Could I set the landscape free? Thoughts on expressionist landscape photography

I recently discovered new inspiration

This summer I visited the wonderful exhibition “The Transience Of Light”. It was a retrospective of the etchings of Norman Ackroyd. He liked to visit what he called the outliers on the Northern coasts of the UK. He would capture them in all sorts of weather and light. And he would abstract what he saw.

I found this work inspirational. Far more inspirational than the majority of landscape photography that I have seen recently. Ackroyd did not capture the landscape: he set it free.

I have been wanting to try to take direction from this work

Could I imagine light? Could I minimalise my compositions so that they concentrated on the form of the land and the form of the horizon and no more? Could I make the landscape float in the ether?

I also liked the fact that Ackroyd often left details of the plate making process in his images. You can sometimes see where he has wiped the plate with chemicals. The process becomes an integral part of the image, not just a way to get there. This touches on my own love of texture within images. Could I make texture a part of the image rather than just a clever post processing overlay? (I'm still working on those...)

These thoughts have led me to the experiments that I am now carrying out

The images themselves are a mixture of ICM and traditional landscape photography (although no tripods are used and focus stacking is completely avoided!). But increasingly, what I make in camera is only the start of a final image. It is the raw material that I start with.

Playing is a vital part of the creative process and I am busy playing at the moment. Part of my play process is to create multiple versions of the same image, to compare different directions, to find out when things might work and when I have taken them too far. And sometimes it is a good opportunity to build on each edit: adding more at each stage until it feels right.

I have tried to move beyond the traditional photograph

I want some of my final images to be tangible: prints that can be held and appreciated and looked at for longer than the average social media post (I hope!). 

I also hope that I have not copied Norman Ackroyd. That is not my intention. I want to take the themes that he has inspired me with and run with them and develop them in my own way. 

I hope that my new images convey the emotion of the land

For me, it has been a chance to interpret how I feel about it rather than simply being a record of what was there. 

PS If you like the images in this piece and would like some help in developing your work in a similar direction or simply finding your own voice, I’d love the chance to help you. Check out my mentoring services here