On Landscape - Passing Through

The weather is a continual topic of conversation for many living in the British Isles, and for landscape photographers, it becomes something of an obsession. Trying to predict the perfect combination of factors that will give a cloud inversion or a misty woodland or a stunning sunset can be utterly frustrating. In this issues instalment of our lockdown podcast, we talk to Joe and David about their approaches to the dark arts of the weather whisperer.

After featuring two articles on tripods recently, a review of travel tripods and a short overview of tripod spikes, I thought a general chat with Joe and David about their own experiences with tripods would make interesting listening. We cover a reasonable amount of ground and, once again, we hope you enjoying listening to them as much as we do recording them.

Just before the New Year, Joe David and I recorded a podcast on the concept of “Truth to Nature”. It’s an idea that has its seeds in the romantic era of landscape painting when John Ruskin, a massively influential art critic and artist of the time, encouraged painters to closely observe the landscape and in doing so capture the natural world as truthfully as possible. The idea then has its echoes in an essay “A Plea for Straight Photography” in Stieglitz’s Camera Work magazine. Sadakichi Hartmann’s essay was critical of pictorial photography’s attempt at emulating other artforms, most notably painting. In our current era where photo editing has become easier than ever, are we seeing a return of the clash of straight vs pictorial photography? Prepare yourself for another podcast where non of your questions are answered but we have fun attempting…

We return to the Lockdown Podcasts and in this instalment, Joe Cornish, David Ward and I discuss ‘field practice’. By this I mean the way in which we go about finding images, what motivates us to go on a walk, what triggers our interest in a scene and how do we facilitate composing. It’s fairly freeform, as usual, although I promise that none of us had been drinking (we’re doing a New Year special for that one!) Without further ado…

Episode Nine

You can listen to the podcast on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts

A short podcast this time as a few of you groaned at the amount of time you had to listen to us waffle for. So this issue it’s a thirty-minute dip into three topics. Firstly, some thoughts about landscape photography as a genre – does it matter what it’s called and should we try other stuff? Secondly, what’s it like photographing at iconic, “overphotographed” locations and finally, because we all love a bit of clickbait, “Is the DSLR dead?” (I’ll spoil the surprise by saying “no but … yes but … ”

This issues podcast’s topic is books and specifically, Joe and David’s experiences making their first ones. Don’t forget, if you like these podcasts, please let us know and suggest a few topics we might discuss in the next one.

The concept of ‘beauty’ often seems to be a dirty word to those photographers from a ‘contemporary/academic’ background. The use of beauty is considered too bright a light to be seen direct for fear you go blind to the meaning behind a work. To those wishing to create works that reflect the natural beauty of nature, such an attitude seems anathema. Robert Adams strode a middle ground between these two camps and his book “Beauty in Photography” is an essential source material for anyone wishing to look more closely at the subject. His writing is accessible and concise without being dry, and his prior experience as an English professor pays dividends for the reader.

Another instalment of the lockdown podcast where Tim Parkin, Joe Cornish and David Ward discuss a few questions around photography including “How is the easing of lockdown affecting you?”, “How do you make the most of a photography workshop?”, “What makes a good photography book?”, “How do you see your photography changing over time?” and “Do you have any other non-photography creative outlets during the lockdown?”. Here’s a clue to the last question – you can guess whether it’s from me, David or Joe.

We finished our reader questions in the last Lockdown Podcase and so in this episode, I thought I’d ask about composition and whether Joe and David thought it was possible to teach, learn and how they go about it. We had a wide-ranging conversation and a few recommendations of book resources at the end. We hope you’re enjoying the podcasts as much as we’re enjoying making them.

We put a call out for question for our third lockdown podcast with Joe Cornish and David Ward. We managed to get through half of the questions last time and this issue we managed to complete the set.

As mentioned in last episode, we are looking at having a mini ‘in your house’ photography challenge. All three of us are going to give this a go (me and David have done something, Joe is still cogitating) and we invite anybody else who wishes to take part to submit some work. The deadline will be Monday morning and the only rules are that it has to be inside your house, not in your garden or out of a window.

We also mentioned last time that we’re having a mini book club chat next week where myself and David Ward are going to talk about Edward Muybridge, in particular the book “Motion Studies” and me and Joe Cornish are going to talk about Robert Adams book “Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values”. We’ll be discussing these in a weeks time, starting with Robert Adams, if you’d like to read them and ask us questions about them, please let us know.