Having written about folios as an alternative to a book I thought it was worthwhile pointing to another solution which is the box of prints.
I understand that historically these might have been matted prints but a trend that I am seeing emerge over the last few years is for photographers to offer boxes of prints to their audience. These prints can range from a representative collection of prints spanning a few years, the output from the previous year or just the most recent season.
I was exciting to receive Simon Baxter’s first box set of prints recently and thought I would show you how he pulled this project together as a case study for what excellent could look like.
It’s easy enough to to buy a photo box off the shelf pop your prints in and call it a day but Simon went beyond this. He has his logo embossed in the box lid, the lid itself is hinged and held closed with a small magnet – a nice touch! Inside the box is a colophon/text sheet describing the project and the package of prints. I was impressed – the small details took it to the next level. Take a look in the video below.
Like many of you I’m starting to get itchy feet. 2020 was the first year that I did not get in a plane in a long while and 2021 has started off looking like travel will be limited this year too.
That got me thinking about all the places I would like to visit. So this is the first of what I’m calling ‘virtual photo tours’ where we explore some of the places I want to visit and highlight who might be good companions for our trips. For our first photo tour I wanted to go ‘home’ and explore with a camera places from my past.
First up Yorkshire. I grew up in a very flat part of Yorkshire, on the border of the old East and West Ridings. Paul Hart’s images of The Fens, such as the one above, could have been taken in this area rather than in East Anglia. They really remind me of foggy Sunday mornings driving around to play football against the neighboring village team.
The river Don flows through the village I grew up in. Growing up I heard stories of epic flooding in the local area. Those times seem to have returned as you can see in the footage below.
Let’s head out to the Yorkshire Coast next and take a drive up from Filey to Robin Hood’s Bay, Whitby and finally to Staithes.
I spent all my summers at the beach in Filey and I’m looking forward to returning with my camera soon. My uncles used to keep their fishing boat just to the left of the little hut in the image below.
As places do, Filey has changed a lot since I was a kid. The fishing boats on cobble landing are essentially gone and there is talk of closing the lifeboat station. What a travesty.
View of Filey Bay
The Brigg – the land that juts out into the sea in the image above has lots of possibilities. You have to be careful though – the tide comes in quick and it’s easy to get cut off.
After a stop in Robin Hood’s Bay lets stop at Whitby. I’ve only been to Whitby a few times. It’s famous as the place where Captain Cook learned seamanship and connections with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It’s also the last stop on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. When I think of Whitby I think of the breakwaters that guard the entrance of the harbor shown in the image below.
Adam Karnacz of First Man Photography gives a great tour of the sights of Whitby in his video below and also a tutorial of long exposure seascapes too!
On to Staithes! I’ve never been to Staithes and only know it from the Joe Cornish images of the harbor below. I can wait to visit, especially at different times of year. What a difference a coating of snow makes!
Joe Cornish: Staithes
Joe Cornish: Staithes
Listen to Joe talk about the image at the top and how he thinks about preparing the image for print in the video below.
Perhaps we could get Joe Cornish or Adam Karnacz to join us for our coastal adventure or better yet the two of them together they clearly have great chemistry in the video below.
For the final leg of our nostalgia edition photo tour I want to visit Snowdonia. More about that next time.
The Lifeboat Station Project: 12×10 inch Clear Glass Ambrotype by Jack Lowe
The view from Filey RNLI Lifeboat Station, 11th June 2017The Lifeboat Station Project: 12×10 inch Clear Glass Ambrotype by Jack Lowe
Filey RNLI Lifeboat Volunteers, 11th June 2017
I’ve been following Jack Lowe’s ‘The Lifeboat Station Project’ for a while through his instagram posts. I was excited when I saw that he’d photographed the lifeboat station of the little Yorkshire fishing village where I spent my summers.
The RNLI – The Royal Lifeboat Institution – is a 200 year old charity that saves lives around the coast of the UK and Republic of Ireland. That the RNLI is a charity and uses community volunteers really distinguishes it from services in other countries such as the US coastguard. The RNLI provides a vital service and is well worth supporting.
Jack is on a mission to photograph all 238 RNLI lifeboat stations in the UK and Republic of Ireland. That in itself would be a challenge but to make things more interesting Jack’s choice of medium is wet plate collodion. He’s making photographs on glass plates and developing them in the field using his mobile darkroom Neena, a refurbished ambulance. The culmination of the project will be a book and exhibition that will help the RNLI raise awareness for their mission and funds to support it. Check out how Jack’s project is progressing on his mission map page here.
Unless my skills with the google are failing me, there are surprisingly few interviews (I couldn’t find any!) with British photographer Martin Henson. Spend some time reviewing his galleries by clicking on the link here and you, like me, will wonder how that can be.
Martin is based in Leeds in the North of England and, from what I can tell, much of his photography is essentially local. Excursions to the nearby coast and the Yorkshire dales – places that I’m reasonably familiar with – result in photographs that really do give a sense of what raw and wild these places can be.
I hope that you enjoy exploring the work of Martin Henson and I’ll leave you with another favorite of his images below.
Joe Cornish is one of those photographers whose work I continue to return to. Much of what he does is shot in the part of England, Yorkshire, that I consider home and his ability to articulate what he’s thinking as he frames a particular shot is instructive. I’m also lusting after the Linhof Techno camera and the Phase One back but that’s a different topic entirely. Find out more about Joe Cornish here and enjoy the videos below.
I’m sure that David Hockney is a familiar name to all. Some have told me that he’s the most famous painter alive today, perhaps that’s true but it’s not what I find interesting about Hockney. I first came across Hockney’s work in the late ’80s when he was making photocollages which I thought were interesting and set me on a path of doing ‘joiners’ whenever I had the chance. I stopped paying attention to what he was doing as life got busy and it wasn’t until when one of my friends recently mentioned that her work was moving close to the Hockney Gallery and Museum that I looked him up again. I was surprised to see that he’d relocated from Los Angeles to Bridlington, a small seaside town in East Yorkshire, and was busily painting the Yorkshire Wolds. This is very familiar territory for me and was a bit of a home coming to see the video and resulting pictures. What is particularly noteworthy is that he’s painting very large paintings outside. He really does manage to capture the essence of the place. If you’re in the UK his yorkshire landscape paintings are being exhibited at the Royal Academy from Jan 21 – April 9, 2012. Check out the video below.
I recently bought Eddie Ephraums’s book ‘Joe Cornish: A photographer at work‘, which documents Joe Cornish’s approach to photographer. It’s fun to see what Joe achieves with a compact camera, using that as a sketchbook to try out ideas before setting up his main camera. I was very excited to see that Environment films had followed up this idea with documentary film. Check out the trailer below:
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