Preface: I’m not entirely sure what prompted me to write this diatribe at this particular time. It is just one aspect of a growing dissatisfaction which I have with all this photography culture stuff. And irritation with pretty much everything that crosses my lawn.

A while ago, quite a while in fact, I made a conscious decision to choose photography as a hobby. Apart from the photography in itself, it seemed like a good excuse to get out of the house, and a way to meet interesting people and make new friends. And as the internet exploded it seemed to promise even more. All those websites, fora, photo sharing - a cornucopia of engagement with like-minded people.

Maybe it’s all my own fault, but it didn’t really work out that way. Over time I discovered that the photographic community, by and large, has the highest aggregation of snake oil sales(wo)men, frauds and egomaniacs in the known universe. In fact I’ve realised that I found very few like-minded people, and hardly community at all. Instead it was just a frantic souk milling with people shouting LOOK AT ME! ME! MEEEE!

Pretty much photographic blogging boils down to self-marketing and selling.  Most photography tweeters are plugging their own or their sponsors’ products. The number of people publishing quality material just for the love of it, be it photography itself or writing about photography is near zero. And as far as I can tell, in the increasingly vomit-inducing world of “landscape photography”, if you remove Guy Tal, it is exactly zero. And to be honest, you can probably have too much Guy Tal.

In less constrained themes there are a few beacons of hope. Andrew Molitor’s writings are largely way over my IQ threshold (no, not that IQ, the other one), but he writes very engagingly, and even when I haven’t got the faintest notion what he’s going on about, I enjoy reading him. The chap behind the Leicaphilia site is good too, and I enjoy reading his stuff even if I have very little interest in Leicas as such. And that’s about it - the other engaging writers gave up about 10 years ago. All the other sites in my bookmarks are full of regurgitated nonsense promising to make me such a better photographer if only I’d buy their workshop / course / ebook / presets, or buy that shiny new camera from the company that’s bankrolling their trip to Outer Wazookstan.

Sadly it’s pretty much the same thing at a personal level. I’m running the risk of upsetting a few people here, but frankly I don’t give a damn. Look at yourselves, people. Especially those of you who are my best friends forever when you want something, or when I buy your stuff, and then don’t write or call until that time you’ve got something else to sell. Fine, you’re in business to sell stuff, but just stop with being so fake about it. Only in the Photography World have I encountered this level of mendaciousness, and I’m getting so sick of it that it is getting close to putting me off photography altogether. The only solution I can see is to pull down the shutters and work in complete isolation, which is totally contrary to my initial motivations. I’ve always tended to believe in mutual assistance, but I’ve lost count of the number of photo buddies I’ve promoted, publicised, helped in other ways, only to see them pull the ladder up as soon as I was of no further use in the Quest to be a Master Nature Photographer. Sure, it could just be me - but really, it seems to be only photography as a pursuit that does this to people.

Why does photography drive such behaviour? Why do we accept that anybody with a camera and some ability in self-marketing can call themselves as “educator”? Is just because is it so easy? Does anybody have any theories?

Of course, there are a few exceptions, and I’m going to assume (if you’re reading this) that you know who you are, because if I included you in the above group, I wouldn’t be buying your stuff…

I’ll go and shout at some clouds now.

Summerbreeze is blowing through your window
And summerbreeze is blowing through your hair
Something in your eyes that took me by surprise
Don’t tell me that it ain’t there

Emiliana Torrini - Summerbreeze

Well, that’s a totally irrelevant quote. Although nothing is really irrelevant, is it?  There is no shortage of summer around these parts, even if the breeze part could do with some replenishment. So, I realised I don’t really write much about my own photography here these days, even if it is superficially the point of the exercise.

Therefore I would kindly direct you to some recent uploads. One, I’ve refreshed one of my “recent work” galleries here, with some, well, recent stuff.  It includes a significant representation of photos from Madeira, of which I have lots, and I’m still struggling to edit. The levadas of Madeira have capitvated me in a way that little else in quite some time, but getting that fascination across in photography is a puzzle.

In a very, very convoluted way the above quote sort of points to the next set, which is actually a refresh of a gallery I used to have here: Pyramiden, in Svalbard. A couple of weeks ago I was persuaded to do yet another backflip and agree to join a short expedition to East Greenland in September. Which means I needed to dust of some of “Arctic” stuff a bit. Maybe I’ll add some more.

Anyway, do please take a look. It’s free, it won’t hurt, and something may take you by surprise.

Lord it’s hot here.  Too hot to type.

Recently the photonet has thrown up a couple of pieces aiming to list the Best Cameras For Landscape Photography. Both DP Review and Photography Life have pretty much concluded that you must have a very big and expensive digital camera to do landscape photography, and frankly, if you don’t have a $10’000 Fuji GFX100, you might as well give up. I will say that DP Review have rebalanced things a bit with a video demonstrating that you can get excellent results with a basic DSLR, but the general theme, as ever, is that for some vague reason, “landscape” photography demands huge resolution.  Leaving aside the fact that neither list includes any camera I own, which frankly doesn’t bother me, this peer pressure pushing people to buy unnecessarily complex and expensive gear makes me angry.  Gear-oriented discussion of Landscape photography comes with a number of tired, ungrounded clichés, which apart from the ridiculous and ever increasing demand for megapixels, includes equating Landscape with “wide angle”, with ultra high end lenses, and huge backpacks.

Frankly it’s all rubbish. Just a couple of years ago people were salivating over 16 megapixel cameras, and winning awards with photos taking with 35mm film.  Those ancient cameras still work, and if your photos (or indeed my photos) are no good at 16, or even 6, megapixels, they’re not going to be any better at 100. You’re just going to have a lot less money to be able to spend on travelling around to actually enjoy photography.

And speaking of travelling, airline carry-on bag dimensions and weight are constantly decreasing. If you like to have a reasonable selection of focal lengths to chose from, even “full frame” is going to become troublesome.  There’s not much point in having that super mega camera or that super bright telephoto lens if you can’t afford to travel with them.

Of course sometimes the biggest and best is justified, but either because somebody else is paying, or because you’re wealthy.  And even then, the difference in outcome is often not much more than size.  Take Julian Calverly for example: while he does a lot of commercial work with a medium format system - where he actually needs tilt shift lenses - he also produces equally fabulous work using an iPhone.

Far be it for me to lay down the law, but I’m just passing on my experience - I spent too many years in the gear acquisition hamster wheel, and frankly it has bought me very little lasting pleasure. If I look at my favourite photos, there is no correlation whatsoever with the perceived quality of whatever camera I was using. Actually most of the few photos I have which have received external praise, and even generated income, were taken using a 5Mpix camera.  A camera which just happened to have excellent ergonomics.

And that’s the key really - the best camera for your landscape photography is the one you feel the most comfortable with, which will get out of the way and allow you to concentrate on the photography. The so-called “image quality” is close to irrelevant, as pretty much all cameras today are well past good enough.  And what differences there are are far from linear - a $10’000 Fuji GFX does not have image quality 10 times greater than a $800 Fuji X-T30. In fact in many cases you’d have to look very closely to see any difference.

My advice is simple - keep the weight down, and buy something digital with weather sealing. The rest will take care of itself.