Take my advice…

One thing I don’t think I ever done on this blog is to give any kind of advice on photography, or attempt to do what is generally passed off as “teaching”. It isn’t that I jealously hoard any knowledge I may have - in other spheres of life I am quite extensively involved in mentoring and passing on know-how - it is just that I am not aware of anything I have worthy of sharing. I don’t have any presets to sell you, in fact I don’t have any at all. I can’t tell you how to do composition. Or indeed exposure. I don’t have sponsored videos to share, or any kind of lessons to hawk. And even if I did, my aversion to social media, or indeed social anything, would be a bit of a blocker.

It works both ways: apart from some good advice from 2 or 3 people, any third party expertise which comes my way generally goes in one ear and out of the other (for example, “don’t put too many photos on your web site”). The same goes for “how to” books: I’ve certainly read plenty, enough to realise that pretty much all of them repeat the exact same basics, and to discover that generally I disagree with the remaining 10%.

I wish I did have more to share, maybe if that was the case I’d be a wildly successful influencer running fabulous workshops all over the world. But then I wouldn’t have time to watch YouTube channels.

However, I am conscious of very slowly developing, or perhaps more accurately settling, into a personal style. I’m also conscious that this style has come about by absorbing and adapting the work of other photographers through their books. Conversely, other photography books, which I may very well like as books, have helped by giving me a clear idea of where I actually do not want to go.

So that’s all I can offer: my advice is to look at and absorb as much photography, and indeed representative art, as you can, to feed your internal neural network, and steer you towards a path you will find satisfying. For me, books, rather than Instagram or Youtube or whatever work, but those can work as well. Don’t directly attempt to copy other’s work, but rather try react to it somehow passively and in your own specific way. Oh, and don’t chase likes, followers and cheap praise - all might give you a transient ego boost, but long term they mean nothing.

Books that I can recognise as having a significant influence on my own work include Arc & Line by Charlie Waite, The Antarctic From The Circle to The Pole by Stuart Klipper, Accommodating Nature by Frank Gohlke, Icelandic Wilderness by Daniel Bergman, Avanna by Tiina Itkonen, and pretty much everything by Otto Olaf Becker. Some notable books which I’ve reacted against (and I emphasise, that’s not a criticism of those books) include A Retrospective by William Neil, and Seven by David DuChemin. But that’s just me, hopefully everybody else will have a different combination, otherwise we’ll all end doing identical work.

Ok, that’s it. Back to YouTube.