Heroic photographers

A group of heroic photographers at work, braving the wind, waiting for the light...

Friday November 9

So the plan is to visit Swanston village.
The google map here at this link should show the location. It is across the bridge over the bypass, to the Swanston village car park. The bridge is accessible from Oxgangs Road. 
I will be at Stills at 1.30pm for those who are travelling with me, and expect to get to Swanston for 2pm.
My mobile is: 07774 477 058 or email: kbrame@blueyonder.co.uk if you need to get in touch.

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.
I hope it won't be purgatory, but that's all in the timing. According to the chart, and the forecasts, the cold front should pass around mid-dayish, and that can leave us with mixed sunshine and showers, and varied clouds with fresh cool temperatures.
So thinking about our loose theme for the course, tomorrow we will be in the border area of weather fronts, which can be a visually interesting place to be.
We are also on the city boundary, with urban environment abruptly changing to a 'rural' one, albeit mixed with pylons.
And we are operating in the boundary between light and dark, and some photographers make a habit of shooting during this dusk, or gloaming, period. http://scotlandinthegloaming.blogspot.co.uk/
I would like to spend a little time walking through the village and up into the lower slopes of the Pentlands. The shape of the land is interesting and varied, giving good views of the city and we can have a look at how the shape of the land compares with the contour features on a map. The red lines on the map are called contours and indicate lines of equal height. If the lines are closely spaced, the slope is steep, and if they form a small circle, a ring contour, this means a summit or high point. So a ring contour next to steep slope can be an excellent viewpoint.
It would be good to come back down to the bridge over the bypass before it gets completely dark to see the moving river of light created by the headlights and tail-lights of the traffic, with the dying light of the sun in the west, and outline of the Pentland hills...Tripods would be good - I'll bring a couple of spares.
See you tomorrow - wrap up warm!

Contour features on a map can help us see the shape of the land before we get there.

Let there be light

Let there be light from Kamil Tamiola on Vimeo.

An interesting and informative video from Kamil Tamiola, an 'adventure photographer' who photographs in the Alps at night. It is full of useful planning tips and explanations of method, admittedly in an extreme environment, but these are fundamental principles of photography.
I particularly enjoyed the small lecture on the inverse square law of illumination, a fundamental law of physics, delivered at sub-zero temperatures, a gale and altitude.
And that's the trick - keeping cool, methodical, in control and creative in difficult environmental conditions.

A quick link

Petapixel.com often has interesting stories on all aspects of photography. Here, several American photographers of landscapes discuss what motivated them to produce these particular images...

http://www.petapixel.com/2012/11/04/looking-at-the-land-landscape-photogs-explain-the-why-behind-their-shots/#more-85552

Friday Nov2

The Met Office pressure chart shows an occluded front passing over us. It might give us a bit of rain, clearing as the front moves away. So from a photographer's point of view, the light may be a little soft, not very bright and colourful, but with some cloud texture and detail. There may be brighter periods too. 
In this type of light, I would consider working in black-and-white to emhasise tonality - the shades of black, white, grey - even silver. I would also concentrate on the composition and design of the pictures. If you have strong design, and a sensitivity to tone, it is often possible to create strong photographs even in poor light. 

Poor light, but geometric composition and paying attention to the
 pleasures of tonality made an interesting picture possible.

The location will be Arthur's Seat - the mountain in the city. We can meet at Stills, then wander down the Mile, past the Parliament and access Arthur's Seat by the Radical Road. This will give us options (and views), so we can choose to go onto the Salisbury Crags or the lower route by Hunter's Bog. 
It will probably be cold, wet, maybe a bit windy and rough underfoot. A snack would be handy. Dress warm!
Walkhighlands gives some helpful information about Arthur's Seat, including pictures and maps.
It is a volcano, with dramatic crags falling steeply to the city. A volcano! In a city centre! This is pretty dramatic, and so does lend itself to a visually dramatic photographic treatment. A very popular and persistent approach to landscape photography is to attempt to convey the location at its most intense and most visually compelling form. This is achieved by shooting when the light is oblique and clear, usually dawn or dusk, at a carefully chosen vantage point. Photographic techniques are chosen to enhance and accentuate elements such as cloud detail, perspective effects and scale. 
Photographers working in this style tend to use graduate filters, polarising filters, wide-angle lenses, red filters in black-and-white to darken blue skies, tripods to allow the use of small apertures to exaggerate deep depth-of-field effects, slow shutter speeds to exaggerate the flow of water.
Every technique serves to enhance, accentuate and to convey perfection, and many photographers feel that they are conveying the 'essence' of a location or environment. The photographer is very conscious of the visual effects of space, light, scale, visual contrasts, perspective and viewpoint.
For many, this is the default way to do landscape photography, and there are often well-known locations and viewpoints that you can visit.

Lindsay Robertson's picture at Arthur's Seat is consciously
 influenced by Ansel Adams and is a masterclass of dramatic tonality,
space, perspective and scale. Red filters enhance the cloud and sky.

When we work in this manner, we are following in the footsteps of people like Ansel Adams. Good examples of this are Lindsay Robertson, Craig McMaster, Lee Frost, Charlie Waite, Richard Childs, Joe Cornish, Colin Prior.
It can be a pleasant way to spend your time, to visit a well-known photographic viewpoint and to recreate your own versions of the famous views.

Friday October 26

 Welcome to the Stills Environmental photography course.

Why 'Environmental' photography?
Because, with a camera we can explore our environment, wherever and whatever that may be - city, village, industrial sprawl, mountain, forest, sea...
If I say 'Landscape' photography, there are often a set of habits, pictures and assumptions that automatically spring to mind, and you might want to look beyond the scenery.

What we will be doing on the course depends very much on what you want to get out of it - so do let me know. (I have a few ideas of my own, of course.)
I have found that most people like to spend as much time actually out and about, shooting. I use this blog to introduce ideas and show some styles of photography that will be helpful when we are out shooting; and I also use it to keep you informed of meeting arrangements and locations.
I can also be contacted at kbrame@blueyonder.co.uk
My background is in professional editorial and corporate photography, and I have produced landscape photography of some of the wilder parts of Scotland for the land conservation charity, the John Muir Trust.
You can find a examples of that project at:
http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/brame 
and
www.keith-brame.com

and http://kbrame.blogspot.com - I try to update this blog and I plan to develop it as a photographic education site, so it might be worth keeping an eye on...


The basic set of considerations for any day out shooting is this:

• The location
• The conditions
• The idea
• The inspiration
• The route

Simple enough, and these can vary in detail and complexity, and we will explore them more fully during the next few weeks.

Met office pressure chart - north airflow often means good light

• The location is Stills and the Old Town
• The conditions will be (probably) cool, with clouds clearing, and when they do so we may get clear, undiffused, contrasty light. We have the beginning of a northerly air flow that often gives lovely clear light and varied cloudscapes. I think today it may be modified by a little hazy cloud. Towards the end of the afternoon, that light will be low angled, oblique and useful for revealing texture and form. In autumn, winter and early spring, such light also shoots through wynds like a dramatic spotlight.

Ragnar Axelsson - using frames to good effect

• The idea may be a simple visual one or something with a bit more conceptual content. The visual idea may flow from the conditions - so today we could explore the visual idea of high contrast light, and explore the extremes of brightness and shade. The idea may also be a larger unifying project idea that links your shooting together to create a coherent project theme.

      As a stimulus, we can consider the idea of frames, borders, edges and boundaries, as these touch upon some fundamental characteristics of photography such as: a frame, obviously; the edge of your frame and where you position it, what you exclude and include; a border between contrasting states such as the Old and New town, between sea and land, woodland and mountain, industry and rural, between the past and the present; a visual 'edge' also known as acutance is a defining quality in image making and in light - see Trent Parke; a boundary might be a constraint and a lot of good photography comes out of imposing a constraint or a limit on yourself - Josef Sudek for example. 

Josef Sudek, the poet of Prague, created a powerful body of work
as a result of being constrained

Rangnar Axelsson making bold use of the frame's edge,
and also the 'acutance' or edge definition of  the tones within the image

Trent Parke "light turns to ordinary into the magical"

• The inspiration - there's a lot of good photography out there to help us. Sometimes this can make us feel that it has all been done before. Paul Hill has remarked in his book, 'Approaching Photography', that "you haven't done it, and it is important to remember that fact."  Jerome Loreau has an eye for light and contrast in his travel photographs that include Edinburgh.

The route - today I suggest leaving Stills, and make for the Greyfriar's Cemetery. It's been described as both a mecca and a holy grail for photographers and its atmospheric grounds were frequently celebrated by Robert Louis Stevenson, who in turn inspired visiting American pictorialist photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn to follow in his footsteps. Since then, almost anyone who can hold a camera has visited the graveyard at somepoint.  We can walk up Cockburn Street, down into the Cowgate and Grassmarket, then up to Greyfriars entrance, opposite the Museum.

Robert Reihhardt, following in Alvin Langdon Coburn's footsteps

Weir's Close - Alvin Langdon Coburn,
inspired by Romantic stories and writing,
especially Robert Louis Stevenson

End of the course

We ended this course on a fresh sunny day at S. Queensferry, adding a coast location to our small selection of different environments that we have visited and explored photographically.
Alberto's still working away at those long exposure techniques with some interesting results. I like the use of this technique in the city, as it takes a popular landscape technique and applies it in a different location. If you haven't already found him, you might like Michael Kenna
Jenna's been using the camera almost like a notebook to record her trip. (I think she likes Edinburgh.) Putting pictures on photo sharing sites is good, but I think it's a good idea also to edit down your pictures to a tight selection and then turn them into something physical like a set of prints or a book. Blurb are good for putting your own books together and also have loads of examples of other people's projects for inspiration, including a lot on travel.
I liked the fact that Ali hadn't been to Swanston before, and I like to use photography as an excuse to find and explore places that I haven't been to before. I'd suggest that you stick to one camera for a while and get to know it - it takes a bit of time. When we were at the T Wood near Swanston you noticed how taking a picture based on a sky light-reading completely changed the appearance of the scene. That's one of the really important points of photography - by changing exposure, or lens, aperture or shutter speed, or going to black-and-white, you change the visual effect. These tools are worth playing with to see how they change the picture. In particular, spend time using the zoom lens in your X10 camera. Try shooting the same scene with wide angle settings and also telephoto. It changes the 'space' within the picture.
I would recommend books in the Basics photography series - David Prakel on Composition and also Michael Freeman's books, including The Photographer's Eye.
Malcolm has a few specific technical questions to do with transforming colour into mono, and also how photographers make their aesthetic decisions. Interesting stuff.  I think the Michael Freeman and David Prakel will interest you too. It's as much about developing judgement and tastes as about technical workflow, and looking at, talking about  and doing photography as much as possible is the way to get there. (You never arrive, by the way!) In particular though, you might like to look at Rolf Horn and especially his technique pages where he demonstrates how the print is an interpretation of the film negative. Yes, it's film, but with digital we're doing the same thing really and all of our techniques and tastes come from film, even if we don't realise it!
And of course, you are all welcome to visit my own blog - http://kbrame.blogspot.co.uk/, which discusses various ways of doing photography.
It's been a pleasure working with you and good luck with the photography.


Keith