There is something incredibly special about being out in our landscapes, preferably in the mountains, and to see, hear, and feel the wonderful displays of calmness, colour, change or power which nature provides. Just being out there is inspirational. I strive to make images that reflect these moments (in some way), but of course can never fully do them justice, partly because of my own limitations as a photographer, and also because a photograph cannot reproduce some of the senses that help make these moments special (such as the smell and sound of being by the sea). Enough of excuses! Most of my work to date is fairly wide angle, but recently I have begun to expolore taking shots without a vista and have found this to be extremely rewarding and interesting. Where it takes me, I don't know. What I do know is that I'm fairly new to large format, I love it, and quite frankly just being outdoors watching a scene unfold makes the early starts and standing in the cold more than worthwhile.

Joe Cornish's excellent and inspiring book "First Light" begins with a poem from "This is the American Earth" by Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall. It explains the joys of being out in our landscapes better than I ever could:

You shall know the night - its space, its light, its music.

You shall see the Earth sink in darkness and the universe appear.

No roof shall shut you from the presence of the moon.

You shall see mountains rise in the transparent shadow before dawn.

You shall see - and feel! - first light, and hear a ripple in the stillness.

You shall enter the living shelter of the forest.

You shall walk where only the wind has walked before.

You shall know immensity and see continuing the primeval forces of the world.

You shall know not one small segment but the whole of life,

Strange, miraculous, living, dying, changing.

With enough passion, landscape photography is, in principle, incredibly simple. What is difficult is getting out to the right places, and being there at the right time, because this can take days, even for one shot. Getting off the beaten track, being patient and persistent are essential, as is learning what makes an image work (and I make no claims to suggest that any of mine do!).

Digital photography is the rage today - and it has opened up so many opportunities. Being able to review your shot is fun, and it's nice to be able to check that the exposure is correct and the image is 'in the bag'. For me this would be the main advantage of using digital, particularly in fleeting light where exposure can be extremely difficult to judge. Shooting in RAW format allows the photogapher to 'creatively edit' the image (to a far greater extent than is possible with scanned TIFF files from film), or to combine multiple exposures which can produce 'High Dynamic Range' images which are generally not possible using film.

I think it's difficult to beat the lovely results possible on large format film cameras, and the image quality is something else! I use an Ebony RSW45 large format camera. It's slow to set up, sometimes difficult to compose, (especially with wide angle lenses in low light) and you basically have one chance to get the right image. These 'disadvantages' are in fact a huge advantage, because you are forced to consider the composition in great detail, and the inverted image on the groundglass helps in this respect.

For learning more about cameras, lenses, techniques and tips, there are some fantastic resources on the web. I also highly recommend looking at other photographers' work. A number that I have found very useful are listed in the links section at the bottom of this page, and some of the books written by Joe Cornish and David Ward are particularly helpful.

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