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So this is the first in what I hope will be a bi-weekly series, sharing featured inspiring photographers and inspiring images I’ve trawled from the web, blogs, Twitter and Flickr.

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It was hard to decide on the opener, but I went with Adam Clutterbuck, whose Flickr stream I’ve long surfed.

The most fascinating aspect of Adam’s photography, is his mastery of the 4th dimension of photography – time – combined with an uncanny ability to create minimalist compositions.

Maer rocks by Adam Clutterbuck (used with permission)

In Adam’s super long-exposures, solid objects all along the English West Coast, both natural and man made, are contrasted beautifully with the sea rendered smooth, often mercurial like from exposure times that must clock in at several minutes.

Simplicity is also a defining mark of Adam’s compositions, there is often no more than a solitary element, a group of rotting groynes or rocky outcrop, isolated against a frame dominated by ethereal milky water.

Often with landscape photography so much forethought and work is required to break down a vista into what to include and exclude from the frame, however, Adam seems to handle this with ease placing rarely more than 1 or 2 objects in any frame.

Adam’s images remind me of the work of Michael Levin who also seems to be able to effortlessly deconstruct reality, simplifying it into opposing textured elements which only render their characteristics after an extended exposure – classic examples of previsualisation.

You can check out more of Adam’s work on Flickr, where he’s known by his handle of g r e e n g a g e – and I thought f29 was odd – or here at his online portfolio.

Enjoy

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Thanks to the excellent design blog Abduzeedo, which posts weekly inspiration — typography, web or print design — for giving me the idea.

Recently I’ve been considering moving from digital to medium format film tempted by the significant increase in resolution, detail and possibility of significant print enlargement.

Begging Google what is the megapixel equivalent of medium format film resolution i found out that you need 100 megapixels to emulate the resolution offered by 6×7 colour film.

With my eye on upgrading to the Canon 5D Mark 2 I felt deflated.

That newest of digital chips falls a massive 80 megapixels short, with a comparatively pithy 21 megapixels. Why bother with 5 times less resolution than film?

Sure a few more years of Moore’s Law in digital chip development would align my hopes of medium format resolution. Or I could squander hours of my life in Photoshop stitching images together to achieve comparable levels of detail. Or embezzle $10,000 to acquire a Phase One back.

Size does not matter

And then it hit me. Why does megapixels and the size of my final print matter?

So what if i have 100 megapixel camera? Or a 6 megapixel camera?

What do those extra megapixels of resolution really mean for my photography? It certainly won’t enhance my creativity? It won’t aid composition, my choice of  location or lighting? That’s the myth perpetrated by the camera marketeers.

Years ago I visited a Salvador Dali retrospective exhibition. I’d studied his works in art books with beautiful scanned renditions of his works. It never occured to me the originals would be smaller than the printed versions.

On seeing the originals I was stunned that most of them were in fact tiny, some no bigger than A5 postcards.

It was the intent and skill of the artist not the physicality or final size of the canvas (or print in the case of a photograph) that created the beauty of the images.

An images qality or beauty is in it’s composition, the light, it’s mystery. That’s art. Not just because it’s 7 ft tall — Andreas Gursky style.

In-camera interpolation

Maybe the greatest megapixel myth I’ve read about is in-camera interpolation. Where the advertised native capture of the megapixel chip is actually smaller than the stated megapixel output.

For example, the digital chip in camera X captures say a 10 megapixel image, but on capture the chip interpolates that image in-camera to the advertised value of 21 megapixel.

This potential megapixel myth isn’t something widely documented, and I’ve found only a little documentation to support this, but it did get me thinking.

Moving beyond the megapixel myth

I must admit i do love huge prints, especially in a gallery setting. And I am the nose to frame kind of guy — aren’t all photographers?

But I don’t live in a mansion yet (sigh), so the realistic need to print 100cm wide prints in my life is relatively small.

Film is still very appealing to me right now though for the breadth of information it can hold comparatively to digital so I’m going to continue looking at a 6×7 and run them in parallel for a while — I’d miss the instant nature of digital.

Guess my days of geeky drooling at manufacturer megapixel statistics may be behind me though.

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Recently finished David Ward’s Landscape Beyond: A Journey into photography, which I can’t recommend more highly.

Most photography books focus on the how, in-camera technique, exposure etc. Not this one, in fact David Ward barely mentions any technical aspect in this devotion to the making of landscape images.

David Ward | Landscape Beyond

In Landscape Beyond, Ward talks about the making of landscape images using the creation of mystery and the incongruity to enrich images and captivate viewers. His technique, if indeed Ward is trying to teach one, is to question of your approach and aims, to look for mystery and simplicity in the landscape to document in order to create more novel and unique images.

Throughout his discussion Ward seamlessly, and eloquently, moves between references to philosophy, art history, quotes from past photographic masters, and his own philosophy without pretention or confusing the reader. He’s clearly a learned fellow.

The key outake of Landscape Beyond is thinking. About what you shoot, your choice of locations, how you behave on location, the why of your images, and how to make better images when in the field by changing the way you look at the landscape. I found it challenged some of my own thoughts and practices, giving my plenty of food for thought next time I head out the door.

The net result will mean shooting less, but with more in depth analysis of what’s in front of you, at least for me. But I don’t see that as negative, far from it. Reading this has I hoped altered my approach and should make for more emotive, evocative and unique images over the coming year — I hope.

Check out more of David Ward’s work.

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