Lost In Fog

This week England is fog-bound. It’s a dark, damp pea-souper over here. The famous English grey mists have descended, and we can barely see a few yards from our front door. It makes driving a nightmare, of course, plus it doesn’t do much for most folks’ moods either.

And yet I love it. It’s like being enveloped in a fuzzy cocoon. The world has contracted, suddenly become smaller. It’s like being lost in time, transported to a mysterious fading black-and-white Brigadoon where sound is muffled, the air smells cold and dank, and emotions are subdued in the grey nothingness. As I look outside, the trees are no longer lush green and brown, but stark black silhouettes against a high-key greyish white backdrop. For this week only, my existence is almost exactly like living inside a black and white fine art landscape photograph. All light and dark shadows at f11 exposure.



So what’s it like living inside a b+w photograph? Well, the first thing that strikes you is the effect it has on your psyche. If your normal average day is a colour photograph, then colour = vibrancy, intense emotion, clarity, LIFE. Its message is easily understood by just about everyone. But how is an emotional message conveyed in a black and white image? When the colour and the life is gone? Because everything is reduced to shades of grey, how do you express feelings, how do you tell the story, show your vision to the viewer?

Well, of course emotions are perfectly possible in b+w photography, but the way they are perceived is very different. If colour equals intense and obvious emotion, then shades of grey are more ambiguous, more subtle, harder to fathom. Mystic almost. You have to think more, look beneath the surface, and whilst you are wandering around looking for that inner message, it is easy to become lost in the misty greyness, or miss the point of the creative vision entirely.

A really good fine art photograph succeeds because the viewer can clearly see what the artist originally intended. He can instantly see the true message in the image. Unfortunately, the nature of photography is that this only happens once in a blue moon. Few photographs are actually that good. Most of the time, b+w fine art photographs are just a mist of mediocrity, nothing special. The vision is unclear because the original artist has become lost in the fog.

O.K. well maybe the metaphor is getting a bit tired, but I’m trying to make a point here.

How does the photographer get out of the fog? How does he cut through the crap so that he can create something outstanding and unique? Well, I don’t think that it is just a case of wandering around lost, and hoping to stumble on daylight by blind luck. I’m of the opinion that extraordinary photographs are created by a combination of constant hard work and following your inner compass.

IMO, to create great photographs, as an artist first you have to know yourself. You have to believe in your own vision, and have the self-confidence to carry on regardless through the mist, trusting that you are going in the right direction to make it out the other side.

The fog is about letting go of control. You can’t see, you can’t know if any particular course of action is right. You just have to feel your way. So even though you may feel lost at the moment, you’ve just got to let go of everything else outside of what you can see in front of you. Trust your intuition. You may be blind, but this heightens your other senses, makes them sharper, more focused. You might not be able to judge clearly today, but pause, take a step back, watch the light and the way it shapes the shadows. See the magic that the mist transforms into something else entirely - a new pattern, a new way of perceiving reality. And then recognise that pattern as art.

And when the fog finally lifts, and the sky is flooded with brilliant sunshine and crystalline vibrant colours, then your creative vision will be clear in front of you. And you can move on.




A very early image of Kate, upside down.