Intimate Landscape

If you look at my photos you will probably not know where they were taken. Each one seems without a context. I prefer to think it is the context. Intimate landscape photography emphasizes the background.

Background is underestimated and calls on us to widen our vision and open to a greater breadth of attention.

Foreground dominates our lives, is overestimated in importance, and hides the greater context from which it has emerged.

—David Whyte Consolations II

It is also about attention and these oft-repeated words are certainly true of my work.

Attention is the beginning of devotion.

—Mary Oliver

Or put another way…

Attention is the tribute we pay to the sacred.

—Simone Weil

It is about finding the small extraordinary in the ordinary. Some beauty we would pass without thinking. It is my way of finding the sacred all around me.

I have found over the years there is wonderful solace in this search. I slow down almost to a crawl at times. I pay attention to the light, the colors, sounds, the smells, plants, and geology. I rarely look up, instead I look out and down and through. I think about the weather and how that could add some enchantment. Fog, rain, snow, sun, wind. Where the light strikes that time of day.

Along the way I come to know a place in a way I could never imagine. I can travel the same paths over years and still find the new and novel.

It did not start out that way. It had its start with me on more pragmatic grounds and because I have a contrarian streak. When I started out in photography I gravitated towards landscapes. I suppose I was like many, captivated by grand vistas captured in stunning light with wide lenses. Ansel Adams or Joe Cornish, you know the type.

However with the age of digital photography and social media I could see getting stuck in the same tripod holes of hundreds of others as they chase all the classic scenes like Mesa Arch, Antelope Canyon, the Gooseneck, Delicate Arch to name a few in the American Southwest. It frankly sounded soulless to stand in a scrum of tripods waiting for the sun to rise bumped and jostled by others, ill-tempered by the knowledge of the evanescence of the moment.

I also lived in Cambridgeshire at the time. A flat very mundane place, the Fens, for landscape photography.

However there were some small woodlands there and I started with that. Can I find the beauty in the ordinary? So I travelled to them regularly over a number of years. In the end I found some nice images and built up my craft. At the time I was deeply into film photography and would print the black and white images in my darkroom.

There were three woodlands I would visit regularly within about 30 minutes of where I lived. They were Monk’s Wood an ancient woodland mentioned in the Domesday book, Woodwalton Fen, and Holme Fen a marvelous silver birch forest. Each has a unique history. In the end I self-published a book of the images I liked best and also wrote a bit of history and my personal experience of the woodlands.

Here are a few examples arranged by woodland. These are all taken on film, typically with a Mamiya 645 or a 4x5 large format camera. (Click into the galleries to see the full images.)

Monk’s Wood

Woodwalton Fen

Holme Fen

North Idaho

And so I find myself in North Idaho and this time I am at the opposite extreme of Cambridgeshire England. Idaho is a rugged, unpopulated, grand landscape. Again I have the opportunity to turn my attention to a new place and find what I can of beauty in a way that transcends the grand and dynamic landscape.

I started out from the lakeshore in Spring and early Summer. I stalked the edge of Lake Pend d’Oreille and hiked up creeks and into the woods. Again attention and observation were my companions. Trying to absorb my new home and reflect it back again.

This process is deeply calming. I retired early due to workplace bullying, intimate photography became my retreat and rehabilitation. When done with complete concentration the mind empties of other thoughts and emotions. I feel my heart rate descend and the heart opens to the wonder and detail of the world. Where life is everywhere flourishing.

The process brought me into a special relationship to trees. Because I started in woodlands and landed in forest again they are natural subjects. One friend in England looked at dozens of small prints I made that lined the wall of the downstair bathroom of our home in England and remarked I must really like trees. I wasn’t even conscious of it, yet almost every image was one of trees.

Now I live near Pine Street Woods and this is my newly adopted woodland where Mollie and I roam and I often bring the camera and search for what is missed.

Mollie for her part, knows the camera has a different pace than merely hiking. She knows when it comes out that the walk will be different. And she comes prepared to assume her zen-dog posture. I stop and focus on a subject. She sits alertly on the edge of the action peering out into the forest. Smelling and seeing and hearing everything. Quietly, patiently, she appreciates it all as much as I do.

And so I have come to my devotion to the sacred. A place of solace for as long as I can get there. And until my mind goes, a place to revisit in the halls of my memories. For when one is immersed in the moment of attention these photos can recall the circumstances. Then someday finally, I will feed the trees.