Pinhole Landscapes - Take 2

I recently uploaded some scans of various pinhole landscapes but hadn't actually printed any out. You can see some of them here and here. I spent a few days in the darkroom the other week and was surprised to see how well the prints turned out. They have a richness, drama and depth of tone completely lacking in the scanned negatives, which now look rather flat in comparison. Of course, looking at an actual print and looking at something on the screen is a completely different experience, but I had never really thought that there would be such a wide discrepancy between a scan of a print and a scan of a negative. Or perhaps it just demonstrates that my darkroom skills are superior to my Photoshop skills!

I now feel encouraged to continue developing my darkroom work and to expand my pinhole photography repertoire, perhaps exploring the urban landscape. I might even try colour......

A few feet away

Last week, browsing in one of my favourite London bookshops - Koenig Books on Charing X Road - I came across a rather beautiful volume of photographs by Paul Strand, the renowned photographer whose work I'm ashamed to say I'm not very familiar with. The book is called The Garden at Orgeval and consists of black and white images of his garden in France, taken in the last years of his life - nothing spectacular at first glance, but beautifully composed quiet studies of plant forms and shapes.

From The Garden at Orgeval by Paul Strand

What led me to examine the book more closely was Strand's quotation on the opening page:

"The artist's world is limitless.
It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away.
It is always on his doorstep."

It is something which immediately struck home - how we are often blind to what exists under our noses, preferring the exotic, unusual or unfamiliar. It's certainly easier to make interesting work far from home - just being in a new or unknown location sharpens the photographer's eye. But surely it can be just as rewarding to observe and document our immediate surroundings, the stuff of everyday life in all its familiarity.

In The Gravity of Time, the introductory essay to the book, photographer Joel Meyerowitz explains how when he first came across this book as a young man, he thought the photographs were a bit dull and simple compared to Strand's iconic earlier work, and that Strand had 'probably lost his nerve and succumbed to some sort of visual ennui'. Only when he was approaching the same age as Strand was then, did Meyerowitz 'get it', understanding that a deep visual communion with the natural world was probably something you only appreciate with age. Artists throughout the centuries have tended to pare down their work in their later years and Meyerowitz proposes that perhaps it is a 'winding down of ambition and the measuring of the time that is left that draws them to this simplicity, within which lie the subtle complexities of nature often hidden from the eyes of the young.' You can listen to him reading the essay here

This is a tendency I've noticed in my own practice though I don't claim to have any deep communion with nature. As I get older my priorities seem to be changing. Instead of heading out to the street with my camera, I find my attention turned towards making still life photographs at home, using the objects I find to hand to create compositions which resonate with a personal meaning. However, I do wonder whether the reason for this is sheer laziness rather than any deepening of insight - it takes effort to go out and photograph in the city! I also struggle a bit with the kind of work featured in this book.  Close-up studies of nature - the kind of thing beloved by macro enthusiasts - don't particularly inspire me.

So this morning, I thought I would go out into the garden and see if anything caught my eye on my own doorstep. At this time of year, there is not much to see - a lot of brown branches and bare earth, the tangled remains of last year's growth. Yet there are still a few little traces of colour and some welcome signs of spring's imminent arrival. This is an exercise I have tried in the past - trying to draw inspiration from unpromising material - and is probably something I should do more often. Looking closely brings its own rewards.

There and back II

Another day, another walk. This time across fields and taking in three ponds and some derelict farm buildings for added interest. The fields are heavy with mud which sticks to my boots, the wind is bitingly cold and my hands freeze but it feels good to be outside as my lungs fill with the fresh air, blowing away my mental cobwebs.

The ponds are a feature of the landscape round here - I know of at least half a dozen. They are fed by springs which trickle down from the Edge Hill escarpment, the same escarpment where the Royalists camped out and surveyed the battlefield in the Civil War. I have done this walk at different times of the year, but it is in the winter months that their stark and mysterious beauty is most appealing....

There and back

Walking and thinking at the same time are ideally suited. In fact, I just thought of doing this occasional series of walking related posts whilst out on a walk this morning!  Going for a walk gives you time out from daily concerns and frees the mind to wander, just as your feet wander down the road. It's also good for you!

One of the things I find most frustrating about living in the middle of the countryside is the boredom that sets in, walking the same road and paths day after day, month after month, year after year - so much so, that I've virtually stopped going for walks round here. My eyes have become lazy and immune to the subtle changes around me. This morning, though, I thought I would try and turn that feeling of boredom into an advantage and make an effort to observe my surroundings more closely, to see if I could find things I hadn't noticed in the past, or to picture them in a different light. 

No two days are the same, depending on the hour, the weather, the season. At the beginning of my short walk this morning the sky was a cloudless blue but on my return, the clouds were rolling in from the west, casting dramatic shadows over the landscape. Things also take on a different appearance on the route back compared to the route out. In theory this should mean there will be something new to photograph all the time. I'm seeing this as a sort of challenge - to try and make an interesting photograph out of the banal and everyday. We shall see! 

The joys of spring

It wasn't so long ago that the fields were covered in a carpet of snow or else submerged under huge puddles of muddy water. There were no signs of life, the sun was in hibernation and winter seemed here to stay. My mood became correspondingly blacker as the months passed. In the last few weeks the sun has woken from its slumber and has gradually been working its magic - the landscape is transformed and my spirits are lifted.

Although everything is at least a month late, it was certainly worth waiting for - the wooded hillside is covered in a carpet of primroses the like of which I have never seen before; the blackthorn's beautiful white flowers adorn the bare branches in the hedgerow, resembling a Japanese painting; the daffodils on the village green turn their heads to catch the sun's rays; even the dandelions light up the verges in a riot of bright yellow. As the memory of the dismal winter slowly fades, it's at times like these that I really appreciate living in the country....

Chasing Sunshine

Things have cheered up considerably since my last post - the sun has come out, the buds are on the trees and I saw my first butterfly today! We have been starved of sunshine for so long that I find myself wandering around the house observing patches of light as they dance around the walls and doors, casting strange shadows and dagger-like reflections.  It's like some strange, ghostly presence has taken possession of the house....