Tag Archives: planning

Location location location

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The title of this post is taken from a really terrible - on all sorts of levels! - TV programme in the UK that I have watched bits of once or twice…

This last week I met two potential models, with whom I plan to do some interesting and in part slightly crazy photoshoots in the near future (not necessarily with the two of them together, though that is also a possibility at some time in the future). One of the very nice things to come out of these discussions is that I am thinking a lot about about locations for shoots - we have a number of ideas, and so I can link plans for landscape excursions with planning photoshoots with these two lovely models. This has to be a good thing!

An idea developed with one of the models involves a particular setup on a hillside. I know which hillside I want to use, so I planned an exploratory return trip this weekend. The photographs I have from my last visit are quite uninspiring, for example:

Castlelaw Hill Fort, Pentland Hills

Castlelaw Hill Fort, Pentland Hills

But today I had snow to contend with! The car wouldn’t even get up the little road to the car park when I was out before dawn this morning, so I gave up on the idea of exploring the hill altogether - and explored some fields and woods instead! There are some images (just the digital ones - the film ones will take a little longer) in a gallery tracing some of the changes from autumn-winter.

Castlelaw Hill, Pentland Hills

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The beauty of autumn

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The beauty of autumn

The beauty of autumn

I love the autumn - the clouds that fill the skies, and the soft gentle light that allows for a different kind of photograph to be taken from the harshness of summer light. So whereas other members of the family, and colleagues at work are sorry to see the summer days going and resent the autumnal weather and nights drawing in, like a little child I’m getting rather excited at the opportunities that lie before me with the soft diffused light that is the hallmark of this season. Of course, all the seasons offer something different, but autumn and spring are perhaps the two I prefer, at least in terms of light.

I’m planning a few short trips over the winter into the Scottish hills so that I can benefit from this light in a variety of landscapes, and am also intending to try a variety of film types (b/w print film in particular) as well as the usual digital images. So interesting times ahead…

An invitation and a warning

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Airthrey Loch

Airthrey Loch

I have been tidying up photographs on my computer, clearing out some that I’m not going to use, and finding others that I’ll still want to work on. I liked this one, from Airthrey Loch early one morning in July: the path seems to be an invitation to get into the water… with the life saving equipment acting as a bit of a warning to not stray too far out!

Speaking of getting into the water: I’m excited by plans for tomorrow: very early in the morning I’m collecting a friend who has agreed to model for me, and we’re off to create a series of photographs at a nearby beach; I envisage this being a little narrative. She is doing all this in the knowledge that I’m expecting her to end up lying in the water… the North Sea in Scotland, even in August, is not where most of us would want to lie down, especially not just as dawn is breaking and the air temperature is still relatively low! So I’m excited but also a bit nervous, hoping that everything is going to go as planned and that my ideas will lead to at least passable results - I don’t want her to get wet and cold for nothing!!

Using my photographs for my writing

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One of the things I have been involved in for almost 20 years is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s not my conflict, and it’s not my land, but I have been active in this area for a long time. My academic work is also closely related - more details here. I don’t want to discuss my involvement in these issues in any great detail here, but one of the things that I have found very satisfying is the linkage I have been able to make between my commentating on the reality of the conflict and my photography, in this Ekklesia essay, for example. Awareness that I was planning this article also made me seek out particular themes for my photography with a sense of responsibility to the subject, as well as to the putative reader - a kind of very real photojournalism, if you like.

The galleries that are referred to in the article are at present incomplete. I have not yet had time to develop these sufficiently, but more images will come soon. I will also post here when they do, since I also have a series of images that form a study on the Apartheid Wall in Bethlehem.