Ian Cox-Leigh

Your photographs are compelling and handsome, allowing the viewer latitude in forming a point of view and perspective. You bring order to the scenes you approach, yet there is a human quality to your visions, often conveying a sense of wonder, loneliness, austerity, etc. Would you talk a bit about whether you agree with that assessment, how you accomplish what you do, and your approach to composition specifically?

IAN: I innately and strongly favor ordered and structured compositions. I even like compositions that many on online forums describe disparagingly as ‘static’. My fellow photographers seem to always be striving for more and more dynamic compositions: for compositions that engage immediately and grab the viewer’s attention and lead their gaze to the subject quickly. Such images have great impact and make excellent magazine covers, good advertising copy, and are perfect for small-size web uses. However, I don’t think they last over time or work in larger formats as well. Of course an image needs to be engaging and to attract the viewer, but it also must retain the viewer’s interest and reward continued viewing. As to ‘how’ I accomplish such compositions, it is simply how I see the world and how I select and edit my work. I am always looking for the balanced composition, and for internal harmony within the work.

I think art exists largely in the interaction between the viewer and the work. This interest in engaging the viewer is part of the reason why I am interested in creating at least a veneer of beauty even with inherently decayed or unattractive subjects. I also enjoy the challenge and the craft of such endeavors. Engaging the viewer is also in my mind with regard to the emotional treatment of any given subject. I want to bring my own interpretation to the work. I choose my composition to accentuate the elements in which I am interested and I develop the resulting exposure in such a way as not to conflict with the emotional qualities I am trying to convey. However, I feel there is very little engagement if the intentions and meaning of an image are too obvious. There must be an interaction between what I present and what the viewer experiences, which must be individual to the viewer and to that moment. Ideally the work will have enough breadth to allow a differing experience with the image on another occasion.

You talk about “a veneer of beauty even with…decayed or unattractive subjects.” Can you expand on that? In what ways do (or can) your photographs of unattractive subjects establish that veneer of beauty? You seem to be suggesting that the kind of beauty you seek goes deeper than or beyond attractiveness. Do I understand you correctly? What kinds of qualities are beyond the attractiveness of a landscape or for you?

IAN: Beauty is often taken to mean that something is pleasing to the eye, something pretty. I assume that is what you meant by attractiveness; although, I would argue that non-pleasing things can be ‘attractive’ – just look at the number of people drawn to the many and various depictions of gore.

I do attempt to create images that are aesthetically pleasing for the viewer. There is plenty of art where creating a completely non-pleasing image is part of the power of the work. However, I do not often find that the subjects and issues I am exploring would benefit from such an approach. Through my photographs, I am not trying to shock, or even to argue; I am trying to converse.

I also enjoy the craft element of photography. I enjoy using focus, color, tone, composition, careful printing, and all the other technical elements of photography to make a pleasing image. Moreover, I am not only interested in finding and revealing the preexisting natural beauty within my subjects but, through my creative approach, to create beauty in my work itself. This is principally what I meant when I spoke of a ‘veneer of beauty’: that technical challenge of creating a pleasing image out of an inherently ‘ugly’ subject.

You are right, though, that this prettiness is not entirely or, rather, exclusively what I mean by ‘beauty.’ I would hold that all good or great art is beautiful no matter how ugly it may seem. Great art must have aesthetic value, which lies in the work’s ability to speak to an audience, to express an interpretation of the artist, and/or to inform on the nature of the human condition, or of some element of existence. This makes it beautiful. For example, both Picasso’s Guernica and Goya’s The Third of May 1808 are, to my mind, beautiful because of their power, their effectiveness in speaking to an aspect of human existence. This is despite the ugliness of their shared subject matter (the violence and terror of war). One may be more aesthetically pleasing in a traditional sense, the other may be more raw, more reflective of the ugliness of its subject matter; however, both are full of beauty.

It is important to note, therefore, that Although I usually want to make pleasing images, neither creating that aesthetically pleasing ‘veneer’ with less attractive subjects nor depicting beautiful things beautifully is my primary goal when I create an image. My foremost purpose is to connect with my audience. This usually involves crafting an image that I hope will inspire an emotional response in my audience, or one that will prompt thoughtful reflection and consideration. I am willing to sacrifice artistic conventions, choose less acceptably pleasing manners of depiction, and otherwise challenge my viewer, if it furthers the deeper goals of the work. Many of my most pretty, aesthetically pleasing, images are not what I would consider my most beautiful, my best, or my most powerful and evocative photographs – despite their popularity or how much I enjoy making them.

In my attempts to achieve my larger goals, I tend to return to similar techniques. Compositionally, I favor traditional landscape approaches of large expanses of relatively crisp focus, level horizons and generally true verticals. I prefer vertical compositions and some inclusion of a foreground. As discussed before, I also favor balanced and stable compositions. I feel such compositions allow the viewer to ‘enter’ the scene and be part of it more easily. This is largely how I feel that I experience the world. I want the viewer to feel grounded looking at my images, that they can linger and fully absorb the photograph. It is in this time spent with the image that I hope my emphasis, my voice will come through from the choices I made in the process of the image’s creation.

I am interested in emotional boundaries in my work. An interest in the edge between excluded space and exploration, between the desire to go forth and concomitant apprehension, seems to have lead to an interest in fences, closed gates, blocked paths, discouraging expanses of distance, dark waters, and other obstacles. Often the desirable distant subject is removed from the position of the viewer in my work. I think this interest leads to recurring and mixed feelings of calm, seclusion, melancholy, longing, wonder, and loneliness in my work. This is part of both why I like working in the night, or the wilderness, and what I want to express in the images created.

I am often interested in the very mixed and powerful state of self-selected solitude which I find both a great joy and a replenishing experience, and an emotionally charged state that can be troubling.

You talk about communicating and conversing with the viewer. Can you talk about the kinds of things you think you communicate, how specific it might be in various cases, and what role potential viewers may play in the various choices you make.

IAN: All art is experienced uniquely by each viewer. However, I think my photography, more than most representational ‘landscapes’, leaves a great deal of room for the perspectives of the audience to inform their experience of the images. Most of the time, I hope to convey to the audience some of my experience of being present at the time of the image’s creation. By this I do not mean that my image is meant to serve as some sort of intermediary or even a substitute for the actual place. I do not mean to allow the audience of my work to experience the subject as if they were there, but rather, to share in my experience of the subject. This goal may seem in direct conflict with the first stated goal of allowing varied viewer response, and really it is! However, the balance between the two is part of the equation as is all sorts of issues of context. For example, is the work in a series, is the title suggestive, how will it be presented, and so on all influence how leading or suggestive I am in treating the subject matter both before and after exposure. Moreover, my experience of a subject and place is usually multifaceted and nuanced and I try to allow my final images to have some of that ambiguity.

These issues play into how I work in the field and when developing an image. I work in basically two modes. When I am away from home, and sometimes when I have a camera with me, I will often photograph a subject in the moment of discovering it. Here I am working with the strong emotions of discovering something and the feeling presented by the subject immediately. These moments and the photographs from them can make great images, but I also find that sometimes what I thought I had captured doesn’t come through when returning to the image later.

The other manner of working I engage in is to simply look photographically. I am always looking for potential images, always in an observational mode. I will be out walking with friends and come to a dead stop examining some place’s potential. I also drive around or explore for long stretches of time – sometimes repeatedly – through an area always looking for potential images that I might create at some future point. I tend to tuck these into my memory and then after weeks of such seeing but not creating, I will go out in good conditions and make several images all at once. In such a manner I think about and reject many possible images without ever taking a photograph. I can also see a good composition or a good potential image and return when conditions are right, when the moment is better. Sometimes I will pass a place I plan to photograph for many weeks before creating the image. Working in this deliberate manner, I find a much higher percentage of the resulting images successful. One drawback of such a process is that it reduces the chance of creating a good image fortuitously.

Once I have an exposure and I am confident that it contains the potential of an image that will reflect the place and my experience of it I develop it with the goal of enhancing those aspects. I consider whether the image relates to other images in my portfolio, whether the subject matter or my composition leads to any expectations in a viewer (i.e., have previous photographers worked with this subject/in the genre and created an expected approach and should I follow that or purposely break the expected conventions), and whether there is a larger context beyond my own photographs and beyond similar work by others. I try to keep viewer expectations in mind, and I try to make sure that my choices accentuate the elements of the subject that I want the audience to experience most strongly. Once I have a developed image I tend to sit on it for a few days or even weeks and come back to it repeatedly to see if it still feels the way I thought it would feel. I sometimes will make a print at this stage too. Then, if everything works, I will carefully think of titling the image and I decide where and how to present the image.

Your technical approach and mastery seems important to your vision. Can you talk about the relationship between technical considerations and the kinds of photos you produce. You are self-taught. What has been your learning process and can you talk about some significant learning moments or experiences that have made a difference?

IAN: Technical considerations are important to my work. I prefer to create images where the technical limitations of the photographic process are as diminished as possible. I have adopted an aesthetic style generally employing crisp focus, level horizons, and readily understood perspectives. I have not previously been interested in producing work where the process itself is prominent in the final work. I try very hard to avoid lens flare and other effects that are purely a result of the process. I do make use of artificial vignetting on occasion as a stylistic choice to help keep the viewer’s eye in the frame, but I view this as being a different matter. Generally, I want the technical issues of photography not to get in the way between the subject and my audience. Even when I work with infrared photography, I am not particularly interested in the ‘infrared effect’ for its own sake, but rather for the potential it has to allow me to better express my vision of the landscape. This is probably why I am not interested in creating false- colour infrared photography. The resulting images become, for me, too much about the process.

I am wary of photographs where the elements of process seem more important than the subjects themselves (in my impression). However, there are plenty of occasions where I connect with work that uses such techniques as uniquely powerful tools to create compelling images. In this vein, I am currently contemplating working on a series inspired by the idea of creating visual palimpsests recording the changes in the urban environment around me in one work. Nothing is firm with regard to this idea at the moment, though.

As you note, I am self-taught. I’m not sure this has been much of a difficulty – the Internet is a tremendous resource and places like Photo.net are full of remarkably helpful people. Plus, I have always had a personality where I throw myself entirely into something and learn everything about it. Perhaps the only surprise is that my interest has not waned and moved on to something else.

I last took up photography seriously over the summer of 2006. I had had access to a camera as a child and had always found photography fun. My mother had an interest in photography and, apparently, before I was born she had a darkroom (which became my bedroom). When I was a teenager we bought a new film camera and I remember experimenting with it: trying out B&W film and using some color filters. I even recall an odd interest in white plastic-wrapped wheat- bales as a possible subject for some images. However, my engagement was ephemeral and transitory: I would be interested during a short trip to a friend’s cottage or on a family vacation, but then forget about photography entirely in between. Not being able to achieve images as I pictured them, and the costs involved, made the shooting more fun than actually getting images back from the lab. As a result, I didn’t even think about photography for several years until I needed to take some photos of X-Folio sized book plates for a research paper I was writing for my Master’s degree. I had procrastinated and needed the images quickly. It was a convenient excuse to buy a DSLR, so I did.

I spent that whole summer photographing our garden (my previous obsession was gardening). I reveled in the instant feedback of digital. I wanted to learn more and I read everything I could online. Searching for information on various topics kept leading me back to Photo.net, so I joined the community and started to share my photos. Most were simply snap shots, but I had a few of which I was proud. At this point I also switched camera brands because I could find more information online that referred to Nikon than Pentax. From this point, there are a few principal changes that helped my photography from a technical standpoint.

The first major change in my photography came about when I bought a tripod and some graduated filters. I have always liked the night and I wanted to try photographing star trails so I decided to buy a tripod. Here is where I made one of the best decisions of my photographic career, I spent more than I might have and bought a really good tripod that was truly a joy to use: it was fast to set up, light enough to carry, and got into the position I wanted quickly. At the same time, I bought a few graduated neutral density filters to experiment with balancing sky and land in my images. Why was this so significant? It wasn’t really because of what the new equipment allowed me to do, but rather because of how it forced me to work. It slowed me down considerably. Until that point I had been working totally hand-held and also very quickly. Working on a tripod and working with graduated filters forced me to slow down and I began to think about what I wanted the images to look like before I took the photograph and how best to achieve that. I also began to think about what I could achieve in the field versus what I could correct in developing the image. This made a marked difference in the quality and expressiveness of my work. I now work almost exclusively on a tripod even when not exactly necessary.

Around the same time, I bought Lightroom and started to work with raw-files. This was another turning point in my photography because it allowed me to think even more deliberately about what I needed to capture in the field and what I could do with that raw-image. I bought a video tutorial to learn the program more fully. This further allowed and encouraged me to think deliberately and to pre-visualize what I wanted to create and how best to achieve that result. I wanted to see my work in print and I decided to buy a cheap photo printer, but I wanted to maintain good control so I invested in a i1 colorimeter and learned to make profiles and work in a color-managed system. I have subsequently invested in a better printer, but the basic skills I learned then are just as necessary now.

Your photographing has obviously taken you to some special and unique outdoor locations. What natural elements have you had to deal with and even overcome in order to get photographs you wanted? Have you been stymied by things beyond your control in getting a photograph? What creative solutions have you come up with in order to navigate hazardous or seemingly inaccessible places? Has your photographing of locations ever gotten you into trouble?

IAN: I am kind of flattered by this question. However, I am really a very risk-averse person. I am also not exactly the most fit person around. There is little chance that I will be following in the footsteps of adventurer-photographers like Galen Rowell. In the outdoors I am likely closer to adopting Brett Weston’s assertion that “If it is more than fifty yards from the car, it’s not photogenic”. Of course he was using a 11”x14” camera at the time, and I am willing to hike a few kilometers for a chance at an image I want. That said, I am not going to snowshoe around the rim of Crater Lake in winter, or hang in some bivouac from the side of a mountain.

Still, I have had to deal with the elements. I have been caught a little less than ideally prepared for snow in June in Wyoming and I’ve been out in the middle of nowhere with a storm rolling in more than once. Good light for the grand landscape is usually light on the edge of changing whether. Clouds, wind, rain, and fresh wet land are ideal conditions. In general, though, I haven’t faced much or risked much in the way of the elements. In fact my biggest obstacles have been clear sunny days when I didn’t want them. I was in the California redwoods in June once and would have loved to have anything but the unceasing sunshine that made the moody forest photography I wanted to do all but impossible.

To deal with weather different than what you desire, there are basically two solutions: change what you’re photographing, or change where you’re photographing. I have employed both strategies. With the sunshine in the Redwoods, I saw what I wanted for my own benefit and then moved along elsewhere. In Oregon, visiting the Painted Hills, I was met with uninteresting, solid gray skies for most of the day. I took the opportunity to switch things up and work on small studies of the clay’s surface and related vegetation. It wasn’t what I had intended to photograph, but the results were very good and the images have served me well. In the end, I got a bit lucky after all when after about 7 hours at the site, the sky started to break up and I got the chance to create a few of the wider landscape images I had originally come to make.

Around urban environments, I am similarly more cautious than many others. I either photograph from public space or I have permission to access the space from the site owners/managers. In fact, I have generally been specifically interested in photographing from the publicly accessible space. I feel this makes the resulting work more immediately understandable and accessible to my audience and makes issues of land-use, and the public response to it, more of a focus of the work. I am not only interested in creating an intriguing image in these cases, but in the context of the space photographed. In both natural settings and urban places, when faced with a visual obstacle that is difficult or impossible to overcome I tend to favour incorporating it into the image.

Even though I work in this manner, I have had quite a number of encounters with the police. Apparently, at two in the morning, they have little else to do but stop and question photographers in unusual locations. I carry my business card at all times because of this and I usually also have a copy of my book with me too. I have only been moved along a couple of times though. Even if the police didn’t really have a good reason to do so, I generally figure it isn’t worth making the situation more difficult and I try to cooperate. I can always come back another time. I have been stopped out in the wilds or in National Parks a number of times as well, often by rangers. All of these interactions seemed to be more about casual curiosity though – or else park rangers just have a more pleasant demeanor than city cops.

We don’t often talk about editing and printing. Can you talk specifically about your “shooting to keeper” ratio, whether that varies wildly or stays somewhat consistent, and how you choose among your raw files what to process. Do you do your own printing. How much of your energies go into that aspect of your work?

IAN: For better or worse, I have what I think is a fairly low ratio. I’d say I use as portfolio images, an average of 25% of the compositions I attempt, and it takes an average of 5-7 exposures to really get the exposure and composition as I would like it, if the lighting is a bit tricky. Sometimes those numbers shoot way up. New subject matter will always increase the ratio, and anything involving movement throws it practically out the window.

Raw file editing is pretty simple. I throw out the complete flaws first (not sharp, ruined by flare, tripped the shutter by accident, etc.). Then, I usually leave everything for a while (weeks) to distance myself from the emotions of being in the place and from my conceptions of what I wanted to achieve while there. Then, I return to files and look at the compositions to choose the ones I find most effective at conveying my sense of the place. After that, I am principally looking for an exposure of that composition that has all the detail I want. I employ an expose- to-the-right strategy when possible. It is easier to push a bright exposure down than to bring a dark one up, but all the detail I want must be there in the highlights (a tight balance). Once I have a pool of prospective images to develop that meet the above criteria I start to consider the little things. For example, since I work at night a lot, I often try differing apertures to vary the intensity/shape of the effect of the blades on bright light sources. Then I develop the image. Afterwards, I still usually wait quite a while, judging my response to the finished image, before making it public.

Sometimes in that process of considering the merits of the image, I will make a print of it. I tend to view the print as the final medium even if most of my audience is online. Since I favor the print thus, I do put a fair bit of energy into printing. I print most images at least once and I have a flat-file full of finished prints which I consult. As I mentioned above, I maintain a color managed system and make my own print profiles with an i1 colorimeter. My current printer is a Canon ipf5100 which is huge, but quite reliable and easy to use. These days I print either to Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Baryta, Ilford Gold Fiber Silk, or Hahnemuhle Bamboo (for matte prints). As such, I have profiles and established settings that I use and I also know instinctively how a given image will look on each paper and I don’t usually need to soft-proof before making a print unless the image is particularly saturated in edge of gamut areas or relies upon subtle detail in the extreme highlights and deepest shadows.

Some Examples of Ian’s Work

Ian Cox-Leigh

“Last Light” – For quite some time I had been inspired by a number of photographers, including quite a few on PN, who were doing urban landscape photography as part of their work. Starting in October 2007, I began to try my hand at creating images from such subject matter. I focused on the Portlands area of Toronto, not too far from me. I was interested in a variety of land use issues and the public debate about the future of the area. This image is both one of my personal favorites and one of the last I made in the project about the Portlands before I edited the series into a self-published book. I was interested in how the lighting and the fencing seemed to elevate the light standard beyond its normal importance. I also am interested in how such spaces are both clearly occupied and used and yet look abandoned and forgotten.

Ian Cox-Leigh

“Mora” – I have a small series of more minimalist approaches to the landscape exploring open expanse as the subject. This is one of the photographs I feel is most successful. I was visiting Mora beach in Oregon towards the end a long road trip and at the time I felt very alone and very isolated. The images I made that day that fought against those emotions all failed in my opinion. Here I decided to allow the water go a foreboding black, the sea stack to seem inaccessibly distant, and I wanted the sun to feel oppressive. The rest of the series deals with the subject with much more enthusiasm.

Ian Cox-Leigh

“Alone” – While exploring the empty expanse of the Owyhee Plateau in Eastern Oregon, near Leslie Gulch, this lone and stalwart jack pine caught my eye. I decided to use my infrared camera to help add contrast to the brooding sky and make the tree stand out against it. Although this was very much a found subject, I have had an ongoing interest in solitary trees and their dead remains for some time. This has resulted in a series of toned B&W images that I have recently been re-examining.

Ian Cox-Leigh

“Painted Pyramid” – The composition of this image was driven by the repeating geometric forms. I was exploring the Painted Hills in central Oregon and, coming around one of the paths leading to a less visited portion of the site, I saw these pyramidal trees. I liked how they lead back to the pyramidal form of the red hill. I also like the varied textures and that there is almost a surfeit of detail in the image.

Ian Cox-Leigh

“Hoodoos” – This is an image that almost didn’t get made. I was underwhelmed by the hoodoos when I arrived at the site, the sunrise was rather unimpressive, and the site faced west and was completely out of the light. There wasn’t going to be the dramatic image I had come to make. However, when I saw the slim crescent moon, I decided to try for a more quiet image. I settled on a very balanced composition and used the soft light to try and bring out the details and the textures in the rock (both in camera and in developing the image). I was still reticent to share the image, uncertain of its broader appeal, but it has now been exhibited and also published as a full page image.

Links

• Ian’s member page
• Ian’s gallery page

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