The art of noticing
Finding the beauty in the ordinary.
Hello, I’m Gill and I write a photography blog inspired by the landscapes of Suffolk and beyond. Please subscribe to read more of my writing and visit my website to view my images.
The path across the heath is straight and well manicured, the grass cut short to reveal the sandy soil below. On either side the flat landscape expands into a tangle of vegetation spread out like a patchwork quilt of cerise pink, mauve, green, yellow and ochre. This area makes up the remnants of the ‘Sandlings’ - a vast unbroken heathland landscape that once covered the length of the Suffolk Coast. Today only a few fragments remain.
Heathlands are fragile landscapes, threatened on a global scale. In Britain we have just 58000 hectares of lowland heath left which is about 20% of the worlds resource. The landscape exists on some of the poorest, sandy soils but despite the harshness of the environment the habitat is a diverse one comprising grasses, flowering heather, silver birch, pine, bracken and gorse. This is home to specialist species including nightjar, dartford warbler, woodlark and adder. It is one that I love exploring not just for its wider landscapes but for its smaller scenes.
This week I ventured out onto the heath a couple of hours after sunrise. I have been commissioned to capture some images of the area, but before doing so I wanted to explore a few locations to find the ones that best represented the habitat. My task today was not a photographic one, it was more an observational recce entirely devoted to the art of noticing.
Often when we head out with the camera we are so focused on getting a good shot and reacting to the light that we don’t have time to look and really ‘see’ the landscape we are working in. So sometimes it is good to pack the camera away and just explore with our eyes.
After I had finished my recce for my commission I decided to spend some personal time with the camera looking for all the tiny, ordinary things around me that I wouldn’t usually pay attention to. I wanted to see if I could make interesting images from inconsequential things by simply paying them some attention.
To make this more of a challenge I decided that for each item I observed I would make at least three images with the aim of creating some triptychs all about the ‘art’ of noticing. In short I wanted to make artful images of things I would usually walk past. To do this I have used my 105mm macro lens.
I began by looking at all the plants around me. There were plenty to choose from but in the end I settled on a dead stem of ragwort - perhaps not the most inspiring thing on the heath! The summer yellow flowers had long faded and the plant was now a dried stem with some lovely star shaped seed heads at the very tips of its stems. Set against the heather I thought these would make a good starting point for my challenge.
Continuing on my walk I came across some thistle seeds caught on top of a clump of bell heather. These became the subject of my second triptych. With these I wanted to create a dreamy effect so I wasn’t looking for big parts of the image to be in focus. I was looking to capture a feeling rather than a portrait.
Finally I turned my camera to the bracken which is everywhere on the heath and created my third set of three, using the lens to find hidden leaves deep in the tangle of undergrowth. This gave me some beautiful colour combinations which are more apparent when only a small part of the image is in focus.
All these images have been created by observing small details and using manual focus on the lens to bring certain parts of the image into view. I love shooting like this - finding a scene that looks promising and then playing with the focus until the most interesting part of the composition becomes sharp.
Sometimes, in these situations, I feel that sharpness is over rated and it is possible to create interesting shots using soft focus or completely unsharp images. This is what I have done with the next series created from a combination of grasses and heather. There are small parts in the outside images that are sharp while the middle image is completely out of focus. For me this triptych is all about the colours and pattens and the feelings they create. I wanted to convey the idea of what it might be like to be small and in the middle of all this foliage.
Paying attention and making a habit of noticing helps us cultivate an original perspective and a distinct point of view and in doing so will help our images stand out from the crowd.
Exercises like this are a great way to hone our creativity. They allow us to experiment without fear of failure and can yield some interesting images that we may never have taken if we were sticking to our tried and tested ways of shooting. They are in essence a form of play which we should all embrace from time to time.
One of my favourite books is the Art of Noticing by Rob Walker. In it he says
Every day is filled with opportunities to be amazed, surprised, enthralled—to experience the enchanting everyday. To stay eager. To be, in a word, alive.
This is what I love about landscape photography - it gets me out, it helps me notice all the wonderful things that are around me and it brings huge amounts of joy to my life.
What are you going to do with your opportunities today? Do you enjoy experimenting with your photography and if so do you have any challenges that you like setting for yourself. I would love to hear how you stay inspired so please leave a comment below.
Thank you very much for reading and until next week enjoy your photography.
Gill
Such a wonderful article and photographs! I love the dreamy style and soft, out of focus subjects. I will definitely venture into my local heaths in search of small details.
One thing I really want to try and capture is something I've seen yesterday during a walk without both the camera and phone. I was mesmerised by a large boulder covered in quartz and numerous old lichens when I suddenly spotted a small clump of something resting on the top. Buzzard pellet! Feathers, tiny bones, a part of a miniscule skull that probably belonged to a mouse. A reminder that everything in Nature has its place and role. I don't know if I will find the pellet still there since we had a huge storm last night, but I think it could make some great, soft shots.
Another great read, albeit a day later than usual. The initial image, fantastic colours, the narrative about the sandlands drawing the read in, then wow, the sets of tryptic images, disecting the scene and separating the individual colours of that first image, I find that by the end of the post I am totally immersed where you were, the power of and the combination of images and narrative!😀
The process you describe reminds me of one of Kim Grant's blogs, where she sits down and concentrates on square metre she is sitting in, only producing images within it.
Until the next one, thank you!