So, I’m back from Iceland. Quite a few of my posts here have probably started with similar wording. I have added another 1400 or so rather average photos to my very large collection of rather average photos.

I think it would be reasonable to expect that after well over 20 years of trying that my photographic output might have improved somewhat, but the hard evidence from a first review is that it hasn’t. The usual collection of dull compositions and technical screwups dominates. Photos that seemed really compelling when I was taking them just fall flat on the computer screen.

Also I just repeat myself. Below are two examples of photos I took a week or so ago compared to similar ones taken in the same locations years ago. Apart from the weather, and somewhat different focal lengths, they are identical, or at least interchangeable. When confronted with the same scene, I pretty much tried to do exactly the same thing with it, with equal lack of artistic merit in both cases. I was not conciously duplicating anything, indeed I didn’t remember the earlier shots when taking the new ones. I might forgive myself for the earlier failures, had I actually learnt from them, but clearly I did not.

These two photos featuring the now extremely well-known small church in Buðir were taken in 2004 (left) and 2023 (right). There is no significant difference in my approach, and neither works well.

These two photos taken at the equally trampled Goðafoss were taken in 2008 (left) and 2023 (right). Again, I tried exactly the same approach, and in both cases it fails to either convey anything specific about the location, or alternatively offer a pleasing detail composition. At least I am consistently hopeless 😊

I’ve tried various strategies to improve my output. I’ve studied the work of photographers I admire. I’ve tried quite radical technical changes. But all to no avail. The only work I’m a little more satisfied with fits into the “urban landscape” box, which nobody I know is at all interested in. It certainly doesn’t appeal to non-photographers, and I don’t have any photographer friends, so it’s all pretty much interesting to me only.

Actually that’s maybe a key point. Without wanting to get too wishy-washy, my theory is that I photograph largely to create a narrative to place myself in. I have dual Swiss- British nationality, but I don’t have significant roots in either country. So for years I have subconsciously been trying to create some sort of anchor for myself. I don’t have much of a connection to most places I travel to, such as Iceland, so in those cases my unconscious motivation to photograph fails to spark. And when it does, it kicks in more in urban environments than out in the landscape. So I’m probably trying to photograph the wrong subjects, even though I actually enjoy more being out in the natural landscape.

I think I’m more of a consumer of photography than a creator. I have a large and ever-growing collection of photo books, and I get a lot more pleasure out of these than I do out of looking at my own photos, in general. And of the general standards of composition, interpretation and presentation and unreachably higher than my own. It is what it is.

I don’t suppose I will stop photographing, but I do think I need to make peace with the fact that “average” is the very best I can hope to attain, and refocus my energies on other things in life.

So this will probably be the last post here for quite a while. Maybe for ever. I’ve pretty much said all I’ve got to say, indeed far more than that. Over twenty years is a pretty good run for a blog. Time to let it rest.

This is mostly a post about camera bags. I’ll leave out the standard boilerplate about never having enough bags. Actually I have 3 bags in frontline service, an Atlas Athlete for “hybrid” trips and extended hiking, snowshoeing etc, a Mindshift Backlight 26L for more dedicated photography outings, and a Wotancraft Pilot 7L for street use.  I also have a battered and semi-retired Domke F803 which still sees some use. This lineup has been stable for quite some time and all these bags have racked up considerable mileage. I’m very happy with all of them.  However ...

Next week I’ll be heading off to Iceland, for the first time in 4 years, and so far as photography is concerned, the first time since 2016. It was time for a refresh. My plan was to take my Hasselblad X1DII along with 3 or 4 lenses. Being a bit nervous about some aspects of using the Hasselblad in the field, I decided that I would take a minimal Olympus kit as backup / secondary system. The Hasselblad would go in the Backlight backpack, and the Olympus in the Wotancraft shoulder bag.  So far so good. Loaded up the Backlight bag was still well under 10kg, including MacBook Pro. The only minor snag is that it is a bit of a tight fit, getting the Hasselblad kit in the Backlight, mainly because the camera section is a little shallow. It’s fine for short trips, but it could mean that working out of the bag in Icelandic locations and winter conditions could be frustrating. So I started poking about online for alternatives. I was restricted by the quite severe Icelandair carry on size restrictions: the Backlight 26L fits in easily, but the obvious alternative, its 35L big brother, violates two dimensions. So that one was out.

Looking around online, it was impossible to avoid the blanket faux-review marketing by Shimoda. Unable to resist, I ordered a Shimoda V2 Explore 30L, which does just fit into Icelandair’s draconian rules. Actually I had to order the “starter kit”, including an unecessary medium “V2 Core Unit Modular Camera Insert”: it was clear I’d need the large one. Anyway, it was returned to sender with 24 hours. First of all, the bag actually has less useful capacity than the Backlight 26L. The “camera insert” is less deep than the Backlight’s camera section.  My impression of the rest of the bag is that it seems well built, but heavens is it fiddly. Lots and lots and lots of Features for YouTube Influencers to bang on about, but quite honestly it feels like it was designed to be looked at and fawned over, not be actually used. The Louis Vuitton of camera bags.

Next attempt was the NYA-EVO Fjord 36L, with large size Removable Camera Insert (RCI), currently in a box on its way back to Belgium. This was a bit of a trickier decision. Actually in one dimension the Fjord 36L does exceed Icelandair rules, but first, this is depth, the most critical for me, and second, the other two dimensions are well within limits. Also the NYA-EVO provides a very well thought out method of stashing the waist straps, making it look more compact. I expect I could sneak it through. Actually I never fully unpacked the RCI inserts, as I wanted to ensure I could easily repack everything in untouched condition if I needed to return it. My very first impression of the Fjord 36L wasn’t actually all that positive. It arrived fully packed down, and gave off quite a chemical stench when I first removed it from its plastic cover.  Initially it also seemed rather flimsy. However second impressions were much better, and it does seem to be very well built, from strong material which I expect would stop smelling quite so bad over time.

One word of advice to NYA-EVO - ship your bags assembled, like Shimoda does. The box it came in was easily big enough to contain an assembled bag, and it would give a much better first impression. Especially given the premium price, you could put a little effort into presentation. And indeed source some less flimsy boxes.

Still, once again the actual load capacity seemed not a lot higher than the Backlight 26L. And with the large RCI, there actually is very little extra space left in the main compartment, although there are several full length front compartments which are similar to those on the Backlight - probably a touch larger. So I was a bit dubious. It didn’t seem to offer significantly more than the Backlight, and where it did, it was verging into Atlas Athlete territory. I convinced myself nevertheless to give it a fair trial, but then encountered a showstopper. At 1.91 meters tall, normally proportioned, the bag with harness at fully extended position was slightly too short for me. The waist straps were sitting too high to transfer load to my hips, so therefore useless, not to mention looking pretty stupid.  So sadly, once again it got returned. And I’m really NOT in the habit of returning things, it is an almighty pain. Swiss vendors are really not into “return culture”, and returning to international vendors requires extensive paperwork and considerable cost.

The NYA-EVO Fjord 60L may be a good alternative, but it exceeds most European airline’s carry on dimensions. However potentially it could replace the use scenarios of both my Atlas bag (which is showing signs of wear) and the Backlight, and I could go for the option of taking just the RCI as carry on luggage. But I have to say I’m not all that keen on that idea, in fact I’m not a big fan of removable inserts in the first place.

If only there was a Backlight 30L. One big marketing point of both Shimoda and NYA-EVO is that they have ultra comfortable carry systems. Well, at best both of them more or less come up to the standard of the Backlight’s shoulder and waist straps.

So I’m back where I started. Looking at my packed duffel bag, full of winter clothing and boots, with the weight creeping towards 20kg, and the backpack, and the shoulder bag, and considering I need to change trains twice, take a flight, then a bus, just to arrive in Reykjavik, I started to feel I was not going to enjoy this much. So I decided to slim things down. First, difficult decision was to jettison the Hasselblad. Replacing this was one Olympus body, 8-25mm, 12-40mm, 40-150mm f/4 and 17mm f/1.2 lenses. No backup body, but the Ricoh GRIII pair as secondary system, along with their converter lenses. This added up to 6.5kg including the MacBook Pro, so quite persuasive. Then I could switch the 2kg Gitzo Explorer tripod for the 0.8kg Gitzo Traveller. Finally, really taking a leap, I decided to substitute the MacBook Pro with my iPad Air M2, running Capture One for iPad.

Finally I’m tending towards lightweight, and have avoided buying a new bag. A side effect of all of this is to push me more and more towards the opinion that digital medium format just doesn’t suit me, so I may well start divesting myself of all these expensive Hasselblad lenses on my return. I’m more suited to toy cameras.

The Backlight 26L with my final camera & lens selections

The photointerwebs, or at least that part which is interested in Capture One, exploded in a orgy of demonstrative outrage last week, when a new pricing model was announced for Capture One software.

In a nutshell, the current offer is that you can buy a “perpetual” license, which will give you long term rights to use a particular release of the software, for as long as you meet the hardware / operating system requirement. In addition, any feature upgrades added up until the next major release you also get to use.  The to-be offer is much the same, only it removes the feature upgrades part, and can be bought at any time to cover the then-current product feature set.

It’s pretty clear why they made this move: some time ago, they introduced a subscription model running alongside the perpetual model.  A major touted benefit of the subscription model was that you get new features when they’re ready, not just at major release points (yearly in Capture One’s case). The problem here is that perpetual licenses also got that benefit, and the perpetual upgrade pricing was not very different to a subscription. So perpetual was more flexible, and on top of that did not lock you in perpetuity to a subscription. 

Since there are clear financial reasons for software companies to try to persuade their clients to move to a subscription model, this must have presented a serious commercial dilemma for Capture One.  And although their messaging was pretty flawed, actually I think they’ve come up with a fair compromise between offering choice to their customers and remaining a viable company, attractive to investors.

So Joe Photographer everywhere screamed he was going back to Adobe, which offers way better value for money (I’ll get on to that later), Joe of course forgetting how outraged he was when Adobe, faced with a similar dilemma, not only summarily dropped perpetual licences altogether, but also played a very nasty trick on customers a few months prior to going subscription only with their Creative Suite upgrade policy change. Then, they coerced people into upgrading, by drastically reducing the cutoff for upgrade eligibility from previous versions - only to kill off upgrades altogether a short time later.

But whatever - this is how commerce works. Neither Capture One nor Adobe are charities. They both need to pay their staff, keep the lights on, and keep the markets happy. Do I like the last part? Not much, no. Can I see an alternative? Nope.

So after several years of Adobe as The Great Satan, suddenly they’re all saints rolled into one.

But anyway, as Paul Reiffer put it, even skipping the false claim (well, false for now, I’m not that naive) that Capture One is forcing you into subscriptions, does any serious photographer really make core creative decisions based on whether or not there’s a subscription model involved?  I certainly don’t.

Adobe (and DxO, and Exposure, and Iridient) make great software. And a lot of people are very happy with Lightroom. Personally, I’m not. I dislike Lightroom for two reasons: one, it has an awful User Interface which makes it an absolute drag to use. But more important, for my tastes, it is an absolute battle to get any kind of attractive output from it. In Capture One my basic process is this: adjust exposure, balance shadows and highlights, adjust contrast with a Luma curve.  That takes about 30 seconds. With Lightroom it is nearly impossible to reproduce.  First of all to me Lightroom controls seem very unsubtle, and second they all interact with each other, following a Grown-Ups Know Best model apparently based what Thomas Knoll thought photos should look like.

Yes, the Adobe Photography Subscription, offers, on the face of it, a fantastic deal. But does it? Lightroom is not for me. Bridge is a clunky disaster area which seems to get worse with every update. Portfolio is ok but not much use to me. Lr Mobile is certainly very nice to have, but the UI is not pleasant. Photoshop? Well, of course, Rome remains Rome. But I think I can live with Affinity Photo for the few things Capture One can’t do.
So yes, an Adobe Photography Subscription is (much) cheaper than a Capture One subscription. Again, is that the basis for creative choice? Hey, a Kodak-branded Chinese Point & Shoot is WAAAY cheaper than a Nikon Z7!

But that’s just me. Don’t worry, I’ve got a long list of grievances against Capture One:

Obviously, the pricing is getting rather excessive. Generally speaking, a ceiling of $200-$300 per year for a core piece of somewhat specialised software is not that ridiculous. However, the problem comes more with what the upgrade or subscription charge brings you. In recent years this has not necessarily been very impressive. In particular for a lot of people Capture One 23 brings absolute zero added value, although for a particular customer segment I imagine it is pretty fantastic. Then again, that same segment probably was underwhelmed with Capture one 22. You can’t please all the people all the time. Actually the new pricing model does appear to be offering more flexibility on which features you want to pay for, but this is also wrapped up in a mysterious “loyalty scheme” which so far we know nothing about.

Capture One for iPad was, and remains, a massive disappointment. The core application looks fantastic, but it is rigidly locked to a workflow which places it as some kind of initial preprocessor for the desktop application. And development seems to have paused if not stopped.

Capture One refuses to support Hasselblad cameras. Well, I don’t know which party is to blame here, and it would certainly require full cooperation from Hasselblad to develop a solution comparable to Phocus, but still… time to get over past feuds?

Capture One’s catalog is far better than its many detractors claim. But it has vast scope for improvement, and while a few bones get thrown to customers who actually value catalog features now and then (versions in separate collections in Capture One 23 is nice, for example, but so far I can’t convince myself that it is $200 nice). The catalog needs to extend parent-child view to User Collections (at least we have it in Folders now), and really, really implement some model of Stacks, Ideally Aperture’s model, not Lightroom’s half-assed hack.  And yes, maybe get a competent data modeller to optimise the database?

But for me it all boils down to this: Capture One gives me results that I’m really very happy with, and is largely a pleasure to use. I’m happy to pay for that, unless the pricing or licensing gets completely insane, and honestly, we’re far away from that. The recent announcement is an adjustment dictated by market conditions, not some dastardly schemes designed to shovel vast amounts of cash to a predatory private equity firm, however attractive that narrative might be to drama queens on the interwebs.

One way or another photography is obviously a significant factor in my life. I’m honestly not sure if I’m happy with that, sometimes it feels like a massive waste of time, complete trivia, something I’m actually really not very good at - but it is what it is.

I’m pretty much hermetically sealed in my photography practice. It is 100% amateur, I have no clients, I have no substantial contact with other photographers that would provide me with any feedback or interaction. I photograph alone, I process alone, and I largely publish to an audience of 1, myself. I do interact on a very superficial extent with a small group of people on Flickr, but interaction there dropped pretty much to “Like” level following changes years back which effectively disincentivised more engaged behaviour, and trivialised the site.  Instagram ... not my thing.

So how do I evaluate what I’m doing, especially in the light of my persistent nagging feeling that it is actually little better than rubbish? Well all I can do is compare. And then it gets confusing. Mostly I compare with photos printed in books, of which I’ve acquired a large number. For some reason, I find that the results of these comparisons fall into two categories: those that are vastly better than mine, and those which are nowhere near as good as mine. In the second group I also sometimes find photos which aren’t really very memorable, but of which I have near identical versions.  There is a smaller third group, where the photography may well have considerable merit, but leaves me indifferent. What I don’t really get is a clear orientation of where I actually stand.  Note, I have to say that the first group is pretty much made up of established artists, and the second more of YouTube bros.

While there is a lot of photography I enjoy, and admire, the list of photographers than I can genuinely claim as an influence is not all that long.  The most significant would be Andris Apse, Hans Strand, Harry Gruyaert, Frank Gohlke, Franco Fontana - quite an eclectic bunch, and perhaps a clear indication that consistency and clarity of vision will forever evade me.

I’m fairly stubborn in my outlook to photography, and quite impervious to instruction. Perhaps another way of putting it would be lazy. I rely on instinctive composition, I really do not have some inner voice rambling on about placing whatever on whichever magic circle intersection, like the YouTube bros do. I just go “oooh, pretty, point. click”. Sometimes I check the focus, or at a real stretch, the exposure. I have no idea what is supposed to be wrong with f/22.

Often I come home with a crop of photos that I’m quite happy with.  I download them, start fiddling around with them, filter out the complete duds, and get them into some finished form. A few I will upload to Flickr, where they largely sink without trace, and for whatever reason I usually realise after a while that I’ve actually uploaded the objectively weaker shots, for subjective reasons that my audience neither knows nor cares about. So from an external viewpoint, I’m really a terrible editor, especially in the context of social media. The (subjectively) better shots actually I usually print, in some cases quite large.  But literally nobody else sees these.

If I compare my “landscape photos in the style of Hans Strand”, I quickly realise that they are a million miles away from equal. It isn’t so much the composition, or the lighting, or whatever, but more the lack of depth. Really successful photos, not just landscape, work well at all levels. Attractive composition isn’t just found in the foreground elements, but all the way through the photo, down to the smallest detail. This, I think, is what accounts for their longevity, it’s the quality which allows us to revise and enjoy time and time again. I can’t achieve that. I would suggest Simon Baxter’s photography as a very good example of this ability.

Here is an example: I took quite some time over this shot, focus stacked it (which I hate), thought about the composition, yet the background is just chaos, nothing at all to rest the eye on.

If I’m kind to myself I might think that perhaps it isn’t so much that I’m not very good at landscape photography, but more that my twist on urban landscape is more my forte.

This, on the other hand, is a simple unplanned off-the-cuff photo I took recently, no tripod, point and shoot, and to me it seems much more coherent.

Probably the most compelling portfolios I could put together would be around urban landscape. Venice, perhaps, or several themes in southern Italy. But on the other hand, I really enjoy exploring and photographing the landscape. Perhaps if I had somebody to bounce ideas off and to exchange suggestions and experiences with, it might help. Then again, probably not 😊

I haven’t written much here recently. Indeed, I haven’t done much worth writing about, in the context of this blog. Yesterday however I did have the chance to reflect as I laid back in the dentists chair and suffered an hour of scheduled routine maintenance (no major issues discovered), and during that time I came up with several erudite, fascinating posts and pretty much sketched them out in my head.

Naturally, I’ve completely forgotten what they were.

But I really feel I should write something, so here we go - a totally unfocused ramble, let’s see what comes out.

Actually I have spent quite some time on my experimental migration to Squarespace, copying over as much content as possible, and working on the structure. I’m still not all that convinced I want to do this, as Squarespace gives me a lot less freedom of choice - which is possibly as much of a plus as a minus - but also once set up clearly requires far, far less time to manage. But certainly it will be a less personal, less idiosyncratic of presenting myself on the web.

I haven’t done a lot of active photography. First of all, time has been a scarce resource. But when time did permit, the weather, oscillating between either constant heavy rainfall or photographer-hostile clear blue sky, did not play along. When the weather was actually attractive, I was otherwise engaged. So that’s another autumn wiped out.

Blue Sky - a day out with the Hasselblad

On the other hand I have spent some time constructively revisiting my archives, and, if not finding lost gems, at least finding some stuff which was more interesting than I expected. In order to lose gems, I’d have to have some in the first place. This in turn led me to carry out some long-needed updates to some software I use ... which in turn pushed me to take a huge risk and update to macOS Monterey.  I’d had a disastrous experience with its predecessor, Big Sur, from which I made a panicked retreat to the the oasis of stability, Mojave. But thanks to the ongoing need Apple has to rake more and more money into its coffers, and be driven almost entirely by Marketing, “old” versions of operating systems get ever shorter lives, and customers are forced into largely pointless upgrades built ever-declining standard of software engineering and testing. Many would say Saint Steve would be rotating in his grave. I doubt it. Under the superficiality, he was at least as much focused on raking in money as his successors.

Anyway, so far - 5 days in - macOS Monterey is more or less behaving itself. Most of the time.

Blue Sky - a day out with the Hasselblad

Of course with all this faffing about, inevitably thoughts turn to Gear Acquisition / De-Acquistion.  Before leaving for Lofoten back in August, I did manage to convince myself that the new Olympus 8-25mm wide angle zoom would suit me more than the Olympus 7-14mm wide angle zoom I’ve had for ages. However the order I put in fell through and the lens could not be delivered in time. Somehow though I managed to end up placing another order, and in mid-September the lens turned up.  Eventually I had to try it out. It’s not bad at all, and has the major advantage that normal filters can be used on it, unlike the 7-14.  The loss of one stop (f/4 to f/2.8) is not very material for a wide angle lens, so I ended up selling the 7-14, at a fair price.  Of course, it is a smidgeon less wide, but that will hopefully mean slightly less shots with my feet or a tripod leg in the frame.

Still, I’ve got far too many lenses.

And cameras, but we’ll get to that later.

Next, along came the announcement of the new Olympus OM Systems 20mm f/4 PRO lens. I was mesmerised. In particular as OM Systems seem to have a slightly better idea of how to market to old men than Olympus did. Sucks for various other (boring) old men getting thrown off of their “Olympus Visionary” perches, but that’s progress for you. Anyway, initially I was just a hop and a skip away from clicking on PREORDER NOW, but somehow I held back. I remembered several things: 1, the old Panasonic 20mm lens that was an absolute must-have in the early days of Micro Four Thirds never much appealed to me. I bought it, and sold it. I already have two fast 17mm Olympus lenses, the f/1.8 and f/1.2. I actually had the f/1.2 on sale, but I pulled the auction. And I also spent a little while reacquainting myself with the 17mm f/1.8, one of my all time favourites. Conclusion, I really do not need this new 20mm f/4. Then again, when has that ever stopped me?

Who needs a 20mm f/1.4 when you have a 17mm f/1.8 ?

Before that there was another burst of GAS with the announcement of the Ricoh GRIIIx with a 40mm equivalent lens - coincidentally the same as the above-mentioned OM 20mm. I’ve been a huge fan of the Ricoh GR cameras since they first came on the market in the dark days of film, but always found the 28mm field of view a bit limiting. The new 40mm FoV is far closer to my favoured 35mm, so this was really a must have. Ok, the price is a little off-putting. But anyway I ordered one, in early October, with a promised delivery in 5 days. Those 5 days turned to 10 days, then to “er, we’ll get back to you on that”, so I cancelled my order. Apparently it should be available in January. I assume they mean 2022.

I did finally manage to soothe my bursting wallet with an opportunistic lunge at a “refurbished” (i.e. new, but the box is a bit scuffed) Olympus E-M5 MkIII at a shockingly low price. So far I’m very pleased with it; despite the outcry that it is made of, shock, horror “plastic” (polycarbonate actually) it feels just as good as my all metal MkII (which moves into a backup role). I would say that some buttons are rather cramped on the MkIII compared to the MkII, but the move to a layout more consistent with the E-M1 MkIII is very welcome.

First ever photo with my new Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III

And finally, back to the elephant in the corner of my room - the Hasselblad X1DII. Without a doubt it is a beautiful piece of engineering and ergonomic design, which delivers technically fantastic results. But so far I cannot honestly say it is fun to use. It still leaves me perplexed, and I really cannot think of one memorable photo I’ve taken with it. Technically impressive photos, yes, but memorable as photos, not really. I think it is down to the lenses. They are certainly absolute top level in terms of sharpness, rendition, colour, all of those “image quality” things. But they have nothing to some key characteristics of the Olympus lenses, for example close focussing. Sometimes it feels like closest focussing distance should be measured in kilometres. And of course they are very expensive, generally about twice the price of the nearest competitor, Fuji.  I do actually think that the Hasselblad system is in general superior to the Fuji - if I give up the Hasselblad, it would not be to go to the Fuji MF system, just to “retreat” to Olympus.  I guess a fundamental issue is that I had in mind some very specific travel destinations which would justify medium format, and the way the world has turned it seems those are destinations I’ll never reach.

...perchance to dream