On Landscape - Any Questions Private

Tim Parkin (00:00)
Hello and welcome to On Landscape. I'm here with our Any Questions podcast with Joe Cornish and our special guest Paul Wakefield. Hello, Paul and Joe.

Paul Wakefield (00:08)
Hi Tim, hi Joe.

Joe Cornish (00:10)
Hi, Paul. Hi, Tim.

Tim Parkin (00:11)
We have a bunch of questions off our readers and I'll go straight into it. And we've got a question off Jim Robertson about your hobbies, Paul. He asks, I know your interest in birds and wondered if you've ever considered producing work, wildlife or with birds involved.

Paul Wakefield (00:12)
You

Okay.

No, I haven't actually. I mean, it's such a specialist style of photography. And the thing about, I mean, you know, and I do love photography. I mean, I would say that's one of my hobbies. I mean, I'm a professional, always have been, but you know, I'm lucky that it's also a hobby for me in the way that hobbies are, that you love something and you would do it whether you were doing another job or not. I wanted to make my...

my hobby, my actual job. And so bird watching, it would take away the actual pleasure that I get and the downtime that I get in something that I really enjoy if I started photographing birds. I just love watching birds. I think they're the most fascinating. I mean, I love all wildlife, but I think birds are just staggeringly phenomenal. They're so busy.

and they're never still and they're always doing something that you're not expecting. I mean, habits of birds are being recognised, of never being recorded before. Even now, after such a long time when so many people have been watching birds and animals as well. So I wouldn't do that. I just love watching it.

Tim Parkin (01:55)
I've always been fascinated by crows and the intelligence compared with the primates. They're quite incredible things. We have crows on the top of Ben Nevis that have successfully worked out how to undo zips on rucksacks.

Paul Wakefield (01:59)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Cornish (02:03)
That is.

Paul Wakefield (02:09)
Well, there you go. I mean, the kids in New Zealand just don't leave anything lying about and they'll strip your car of all the windscreen wipers, et cetera, et cetera. I once drove through Longleat in a Land Rover with some American friends and they literally took all the rubber off the Land Rover. And my American friends were just falling about with laughter. I couldn't do anything. I was stuck in a compound. I made a stupid decision to go through.

having seen a pile of what looked like spare parts from cars, drove past it thinking, what was that? And then by that time it was too late.

Tim Parkin (02:47)
discovered. I'm interested is, I mean, obviously, photography is partly a hobby. How do you how do you keep your interest in? Because I've taken my hobbies and turn them into jobs a couple of times, and they sort of ruin things, as I think you're alluding to. How do you keep how do you keep that interest in the photography as a hobby going as well as photography as a business? You can't come from a place.

Paul Wakefield (02:49)
Anyway.

Yeah.

Well, I think because I've always been a photographer that's done my commissioned work and I've also done my own work. And a lot of professional photographers, i .e. photographers who make their living out of making photographs, a lot of them don't do that. They just do commercial work. Especially previously, not so much now.

I don't think you get that so much now and I think it's probably easier because a lot of photographers were studio photographers back in the day. And when they came out of the studio, they didn't want to take pictures. They just wanted a downtime. They just wanted to go out and do something. Well, I just wanted to go out and take more pictures when I was working in the studio. And so ultimately I changed from working in the studio to working outside with natural light for advertising agency with cars and all sorts of stuff like that.

Tim Parkin (03:57)
Yeah.

Paul Wakefield (04:09)
I still wanted to make my own pictures because that's actually what I started doing in the first place. That's why I went to college to make pictures. And I'm sure Joe did the same. You went to art college, I think, Joe, you know, but you changed from an artistic, if you like, painting background to a photographing background. It's still this need, if you like, to express yourself through a creative medium.

Joe Cornish (04:31)
I remember the first time we met Paul, that you told me, I think I'm pretty sure it was the first time, you told me then that you kind of worked for six months, worked, quote unquote, and well not exactly played, but you used to spend six months of the year doing your own photography. And I always thought that was fantastic model for having a well -balanced life, where you would have personal artistic fulfillment, but also financial.

enough finance to keep yourself in a comfortable way of living as well. So although my you know, since I never really did commercial works at the level that you did anywhere near it. It was always somewhat different from me the emphasis. But I do think that that was I mean, and that was true. I don't know if it is still true. Was that true then the six months or was it?

Paul Wakefield (05:23)
Yes it worked, but it was never a six months and six months. That would have been impossible. But I would say that yeah, half a year, maybe not quite half a year, but certainly four months, eight months, for that four months I was always doing my own work. And I ended up going, traveling a lot I suppose. I went to Scotland a lot, I went to Wales a lot, I did those four books in that time with Jan Morris. And then I went a lot to India.

on my own projects. And yeah, it wasn't a case of, I mean, I was prepared to back myself, if you like. And all those times were not paid work. And so I had to make sure that during the time I was working, I was earning enough to give me a lifestyle that I wanted really. And I think that's why I changed from working.

for publishers and record companies into advertising because the money was so much better. And also you didn't have to do as much for a lot more money. The risk was huge. But I don't know why I actually liked it. I don't know why. I mean, you know, I just liked...

Joe Cornish (06:37)
Yeah, the pressure, the pressure, that's one of the...

Paul Wakefield (06:50)
solving problems, I think. That's another thing. It wasn't just the photography. It sort of got parts of other parts of your brain working. You always have to come up with a way of delivering a campaign to an agency using your vision, if you like, of making pictures with their very structured brief.

And I mean, also a lot of those briefs, I would never do myself, obviously. You know, I mean, why would I photograph a car in the landscape? There'd be absolutely no need for me to do that. So it was a challenge, but also, you know, it worked. It did work. And I realised that you can make the two work in a way that... And you can also find out things about your own personal work.

that you wouldn't be finding out if you were just taking pictures for yourself because you were considering light in a completely different way because you had a metal object in front of you and you had to learn how to light it and in fact I learnt pretty quickly what an art director once told me the first card job I ever did was for a Range Rover and they wanted me to go to UAE I think it was.

And I kind of shit myself really, because I'd never ever photographed a car in my life before. And he said, no, no, no problem. He said, just go down, go down to the basement and take one of our Land Rovers out and take it out to the countryside and you'll see it lights itself. And he was right in a way. I mean, you just have to put it in the right light. And, you know, I was photographing then anyway, in very soft light.

And I very quickly realized you put something like shiny metal object in hard light and it completely wrecks it. So you learn sort of things like that and then you learn more and more and more. And then I was also doing studio work at the same time and that taught me a lot about lighting again outside, for example, in closed.

places like canyons in America where you use the light bouncing off one wall, but you'd be photographing something down here and the light would be coming over your left shoulder, bouncing off that wall and then coming into your picture. So you've got this incredibly slightly strange light that's made things glow in a way.

And it only lasted a very short period of time because the facet of that rock up there was only angled in one direction. It didn't move like a studio flat. You could move a studio flat, but a cliff face doesn't move. And so what made it alter was the angle of the light. So there were all those kind of things that you sort of pick up on really. And once you notice something like that, I think you take it into other areas of your work.

Joe Cornish (10:07)
I totally agree. And it's really interesting to hear you talk about lighting in such a detailed way, because I do believe that that's one of the things that is often neglected in contemporary photography, because to some extent, digital solved some of those problems of high contrast for us, but also the way that, you know, when you have a commercial background, you obviously have to deliver, you have to deliver on film.

pictures that have atmosphere and depth and feeling, it's really necessary to understand the light and how to use it properly. And I think that that's a big advantage in terms of your own work. And the way that you describe it is just fascinating because I totally relate to it myself having been an assistant to car photographers for a couple of years. And I'm aware, if you think of the car as a car shaped mirror, which is...

you know, one way of thinking about it and you realize that every single surface it reflects is fundamental to the shape of the car and how it appears, you know, it's kind of living sculpture, which is usually the goal of the art directors at the time. And I think you bring that knowledge to your own work and an understanding of how light essentially defines and describes atmosphere. And you see that in your work, absolutely all, you know, especially in your contemporary books.

as I'm sure many other people watching and listening will know.

Paul Wakefield (11:37)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, when a car manufacturer gives you a brief to photograph a car, the art director has made drawn layouts that specifically enhance certain aspects of the car. It's all about modeling. You know, it's all about lines on an object. And there are certain things that you have to show and you have to...

And you kind of have to tweak that really quickly when you look at an object, when you look at a car. I mean, even now, when I look at new cars, it's going through my mind how it would look in a certain kind of light. I'm never going to photograph it, but it's just habitual. It's become habitual. And it's also kind of interesting as well, because it keeps my mind a little bit active in an area that I'm no longer working in. I don't do commercial work at all any longer. I stopped in about 2019. But you can't help your mind thinking in that way. And also, it's still very interesting. And I do like...

I do like car design. I didn't in the first place, but I sort of got to like it because I got to understand the problems involved. I don't like it so much now. I think most of them are pretty ugly and all the same, which is another challenge. How do you make very similar cars look different? But anyway, that's a whole different story.

Joe Cornish (12:56)
it is. But I mean, yeah, just to go back and Tim, I'm sorry to dominate this. Just thinking about, you know, from what Paul is saying, how that applies in the natural world as well, because I know that when I walk through a woodland, the light on on trees and how, how the shape of the tree is revealed by the light from a given angle, very often, it makes it makes a big difference to whether you have an opening on one side or a clearing, for example, and a woodland blade, and the shape of the trees and

Tim Parkin (13:00)
That's right, no problem at all.

Joe Cornish (13:26)
Ultimately, all of these things can be related back to the discoveries in European art, at least in the Renaissance, and how you see through, especially the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries of painting, how each generation gradually improved their understanding of modeling, starting with Masaccio, and then through Michelangelo and Leonardo. And then if you use Caravaggio as a...

Paul Wakefield (13:43)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Joe Cornish (13:56)
and most people would be familiar with this work. He was a painter who literally made people believe they were looking at three -dimensional objects. And this is part of the same tradition in a way.

Paul Wakefield (14:02)
Absolutely. Yeah.

It is, it is, and actually one of the things I still do, and I did from the very beginning when I started seriously making landscape pictures, having worked in the studio up until about 1980, and I stopped, from college I stopped doing landscapes because I was concentrating so much on earning a living up until a point where I sort of got to a reasonable stage and then I was able to go back out into the landscape and take a music. I started to take,

you know, those little roll -up, those little spring -out reflectors. You know, they're silver one side and white the other. And you can either get them that spring out to about that size or that spring out to something like this size. And then they just literally twist like that. They've got this metal hoop on the outside and they twist like that and go back in the envelope, in a metal envelope. And I can tell you what, you know, I can...

Joe Cornish (15:05)
Last one.

Paul Wakefield (15:06)
I carry one about that size in my pack and one about that size in my pack and I have done through my whole career. Because you know, you'll get, when I'm doing closeups, you know, there might be a rock or something or other that you, you know, with film, I mean, digital, like you said earlier, Joe, digital is so forgiving. You don't need to do these kinds of things nowadays with digital, but I still work in film when I can, when I'm doing my own stuff.

You get a little reflector out here and you prop it up there and it evens up a photograph. You know, I don't like contrast. I don't like a massive amount of heavy contrast. I don't like losing things in the shadow. That's why I photograph a loss in soft light. I want everything to be equal and everything to have its own level of importance in a picture. I don't want one thing to grab your attention. I want you to be able to sort of...

roam around it really.

Joe Cornish (16:06)
So, sales of last delight factors are suddenly going to skyrocket after this interview, Tim, just thanks to Paul. I think they should know that. But actually that's fascinating. Also the fact that the idea of an even quality of light across the picture space is part of your philosophy. That you will create a kind of a scenario where everything has...

value and inequality. I'm especially aware of that when I look at your India work, most of which of course doesn't necessarily use reflectors.

Paul Wakefield (16:45)
No, I couldn't do that in that instance.

Joe Cornish (16:48)
Absolutely, but the quality of the light is usually soft and there's an every single part of each composition right to the corners, to the edges and throughout the picture space. Everything matters. And I find that just fascinating. It's one of the reasons that you look at those pictures, you can open any page in your book. So I've got a couple of them here and you're just so absorbed. You could literally spend an hour looking at a single spread.

Paul Wakefield (17:03)
Yeah.

Joe Cornish (17:17)
just enjoying the details and thinking about the atmosphere, thinking about the place and the time. And they still bring joy after that hour. I mean, it's a remarkable quality.

Paul Wakefield (17:29)
Yeah, thanks, yeah. I mean, you know, the thing is, obviously, no, I don't use, I didn't use reflectors on those photographs in India, because you just couldn't. I mean, I was having, I was using handheld cameras. The only pictures that were taken on a tripod in that book were the 617s. And there's only about three or four of them. So everything was handheld, you can't hold a camera and hold a reflector at the same time. And anyway, it's a completely different mindset. It's all to do with...

movement and flow of people within a space and you can't guarantee where anyone's going to be, you can't guarantee what might need an extra light. I did obviously, as you say, photograph everything in the light that I like, the soft light that I like, but that's a choice of when you go out in the day and what type of locations you choose. I was in a lot of enclosed spaces, i .e. down streets, where the light filtered down and bounced between each other.

And so there's a lot of that going on and there's a lot of stuff going on that, you know, it would bounce off one red street, one side of a red temple or something and hit the back of a man who was praying on the other side of the temple. And it looked like his back was on fire. Sorry? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's completely, I mean, it might look odd.

Joe Cornish (18:47)
like those canyons in America.

Paul Wakefield (18:55)
But it's not odd and it's kind of like a sort of instance in a way. And I'm not impressionistic at all, but it's a little bit like the impressionists used to paint shadows that were purple. And when they did it, people thought, what the hell are they doing? Shadows aren't purple, they're black. But actually, if you go and look or take a color meter into a shadow on a day when there's a fair bit of blue sky up there,

you'll get a reading where you need to put a very strong orange filter on to correct that shadow to make it look normal. And if you look at it long enough with your naked eye, it starts to look blue and purple. They were just very, very clever and they had not, they wasn't just so much clever, they were unbelievably acute to sensibilities and the absolute tiny detail changes of color.

Tim Parkin (19:46)
Yeah, that's different, yeah.

Paul Wakefield (19:53)
within certain spaces. And maybe I can do that a bit myself, maybe my eyes are attuned to that, I don't know. It just happens to be, you know, you can't really analyse how you see, I don't think. I can't.

Tim Parkin (20:09)
I think that's as you spend a long time looking at colour, your vision for what the colour is there changes, it develops. I think it's as you get a concept language for colour as well in your head, you start to see things that you wouldn't have before.

Paul Wakefield (20:24)
And every single color has an emotional value. Every single color. You can't rule any color out.

Tim Parkin (20:34)
Out of interest, if you were trying to transfer or teach somebody about light in as a landscape photographer, what sort of things would you would you tell them to look at or do?

Paul Wakefield (20:47)
That light... Look harder.

Tim Parkin (20:48)
Yeah.

Spend more time.

Paul Wakefield (20:53)
more time looking. It's as simple as that. I can't actually teach anyone how to do it, but I can say, I mean, you know, I spend a lot of time not taking pictures. Okay, I don't take many pictures. I spend quite a lot of time not taking many pictures, but I do spend a lot of time looking. And I spend a lot of time taking account of things.

And I'm not, I can work really fast if I have to. I can set up a full -WIFI camera really, really quickly if I have to. Nothing like as fast as you could set up a digital camera now, but I can still do it in a matter of minutes if I have to. But generally I don't, because I don't need to. I only do it when there's something,

happening with the light that I really, really want to make sure I get instead of having to set it up and wait for one or two hours to make it happen again. So that's the only time I might work with it quickly. But, I don't know. I don't know, I mean, I wouldn't, yeah, I think really just look, look, look, look, keep looking. Looking and keep asking yourself what it is you're looking at, what the qualities of light.

And also it's all about subtlety. For me, it's all about subtlety.

Joe Cornish (22:25)
On that note, one of the things that I really learned from Paul and continue to learn is you made the statement, I think, either in an article or an interview once that strong light breaks my composition. I just think that's a brilliant way of distilling this concept. And of course, there'll be times when that might not necessarily be true, but it's a general consideration for landscape photographers.

the idea that strong light, quote unquote, that sort of hard light of sun, the sun that we're all familiar with, that the human eye and the brain can generally get kind of bypassed or filter in a way, but a camera can't do that. It's amazing how when we photograph objects with hard light, they become dominated by cast shadow. And the way that you distilled that concept in that statement is brilliant, because strong and break.

go together so well.

Paul Wakefield (23:25)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm possibly, I don't think I developed my liking for soft light and subtle color for that reason. I think it was already there, but I think the fact that I use film made me persist with it because film is unbelievably unforgiving.

Tim Parkin (23:51)
Did you shoot transparency primarily to begin with?

Paul Wakefield (23:55)
I shocked transparency to begin with and I really didn't like it because of the problem that I've just mentioned. It's really, really difficult getting details in shadow areas in transparencies. And...

That's one of the reasons why I was shooting in soft light, for sure. And then when I realized that color negative, and I used color negative first when I was at college, so I knew it was a better film. It's just that in commercial work, people, clients, would just didn't get color negative. They really didn't, they wanted to see something that was positive. A little bit like now.

an art director wants to look in the back of your camera because it's a digital camera and he's going to poke around and tell you what to do or look at a computer on the table while you're photographing. It doesn't really work for me that. I mean, that's why up until very, very late on in my career, I was still using film.

Tim Parkin (24:57)
As an ad of interest, I've got a question I wanted to ask you about working with art directors and your experience in doing so, because I don't suppose many people do work with them, but occasionally they will in commissions. What was your general experience working with art directors?

Paul Wakefield (25:14)
I think I loved it. I absolutely loved it. They generally, you're on the same side. You know, they've asked you to do this job and you can figure out pretty quickly whether he or her is an art director that's going to be open to things changing. If you're working in a studio, no problem.

you know, you've got all this lighting set up, you just move things around as you both see fit. And they've come to you because you've got a certain type of lighting quality. When you're outside...

You've got no control over the light whatsoever, except when you make a picture. That's the control you've got. And that's what you've got to let your art director, I mean, again, he's chosen you for the work that he's been shown. A job always goes to an agency with at least three portfolios from different photographers.

Those three portfolios have to put in, those three photographers have to put in a quote through your agent. You put in a quote. It's not always on cost. Sometimes they'll choose the most expensive. It's often on argument. How are you going to do the job? You have a conversation with the art director. Sometimes it's over the phone. Often you had to go in for a meeting and you had to sit in front of a group of people, the art buyer.

the art director, the copywriter and maybe a couple of other people, sometimes even a client, although they try to keep the clients out of those kind of meetings.

And you have to be convincing to a group of people how you are going to do, get a campaign back to them and you've got actually no real genuine proof that you can do it. Because I don't know how it's gonna be when I go outside. But you do know how it's gonna be in a way because...

Tim Parkin (27:14)
Yeah.

Paul Wakefield (27:25)
you know what conditions you photograph in, you know the landscape you're going to be going to because you've already thought about that. Then when you get the scout pictures back, someone goes out and does a lot of scout pictures, I give them instructions to literally give me 360 degrees, not just what I'm looking at, I want to know what's behind me, I want to know if there's not a hill behind me full of pine trees, et cetera, et cetera, that's going to...

wreck everything. And then what you also have to have is an art director that on the job, if you're not getting what he's hoping you're getting, and you can tell that very, very, very quickly, because they start getting twitchy. And they start looking nervous and they start, you know, maybe ringing someone on their phone, ringing their art buyer saying, and so you kind of got to,

either have a backup plan, which I always, always, always went along with, and that's a very, very simple thing. It's basically a box of transparencies or prints, a little mini prints, with skies. Because, you know, taking photographs outside is all about the light that's falling on the object, but the light that's behind as well, in the atmosphere, and that's the sky. And it's amazing what you can do by transforming,

a soft lit picture which is perfect for the foreground of the car but seriously dull and boring behind the car and has no drama or atmosphere whatsoever. But I know I became very good at getting a retoucher later on to put another sky in for me.

And so, you know, I used to literally cut a four by five Polaroid in half with a foreground and stick it on a little print that I brought. And then, and you say, what about that? He said, we're not getting what we're not getting what the night we want. We're not getting it. And I used to do that. He said, what about that? fine. So, you know, there are all those kinds of things that you can do. And it's, it's, you have to have up that you have to have those plans because like I said, I've literally got no control.

with outside light apart from the choice of when I actually expose the film and what I know of what I've got of how I can then change it later on. And a good retoucher can do that really, really well.

Tim Parkin (30:06)
quite interesting talking about light like that, because one of the things that's become dominant in the movie industry recently is 360 degree projector screens. So you actually create a four meter tall, completely circular screen that is illuminated and cast light on the actors. So you actually get full contextual light, not just a green screen backup, which are the green screens. That's why green screens never work particularly well with that, I don't think, because you don't get that colour.

Paul Wakefield (30:26)
So.

Yeah, that's right. Is it more like a CGI thing?

Tim Parkin (30:36)
Yeah, no, it's but it's actually the people actually stand in the middle and they can see everything behind whether whether it's whether it's created with a camera or it's created by CGI. But they actually feel like they're in the location or the light that's landing on them is as if they were in the location. And then they illuminate above it to get sunlight and things.

Paul Wakefield (30:47)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. You see, there was a point where car photography, I mean, CGI took over completely. And so what they were, what they would then ask you to do is they would then ask you to photograph a car. You didn't go abroad. You didn't go away with a car. The car stayed, it didn't even have a car. The car was never photographed. So you went away with a camera.

and you went away with a 360 degree tripod pivot that you also put the camera on top and you took a background. A background, you could either take it with a full Wi -Fi camera or a digital camera, it didn't really matter. You took a background. Or a number of backgrounds. And every time you took a background, you took a 360 degree capture of what was around you. You gave both those things to the retoucher. Boring as f -

Hell, no challenge whatsoever to do with an object being lit outside. The technical drawings were sent to the retoucher from the car manufacturer. I never even saw them. He put the technical drawings into the computer, my background into the computer, my 360 degrees capture into the computer, and there's a software, CGI software.

that sucked the whole of the light into the car.

Joe Cornish (32:28)
Darn.

Tim Parkin (32:33)
So you get all the reflections and everything on the car.

Paul Wakefield (32:34)
You get all the light reflection that should be on the car. And it looked amazing. And I stopped doing it. I mean, I think I might have done it once. There's seriously no joy in that. So I stopped doing it. And the only thing they couldn't really capture from the technical drawings was the texture of the rubber tires. They were always flat.

Tim Parkin (32:43)
Yeah, there's not much joy in that is there.

All right. Yeah, yeah.

Paul Wakefield (33:02)
They never had that bright shine on them. So, you know, it got very boring for me. So I started not doing car photography, I started doing a lot of other commercial photography, more to do with, well, I did Agler fashion and things like that. Still campaigns, still campaigns, but I wasn't photographing cars any longer for about, I don't know, eight years, I think.

Tim Parkin (33:27)
Yeah. Do you think that the industry may be gone back to using photography?

Paul Wakefield (33:33)
I don't know. I don't have anything to do with it. I don't really have anything to do with it.

Tim Parkin (33:36)
I was going to ask you about AI, but not how AI is now, because AI -generated photography is just coming on in leaps and bounds. And there will be a point where you can say, give me a picture of a mountain in Lofoten or a particular mountain or whatever, and get a very convincing result out of it. I mean, have you thought about what that means for photography or for people who choose to do landscape photography?

Paul Wakefield (34:06)
Well, I guess there's going to be a point where technology always finds a way of doing something completely convincingly. So there is going to be a point where you could say that a piece of software can copy someone else's stylistic vision of making a photograph or making a painting or whatever, making a piece of music.

and make an identical version of it in, but not with any physical being there. Yeah, I'm sure that'll happen. I'm sure that'll happen. Hopefully, people will still be making pictures because people still like making pictures.

Tim Parkin (34:43)
Yeah.

Well, I did wonder whether it's like the way that photography changed painting, painting developed when photography came out. I mean, who needs painting once you've got a camera that can just point at things and reproduce them, but it's...

Paul Wakefield (35:07)
That's what they said, isn't it, when the camera came out, that they said it would kill painting. Well, it never did. And I don't think AI will kill photography. It'll make certain things change, and it'll make a lot of weird things going on, and a lot of fake news stuff going on. I think that's the danger. I think that's what would worry me more than it taking away the...

Tim Parkin (35:28)
Sadly, no.

Paul Wakefield (35:37)
the possibility of making landscape photographs because it's not that that takes it away, it's whether people want to do it or not. AI has got nothing to do with whether you want to take pictures of the landscape.

Tim Parkin (35:45)
Thank you.

I like this idea that landscape photography isn't about the photography, it's about the landscape.

Paul Wakefield (35:53)
It's about the landscape, it's about the landscape and how you feel about it, about the light on it and also it's about, it's about, I mean if you like it would challenge every single landscape photographer to think even more about making better pictures of the landscape. I mean what is the point of making a landscape picture if you're not there in front of it?

Tim Parkin (36:08)
That's what I think as well.

Yeah.

Joe Cornish (36:14)
Exactly, exactly. I agree. I mean, I think that's definitely, you know, and that's why it won't, it certainly won't kill landscape photography. I think inevitably it's bound to change some of the conversations around it. But I think that wanting to be an eyewitness to the natural world is going to be stronger than ever in the future, actually. So.

Paul Wakefield (36:16)
sorry. I didn't get it.

No.

Yeah, yeah. I think all of us, we make pictures because we love making pictures of the landscape, but we also love the landscape. We like our subject matter. We're fond of it. You know, it's an old friend. However you want to term it.

Joe Cornish (36:52)
It is, and I think that feeling of just being part of it. I mean, every time I go for a walk in the woods, whether I take a picture or not, or the beach or wherever it is, it's just gradually sort of melting into that place and being there and just feeling that you are part of nature. To me, that's really as important as anything in landscape.

Paul Wakefield (37:09)
Yeah. It's absolutely one of the most important things, you know, the whole emotional thing of being there, doing it and experiencing it. You can't get that from AI. Yeah, AI can create a picture, but it's not going to stop people making pictures.

Joe Cornish (37:27)
Exactly. And I think actually, Tim, what Paul was saying about CGI, you know, shows that actually this process has been ongoing for many years. We're talking about AI now. But in fact, the fabrication of pictures, after all, let's face it, it's been going on for 150 years. So it's just gotten more and more sophisticated in the last few.

Tim Parkin (37:27)
It's just a one off thing, isn't it?

Yeah.

Paul Wakefield (37:40)
Yeah.

Tim Parkin (37:45)
It just commoditizes it like a...

Paul Wakefield (37:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can say that, you know, CGI was fantastic for the car manufacturers because it was also actually very good for the planet because you didn't have to need to ship a load of people out to another country with a car and spend a lot of money on airfares and etc etc. It was all done by one or two people really easily. So that's great, you know, why not?

I don't have a complaint against it, but I don't necessarily want to do it myself, and so I just went and did something else. And I think that's what people will do if they see something where it's cutting down, they're always limiting their choice, they will just find another way around it. The human brain is way, way more inventive. I mean, it's got to be more inventive than AI, because the humans invented AI.

So surely you can reinvent round it.

Joe Cornish (38:49)
Yeah, and in a way that's the big challenge, isn't it, for human beings is not to have our creativity constrained by AI, but to have it be a platform for further creative thinking, really.

Tim Parkin (39:00)
discover what it means to be human. Yeah, basically.

Paul Wakefield (39:03)
Yeah, I mean, I find, I find.

I find that the most important, the most frightening thing I find about it is, like I said earlier, someone faking something that's so convincing politically or saying someone said something and did something that they actually didn't do. And then people would be getting in serious trouble for it and they never did it. Things like that are really, really dangerous. It's Big Brother state. So as long as governments...

And it is governments, it's nothing to do with individuals. You know, governments have known about this for years, they've done absolutely so all about it. As long as they get it under control, and there are laws passed that stop certain things happening in it, then yeah, it's a thing that has got to have positive connotations, got to. Especially in the medical realm and everything, you know.

Joe Cornish (40:02)
Definitely.

Tim Parkin (40:02)
Yeah, absolutely. Got a question from Joe about how your style has changed. I mean, we were chatting about this on the phone earlier and looking at your Scotland book and then the Wales book. And wondering, I can see a certain way your photography has changed. There's been a very consistent thing going through the whole stream of everything. But have you noticed a different way you approach?

landscape photography over time or your style or the way you recognise pictures in the field or anything.

Paul Wakefield (40:39)
I don't know if I've, I think what I've done and I think what anybody does is I've refined what I do.

You know, I've honed it. I've sharpened it. And I don't mean focus. I mean taking all the unnecessary bits and bobs out. And they might not necessarily, they're not physical things. They're sort of ways of looking at things. I mean, I think you'll see, for example, in the Wales book, yeah, I did have photographs in hard light.

I did, you'll see them, they're there. They're not good. But they're there and I don't regret them being there because that's what I did at the time. But I wouldn't do, even in the India book, you'll see there's a number of pictures in pretty hard light, but they do work.

Joe Cornish (41:43)
They do. They do. Yeah.

Paul Wakefield (41:45)
And so I'm, you know, when I say I only photograph in soft light, it's not absolutely true because there are photographs in the India. I would say there are photographs in the landscape, but they're in hard light. I don't think there are. They're very bright light, but not contrasty light. I mean, I'm not one for photographing very early in the morning and very late in the evening. Some of those pictures in the landscape are photographed in the middle of the day, but they're photographed under very soft overcast.

conditions and so you know that like that's that that's that evenness of light is appears to be the same in I mean I think there's only a couple of pictures in that landscape book where they are obviously taken early in the morning and early in the night because of the color of color values in the sky yellow and pink and blah blah blah I'm not that keen on sunsets and sunrises.

in my photographs. I'm keen on the softness of light at that time of day, but I'm not really keen on sunrises and sunsets because I have this sort of slight fear that it's going a bit towards, a bit of kitschness for me, a little bit, you know.

Joe Cornish (43:05)
I would put it too, Paul, that when with sunrises and sunsets, the colour tends to become quite dominant, the colour of light.

Paul Wakefield (43:14)
dominant, too dominant again. So you're actually right Joe. So I mean, I don't photograph in hard contrasty light. So I don't photograph in light that's too dominant of one color, if you like. So it's still very soft. I mean, there's one photograph in the desert section in the white desert in Egypt that's got a sunset behind it. I think it's the only one in, and there might be one on the Isle of Vague, I think, with a...

with a sort of pinky bit of sky over there. They're very, very soft and they're very minimal. Yeah, they're very minimal. So I don't go for this wham, you know, sort of, I don't know, yeah. And so, yes, I suppose trying to answer your question, which I'm struggling with, because things happen very slowly and you don't notice them happening. They happen over a number of decades.

Tim Parkin (43:47)
it's the backdrop rather than the light.

Paul Wakefield (44:10)
But I can only say that there are certain numbers, there are certain number, I would say a fair number, particularly in the Wales book of photographs that I wouldn't dream of including now, if I was doing those books again. But you know, that's good. I think that's good. That's me refining how I see things. That's me being more decisive. I've tried things. I didn't really like.

them. I wasn't sure enough at the moment. When I did I was a bit conflicted. Do I put it in? Do I put it in? Now I wouldn't put it in. So yeah.

Tim Parkin (44:54)
We've had a couple of questions off Judy Sharrock and Richard Wolves asking about what it is that makes you stop and get the camera out. Is there a particular reaction you have that makes you go, OK, there's something happening here.

Paul Wakefield (45:13)
Well it's something literally, I mean I've said this before, you know, walking along, even driving along, but generally not driving along, generally walking along.

I mean, I'm always looking around. Obviously I've got my backpack on my back, I'm holding my tripod. So you're sort of staggering along a bit, you know, making sure you don't trip over, which I've done a lot of. And noticing things at the same time. And...

You know, you could stop and look at almost every step and consider making a picture. You wouldn't get anywhere. You would hardly get anywhere. You would hardly get a hundred feet down the track. So I find that would be very difficult to do. But I don't rush unless I have a particular location goal point in mind.

and I'm not particularly interested in what I'm passing through, yeah, I will go fast as I can to get there because I don't want to miss what I've thought of. And I don't preconceive things at all because I don't really know what's gonna happen when I get there. So there's no point in wasting my time doing that. But I will walk fast to get somewhere. But I might miss something on the way, but I might not. But if I'm just wondering about, particularly for example, I would say in a wood,

not necessarily with an end point in mind. I'm just looking around all the time, all the time and all the time. And then I think what will stop me is something where suddenly certain things in front of me and behind me and in the distance all start interlocking.

And when you get that slight signal, you realize you're in possibly a good spot.

Tim Parkin (47:20)
Yeah, worth looking at.

Paul Wakefield (47:21)
Worth looking at so you will then maybe stop and think what was that? You know, did I did I did I notice something there? And you will you will you make and maybe I'll put the pack down. Maybe I'll just get my viewer out and Check it out. If I didn't if I didn't see that this there is something there. I'll take the pack off I'll put the tripod down Carefully, I have had things go down a very steep hill before

So, you know, all of these things you take in mind, but everyone knows all about that kind of stuff. And then, yeah, I'll slowly, or actually I wouldn't say I do it necessarily slowly, I actually do it quite quickly. I quite quickly move about, very, very tiny bit, but seeing if what I thought I saw actually exists. And often it doesn't. Often it's a, yeah, fine, no, that's done, yeah, no, no, that doesn't work, but I'm saying, off you go.

But then if you start seeing things, yeah, they are working, then I will really focus and I will, you know, with my, I've got this Linhoc viewer, which I've always had, even though it doesn't fit on the Ebony camera that I use now, it's still an amazing tool. And I even use it when I'm using the Fuji GFX camera that I sometimes use now. I still use that.

and once I get to a point where I, where I know that everything has slotted in into sort of place, it's a bit like a load of cogs, you know, like those, those little, you know, if you took the back of a watch off and watch all those things slowly in place, there's a point where, yeah, there's a point where you think, yeah, that's perfect. You could go past it, you could, you could not, but there's a, there's a point where it works for me.

Tim Parkin (49:06)
Yeah, so parallax effect of things learning. Yeah.

Paul Wakefield (49:19)
It doesn't necessarily work for somebody else. Somebody else wouldn't necessarily stop on that same spot. They wouldn't necessarily notice those cogs joining in that same place that I see. And that's the whole thing that, if you like, takes you back to why someone wants to go out and make pictures and why AI is not interesting, because it's all that.

It's all those little things that you're doing yourself personally, that no bit of software can do for you. This is your software, this is all your little codes going around in your brain, all your little synapses buzzing and clicking and what makes you a human being actually, what makes you a human being? And so all of those things, and then all you come to a point, and then honestly this sort of scale of sort of excitement just goes whoop.

Tim Parkin (49:58)
What makes you unique? Yeah.

Joe Cornish (50:00)
that's, that's a...

Paul Wakefield (50:15)
like that and you suddenly realise you really have seen something that's absolutely fantastic. And all it is, is an arrangement of natural phenomena. And you just happen to be standing where it looks good. And how lucky is that? And so down goes the, I think Jo does the same thing, down goes the viewer on the ground.

Tim Parkin (50:35)
Sounds simple. Yeah.

Paul Wakefield (50:46)
out comes a tripod, I set the tripod up literally over the top, central con goes over the top, and I rest my chin on the tripod bed and tilt it with my chin on it until I'm looking at the right thing, you know.

Joe Cornish (51:01)
I can't believe that. I remember chatting with Paul about this years ago and we literally come to exactly the same method of working completely independently. I'm sure other people do it too, but that's exactly right. Most of the creative thinking happens in, well, first of all, in that brilliant way that you described, using your peripheral vision, essentially, the things that sort of cast in and out of as you're walking through a space and...

Paul Wakefield (51:15)
I'm heavy.

Joe Cornish (51:31)
It's what catches your eye, those little things. And that is literally, that is what makes your way of seeing unique. What makes you a human being, what makes you a photographer. And then the method of actually, of finally stopping to make the picture, which is a really considered process. I'm not gonna repeat what Paul's just said, but I just wanted to back it up. So.

Paul Wakefield (51:42)
Hmm.

Joe Cornish (51:55)
because that just describes it so well. And then finishing off with your chin on the tripod, literally using your eyes to try to distill the frame in front of you, probably starting to already think, what's the lens I'm going to use here, which is probably the lens you nearly always use, whatever that is. And it's so exciting. That process is a way of...

Paul Wakefield (52:11)
You know. You know.

Yeah, I think you're right, you're right, the bit that I left out was the point that what I've done when I stood stand on that spot is I've managed to drag that peripheral vision into that focus spot, which I didn't mention, but you're absolutely dead right. That is what it's about. Dragging that whole peripheral vision into that spot. Because in a peripheral vision, it's kind of here somewhere. It's not definite.

But then what photographers are doing is they're putting a definite frame around something. But what I've got to try and do, and I think what every photographer tries to do, is you've got to give somebody a feeling of not what just is within your frame, but what you've been looking at to get to what's inside that frame. And that is where dragging the peripheral vision comes into play. And I think, you know, the whole point of me,

putting my head on the tripod is a kind of, is a physical attachment for me. It's like I become the camera for an instant because when I do that, that space is almost exactly the same space from the bed of the camera to the center of my lens. And so for a few seconds there, when I'm doing this with a tripod on, my head is, my eye,

head is the actual 4x5 camera and then when I've got it exactly right then I put the camera on and then the dark cloth comes out and the movements go on and blah blah blah to focus and you know shit like that.

Tim Parkin (54:02)
We've got a few minutes left. We had a question from Rod Edwards about whether you're using large format or digitally. You mentioned the Fuji GFX and large format. You're using both or are you moving away from large format?

Paul Wakefield (54:03)
That's it. Thank you for watching.

No, I haven't taken any pictures for a while. I've been messing about on my phone. I've always messed around on a small camera. Previously it was a Contax T2, which I still have. It's an absolutely fantastic camera. I used to take it with me wherever I went. Of course it was a film camera. You had to get film... And now...

Tim Parkin (54:28)
Yeah.

Paul Wakefield (54:49)
And then I went through little Fuji cameras and thingy, you know, Lumix cameras and things like that. I still have a couple of those. And I still sometimes, when I go away on a trip, I sometimes take one of those as well as a big camera. But generally, you know, I think the phone is a pretty damn amazing object, an iPhone. And it can do things that I want to do all in one. I .e. it can, it can, it can...

Tim Parkin (55:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Wakefield (55:19)
allow me to make photographs that do not clash with colour and contrast and everything. They say bloody easy, isn't it nowadays? But I don't begrudge that. I think that's actually fantastic. What I think that people...

in a way don't get the opportunity of is making mistakes and making and making they take too many pictures. There's way, way, way, way, way too many pictures made. Way too many. I've always told people, I don't tell people very much at all because I'm not really interested in.

in telling people or educating people. It's not really my bag, I'm not very good at it. But the other thing I always do, apart from you said earlier, what would you say? And I'd say, look, look, look, look, look. I'd say take, take, take, take, take, less, less, less, less, less.

Tim Parkin (56:27)
You think it's also differentiating between sketching and actually doing finished pictures. I mean, you say you use the phone quite a lot, which is like sketching.

Paul Wakefield (56:35)
Yes, that small camera is a note taker. A lot of those small pictures go into my diaries later on. A lot of the small pictures beforehand went into my diaries from the Contact T2 because I would make a picture when I was away on a location or in India or somewhere and I would...

I wasn't using digital cameras now, it was in the late 80s, early 90s. But if I took a picture, I kind of liked, or not liked, but I thought, yeah, that would be interesting to stick in as a reminder of where I was, what I was doing. I'll leave a space in my diary for it. And I'll make a print later when I get back home and stick it in.

Joe Cornish (57:24)
I must say that I think that the phone plays a role for us as photographers, which we hadn't really had before. I mean, Paul, you talked about using the Contacts G2 and in a way that's a precursor of the phone. But I think if we go back far enough in history to the days before photography, we think of how artists worked up to their finished pieces. They would almost always do that by drawing, by drawing, by watercolour.

by using forms of notation so that they get an immediate feedback from being in a place, whether you were the sort of painter who finished off your work in a studio, or some people of course prefer to work outside only, but you would still start with a sketch pad and responding very, very directly to what was in front of you. And I think that's where the phone plays such a really helpful role from my point of view in terms of.

of encouraging your creativity in your way of seeing because it's so easy, makes it straightforward and it's a permanent sort of ish, permanent record which then gradually filters into your memory and then you can remind yourself as you look back through your images of what was catching your attention and what's important to you.

Paul Wakefield (58:39)
Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. I mean, one other thing that, you know, I would say that the difference, one of the differences for me when I was doing the landscape to doing the India work was I suddenly started working with roll film cameras, handheld cameras that didn't allow me that very, very careful standing in one spot and incrementing moving down until I got there.

because all this stuff in India was moving. And so I had to choose a spot that I could stay in and let things move in and out and through. But you still had to move a bit here and there, et cetera, et cetera. And so I was never sure, and it was all film, all that is film, kind of negative. And so I was never really sure, you can't be really sure unless you're looking at the back of a digital camera, whether you've made a picture you want or not. And so when I...

When I did all, when you scanned all those India pictures for me, you scanned them all full frame. I had previously, I sent you all those mini, little mini prints, as well as the contact prints that I'd had done years and years ago. I sent you both those things. And I cropped some of those pictures. And some of those other pictures had crop marks on. And when you were scanning them, I was looking.

at some of the other pictures that I didn't send you and I was thinking why the hell did I crop that picture?

And so when I got all those pictures back off you, all those scans back off you, and those little mini prints and everything, every single one of those pictures, bar one, are all full frame in that India book now. And I realized what I was trying to do, I'm kind of pleased in a way because I was working in an area and with a couple of cameras I wasn't used to. And so I thought, well, I can always crop.

Tim Parkin (1:00:34)
Right.

Paul Wakefield (1:00:50)
No big deal. And so that was my mindset. When I started getting pictures back, I started thinking, well, I can crop them. And so I did, without actually having the faith, thinking, well, maybe I actually got what I was hoping to get.

Tim Parkin (1:01:06)
You were still instinctively framing them. Yeah.

Paul Wakefield (1:01:09)
And so that period of time, from when I took them to when I finally put them in a book, made me realise I didn't need to crop them. I shouldn't have cropped them. And none of them, apart from one, is cropped. And it's only cropped because it's got a load of stuff on the top, which really is totally uninteresting and everything needed to be compressed in a sort of linear way.

Tim Parkin (1:01:34)
Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you very much for that, Paul. Really appreciated, because it's fantastic listening. I'm sure our listeners will love it as well. Thank you, Joe, again. Really enjoyable.

Paul Wakefield (1:01:36)
Sorry.

Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

Joe Cornish (1:01:47)
Well, an absolute pleasure to listen to Paul now. Just so many fascinating insights. So yeah, I hope lots of people will tune in.