A few weeks ago I ended up in Alnwick, the picturesque County town of Northumberland, aimlessly passing the time and ultimately wandering into a kind of pavement-impasse with a young man in a hat holding a clipboard. As anyone would I stepped into the cobbled street and tried to look like I was in a hurry, but it was too late – he had eyes on me and wanted to talk…
“You look like a nice person” said the smiley young man as I awkwardly tried to move past. “Before I carry on though can I just check that you’re older than 24?” Dammit, he had me. Clearly I look at least five years older than that but if your street patter is to brazenly flatter people into a kind of paralysis then who am I to stand in your way? I’ve got all afternoon – talk away.
After establishing that I was from Lancaster – a place that he thought was “down south” and an error that he subsequently attributed to being from the east coast of Scotland (where everything’s ‘down south’) – conversation turned to what I do and why I was in Alnwick. I replied that I was a visiting photographer. “Really?” said the man, whose name escapes me but whose apparent lack of general knowledge was endearing me to him more by the minute, “I didn’t think there were such things anymore”…
Now this raises an interesting point, as we would discuss on the freezing cobbles: in a world where everyone seems to be snapping away with their camera phones, aren’t we all photographers now? Well actually, that’s probably no more true than it ever was. People just happen to have some kind of camera with them all the time to capture their own memories. Did the DIY boom bring about the downfall of craftsmen and skilled tradesmen? No. Because there’s a big difference in the end result. The internet allows the world to deluge their pictures en-masse onto anyone whose attention they can get for ‘likes, comments and shares’, but while it’s easy nowadays to reach for a digital trowel and start plastering, it certainly doesn’t make you Michaelangelo.
All this preambling brings me to the subject of this post: at the end of each year I head off to the Lake District in the hope of capturing a sunrise. It’s an hour an a half drive in the dark followed by a walk in the murky dawn, setting up my camera gear lakeside in the freezing cold and hoping for the best light. This year I was in Buttermere and there were already a few others doing the same thing down by the shoreline. Nobody was using a smartphone though.
And that’s the point really; to be a photographer rather than just somebody with a camera you need vision, dedication, patience; you need to think about what you want to capture and research how to find it at its best; you need to take a chance that the weather forecast will deliver the perfect light and you need to be prepared for disappointment when a four hour round trip for the sake of one shot doesn’t work out. And you never really know what you’re going to get. This time I got lucky.
In my last post I presented the Edinburgh skyline as I’d always wanted to capture it, a shot that took several attempts over the years and well over an hour of standing around on the freezing November evening itself. People with camera phones came and went, trying to get a shot for themselves and looking disappointed when they saw the result. Even those with expensive DSLRs often tend to wave them about on ‘auto’ expecting a magical result that won’t come unless they study the craft and make an effort. There’s still a world of difference.
I enjoyed talking to the young Scotsman – Rory might have been his name, come to think of it. I think he got more than he bargained for and I managed to make it away without divulging my bank details, off to catch a sunset somewhere. Always off to catch a sunset somewhere. One day I might just walk off into it…
Thanks for reading in 2016. Happy new year to you!