On Landscape - Passing Through

The weather is a continual topic of conversation for many living in the British Isles, and for landscape photographers, it becomes something of an obsession. Trying to predict the perfect combination of factors that will give a cloud inversion or a misty woodland or a stunning sunset can be utterly frustrating.

After featuring two articles on tripods recently, a review of travel tripods and a short overview of tripod spikes, I thought a general chat with Joe and David about their own experiences with tripods would make interesting listening

Just before the New Year, Joe David and I recorded a podcast on the concept of "Truth to Nature". It's an idea that has its seeds in the romantic era of landscape painting when John Ruskin, a massively influential art critic and artist of the time, encouraged painters to closely observe the landscape and in doing so capture the natural world as truthfully as possible. The idea then has its echoes in an essay "A Plea for Straight Photography" in Stieglitz's Camera Work magazine. Sadakichi Hartmann's essay was critical of pictorial photography's attempt at emulating other artforms, most notably painting. In our current era where photo editing has become easier than ever, are we seeing a return of the clash of straight vs pictorial photography? Prepare yourself for another podcast where non of your questions are answered but we have fun attempting... Episode Ten

We return to the Lockdown Podcasts and in this instalment, Joe Cornish, David Ward and I discuss 'field practice'. By this I mean the way in which we go about finding images, what motivates us to go on a walk, what triggers our interest in a scene and how do we facilitate composing.

A short podcast this time as a few of you groaned at the amount of time you had to listen to us waffle for so this issue it's a thirty-minute dip into three topics.

This issues podcast's topic is books and specifically, Joe and David's experiences making their first ones.

The concept of ‘beauty' often seems to be a dirty word to those photographers from a ‘contemporary/academic' background. The use of beauty is considered too bright a light to be seen direct for fear you go blind to the meaning behind a work.

Another instalment of the lockdown podcast where Tim Parkin, Joe Cornish and David Ward discuss a few questions around photography including "How is the easing of lockdown affecting you?", "How do you make the most of a photography workshop?" ..

Joe Cornish, Tim Parkin and David Ward talk about learning and teaching composition

Finishing off the reader submitted questions and a reminder of the lockdown photo challenge

We are looking at having a mini 'in your house' photography challenge. All three of us are going to give this a  go and we invite anybody else who wishes to take part to submit some work.

What we really want to do is to continue having these conversations but make things more interactive with our audience. So if you have any questions you'd like to address to Joe or David (or myself).

Back in January, Mark was in between two workshops he as running based in Kentallen. This village is on the coastal road from Ballachulish to Oban and approximately 25 minutes from Glencoe. Tim and Mark met at the Joe Cornish Gallery when Tim had just started using his large format camera and since then Mark has transitioned from using large format to digital photography. In this podcast, Mark talks about how and why he transitioned from large format, the challenges, and why he enjoys printing workshops.

On our 200th issue, we decided to have a special Passing Through podcast. David Ward and Joe Cornish are running a workshop in the area and Ted Leeming and Morag Paterson are in Scotland. We decided to invite them to a roundtable discussion on what we as landscape photographers can do to help protect the environment and mitigate climate change.

In this podcast, Margaret talks about her exhibition and what she finds in the quietness and solitude of the islands that keeps pulling her back.

A couple of weeks ago, Al Simmons from Teamwork came to visit to demonstrate the latest camera system from Phase One, the Phase IQ4 150 and also the new technical camera solution, the Phase XT and it's range of 23mm, 32mm and 70mm electronic shuttered Rodenstock lenses.

Alister Benn joined us at our Highland headquarters for a chat about his recent trip to Sweden, where we randomly bumped into each other, and his forthcoming move to Lochaber!

In the first edition, we're talking to Paula Pell-Johnson of Linhof Studio and our own Joe Cornish where we cover ground from megapixels to film and some of the new products that Paula is excited about in the coming months.

Just before Christmas we asked our readers for a bunch of questions that we could put to Joe Cornish when he visited next and the response was fantastic. In the end we recorded two hours of audio but to keep installments to a useful length (a lot of people say they listen to them over breakfast or during a commute) we've split it into half hour sections. So, a big thank you to Joe and everyone who submitted their questions and here's the fourth and final section..