"Curves of Grey" is a collection of beachscapes, rivers, lochs, woods and trees mainly in Scotland and other relatively wild areas of UK. I understand from information on his website that the book and exhibition are a selection of his black and white landscape photographs taken over a number of years, often with large format equipment.
The points of interest I noted from studying these photographs (in the order in which I noted them down) were as follows.
- The book is in vertical format and the majority of the photographs are in vertical frames. A relatively small proportion were in horizontal frames and of necessity these are printed smaller. I cannot tell whether the vertical format was chosen because most of the photographs were vertical, or whether the shape of the book led the editor/designer to select predominantly photos in this format. I had previously thought that a horizontal frame was more "natural" for landscape subjects. In a number of his photographs the vertical frame seems to accentuate the sense of depth as the viewers eye is drawn from the foreground to the distant background of the pictures.
- The photographs appear to have been taken in a variety of lighting conditions. A few have shadows and highlights that suggest they were taken when the sun was low on the horizon. Many have been taken in relatively flat lighting conditions.
- I did not find any sunsets (not surprisingly). Furthermore, the photographs seem to have been taken in the clearest of weather conditions. Distant hills were only slightly affected by haze and there were no mist or snow scenes that I noted.
- He appears to adjust the tones of the features in the landscape in a very controlled manner. To me, this has the effect of adding a subtle glow to the photographs which is striking but does not disturb the veracity of the image for the viewer. For example areas of vegetation are sometimes lighter than I would have imagined they might have been originally. I did not have the impression that the photographer had used infra-red photography and I believe that the adjustments were made by dodging and burning methods to specific areas. He may also have used coloured filters.
- I tried to judge what type of lens was used for the photographs either "wide angle" or "standard/telephoto" and found a roughly 50:50 split. Again, this was a slight surprise as I had previously assumed that landscape photographers would tend to use a wide angle more commonly than a narrower angle of view. I saw no photographs which I thought had used an ultra wide angle or photo-stitching techniques.
- As might be expected from a photographer of his calibre, sky was only included in the frame where this contributed to the composition.
- I have heard somewhere that some photographers use zones of tone or texture to achieve a balanced and interesting composition. This could be the case of some of the pictures in this book. For example, in the photograph of Formby on page 57, foreground areas of dark sand ripples with highlights give way to dark pool of water that stretches back to a line of reflected light from the sky just in front of a dark sandbank. Behind the sandbank, which is just below the middle of the frame, is an area of light sky (as if it was late afternoon), above which there is a band of grey clouds reaching to the top of the frame. The variation in tones and textures seems to draw theviewer around the frame looking for clues and details to visualize the physical reality.
Conclusion
Even though the photography in this book has not much relevance for the Assignment on Colour that I am currently working on, this may be potentially be valuable for the subsequent topic of light. I have not in recent years taken many landscape photographs, but having seen this book, it would certainly inspire me to sign up for one of his workshops.
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