Hi and welcome to Out of the Darkroom on AdoramaTV.
I'm Ruth Medjber, and joining me on today's show is Peter Gordon.
Peter is an incredible landscape photographer, he's won many prestigious awards,
and even publishes fantastic books. Today we're going to find out just how he creates
such masterful landscapes.
AdoramaTV presents, Out of the Darkroom with Ruth Medjber.
Peter, welcome to the show, thanks so much for joining us today and
I hope our studio is a little bit easier to get to than maybe some of your locations?
Well it's a little bit closer than the Wicklow Mountains or the West of Ireland,
or the Nevada desert. A little bit less parking out there!
Yeah, you can't just fly up in the car and leave it and pop out with camera and tripod.
I left by helicopter home I'm afraid. So tell us a little bit about your work
then for those that don't know it, what is it that you did?
Well I do, I suppose a range of fine art photography,
all my work is project-based and so
my most recent project that I launched was about the Burning Man festival
and a specific aspect of it. Ok, and you survived Burning Man?
I survived Burning Man, I went back again this year and I'm still here!
So yeah all good, and I do a range of landscape work as well
in various thematic
areas. So when you say project-based
is that you setting yourself kind of, an idea you might have, like I want to
go photograph this location and then you just take yourself off and go?
Yeah I mean I think it can be about a location or area, I think it's about
trying to communicate something in a set of images, now that can be
about an area like, I've done a project on Wicklow where I wanted
to just
show people all these different parts of Wicklow that they hadn't been to before,
or they hadn't been to at five o'clock in the morning maybe.
The Burning Man project was I suppose a little bit more conceptual,
because it was about
people grieving mostly. But
yeah I suppose project-based just means that the set of images are tied together
some way that they're not just
random sets of images. Yeah, I get you, so tell us a little bit more about Burning Man, I mean you're
saying its about
grieving, I think when most people think of Burning Man they think of just
hedonistic fun. Well I mean certainly there is
hedonistic fun there in abundance, and I went for the first time
in 2001, and it was all about hedonistic fun and
abundant. The second how it went back which was ten years later, was in 2011 and
I focused on a sort of a specific
aspect of the festival when I went there and it's basically this idea called
the Temple,
and essentially what happens is people
build the temple every year at Burning Man,
dating back to I think 2000, and people go to leave messages on the temple walls
for people who have passed away,
and they also get married there, kind of performing the function of a church in a way I suppose,
and then at the end of it, they burn it. You know it's a personal turning point in
some people's lives that they're going to this temple, they're leaving their
messages,
and these are quite like heartfelt, deep emotional kinda moments,
how do you access that? How do you as a photographer get in and just
capture it, because some of your pictures I mean you've got
a bride and a groom at Burning Man, that's a very intimate moment, and you've got
kind of people crying, and people obviously in
times when it's really difficult, so how do you,
you know, what's your process? Do you just rock up and photograph or do you
wait for these, or?
I mean I think you know, what I would generally do is is take the picture
and then approach the person afterwards,
and say I have taken your picture, is that okay,
and you know everybody was fine and most people that were upset, we had a bit of a
hug afterwards in the Burning Man spirit and it was cool.
This is Ruth Medjber for AdoramaTV,
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Tell us a little bit then about
what's it like working at Burning Man, because I mean you're in the desert
you're in some pretty kind of, you're not in a comfy studio, you don't have
everything to hand,
what kind of gear would you bring with you? Well I mean
the dust is the big thing in terms of taking pictures and
if you kind of see the actual pictures in the book and in the project like
there is kind of single figures in these dust storms which is
amazing photographically because it just simplifies everything
shape wise, but with the gear it is a bit tricky. Were you not terrified then that all that
dust is going to migrate
into your camera and wreck everything? Well what I did was I had a
Acratech bag, which is essentially
a sealed bag that allows me to access the equipment still
and still shoot, all my cameras are weather sealed,
professional bodies, so that helps as well. I mean I brought my camera's back and I
had them
you know, sent off and cleaned, sent them to Nikon and had them
cleaned and looked at, and you know. Everything was ok, nice and safe. Yeah, but I
was a little bit...
So what camera did you bring? What camera would you have shot the majority
of Burning Man on?
Well I shot this project in 2011, so it was a
Nikon D3 X,
I'm a Nikon guy, and
this year we went back, I shot a wedding there actually for for friend,
and I shot it on a D800 and a D800 E as well.
Wow, okay so you're a firm Nikon fan. A firm Nikon fan. Talk to me then about
lenses, what would you have put on? Whats kind of your 'go to' lens in a
kit bag for this? Because I presume if you're wondering around the desert you're not
going to have bags upon bags hanging of you because
it's roasting, its too hot. It is hot, I think more the thing to be honest is
you don't want to be changing lenses out there,
because the second you open it up, you know your camera is
just going to get ruined, and I think my camera survived because I didn't
change lenses very often and I
kept the Acratech bag, and so what I did was I had two bodies,
and I had a 70-200mm and a 24-70mm
on the other lenses. Nice solid lenses. Soid lenses,
and I kind of went out a few times with my 24m tilt shift lens to
shoot some of the buildings and the structure itself.
So would that differ then from say your setup,
if you were going into the mountains here in Ireland?
I would still bring similar gear, I would have another wide angle lens as
well
and but I would shoot a lot more with my 24mm tilt and shift lens because
I knew if I needed something I can just change lens easily, where with there
you just can't actually change lens so you kind of need, like if you said what lens?
You know one single lens you can take with you anywhere, it would always be the 24-70mm,
because it just gives me a nice range, and its good 2.8 lens as well.
Yeah, my favourite too. So then
Burning Man yeah, it was definitely a project, it was an idea, but I'm thinking
more of the other locations that you shoot.
It always seems to be that you end up at
these fabulous locations, that are composed really, really well at the
most perfect time of day, now thats simplifying it but
tell us about how you get from picking a location,
to shooting it? What goes into it? How much
patience and process and planning goes into that?
I mean I think a lot of planning does go into
locations that I shoot. I mean you need to return again and again
a lot of the time,
you know like I'm working on a series of work in the West of Ireland and
you know I might head down to Kerry for 4 or 5 days and come back with no pictures
but I'll have kind of seen different places and have ideas for pictures in my mind. I think
a big part of any photographic process whether it's landscape or otherwise is that
you pre visualise what's going to happen afterwards and you
have a sense you know not just of turning up somewhere but
up you know what's going to go on a piece of paper I think more than a screen.
So you think of the finished prize, the finished image after.
So does that in a way
affect how you shoot? Because if you're thinking this is going to go into a book
and you've had
two books published, one about Burning Man, and one on Wicklow as well.
So when you're out there and you're shooting, and you know it could be
raining, it could be freezing and you could be standing there for hours,
are you thinking that this is going to look perfect in this book?
Or are you thinking for an exhibition or how does that work? Yeah I mean I think
I definitely have an idea in my mind of what the finished picture will look like, and you're
going they're hoping for something to happen but ultimately
sometimes the light dictates something else, and I certainly would respond
you know, to different things happening, with different lighting conditions,
but I think if you go there with some sort of conceived idea of what you're looking for then
you're much more likely to come out with something much more interesting. I never kind of box myself
into one thing but
at the same time you, it's the planning does
most definitely help. I mean I'm sure the light changes
and that's completely out of your control, but when you are shooting I mean
a lot of our viewers here
are probably aiming to do what you're doing
you know we have a lot of photographers that would love to be a
landscape photographer full-time professionally,
would there be anything that you could say to them that you know,
any tips that you've learnt? Get out of bed really, really, really early!
Is it all about getting up early?
Definitely being able to get up early helps, but like
well its like, I've stopped shooting
that much in the summer these days because its just so ridiculously early and in Ireland you just get
absolutely mangled
by the midges but the side of the lake at 5 o'clock in the morning,
I've learned along the way, I'm more of an autumn shooter these days.
But definitely getting up early is really important in terms of getting the best light, I mean,
I think
you know, being able to master the
basic technical attributes of your camera is something that, you know, when I teach workshops
and things like that, people will struggle with initially
and then once you've mastered those sort of basics,
its about how you interpret the light that you see and how you
shape the picture in terms of your composition so, certainly being there
at 6 in the morning is very important.
But you know ultimately, you know when we take tours away
where we have 8 people and they're standing beside
each other and they come away with different pictures,
very different pictures. I suppose maybe, I mean it's all in the eye
you see things differently than everyone else does but I mean, for you
I mean was that trained did you did you learn that in college or how did you
come to be a photographer?
Well my dad is actually a photographer as well so.
He's part of the duo that you're in right? Explore Light. Yeah exactly, exactly we do it together
so I was fortunate, I actually studied something completely different in college
and then when I finished college
I kind of had the choice whether I'd pursue photography
or a career history basically,
kind of an academic career, but I was able to ask him
any questions that ever sort of sprung to mind
which is a very fortunate position to be in,
and then a lot of it was just actually being outside and
you learning through shooting loads of transparency
film, I shot everything on film. Like I mean the quality you get from your images, even
from the Burning Man images in particular, I mean this quite a filmic
quality to them I thought they were shot on film, because you know there's something
about film that just has a different color and depth to it, you don't really get in digital,
but I mean how did you make that? How did you make digital
almost like film? Well I think, I suppose for the Burning Man work for me
I jumped straight into actually from
like velvia, pro via, astia
and those transparency fujifilms,
and I don't know did it,
I process things on how I see it, I'm doing it in Photoshop,
but I process everything by eye, like people are always
when I teach photography, people are asking me,
you know, is there a specific workflow?
and there is there workflow, I mean everything flows from white balance for me,
that's the first thing I always adjust and I get that correct and everything
that happens afterwards comes from that point. So are you almost kind of going back to
the scene in your head and saying well actually it wasn't that warm, it was a little bit colder?
I'm processing on the basis of color, definitely, in terms of everything that will happen
and afterwards in terms of contrast, or if you had clarity, or anything like that will all lead from
that initial point but I'm not going back to the scene in my mind, I'm going back to
what I feel looks good. Okay so its your interpretation of what was there, I suppose
you're not a documentary photographer, you're a fine art photographer.
Yeah, so I don't think it necessarily it has to be absolutely true to what you saw,
equally I don't kind of like to grab Thursday's moon and
drop it into Sunday morning's picture. You're not that deceptive,
fair enough, and when you're in the field then do you use anything that would help
in the post-production? I mean you must use
ND filters and things like that? Yeah, I use a lot of
filters for my landscape work, because
I prefer to get it in one frame if I can,
and that's not the right or wrong thing. Like, you can obviously
blend in Photoshop multiple exposures for skies,
I get more enjoyment out of it if I've actually got it in the can when it's happening
and I'll change white balance when I'm in the scene as well,
and it just makes me feel more fulfilled about it, and I just really think
that if you feel more fulfilled about the pictures that you're taking, that you
actually make better pictures.
So I use graduated neutral density filters,
I use 1-stop, 2-stop, 3-stop, 4-stop,
soft and hard, and then I have 6-stop
solid ND's, and 10-stop solid ND's as well,
and I have a polarizer, just to finish it off! You have quite the kit bag then, I mean they're
probably essential
right for a landscape photographer, to have all that gear? Well definitely essential for holding
in your skies, in terms of the graduated neutral density filters.
Again you know you can shoot one for the sky and one for the foreground, but if
you want to hold
that detail in the sky in one frame, you definitely need a graduated filter, and if anyone is
thinking of, you know purchasing filters like that, I would recommend a .6
which is a 2-stop hard filter, or
1.2 soft filter. Well that's brilliant, I mean we'll put links to filters and stuff so people can
find them easily but that's a great little tip to have then, and
tell me then, because I know you don't you're changing everything in the camera there
and you want to get everything in the camera, is there ever a time when you change something
in the scene in front of you, do you use any
artificial lighting or is there anything that you wouldn't move around or?
Well the new project that I'm working on is all about artificial lighting actually,
so you just led into that nicely, so
in work you know, up to this point I haven't used any artificial lighting,
I have processed things in a way
like the Burning Man stuff where I have used some
bleach dying and things like that in the post-production. But in terms of the actual scene
nothing had been added. I suppose I find myself to be honest
being down in Wicklow which is the area where I made the first book about, and
enjoying being there, but not having any real desire to actually take pictures
there anymore.
Because it has kind of been I suppose. Yeah. and I did it and
just there are so many pictures taken there. So I kind of
still really love the place wanted to,
you know still photograph it, but I wasn't sure how. So I
went down there about 3 o'clock in the morning with lights not
too dissimilar than we have around us here, basically LED
video lighting and started lighting up the forest
in the middle of the night with LED lights in the mist and stuff like that, so
that's my
my new project, in a different light.
Well listen thanks so much and I'm really looking forward to seeing
more of your backlit shots and your artificial light shots, they're going to be
fantastic and
don't get lost in Namibia or Bolivia or anything because
we need to see more of your stuff. Thank you Ruth, thanks a million.
Well that's it for this episode. join me again on Out of Darkroom when I'm going to be
chatting to more great photographers
they're going to be sharing with me and you some of their tips and tricks and how to
get some great photography.
Bye for now!
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