New Work - Industrial Processing

Nearly two weeks since my last post...life has been busy! Happily though, I've been able to put some time into new work and not been completely consumed by the day job. One of the things I was looking forward to after moving from the empty expanses of Suffolk countryside, was photographing the industrial architecture and landscapes of my new home in the North West. These images are some of the first results of that endeavour.

The Potential Difference I     2011

I've also been experimenting with some post-processing to create specific atmospheres for these photos. HDR is in danger of becoming a cliché it seems (and with so much of it being overdone to the point of ridiculousness, that's not surprising). I don't want to go down that route, but the techniques intrigue me, and there can certainly be creative validity to it. So instead of running my photos through a piece of $30 software, I've taken a little time to more gently and carefully alter the work, hopefully with some success.

The Potential Difference II     2011

The idea of photographic purism doesn't interest me in the slightest. In fact, since the advent of Photoshop and high-quality digital equipment, I think it's an irrelevance. If one chooses to place artificial limitations on oneself instead of using the tools available to express one's creativity, that's fine. But don't preach to me about my work having less validity because I have taken the image from the camera and turned it into something different.

England's Green and Pleasant     2011

It's certainly possible to go too far, and it's certainly true that post-processing won't (in most cases) turn a bad photograph into a good one. But then, much of this is subjective. Personally, my aim when shooting is to achieve the composition I want (and I don't always follow the 'rules' on that either)...but what I do with the raw image I capture is determined not by artificial restraints, but by my creative concept and vision.

Black Gold, Black Sky     2011

These images are post-processed in this way for a very specific reason, because the contrast between the skies and the man-made elements is enhanced and emphasised, and the effect of our presence on the environment is dramatised. In the last two, of the Stanlow oil refinery at Ellesmere Port, this concept is distilled into a depiction of the industry and landscape both in harmony and in opposition, the sky itself seemingly created by the smokestacks of the giant plant below.

Less valid than an unaltered photograph? Some may think so. I think not.

Featured!

On Etsy's UK front page...

A day at the seaside

La Nuit Américaine lll      2011

Southport is a very typical English seaside town. Once a fashionable resort, it now possesses only faded grandeur, as evidenced by the decaying but still beautiful Art Deco lamps which still line the promenade. 

La Nuit Américaine ll      2011

'La Nuit Américaine', also known as 'Day for Night' refers to the film-making technique of manipulating film and lighting to create the illusion of darkness or moonlight while shooting in the day. 

La Nuit Américaine l      2011

These shots, taken at twilight, use this filmic quality to evoke and relate a bygone era of bright young things, when the English seaside was in its heyday and celluloid in its infancy.

And the last shot from my trip to the seaside was captured not among the manicured gardens along the promenade, but in a car park strewn with rubbish at the back of a half-derelict building, where quite by chance, I came upon an angel.

Last Exit      2011

All these images are now available as prints in my Etsy shop.

At last...

Seems like ages since I had a chance to get out and actually take some new photographs. This weekend I managed it at last, with a trip into the Lancashire hills. And at last it feels like Spring is finally coming, after a long hard winter.

Springtime 1, 2011

Springtime 2, 2011

Springtime 3, 2011

Springtime 4, 2011

Light and Brilliance

What I did this gloomy February Sunday afternoon. A treasury featuring the incredible depths of talent in the UK based photographers of Etsy.

Look, click and comment here.

Actually, that's not all I did this gloomy Sunday...but the other thing is staying under wraps for now. All will be revealed in due course!

Dis/Integration

This ongoing photographic series evolves from an interest in surfaces under stress, weathering, deterioration and decay. Dis/Integration is an exploration and exposition of the process in which distress and decay in themselves create beauty.

Dis/Integration Series 1-6

The UK's East coast, where I live and where all these images were captured, is an area where the elements are acting dramatically on the coastline and landscape.

The sea is rarely angry here, but its formidable power is still felt, as erosion gradually but inexorably eats into the land. Whole villages have disappeared, and the predicted rise in sea levels mean large areas are expected to succumb in the future. The coast is studded with man-made attempts to hold the sea at bay, but the task is futile.

Dis/Integration Series 7-13

The weather is rarely extreme here. We are sheltered from the atlantic storms which batter the western coastline. But sometimes, when the wind swings around, the weather comes straight from the arctic circle, or the winds scream across the European continent from Siberia, turning our coast into a desolate, inhospitable, but still beautiful place.

Dis/Integration Series 14-16

And with the weather comes destruction and decay. An unstoppable decomposition of the manufactured and also the natural world, a constant reminder that everything created is ultimately destroyed, that birth is the beginning of a journey with only one possible outcome, that despite the advance of civilisation and technology the power of nature remains always outside our control.

Dis/Integration Series 17-19

So, the question becomes whether we despair at our lack of ability to control our ultimate destiny or that of our creations, or accept the transience inherent in our existence and celebrate the moments we experience and the beauty within them. The Dis/Integration series is an invitation to experience every moment as fully as we are able and focus on the things we can control instead of the things we can't, in the knowledge that our time is short. 

Find the complete portfolio here.

Inspirations - This Sceptred Isle

"This precious stone set in the silver sea"
William Shakespeare

Like the documents of decay which make up my Dis/Integration and Surface projects, many of the  other photographs I take in this country are studies in the power of nature, its capacity both to create and destroy, and through either process create a purity of beauty which is at once definitely aesthetic and indefinably metaphysical.  

Each image a captured moment, an experience, and each immediately lost in time, the record merely a substitute, a cipher for the experience. The moment becomes the stuff of memory, and imagination, without the possibility of empirical verification...the time and space changed irrevocably even as the shutter closes. 

And so the image becomes what it evokes. Recognition, recollection, inspiration, contemplation. The viewer experiences not the moment which was captured, but their own response to the record. The empty beach becomes their personal environment, the flower blooms in an imagined garden, the landscape creates a landscape of the mind. 

The captured moment is just the starting point, the catalyst for a reaction and the beginning of a journey. The image may be manipulated and distorted to create a more concentrated, distilled version of the moment, into which  we pour the water of our own emotion and experience. Every image is an imperfect representation of a perfect moment, and from every image, we create or recreate our own. 

The coast, landscape, urbanisation and countryside of this land, the power of nature shaping and changing them moment by moment, subtly and violently, creating images of beauty and evoking memory and emotion which at times are also awesome in their affective power, delivers constant ever changing inspiration for the mind and soul.

My photographs of 'this sceptred isle' are humble attempts to convey and catalyse that power. See the results at my portfolio site.

New Work - Weathered Wood and Panoramic Beachscapes

January was good for creativity, if not so much financially. Added three new works to my ongoing Dis/Integration series, which centres on the abstract aesthetics of decay and deterioration in our coastal features and sea defences. 

Dis/Integration 17

And also began a new series of panoramic beachscapes, under the title of Convergence, emphasising the amazing beauty of empty and desolate expanses of sand contrasted against huge and dramatic skies.

Convergence 3

As always, more to be found, and prints for sale, at Etsy.