In an attempt to spice things up a little, I’m going to be podcasting a few blog entries — they’ll simply be an unabridged reading of the entry, possibly with a variety of retarded localised accents to make things interesting. I have no idea if it’ll work well or at all but I may as well give it a try — perhaps continue surfing the web while I read to you in the background? Forgive the vanity to your right… but I have to get my kicks somehow.

I can’t do a very good Italian accent, so don’t laugh! Fast forward to 3:40 if you want to just hear the ‘exciting’ bit with the shitty Italian accent, and a hint of Dan Brown-esque American storytelling…

Photographers have it easy compared to our painter comrades. We both deal in luminance and colour, tone, texture and saturation, but at the end of the day painters start with a blank canvas and nothing but the camera of their mind’s eye. Some painters will probably tell you that it makes their life easier, being able to create anything their imagination conjures up. Surely though, controlling the minuscule movements of mixing pigment and the brush itself is infinitely more difficult than raising the shutter on a camera. Then there are those that claim photography is harder — you can only work with what you’ve been given. There is some leeway of course: trickery of the eye and your ability to move props and pose models, but at the end of the day, that’s all you have: you can’t magic a dragon out of thin air.

Photography is all about working with what you’ve got. There is a small amount of knowledge that you need to know before you can operate a camera but we’re talking 3 or 4 simple equations — and the ability to push down a button. Point, and shoot. You can affect how much light enters the camera and that’s it. It’s because of this simplicity and the switch-over to digital cameras that we’re now swamped with thousands of photographers; you, your mother and her mother can be a photographer. It’s no surprise then that selling photos has also become a lot harder: there are more photos in circulation and thus it’s harder to be seen. You can still get lucky, but more than likely your only chance to make money today is as a stock or paparazzi photographer. Like almost every art form it’s one big labour of love: you pray that one day you’ll become the next Monet or Ansel Adams but chances are you won’t.  There are so few rich artists, it’s depressing.Whether it’s due to a lack of talent or saturation of the market I don’t know. What I do know is the one thought that courses through the mind of every person that’s made art their life-long dream: will I only be famous after I die?

To separate themselves from the pack, to stand out, artists try to be different. ‘Yet another photo of some daffodils’ isn’t quite as appealing as ‘Exploding daffodils in the bedroom of the woman that broke my heart’. Almost every photographer you’ve heard of or seen today will have been unique — that’s what it takes to not sink into the mire of boring, formulaic photographers, your voice forever unheard, your view of the world unseen.

It’s all about chasing the perfect photo. Like storm-chasers, train-spotters or groupies chasing the perfect tornado, rare train or celebrity photographers must try so, so hard to get the perfect photo.  Place yourself one centimeter to the left and you might ruin the entire photo. You might have to wait for a cloud to cover the sun to get the perfect light conditions, or even wait for the sun to be in the perfect position before you take the photo. A landscape could be completely average and nondescript at midday, but the most beautiful sight you’ve ever seen at 5pm as the sun begins to set.

Photographing people is another beast entirely: the merest flick at the corner of a girl’s lips might make or break a photo. A glint of sun refracting off her eye could change the meaning and the impact. Is she breathing in or out; are her muscles tensed or relaxed? Even the greatest photographers of all time might take thousands of photos of the same  setup — as the years go by, the ratio of good-to-bad photos will improve but you’re still searching for perfection, and sometimes that’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Fortunately I’m a landscape photographer. I’m quite good at portrait work, I just don’t have the experience — and being a good photographer takes a lot of experience. Landscapes don’t go anywhere: the sun continues to rise, the clouds roll on by — you can keep practicing and practicing, with landscapes. With people… it’s a little trickier. One day I’ll put in the hours and chain down one of my photogenic female friends, get the lights out and go to town! One day.

So there I was in Venice, up a clock tower. It was 3pm and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. Being the geek that I am, I phoned my dad and asked him what time the sun would set — 6pm, 3 hours away. Fine, I can wait 3 hours. I’ve got a book and a bottle of water. There are all sorts of pretty tourist girls swanning around that I can chat to, and take photos of (with their own cameras, of course!) Two hours pass, it starts to get dark, my pulse quickens. I dart around the tower, surveying how different Venice looks in the fading light, looking for the perfect angle for the perfect photo.

‘The tower will be closing in 10 minutes, please take the elevator back down.’

Shit. I smile and nod at the Italian, my mind quickly working through the available solutions: I wasn’t about to head back down the tower after waiting for two hours! It wasn’t a big tower, and there weren’t any obvious dark corners. I looked up and wondered if I could wedge myself inside the bell itself. Maybe in films… but not here in real life. I was out of time and only one option remained: climb out one of the windows and cling to the wall. They do it in films… they inch themselves along a thin ledge…

The Italian usher was slowly walking around the tower, shooing people into the elevator. I only had 30 seconds to decide — wuss out and waste two hours of my life, or… chase the photo. I jumped onto the windowsill and looked down — Shit — I turned around and inched backwards until my toes were on the ledge — Crap — I reach to the left and grab the edge of the next portal — Phew — I’m safe for now, but the pounding of my heart against the ancient brick wall would suggest I’m still in in a wee spot of bother. Finally, the sound of the descending elevator! I slide myself along the ledge, my feet now splayed like a ballet dancer’s and pull myself back inside.

There I am, all alone and king of the hill! I camped out for another hour, constantly assessing the landscape, sizing up the prey, waiting to strike. An hour later, I struck gold — a full moon! A total fluke, but completely deserved. I pulled out the camera, struck a pose not unlike a war-time sniper and… wait! A big ship too! Click. Bang!

That’s how I chased my perfect photo of Venice. It’s not a stereotypical view of Venice but I challenge you to find another like it.

It was getting cold and I had no food; I was out of water and thirsty. I packed up quickly and pushed the call button on the elevator. Nothing. I pushed it again. Still nothing. I looked out through a window and grinned in the darkness, wondering if it was possible.

To be continued…

There are lots of pretty photos in this entry. Feel free to scroll down to them if you don’t feel like reading. They’re not my photos though — but you get lots of those next week!

For the rest of the week you’ll likely get more highly interesting (or perhaps boring) posts on the Faroe Islands. If you didn’t know, or you’ve only just discovered the delightfully British realm of my blog, I’m going on holiday on the 13th July — next Monday! I have to admit, when I realised I was leaving in under a week I squealed with both excitement and worry. I think you’re meant to do lot of preparatory work before flying into a cold, rainy, desolate middle-of-nowhere island. A lot of preparation which I’ve kind of skipped doing so far. Oops.

I blame this blog! I’m writing when I should be cleaning my camera lenses! I’m shoving frozen peas down my shorts when I ought to be making sure I have enough clean jumpers (sweaters) to keep me warm!

Anyway, I have done a little research into what will be my home for 17 days (which is an awfully long time to spend in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, I tell you!)

First, a more detailed map.

If you’re wondering how big these islands are, the simple answer is ’small’; the exact answer is: from north to south  it’s 70 miles (113km) and from east to west only 47 miles (75km)! There are 18 islands which have a rather grand total area of 545 square miles (1400km²) — the UK, by comparison, is 94,000 square miles. And the UK is small (the USA is 3.7 million square miles, by the way — you think you have population issues…?) If you click the map, you’ll see where I’m staying — Klaksik — in the the north east, quite close to ‘BORÐOY’. It’s only about 20 miles as the crow flies from the capital Tórshavn but it still takes 50 minutes to drive it (look for the bridges and tunnels between the islands shown by dotted lines, there’s no direct route!)

So I’ll be spending most of my time in a town with a vast population of about 4,500 (the second largest in the country!) The address of where I’m staying is simply the town name followed by a number (’Klaksik 53′) — how cool is that?! If you’re nodding and saying ‘Cool!’ then good on you; that is why I chose the Faroe Islands! There are only a handful of locations like it in the world, and this is the only one that isn’t tropical.

Anyway, the people — they’re like Vikings, with all the braided beards, horned helmets and daunting tallness removed. I’m told I’ll be the tallest person in the country (…!) I will of course obtain photographic proof that they’re all really short (and cute, in the case of the girls, my host hastened to add). They seem to have kept their Scandinavian looks, but thanks to to the occasional rape-and-pillage by Portugese, Spanish and Turkish sailors there are a few darker-skinned and intense-looking people too. Mostly though, they’re just plain short.  Probably due to the inbreeding, if you think about it: 2,000 Viking settlers started it all and almost everyone there today stems from those original bloodlines. First cousins are considered ‘quite distant’ in Faroese terms…

(Incidentally, none of these photos are mine. They all come from Ólavur Frederiksen’s site, a fantastic Faroese photographer.)

There haven’t been any celebrities of International renown (except perhaps for Teitur, a musician) — perhaps on a local or Nordic scale, or if you’re really into ancient Norse texts, you might find some. They’re famous for fishing whales (and their wind-dried sheep) — that’s about it. If you don’t believe me, here’s a list of all their famous people. Leave a comment if you recognise any of them.

On the topic of whales, apparently, if I’m very lucky, I’ll get to participate in a whale hunt! Whaling is part of their culture, their heritage and their livelihood. There aren’t a whole lot of resources in the Faroe Islands; the sea is one of them and whales have provided valuable meat (and blubber!) for centuries. It’s a little sad that it has almost been banned, even though only 950 are caught each year. Is butchering pigs or cows any worse? They’re all mammals…

If only a bloody, sanguine-saturated sea didn’t make for such an awesome photo, eh?

(It was a toss-up between a photo of them jumping jovially through the water, or one of them dead on a beach…)

I won’t actually be killing any whales (I think) — it’s more of an involved process than ‘just’ killing them: there’s a sighting (probably by some ‘official whale scouter’); then the rallying of the whole town (really, the whole town takes part). Then they all jump into boats to hunt and drive them towards the beach. And then… I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to wait and see!

Talking of boats, we’ll have one to get around with. Which is how we’ll get to the tiniest and most remote islands (some of which have a population of… 1) and also how we’ll get to rocks (smaller and less grassy than an ‘island’) that have nothing on them but thousands of puffins. Puffins like these:

It can get a little rough at sea though, which is apparently why we have to stay very close to the coast. If you check the map again and find ‘Suðuroy’ (which we will be visiting), the following video is an example of what the sea can be like during the crossing:

I have a feeling that being able to tread water for 10 minutes might not be all that helpful if we capsize. Hopefully he has life jackets…

Back to the geography: the Faroe Islands are very low-lying (the highest point is only 880m!) but incredibly craggy. Black rock juts out of the short grass and almost nothing grows well there — except for sheep. There are lots and lots of sheep.

Also, I guess because of erosion by both sea and wind, almost every coastline is a cliff. This makes for some terrifying views which I am incredibly eager to photograph. Just look at this:

(Does your stomach flip a little looking down there…?)

And soon, in just 6 days, I’ll be there! Taking photos, hunting whales and eating puffin kebab! Remember, it’s not too late to buy your very own Personalised Faroese Landscape (but it’s probably too late to order in any fancy props, so bear that in mind).

Apparently artists need to be challenged. They need muses, they need inspiration. Without pushing boundaries an artist tends to wilt and wallow, churning out much of the same, day after day, year after year until… well, they die. Scant few become very, very famous, and the rest are forgotten.

So to combat that particular murky mire of artistic dullness, to stir things up, Abi (a talented friend of mine that paints and makes pretty dresses) and Sebastian (photographer and part-time purveyor of baked goods) will be doing a grand project entitled ‘52 Weeks‘.

There are very few rules to 52 Weeks — in fact the only real rule is that we must post one photo each every week for a year. In our case it will be every Monday from August 31st 2009 until whenever 52 Mondays have passed! Is that August 30th 2010? Somewhere around there.

We have no set theme and no limits on what we can submit, as long as it’s one photo, every week, every Monday. Our photos will be placed next to each other, perhaps with a little bit about the photo or what’s going on with our lives. We’ve also never met and live on opposite sides of the country, but might plan for some kind of ‘momentous meet-up’ (or ‘hideous break-up’ as the case may be) during the project.

The photos will be posted both to Flickr and to another blog I’ve set up: 52 Weeks by Abi & Sebastian. It has its own RSS feed so you won’t see my (or her) photos pop up on this feed or this page. If you’d rather follow it on Flickr, you’re more than welcome to — it will all be cross-linked together anyway.

Expect to see some kind of introductory statements from the both of us to pop up over the weekend. Now I’m going to go and work on some cheesy picture of us both together to serve as our ‘title image’… and also have a think about what the hell I’m going to do for Monday. Stay tuned — this could either be very, very good, or diabolical. Either way, it’ll be interesting.

They’ll name a city after us & Easier than it looks

Abi: One thing that irks me about humans, is that some of us tend to think of things in terms of limitation as opposed to possibility. We think of millions of reasons why we can’t, shouldn’t or wouldn’t. We devote so much time to this reasoning that we fall into a pattern and begin to apply this way of thinking to almost every element of our lives.

We limit and restrict ourselves to such a point that we forget to see, we forget how to feel and we no longer entertain the idea of letting go. We miss opportunities and let things slip through our fingers.

The second image in my 52 weeks collaboration with my dear Sebastian.

Partly inspired by his love of all things sky “They can make or break a landscape, Abi” (something I have not attempted to photograph before). And parly musing on the topic of greatness and potential.

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Seb: Obviously influenced by Abi’s 1 of  52, I’m being rather experimental here. I’m not a self-portrait master by any means — I don’t even have a remote for my camera!

So this is a 10-second dash and the hardest I’ve ever had to do. It’s REALLY hard to balance a blackberry on your nose when your camera is ticking down… Needless to say, getting the blackberry into the 1-centimetre plane of focus was also fairly difficult…

Why black and white? The colour version is actually quite nice but B/W made the blackberry pop right out. The incredibly-narrow depth of field is also a little distracting in the colour version. Incidentally, the larger version is well worth seeing, for the detail of my beard and the blackberry if nothing else!

(As a blog-only treat, here’s an outtake of the blackberry rolling off my face… I believe my mouth is starting to form the words ‘Oh shit’…)

Anyway, it’s now blustery and chilly here in the UK and I think the next few weeks will take a look at the beginnings of AUTUMN! (Fall, for you Americans.)

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Click the images to visit our Flickr streams. You can comment either here or there!

There’s a nasty problem that afflicts most artists. Some would say it isn’t a problem, some would say it’s merely ‘perfectionism’ or something, but the fact remains: artists tend to be very critical of their own work. I don’t necessarily mean that they HATE everything they produce, though some surely do. I mean that the artist judges his work very heavy-handedly. A painter might hate a portrait simply because they got an ear slightly wrong. A photographer might hate a landscape for being just slightly skewed. A singer might think their performance was awful because they hit one wrong note.

But in all actuality, to the audience — those that look at the paintings or photos, those that listen to the singer — it’s still a beautiful piece of art.

What I’m trying to say is that for every single photo you see of mine on this blog or on Flickr, there are probably 10 others that are great, but not good enough in my opinion. But the sad thing is, history has shown that more often than not, it’s those hated paintings, those paintings that ‘aren’t quite good enough’, that become famous.

Because the artist’s viewpoint is heavily biased. It’s like… you can’t see the forest for the trees. You’re so immersed in your own art that you never really get to stand back and appreciate it. You get to enjoy my art more than I do. How lame is that?!

Anyway…

So, because these photos are probably good, even though I don’t think they’re PERFECT, I thought I would share them with you. Scroll through them, there should be something for everyone! The ‘Sebby Landscapes’ are towards the end, if you don’t like PEOPLE photos.

(Click for a slightly larger version of the blonde guitarist — she’s blonde, can’t you tell?!)

(You probably recognise this kid from the ‘peace’ photo I took of him. A whole lot cuter in this one, eh?)

(Painting with light and smoke! Just an experiment… turned out better than I thought it would be!)

(Aw! There’s a better portrait of her, but it’s not public… so this one will have to do.)

(From one of our ‘invigorating’ walks in the Faroes. From the same ’session’ as my ‘meet my Faroese hosts‘ post.)

And FINALLY, an over-exposed-but-deliciously-blue-and-cerulean-and-cyan landscape from the east coast of the Faroes. You’ll recognise this landscape from this Faroes post.

(I couldn’t resist the opportunity to have ’shooting’ and ‘gasm’ in the same sentence. I can’t really call it a ‘meteorgasm’ for obvious reasons. Say it out loud… go on… Loud enough for anyone nearby to overhear you.)

Bit of a smorgasbord of photos this week. It’s winter, so everything happens really quickly — when the sun’s out, it’s beautiful, but five minutes later it can be dismal and grey and rainy. The sun is setting at 3:50pm or something crazy — when you wake up between 12 and 1pm, that makes the apparent length of days very short. Fortunately I have these blog-writing sessions to add structure to my life, otherwise I might hibernate or something…

I’ve been listening to Marvin Gaye again, almost non-stop. I think it’s turning into some kind of addiction, some kind of need – I haven’t put a song on ‘repeat’ since I was 16, but I must’ve listened to ‘Please Stay‘ 25 times in the last few days. It has only avoided tonight’s playlist because I’ve discovered another great album by Gaye called Here, My Dear. But I digress…  as I alluded to yesterday, I should have a (dare I say it) photo shoot with a cute girl at the end of the week. Little does she know just how easy these photos are going to be, because she’s stupendously beautiful and photogenic. But hey, I need the confidence-boost, the ego-stroking, so that in the future I can take photos of ugly people!

Big mish-mash of photos today then: the meteor shower of December 12-14 (Geminids), an ‘out-take’ from 52 weeks, and a couple of ‘geometric experiments’.  I’ve been trying to catch meteors for a few years now, but it’s hard here in south England. Lots of light pollution (I have an airport very close by). Then there’s the matter of clouds and full moons and all that jazz — this year was meant to be the best ever for Geminid sightings, but I was still hampered by cloud and sub-zero temperatures.

Yes, I stood outside for about three hours, and all I got was three photos. I couldn’t feel my toes for about two hours after I came back inside (it was the coldest night of the year so far… brr! ice on my boots!) They’re not even that great photos, but I’ve included a couple in today’s Shooting Stargasm.

The geometric photos are just… experiments. I liked the light, and I’m fast learning that I should just TAKE PHOTOS when there’s any kind of light to be had, otherwise I might not get another chance before another Tuesday Photogasm comes around. I’m also coming to terms with the fact that I might be a very good ‘available light’ photographer. It’s dawning on me that this may indeed be the case… (buy my photos, because I have a nagging sensation that they’ll double in price by this time next year).

Enjoy the photos! Think of me freezing my rapidly-gangrenous nuts outside just for the art.

As always, hover over each image for specific notes.

(Admire Canis Major on the far left! Two stars of Orion’s Belt are just visible)

Phew! That was a rather eclectic mix. Now I’m going to shave off my Hitler beard and think of something disturbing for Thursday.