My published photographic output has been decreasing a lot recently. I’m continuing to lose interest in my own output, a trend which has been ongoing for a least a few years. On the other hand my interest in other people’s photography remains high, and there are a few books and other publications I’ve discovered over the past few months which deserve an overdue mention.

Towards the very top of the list is the high-end periodical “Land|Sea”, published by Triple Kite in association with OnLandscape. The first (and I really hope not the last) issue features in-depth interviews and portfolios from a series of artists nominally working in the Landscape area, but who’s output diverges significantly from the standard long exposure crowd-pleasing beach+rocky headland+castle+sunset bilge. Throughout the pages there lies ample proof that there is at least as much scope to be creative in landscape photography as to be a copyist.

The first issue features Joe Wright, Valda Bailey, Al Brydon, Giles McGarry, Finn Hopson and Paul Kenny. There’s plenty of variety but the quality is constantly high. The scope is very inclusive, ranging from (fairly) straight landscape, to abstract, to urban landscape and much else. The publication quality is sumptuous, beautifully printed on heavy grade paper, and the writing, typography and layout are of a very high standard. The online magazine OnLandscape has featured some very accomplished photographers and sets the bar high - Land|Sea carries on the tradition in print.

Personally I find printed photography much more involving than viewing on a screen, even when the screen is high quality. For me, layout and space contributes a lot to the experience, and being able to sit back and enjoy such a high quality (and ad-free) print experience easily beats squinting at my iPad.

Apart from Land|Sea, Triple Kite publishes equally high quality monographs from a range of photographers, and hopefully I’ll get around to writing about a few of these in the near-ish future.In the meantime, if you’re at all into quality photography, you deserve to buy yourself a copy of Issue 1 of Land|Sea as a New Year present!

Land | Sea is a courageous initiative from Triplekite Publishing, leaving behind the safe waters of so much landscape publishing and making a very strong claim to entrance in the “art photography” market. Given the “pretty pictures” baggage that goes with the general view of landscape photography - notwithstanding Gursky, Burtynsky, Lik (er, sorry?) et al, - it’s quite a tall order to gain any traction, but I certainly wish Land | Sea a long and successful life.

Over the years, a late spring long weekend on French Mediterranean coast, specifically in or around St Tropez, has become something of a tradition. Although I’m not that much into the boutique shopping, or gawping at the ultra-rich (well probably mid-high net worth actually) individuals with their floating gin palaces and Bentleys and whatever, it’s no great hardship. The beach is relaxing, the food is good, and the surroundings are gorgeous. Usually, during the shopping breaks, I manage to sneak off and indulge in a little photography. I very quickly got bored of “street” photography, the denizens of “Saint-Trop” are rarely photogenic to my mind, but instead I like trying to find hints of the past quiet, isolated fishing village, away from the glitz, the painfully bohemian and the tourist tat. So this year, I was delighted to come across an exhibition by French travel-street photographer, Xavier Roy, who’s book “L’Autre Saint Tropez” I had read about. The exhibition was a more general sample of his travel photography, with some local stuff mixed in, and it kept me entertained for quite a while. I was also able to buy one of the last copies of his St Tropez book, and get to chat with him and get my book signed. I came out with a grin plastered all over my face.

Xavier Roy’s photography is film based, black and white, and quite timeless. His style is subtle and the delicacy of his compositions takes a while to sink in. I mentioned to him that I thought it was quite a challenge to peel away the superficial in Saint Tropez, which he agreed with. Some of the most successful images in his book make use of off-season fog to soften the ambience, but others revel in the harsh summer light. Others in turn are quite abstract, in particular a set of dense, blurry, disorientated grainy views over the bay at dusk, which to me very effectively communicate the torpid, quiet Mediterranean heat.

© Xavier Roy, click to visit gallery

© Xavier Roy, click to visit gallery

There are many more facets to the collection, much of which is included in Roy’s web galleries. They’re well worth a visit if you’re into this kind of contemplative street / travel. Actually I would say his style is better deployed on the photos he shows from his travels to Asia and especially Latin America.

Anecdotally, I was particularly struck by the cover photo. It’s not a million miles away from something I attempted two years ago, but without the distant figure which makes all the difference between expression and technique. Never too late to learn I guess - and I’m sure I’ll get the opportunity to try again next year.

I’m gradually building up quite a large library of Antarctica literature, science and photography books, but my most recent acquisition is easily amongst the best.

“The Last Ocean - Antarctica’s Ross Sea Project”, by John Weller, caught my eye in a fairly highbrow Art bookshop, the sort that usually only stocks books with blurry, grim, preferably black & white photos.  Certainly nothing as common as nature photography.

But The Last Ocean _is_ nature photography. Actually, it is extremely good nature photography, possibly the best contemporary Antarctic photography I’ve ever seen. John Weller’s photography is restrained, giving the land, the sea, and its native inhabitants space to breathe. Unlike so much other work, these photographs are about their subject, not about where the photographer has been or how hard he/she can push the saturation slider.  They are sometimes dramatic, but it’s never forced. This photography draws you in and captivates you. It doesn’t make you go “Wow! Great Capture! You must have a great camera!”, but rather it demands that you linger and let you eyes explore. It’s meditative, subtle and thoroughly gorgeous.

But that’s not the end of The Last Ocean by any means.  Photography is only half the story. The book is full of excellent, reflective essays on the Ross Sea ecosystem, and anecdotes about making the photographs. In fact I found that I had to read the book twice, once for the essays, and once for the photos. And then I read it again, twice.  The essays are not of the clingy, preachy, hand-wringing variety one might fear, but rather are informative, scientifically literate and very readable.

The Last Ocean is associated with the wider Ross Sea Project, a voluntary organisation started in 2004 to promote the establishment of a marine protected area (MPA) in order to conserve the pristine qualities of the Ross Sea, Antarctica. There’s also a film. But start with the book. You won’t regret it.

And if you happen to browsing Orell Füssli’s art book section in Zürich, watch out, they may still have some copies. They’re near the blurry, grainy black & white naked ladies books.

A while back I made a bit of a mistake. I wrote about Stuart Klipper, and in particular his book, “The Antarctic: From the Circle to the Pole”, here, and I was pretty enthusiastic about it. The problem is I didn’t realise quite how rare it is, and a few days after my post, coincidentally or not, Amazon and all other vendors (for example the excellent Longitude Books) were out of stock.  Bugger.  I did manage to get Amazon.de to take an order, but every now and again they send me a stream of undecipherable Germanic e-commerce babble which I assume means they’d love to take my money but they can’t. 

So I was pretty surprised not to mention happy to discover Amazon UK suggesting that I buy it new from a 3rd party vendor for just £7.22. And it’s just arrived.

Over the past few days I’d been enjoying Joseph Holko’s Antarctic images, and feeling a little intimidated by them.  They’re dramatic, full of contrast and vivid flashes of colour, and sharp enough to cut through steel. They grab attention. I despair of ever being able to get anywhere near this standard.  But although I don’t in way want to dismiss them, I’m not sure I ever actually remember Antarctica looking like that.  Antarctica looks the way Stuart Klipper photographs it. It’s mysterious, unattainable, incomprehensible in it’s alien vastness. It’s really not the world of highly saturated dramatic icebergs and penguins that we’re getting increasingly subjected to. Stuart Klipper lets Antarctic speak to us, rather than impose his vision on it, and it makes a huge difference. He doesn’t go the uninvolved, dispassionate lengths of the more conceptualist art landscape crowd, there’s still a considerable emotional attachment involved, but you get the impression of a photographer who has taken his time to take a long look before pressing the shutter release.

Of course, Holko will sell, and Klipper probably doesn’t much. And Holko is a photographer, while Klipper has at least one foot in the “artist” camp. These are just observations, Joseph Holko is a fantastic photographer, and I’m just using his work to contrast with Stuart Klipper’s, I’m not being judgemental. But although I certainly don’t claim any artistic merit for myself, I do feel that my own photography is somewhat validated by Klipper’s. Sure, I’ve tried to go for the in-vogue ultra-impact approach myself, but I’m not comfortable with it and I think it shows. Which is probably why in my heart of hearts I prefer my XPan work. Not specifically because of the format, but because it’s on slide film, and there’s very limit scope in pushing that beyond what-you’ve-got-is-what-you-get.

Anyway, I’ve got a book to read tonight.

The internet has brought about a huge change in book publishing. In the “old days”, getting a book published meant getting a publisher, an editor, a designer, a printer, a distributor and probably a lawyer or two. All this presented a high bar to entry, and although self-publishing, at a range of levels, could work, generally you had to jump through the hoops, and this provided a reasonable quality filter. Nowadays all you need is a desktop publishing application and a web service.

One area which has bloomed in this new world are photography “how to” eBooks. There are countless examples on offer, on topics ranging from the ultra-specialist to getting started guides, and quality ranging from absolute crap to excellent. And with wide ranges of pricing to match.

There are various ways to evaluate eBook quality, including design, layout, writing, photography and content. They don’t always come together - I have examples of eBooks which look gorgeous, but where the content is a severe let-down, basic to the point of laughable. I’ve also had to hack through jungles of mangled prose delivered with all the grace of a 3rd rate corporate PowerPoint presentation, to get to a kernel of valuable information. I haven’t come across many photography eBooks which tick all of these quality criteria, but of those that do, several come from the (digital) pen of Bruce Percy.

His latest eBook, “The Digital Darkroom: Image Interpretation Techniques” doesn’t really break any new ground - in fact the topic has been done to death by the likes of Michael Freeman, John Paul Caponigro, Alain Briot, David duChemin and a host of others - but it just does it better, by avoiding mystification and waffle, and bringing a very welcome clarity of expression to the table.

The topic is essentially an extension of ideas about image composition, discussing how you can use digital darkroom tools to help to lead the eye and to enhance the composition you made in the field. There is no discussion of technology here, just the ways in which generic software tools can be used. This in stark contrast to another eBook I purchased not so long ago, on Dodging and Burning, which I expect to cover similar ground, but was actually a sumptuously designed never ending rundown of various things you can do in Lightroom. I don’t even use bloody Lightroom. While I expected it to be an enjoyable read, I didn’t necessarily expect to learn that much from Bruce’s book, thinking that I already know this stuff, and that anyway it will be applicable principally to Bruce’s very distinctive style. I found out I was quite wrong, on both counts.

The book starts off by discussing visual paths through an image, and how the eye can get attracted - or distracted - by some sometimes quite innocuous areas. Where often people will tend to boost things, like saturation or contrast, Bruce shows that locally reducing such parameters can be more effective in achieving a good balance. It also helps that his example photos are pretty good from the outset, in that it the subtle enhancements he makes are all the more impressive in their effect. A set of case studies demonstrates various techniques, and includes the application to portraiture as well as landscape. I have to say the book immediately made me take a closer look at the photos I’ve recently been editing, and inspired to add some touches I otherwise would not have thought of. I have my own approach to enhancing areas of images, and actually it uses a tool which Bruce doesn’t cover - but that’s all for the better, as seeing things from his perspective can only add value to mine.

Getting back to design, typography and layout, it is clear that Bruce Percy, unlike far too many photographers, not only cares about such things, but is skilled at them. It makes a big difference - so many pundits on photographic style preach from the most horrifically designed eyesores of websites.
On a final point, the vast majority of eBooks I find are of the “read once, delete” variety. This one is quite the opposite, being both a rewarding read, and a reference I’ll come back to many times.

There’s a lot packed into the 37 pages, and although the presentation is clear and easy to follow, it isn’t necessarily suitable for complete beginners. Oh, and one more thing: at £9.99,“The Digital Darkroom: Image Interpretation Techniques” is pretty expensive for an eBook. But there are those that know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Unless you fit in that category, I thoroughly recommend this eBook, and indeed the others you can find on Bruce’s web site.