I rarely enter photographic competitions, but the Scottish Landscape Photographer of the Year is an important point in my photographic calendar: Scottish landscape is my primary photographic interest and it’s always worthwhile to be able to place my own work in the wider context of other people's imagery. »
The Scottish Landscape Photographer of the Year 2019 results have been announced, and I am glad to note I got a commendation in the monochrome category for Assynt Evening. »
My current interest in black and white photography goes back to a three night wild camping trip in my favourite part of the world a couple of years ago. I had planned it for some time, with one particular image in mind, but alas, happened to run into an early heatwave, with all that it brings -- largely cloudless skies, haze that even a polarizer can't do much about, thunder, and rapidly forming, all encompassing, evening inversions. »
The question of the role and the importance of realism in landscape photography is one that keeps coming up over and over again. On the one hand we have the purists, holding onto old fashioned notions of truth, arguing that landscapes should be true to the land; on the other the free creatives, raising that millennia old question ‘What is Truth?’. And, broadly speaking, the former seem to have long lost the argument. »
Some of the photographers of old get rather upset when folk say ‘film slows you down’, so I won’t say that, but I’ll say it slows me down for sure. It’s not just the ‘on location’ pace, but also the time it takes before I get to see what I tried to visualise. »
Film is experiencing something of a renaissance these days, as attested on social media (#ishootfilm #filmisnotdead), and, perhaps more importantly, by the reappearance of numerous previously discontinued film emulsions—there is, again, money to be made from film. »
It’s been 10 years since the birth of the M4/3 camera system. I got my first M4/3 (Lumix GF2) in 2010 and never looked back. Indeed, I am about to argue that during that decade M4/3 has become the best camera system both for the landscape photographer on the move and a wildlife photographer alike, hitting the sensor size sweet spot. And yet, it’s completely overlooked by the outdoor movers and shakers! »