The key factor in the technique I have evolved is SIMPLICITY. There are so many variables in photography that it is very easy to become lost in a sea of options. Film stock, filters, lenses, formats, editing (cropping), presentation, printing styles.... the list goes on and on. I have spent more time than I care to think about bogged down in this technical mire, and the change came suddenly, not on the road to Damascus but on the island of Lindisfarne in Northumbria.
To cut a long story short I was travelling around the country on a commercial commission and I took the opportunity to stop over on Lindisfarne for a couple of hours. It was December, and the weather was very cold and very changeable, all of which added to the eerie magic of the place. I managed to take about ten shots before my hands froze!
I got the proofs back from the lab. a few days later and was delighted to see images which conveyed, at least to me, something of what I had experienced on the island. I analysed how I'd taken the pictures - medium format camera (6 x 4.5cm), wide-angle lens, graduated grey filter, colour negative film, image composed in-camera (i.e. no cropping at the printing stage), and no tripod. This is how I've worked ever since. Apart from the addition of a couple of different lenses and filters, my technique has not changed since shooting those pictures back in 1978. One of them is in the Northumbria section of the gallery (ref. no. NN1)
There are times when I have to use a tripod, but I much prefer to do without it if I possibly can. Setting up a camera on a tripod takes away a lot of the spontaneity of shooting, and it is this quality which I think is a very important part of my approach to photography. I don't always "see" a photograph straight away - it's usually more a case of getting a feeling about a location that "there's a picture in there somewhere". I'll then explore and work around it, quite often taking only three or four shots - if I haven't got anything within ten or fifteen minutes I know I probably never will, and so move on.
So let's look at the technique in a little more detail. I use a medium format camera because it gives me a degree of automatic discipline which I can't get from 35mm. It's down to a combination of the physical size of the thing and the fact that there are only fifteen shots on each film - these things lessen the tendency to shoot first and think later.
Incidentally, I tend to see cameras and lenses as a necessary evil - something I have to have in order to get my images into print. Equipment is an expensive nuisance that has a tendency to break down and wear out. In the not-too-distant future, I've no doubt that technology will be developed which will enable high-resolution images to be captured electronically, literally with the blink of an eye. I look forward to it!
I often use one of three filters - two graduated greys (two different strengths), and a polarizing filter. The graduated filters are used to alter the sky rendering, either retaining detail or adding drama, depending on the strength of filter used. The effect of the polarizing filter is trickier to define - in general it enhances the colour saturation in a scene, but the degree of enhancement depends on things like the nature of the subject, angle of light etc. It's a suck-it-and-see filter - you really have to look through it to check its effect.
Once you've accepted the principle of getting everything right on the negative, careful composition in the viewfinder becomes a natural habit, and it adds to the discipline of shooting. You need to allow a little leeway at the edges of the frame to accommodate inaccuracies in the viewfinder, and slight cut off by the printer mask.
I often hear people talking about interesting places they've visited, and then they'll add "I took some photographs, but they don't really show how it really was". The implication is that "I'm not a very good photographer", but there is more to it than that.
When you look at a landscape, the looking is only part of it. What you are really doing is experiencing the environment. Your sight is only one of your senses which are all feeding information to your brain and creating a complete experience of the scene before you. So as well as the visual aspect of a place, you will be aware of things like scents (grass, flowers, pig muck, seaweed....), sounds (wind, water, birds, animals, traffic), tactile sensations (wind, rain, sunshine, textures of stone, grass etc.), and possibly taste (wild fruit, a blade of grass, a gin & tonic!). So is it any surprise that when you take a picture of a scene, and in so doing wipe out four of your five sensory inputs, the results are often disappointing?
So what can be done to make up for this lack of "sensory experience" in a photograph? I suppose the short answer is "creativity". By using certain techniques, you can raise the level of a photograph from being merely a visual record of a scene to turn it into something which has a better chance of conveying the atmosphere of a landscape to anyone who sees the photograph.
Briefly, some of these techniques, or elements, are:
A successful photograph invariably contains at least one of these elements, a really great picture probably contains three or more. I shall look at these techniques in greater detail later... watch this space!