Vision and Style

I tend not to think too deeply about the vision and style which drive my photography, if indeed I can be said to have such things. I have some sympathy with the late, great American photographer, Galen Rowell's sentiments when he wrote: "The best photographs speak for themselves. Attempts to analyse their meanings invariably detract from the special quality that is beyond words in the first place. The photographs that move me the most propel me into an emotional realm where my experience is no longer verbal. I wince whenever I hear a photographer limit the effectiveness of his work by trying to express its meaning in words, and I cringe when I read photo-criticism that authoritatively describes the vision that was in a particular photographer's mind at the moment the shutter was released on a day long forgotten in the nineteenth century." Rowell's words are reminiscent of Ansel Adams' thinking: "When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence."

Nevertheless, I am currently going through a period of reflection and reassessing my own photography. This is partly due to an enforced period of recuperation following a major operation at the end of January. During my recovery, I have been working through a backlog of post processing (deliberate in order to keep me occupied during 'house arrest') as well as assembling some portfolios of earlier work. My time at home has also enabled me to look at the work of other photographers in book form as well as online. But I am also looking forward, and am in the early stages of planning my first exhibition, for which I will need to construct an artistic statement. My aspiration is that the work contained in my first exhibition should 'flow' and perhaps give a sense of of what motivates me to take photographs and what it is that I try to convey about the landscape.

My thinking so far is at a very preliminary stage. I know that I am attracted to the big vistas, to big skies as well as to water, be it sea, loch, burn or waterfall. I know too that I thrive on light in the landscape. As much as I enjoy the abstracts and inner landscapes created by photographers such as David Ward (http://www.into-the-light.com/), I struggle to to find such compositions in the field and indeed I don't particularly enjoy looking for them as it just doesn't feel like 'me'. I could ask, 'why should I try to recreate them?' I enjoy David Bowie's music, but I don't want to rewrite Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

A few days ago, I began to re-read a book co-authored by Joe Cornish, Charlie Waite and David Ward, edited by Eddie Ephraums, called Developing Vision and Style: A Landscape Photography Masterclass. In this book, Cornish, Waite and Ward set out to answer a series of questions about their own vision and style and the same questions are then thrown out to a number of other professional, semi-professional and amateur photographers. The questions include:

- What does vision mean to you?

- How would you describe your vision?

- What is it based on? Is it evolving? If so, in what way?

- How do you try to convey your vision through the pictures you make?

- What does style mean to you?

- How would you describe your style?

- Is your style evolving? If so, in what way?

- Might style enhance or limit creativitiy? If so, how?

Over the next few days as I continue to progress my recovery (hopefully to the point when I might even be able to drive the Land Rover next week!), I intend to seek to try to answer these questions whilst at the same time bearing Galen Rowell's caution in mind. Watch this space for the answers. In the meantime, I have posted an image from that backlog of post processing. The image above was taken in Aros Park during a photography tour at the beginning of November. I don't think I have seen quite such deep and vibrant autumnal colours for some years.