Today
Having mentioned that I’m now drawing on my personal pension, I don’t actually like to think of myself as retired. Yes, I maybe retired from commercial photography and dispensing optics but not necessarily from picture framing. And I’m certainly not retired from photography. In fact, now more than ever I am a full time landscape photographer.
Humphrey Head, Grange-over-Sands is a favourite location of mine. My prints are often toned blue to portray a sense of cold in the landscape.
The light and mood of Morecambe Bay can change by the hour. Working in monochrome allows me the freedom to express some personal emotion in my work.
Photography is my occupation and I am even more devoted to monochrome photography today than I was in the beginning when I saw my first images appear in my teenage darkroom. I still experience the same excitement when I see my photos for the first time, albeit on a computer screen. I’ve had many happy years using film cameras and printing in darkrooms, but now I use digital cameras and print with pigment inks on cotton papers.
Printing in traditional darkrooms, I have acquired the skill and knowledge of how to bring a monochrome image to life. It all starts with finding a composition in the landscape and capturing it in the camera, whether film or digital. This is what I refer to as taking a photograph. The making of a photograph happens in the darkroom or using image editing software. In my darkroom, I would place a negative in my enlarger and skilfully transform it into a finished print. Today, I will apply all those acquired skills and convert a colour digital file into a finished monochrome photograph.
To quote Ansel Adams: “The negative is the score, and the print is the performance”. Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist who was also an accomplished concert pianist.
I like nothing more than being out in the landscape with my camera. Sometimes I’ll be on a walk with my wife Sarah and I will carry a camera with me and photograph scenes that grab me. Other times I’m on my own and I’ll take my camera (sometimes two), a selection of lenses, filters and a tripod. This is what I call a photography walk. I immerse myself in the whole process of landscape photography and can spend a long time in one location looking for the right composition. Then, when I get home, the art of image making can begin to happen as I bring my photographs to life!
If there is one thing better than being in the landscape with my camera, it’s being in the landscape with Sarah. Hampsfell and Gowbarrow.
In future blog posts I’ll try to explain why I love monochrome and why printing my own work is so important to me.
Cheers for now,
David.
Misty Trees, Knottallow Hill, Ulverston
Three Walkers, Humphrey Head.
Misty Trees, Arnside Knott. As well as photographing big sky landscapes, I often enjoy getting lost in the woods with my camera!
Winter, Morecambe bay. The sand recently turned white! January 2025.