose things normally hidden. In his case, however, the secrets are the kind that lie in plain sight. His photos reveal the darkness people usually pretend isn't there because they don't want to look."
In relation to our discussion about the ethics of photographing people in public places, there is probably quite a lot in Frank's pictures and in his approach that could make us feel uncomfortable. They certainly made people uncomfortable when they were published, and Life magazine said they made America look like Russia, which was a severe criticism. However he was saying, with his picture essay, something important that needed to be said about America, the reality and the self-image; something that made a significant contribution to visual culture. All societies need this: to see ourselves as others see us.
This, I think, is what photography can do and what photographers are entitled to do as part of living in a democratic society: we are entitled to use our chosen medium to comment upon and engage with our own society and environment. This is an important principle, that comes under pressure from a variety of directions. For example, photography is discouraged in many shopping malls and in my opinion this is because the owners of these centres do not want anything to interfere with the commercial activity, or anything to interrupt the selling message. Photography - particularly serious photography - often undermines and pokes fun at that message.


A few people have said on courses like this one, that they wish to move on from pictorial or picturesque images, or to make work that is more creative. One approach is to develop the understanding that photography can be critical, it can be subversive, it can be challenging and opinionated and unpopular, and it can be impolite. The results are not always pretty. This applies equally to landscape and portraiture as it does to street and documentary.

Broxburn Bing 27.5.2011

The plan is to visit the shale slag heaps of West Lothian - the Greendykes Bings at Broxburn.

Sounds romantic doesn't it?

They create a remarkable post-industrial landscape, that has become significant for flora and fauna biodiversity. The bings make very striking features in the West Lothian landscape and you could explore them photographically from a distance from all sorts of angles. On Friday I hope to explore them from up-close.

Juilie, if you read this and need transport, give one of us a ring for a lift. I think you have some contact details?

Click on this:

 Directions to Broxburn bings

to go to Google maps, with directions to the bings.

Or go to the Newbridge roundabout, follow the A89/Edinburgh road to Broxburn. Pass the big viaduct (symbol of West Lothian) and over the rounabout into Broxburn, Turn right into East Mains Industrial estate (Dunnet Way. You should see the big pink bings at the back of the estate, and oyu are trying to get as close as possible, so just drive to the back of the estate. There's parking at Clifton View, where I will be waiting.

The weather chart shows a weakening high pressure over us, with two warm fronts and a cold front, associated with a low pressure system close to Iceland. The two red warm fronts will be trying to move towards us over the next day or so, bringing rain. The high pressure can delay or hold them off, so predicting the weather depends upon the timing and progress of those fronts. 

I think we will get fair weather on Friday afternoon, and perhaps we will see some attractive high level cirrus clouds, associated with the advancing front.

Or perhaps not - I am often wrong, but it keeps my mind occupied.

Szarkowski

 Last night I heard an interesting and useful lecture at Stills by Mathew Sowerby, who is one of the key tutors at Stevenson. He was talking about John Szarkowski, and his analysis of five critical tools for engaging with photographs.

This provides an excellent toolkit for both looking at photographs and for thinking about how you take photographs. The idea of 'the frame' is particularly relevant to us, as we are exploring edges, frames, and boundaries. Spooky coincidence!

John Szarkowski,

"The man who taught America how to look at photographs."

Another article in the Guardian by Sean O'Hagan who consistently writes interesting and insightful pieces on all aspects of photography.

Five characteristics for looking at photographs.

The following extract is taken directly from this site.

http://www.phui.com/wiki/index.php?title=Szarkowski_on_Criticizing_Photographs

Szarkowski on Criticizing Photographs

From Photography Notes

Shortcut:

Photography Notes

"To quote out of context is the essence of the photographer's craft. His central problem is a simple one: what shall be included, what shall be rejected? The line of decision between in and out is the picture's edge. While the draughtsman starts with the middle of the street, the photographer starts with the frame. The photograph's edge defines content. It isolates unexpected juxtapositions. By surrounding two facts, it creates a relationship. The edge of the photograph dissects familiar forms, and shows the unfamiliar fragment. It creates the shapes that surround objects. The photographer edits the meanings and patterns of the world through an imaginary frame. This frame is the beginning of this picture's geometry. It is to the photograph as the cushion is to the billiard table."

--from The Photographer's Eye by John Szarkowski, former director of the photography division of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Many methodologies have been used by art historians and others for examining and interpreting images. One often-cited approach, although essentially an aesthetic one, that is still useful for the study of all photographs was proposed by John Szarkowski in The Photographer's Eye, an exhibition catalogue published in 1966 by the Museum of Modern Art. His fundamental conclusion is that there was a major difference between the way paintings are made and the way photographs are taken. The principal attribute of photography is that it was a process of selection rather than synthesis. As a way to talk about the issues a photographer must keep in mind when taking a photograph and the issues a viewer must remember when analyzing the preserved image, Szarkowski listed five characteristics or problems that appear inherent in the medium itself.

THE THING ITSELF 

What the photographer taking the picture and the historian viewing it must understand is that while the camera deals with recording factual things and events that form the subject of the photograph, it only produces a perceived reality that is remembered after the thing or event has passed. While people believe that photographs do not lie, this is an illusion caused by the mistaken belief that the subject and the picture of the subject is the same thing. One is reminded of the written inscription on the famous painting of a "pipe" by the Cubist painter Rene Magritte that refutes what we believe we are seeing by saying "This is not a pipe." Indeed it is a painting of a pipe and not a real pipe in the same way that a photograph of a subject is both an artifact and a record of what the photographer captured with his camera from nature. Because we see reality in different ways, we must understand that we are looking at different truths rather than the truth and that, therefore, all photographs lie in one way or another. Today's technological advances in digital manipulation of images that the public sees regularly in photographs and films now only makes it easier to understand what has always been true.

THE DETAIL 

If the scene selected by the photographer shows too much, he has only to isolate those facts (to lie?) that will best support the truth. The camera's lens records the trivial with such clarity that the interpreter of the scene must carefully select the clues which, because they make things real, act as important symbols more than as story tellers. If a photographer cannot easily record a concept such as the "social class" or "economic condition" of a family or community or region, he can record a partial view that will allow viewers to select details that will help illustrate the truths or lies he is intending to convey. Does the photographic image contain symbols that mean "poverty or plenty," "lower or middle class," "squalor or comfort?" Photographs of domestic interiors can, with careful reading, include as much useful data to answer those kinds of questions as written academic descriptions or official reports and can also generate an emotional or intellectual response. What other details did the photographer capture, on purpose or by accident, that will help the historian identify the subject or decipher the circumstances under which it was recorded? Does a careful examination, perhaps with a magnifying glass, reveal names on street signs or store windows, advertisements on billboards or posters, fashions from clothing or hairstyles, dates from auto license plates or calendars, or other pieces of evidence that help make this image part of a story as well as a picture?

THE FRAME 

The photographer selects rather than conceives a picture by choosing what will be inside and outside the four edges of the frame in his camera's viewfinder. Those edges take things out of context and define the content of the subject. The image of a politician speaking to potential supporters could be perceived quite differently if the photographer took a tightly composed close-up view showing only an attentive crowd and the speaker or if he framed a larger view from the back of a large meeting hall that showed the same small group along with a sea of mostly empty chairs at a sparsely attended event. In this case what was left out of the frame was as important as what was included within its borders.

TIME 

Unlike other kinds of visual records, the photograph is always made in the present time. The slice of time that the photographer preserves instantly transforms the present into the past. Another photograph taken a moment later is of a slightly different subject and is a different photograph. The camera, however, can serve as a time machine in a way that no other instrument of communication can, making it a valuable ally of the historian. Throughout photography's history, as the technology improved, the length of time necessary to trip a shutter or expose the film continued to shorten so that the blurs and shakes evident in the beginning gradually were decreased. Nevertheless, the process is still not instantaneous, and all photographs are, in a sense, time exposures. The photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson tried to indicate the importance of choosing the visually correct instant to make an exposure by referring to it as the "decisive moment."  When time is stopped it creates a slice of time, a picture rather than a whole story.

VANTAGE POINT 

When the photographer is out of his studio and cannot move his subject, he must move his camera. His vantage point for seeing his subject can be from above or below, from in front or in back, and from any of the other angles we are now used to seeing, thanks to the creativity of photographers. Often the point of view calls attention to subjects or details that we might not have thought important otherwise. The foreshortening caused by the use of a telephoto lens, for example, can make a viewer aware of the seeming density of some urban architecture or traffic on a city street by making things look closer together than they appear with a wider lens or with the human eye.

Stock pictures

 I had a look at George's photography. (I wasn't asked to, but I looked anyway.)

http://www.georgeclerk.com/

Adam Elder, the photojournalist who set up Scottish stock agency, Scottish Viewpoint made a remark that if you use a camera to photograph your life, photography can pay for your life, and this seems to be what George is doing here, which is a neat trick if you can manage it.

Being able to shoot sellable stock photographs, which must be slick, bright, colourful, technically adept and usable for a range of purposes is a significant professional skill, and George is obviously in control of the equipment to be able to do it.

One of the repeated remarks made by participants in this course was the desire to produce pictures that are more than picturesque, or more creative. Oddly enough, being in full control can work against you in this aim. In the book 'Camera Lucida', the French philosopher Roland Barthes coined the term 'punctum' which is sometimes given the simpler term, the third meaning. He was trying to articulate the unique manner in which photography can communicate: there is the intended and controlled content - the 'studium'. Some photographs have an ability to reach out and touch the viewer, or perhaps more accurately an element or detail of the image strikes the viewer personally - to puncture them in some way. This is the punctum.

Some professional pictures, such as stock or advertising, are so slick and controlled and have an intrinsic selling message that does not allow any other message to get through. There is no chance for happy accidents, or for the details and paraphernalia of real life or real locations to reach out and engage with the viewer emotionally. Everything is smoothed over.

Documentary photographers, in particular, who photograph real life in uncontrolled circumstances have more opportunity for incorporating details and visual information that may have additional meaning to the viewer.

I first encountered Bruce Davidson's picture from his circus documentary when I was still at school, where it illustrated a poem that I can no longer remember. The rain falling in the mud in the background really hit me. Now, I would analyse this as the textural quality of the rain in the mud creating a disquieting contrast with the painted face and flowers of the clown who would normally be expected to be jolly and happy. At the time I didn't think like that, but just felt the rain as the very essence of misery (and not just because I was a teenager.) The photographer probably felt this intuitively too and made quick and spontaneous use of the opportunity to present a very down-beat and off-kilter image.
Many photographers seek out places or events that have an element of disjointedness, or tension, or lack of control that can reach out and prick the viewer.
In Luke's Monday night talk on Taryn Simon he quoted David Levi Strauss as saying, "To be compelling there must be tension; if everything has been decided beforehand there will be no tension, and no compulsion."
So in the context of landscape, really slick, professional photographers who are in total control often lack that compelling quality. I'm thinking of people like Charlie Waite, Lee Frost, Colin Prior.  Whereas people like Fay Godwin, Don McCullin, John Davies, Titarenko and almost anything at Lensculture do have a more compelling, but often disquieting quality.
Unfortunately I cannot teach people how to become creative, but I can point you in the direction of some thought-provoking photographers, and share some ideas with you.

Swanston, Friday May 13

 On Friday 13 May we are planning to meet at the bridge over the bypass (A720) that leads to Swanston village.

The google map here should show the location. The village itself is absurdly pretty, and has historical links with Robert Louis Stevenson, whose 'Picturesque Notes' to Edinburgh makes for entertaining reading, especially his descriptions of the downright meteorological purgatory of Edinburgh weather.

It is just over the bypass, so fits in with our notional theme of looking at boundaries and borders and there is an intriguing looking cross-shaped wood, the T Wood, that might make for fruitful exploration. 

Speaking of meteorological purgatory, the met office weather chart today (Tuesday) indicates a low pressure just above Scotland which is pulling some cool air down from Greenland. That usually means showery weather, but often clear air and visibility. If you follow the isobar lines from your location you can see where the air flow is originating. Air flows around a low pressure in an anti-clockwise direction. (It is only Tuesday, so anything can still happen.)

Pennywell project

 Steven Hope was good enough to send me a link to his Pennywell project.

I hope he doesn't mind me displaying it here.

After seeing a talk at Stills by Luke Watson on the work of http://www.tarynsimon.com/

it struck me that projects that document a place or process, such as the dismantling of Pennywell, benefit from some detailed factual information to help put the work into context.  Another thing that struck me was the editing down of her work so that each image tells a distinct story. Also, the images were painstakingly crafted and many had a formal aesthetic quality that was often beautiful, although in a disquieting way.

Looking at Steven's shots, it looks like he has found a clearly defined subject - the dismantling of a housing estate, a community. Many of the pictures are strong, compositionally, and the monochrome, documentary style suits the subject well. Monochrome has a historical association with documentary photography that helps to convey an authority of truth; and stripping away colour has an aesthetic role in simplifying the scene, removing the distraction of colour and resulting in the image being distinct and separated from everyday reality. 

I would view the online set of pictures as a draft, from which an edited down set of around 20 would be chosen. Generally speaking, less is more and all projects benefit from the painful stripping down process. To help in the editing process, you need to be clear in your own mind what you are trying to convey, and the visual style or mood that you are aiming for.

In the Oxford University Press 'Very Short Introduction to Photography' (a superb series of short introductions to all sorts of ideas), photography was presented as being on a continuous line, stretching from 'documents' at one end to 'pictures' at the other. Documents being pure, neutral facts with minimal input from the photographer, and pictures as being creative, aesthetic images which are a product of the creator's imagination and practice. 

So some of these pictures look like documents that accurately and factually describe the location. Others look like Steven is using more careful composition and framing to isolate visual elements and create a slightly abstracted, graphically designed picture, which I think are the more successful ones. 

If he has the chance to shoot some more, my advice would be to develop this visual style and also to try to identify and clarify what is being communicated - is it something factual or is there an emotional resonance to be explored - pictures of abandoned dolls and the  flotsam of people's lives suggest there could be.

Looking at what other significant photograhers have done is invaluable.

Joseph McKenzie documented the dismantling of the old Hawkhill area of Dundee. I'll try to remember to bring in the book.

Josef Koudelka, the Czech photojournalist has effectively lived as a stateless exile from his own country. Some of his work, such as his book 'Chaos', explores the hidden, overlooked corners of industrial Europe in a brooding, dark and quite magnificent style that is (I think) uniquely his own vision, and has been described as 'industrial picturesque.'

More quietly and intimately, David Williams, who works at Edinburgh College of Art has produced a series of formally very beautiful, almost abstract images that have have personal symbolism, influenced by his way of thinking as a musician. The Ecstacies 1-XX11 might be most relevant here.

There is an arts centre at Pennywell, who could be interested to see these pictures.

planning resources

Knol - free online community giving guidance and advice on all sorts of subjects, including many aspects of photography. Particularly useful is the growing collection of guides to locations. Nothing on Edinburgh yet, so maybe you could write one?
http://freephotoguidesukscotland.blogspot.com/



You probably won't need to worry about avalanches just yet, but the Scottish Avalanche Info Service has an avalanche map, which you can also use to scroll through maps of the country. If you do continue into winter mountain landscape photography, then the SAIS is essential.
http://www.sais.gov.uk/avalanche_map.asp


Map reading and navigation is useful, obviously, to avoid getting lost. Photographers do sometimes get to out of the way places at unusual times of day, so good accurate navigation becomes important. It is also useful to be able to visualise from the map the nature of the terrain to help you to select good viewpoints and to predict what you might actually see. In Scotland it is quite common to see nothing at all in poor weather, which makes photography tricky. On those types of days, it is still good to go out, practice some map work and use the day for reconnaisance of locations and gathering visual ideas.
The Mountaineering Council of Scotland gives 12 essential skills for navigation. Contour interpretation is especially useful:


http://www.mcofs.org.uk/navigators-dozen.asp


Mountain weather information service:
http://www.mwis.org.uk/index.php



Met office forecasts. It's worth getting familiar with the synoptic charts too, not just for the weather, but to predict and previsualise the type of light and cloud that you might experience. This way you can plan the type and style of photographs that you are likely to be able to achieve.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/loutdoor/mountainsafety/index.html





And on the subject of clouds, here's the Cloud Appreciation Society:
http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/


Magic Seaweed gives sea tide and swell information. I have seen lots of photographs of coastal scenes with the tide out, making the foreground look quite sludgy and muddy. Why not go when the tide is in, and you can make use of the textures, reflections, movement, light, colour and fluidity of the water?
http://magicseaweed.com/


The Photographer's Ephemeris gives you access to free software enabling you to select your location and predict the angle of the sun. Choosing your location for a dawn or dusk shoot can be quite difficult, and this information can take some of the guesswork out of it.
http://photoephemeris.com/

Raymond Moore : “If I were dropped into (the middle) I don’t think I’d want to photograph, I’d have to move out to the edge. Definite statements have something preaching about them. I’ve always been interested in the point where cultures meet."

http://www.weepingash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=36&Itemid=6

My idea to focus our attention, is to look for boundaries, borders, frames and edges.
Off the top of my head, here are a few ideas that might prove fruitful:

Old Town/New Town,

History and modernity,

Past and present

Ugly/beautiful

Imaginary

Historical – Cannongait

Geographical – Rivers, mountain

City boundaries

Greenbelt, bypass

Within the image – acutance, composition lines, juxtaposition, reflections, framelines, barriers

Pictures:

Brookes Jensen – working in series:

http://www.brooksjensenarts.com/

Colin Baxter:

http://www.colinbaxter.co.uk/products/largeportfolios.html

Jerome Lorieau – striking travel and photojournalism:

http://jeromelorieau.photoshelter.com/gallery/Photos-of-Edinburgh/G0000Ex6IxrMT5Rw/P0000tdUPjFo8szE

David Springford: mono ‘fine art’ pictorial:

http://www.infinityphotos.co.uk/collections/edinburgh-reflections-photographs-of-edinburgh

Eugene Atget at Getty:

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1763&page=5

and at Photography Now:

http://photography-now.net/eugene_atget/index.html

Josef Sudek, Czeck ‘Poet of Prague’

http://photography-now.net/josef_sudek/

Andre Kertesz

http://photography-now.net/andre_kertesz/index.html

Edwin Smith

http://www.chrisbeetles.com/gallery/picture.php?pic=71008

http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/photography/magnify.php?imageid=im00260

Stills environmental landscape course

http://www.stills.org/
http://stillscameraclub.tumblr.com/

Tutor: 

Keith Brame

Photography has always been a rewarding and powerful process for exploring and engaging with the physical environment. Effective landscape photographers often develop a consistent set of visual concerns and interests that they express in their own unique style.
In this dynamic practical course participants will consider the idea of ‘Boundaries, Borders, Frames and Edges’ as a stimulus for short forays into a variety of physical environments in and around Edinburgh. Participants will start to explore some of the significant photographers of the environment and use their work as a source of inspiration to develop their own consistent photographic response to landscapes.
Intermediate-level: Some previous photographic, computer and ideally Photoshop experience desirable. This course includes light physical activity.

Course Outline

Week 1: Introduction to the course
Discussion of themes and introduction to classic practitioners such as Josef Sudek, Edwin Smith, Atget etc. Followed by a short shooting excursion within Edinburgh city centre. Planning of week 2 location shoot along with presentation of relevant material for inspiration.

Week 2: Greenbelt location shoot 
Location shoot – Bypass/Greenbelt. Meet at pre-agreed location. It is recommended that suitable outdoor clothing is worn and mobile phones are brought along.

Week 3: Review and edit images 
Post-production of Week 2 images using Adobe Photoshop, including B&W conversions and basic editing. Looking at the city landscape, with a presentation of works including Rene Burri, Bernice Abbot, Lee Freidlander and Trent Parke along with relevant planning tips such as maps, tides, light, weather, safety.

Week 4: Countryside location shoot 
Meet at pre-agreed location for shoot at one of Edinburgh’s surrounding countryside vantage points. It is recommended that suitable outdoor clothing is worn and mobile phones are brought along.

Week 5: Waterfront location shoot
Meet at pre-agreed point for shoot at one of Edinburgh’s waterfront locations. Again, it is recommended that suitable outdoor clothing is worn and mobile phones are brought along.

Week 6: Upload, review, edit
Participants will collate their images into a slideshow for a presentation and supportive critique by the rest of the group. You will also look at each others individual plans to continue the projects. Options will be discussed for taking things further, including online book publishing, Stills production facilities and activities.