Considering Landscape Photography

This video is brought to you by Squarespace. Okay, welcome back everyone. In this video, I want to share some viewer mail, some awesome projects that were sent in. I've got a really good lineup today. I hope you guys enjoy this. We are going to kick it off with Norman McCloskkey who is a wonderful photographer from Ireland. Uh he is actually a veteran of Mail Time. He sent me stuff before and he sent this new book called Headlands. I'm going to share a little of his note which reads, "Dear Ted, I'm delighted to send you a copy of my new book, Headlands, Images of West Cork, which is my fourth book and the final part of a trilogy focusing on the landscape of the southwest of Ireland. The majority of the images in the book were created over a 2-year period, exploring an area, which I have a long connection with, but didn't really know intimately. My goal with these books is to explore an area to see if there's a connection and create images that sum up that process with the hope that these images will allow the viewer to make a similar connection whether they are familiar with the area or not. It was also my first project to shoot with the Hustelblot X2D and a paired back lens selection which simplified and helped slow down the whole process. As a landscape photographer and an Irish one at that, I don't shy away from showing our landscape in its true form which of course means a lot of man-made elements. As always, creating the image pairings and flow of the book is something I spent a lot of time on. Some pairings are quite obvious companions, while others are more subtle, incorporating elements of a juxtaposition and even a bit of humor. You'll see the real thing when I get to show you around here someday. All the best, Norman. Norman, this is outstanding. This is very well produced. The book is very well printed. I mean, you did an awesome job on here. I really love the design elements, too, when illustrations are incorporated in some of these things. And of course, the pairings are absolutely wonderful. I love the cows and the rocks and that kind of sense of humor persists throughout. U you did a fantastic job on here and I will put a link to uh Norman's work. Uh if you guys want to get a copy of this book, he's got a gallery in Ireland and one day I really hope to visit because I think it would be a lot of fun. Other thing that I love is that he shakes up his format quite a bit in here. Uh sometimes you have square images, sometimes they're vertical orientation, and sometimes you get a nice horizontal like this. It's interesting he mentioned the X2D as many of you who follow my channel know that I'm a big fan of that camera and now the XTD2. Uh, and what I love about it is when you have such an incredible dynamic range with that and also the resolution that you can vary it up with cropping. And I think Norman makes really good use of that. So anyway, Norman, thank you for sharing. You should be really proud of this. Um, and thanks for sharing all the stuff in the past. This has been really cool and I can't wait to see what you're working on next. So you guys check him out. I'll link his work below. Thanks, Norman. Okay, this is quite a diverse mail time today because next up is a Zen that comes to us from Oliver Andress. This is called Sona. I'll read you a little of Oliver's note which explains this. He writes, "Hi Ted, I'm Oliver Andress, a photographer from Europe from Slovakia. I follow your YouTube channel with interest. I am most interested in videos with various photo books and photo zenes and they are often an inspiration for me. From October 2020 to March 2021, I intensively documented hearty people whom we call quote unquote polar bears throughout Slovakia during the coronavirus pandemic. From these photos, I published a small zen called season. The zen is already older, but I'm sending it to you for evaluation. I would love to know your opinion on the photos. Thank you very much for your time and review. I wished you all the best in your personal life and in your future work. Best regards, Oliver. All right, Oliver. This is very nicely done. And I'm going to make a couple comments on this. All positive. I think this is really cool. It's a very quirky niche concept. Um, you've done it very well. Sometimes this isn't easy to do when you have a bunch of people standing around the cold jumping into cold water. Of course, we have this in the US now. We call it the polar bear club. And this is really wonderfully done. I love how this is printed. You've have a really nice print job on this. Uh, deep blacks, good midtones. It's very nicely laid out. Your graphic design is wonderful. And it's a wonderful documentary project that kind of leads our eye through all this stuff. And I think it's I think you've done a fantastic job on here and the only thing I can say is I would love to see more. So uh I'll link this below. I didn't look yet to see if Oliver is selling this, but uh very different and very much worth having. So Oliver, thanks for sending me. All right, next up I've got two Zen that I want to share that go pretty deep. This first one's called The Process. The next is called I Saw God today. But real quick, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor this week who are the awesome folks over at Squarespace. How easy is it to build an amazing website in a matter of minutes? Squarespace has you covered. It's dead simple. Head over to Squarespace, hit get started. You can start by using Squarespace blueprint AI and SEO tools, which will give you an impressive website in no time. Something unique because, you know, you're not like other websites. Give your site a name. Next, you can build your homepage. We'll start with a few preset layouts just to get us going. Want to sell products like prints, books? Maybe you make a zen. Well, you can feature those on your homepage. Create a few more sections if you want. Let's also give it a color palette. There's a whole bunch to choose from and just get us started. We can change this all later. Next, let's

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You can accept credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and in eligible countries, you can offer customers the option to buy now and pay later with Afterpay and Clear Pay. You should try Squarespace for yourself. It's absolutely free. No credit card required. Just go to squarespace. com/aop. Sign up for that free trial. If you decide Squarespace is right for you, I can save you an additional 10% on your order by using offer code AOP on checkout. That's right, the code is AOP. So, stop procrastinating. Go build your website today. And I want to give a special shout out and thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video. All right, so next up is this little booklet/zen. This comes to us from Bert Stefani. This is called The Process Fall 2024. or I will read you a little of the intro to this cuz it's quite interesting. Bert writes, "The process, the creative process, it's a weird yet wonderful thing. I sometimes feel like I have to explain it to those around me, but has always seem just outside the grasp of words to clearly describe it. I've come to accept that not everything can be put into words, but I'm convinced that you don't have to be an artist to feel what the creative process means. And that's what I hope to achieve with this zen. I don't expect you to understand my process and the value it holds for me, but I do hope that this zen will make you feel it just a little. Why do I always carry a camera and take pictures of random things? Why do I always spend my scarce free time shooting portraits for free? Why is my mind so occupied with a new idea that I'm mentally absent from real life? The creative process does not always align well with our often uncreative society. On good days, I feel like transcending confrontation is a superpower. On bad days, I feel like a freak, a misfit. I can pretend to ignore the call of the muse for a while, but that makes even the misfit unhappy. I need to give the creative process enough room to breathe and try to channel it enough in order to function in the non-artistic world. Being subject to the creative process is not a choice. It's a vital part of who I am. Bert, this is really strong work, and I really love the fact that even though you don't have a central theme that kind of ties everything together, this ends up acting like a journal, a diary of sorts. Uh your work is very good. Uh a couple things that I really love is I love your use of really low tone uh low light images that have these deep rich colors in them. You bring the exposure down just a little bit and your portrait work is really outstanding. There's a wide variety to what you do, but I never get the sense that the work is all over the place. I mean, I think it really kind of holds together with the way you set the tone in the intro. Um I'm very impressed with this and I would really love to see more. In fact, this is something that I would encourage all viewers who are watching this to be inspired by and maybe consider doing yourself is just setting up kind of a journal of stuff that you're going to take and how does that tie together come together and maybe there's not a solid thread that goes through. It's kind of difficult to do, but I really love the idea of the journal and the behind the scenes. It makes me wonder who the portraits are. Makes me wonder where the places are and the stuff with the shotguns. It's really cool. Anyway, man, thank you for sending and um like I said, I just want to see more, man. Awesome work. Okay, so next up is this beautiful little book called I Saw God today. And this comes to us from Roland Banderob. Share a little of his note with you. Read, Dear Ted, after a few years of getting life sorted out after being laid off with the support of my loving wife. I decided to create my first photo book. While in the reportage tradition in community I know I gave it a single perspective that I would not have done before within my traditional journalist standards for various reasons I was only able to work on this on and off again. So it was created over the last 5 years. I hired a graphic designer who I worked with at the newspaper to create the cover and she helped with the front section in the text layout. Last year I self-published I saw God today and celebrated with a good old community beers and hymns. I would like to connect with anyone who is doing similar work at my included social media links. Hope you enjoy and keep up the good work. Ran Ran, I love this. I think it is fantastic. I can tell you have a strong background in photojournalism. And I want to speak to a few points on this. So, first of all, I love that you took your time with it.

I think it's fine that something takes 5 years. Some projects take a while and sometimes life gets in the way. There are other things and I love that you stuck with this and got it finished. And so, uh, major props for that. And I think that's a lesson for anybody that gets a little bit frustrated sometimes when projects aren't coming together very quickly. The other thing that I love about this, first of all, it includes some texts in the front. And I'm not going to read these because they're a little bit long, but they get into farming and they get into community and religion in the south. And it really paints a wonderful picture. Um, this is a really nice job with storytelling in here. and I think you're a fantastic photographer, but what I really love about it is that, you know, it's one thing if you're just going to do a book on farming or if you're just going to focus on people, but I love that you transcended that a little bit and I think with the title, which is wonderful, I saw God today and what that does opening up visual possibilities and what you could possibly do. Man, this is an A+ job. I really, really love this and you guys should check out his work and as he said, he's just looking for people who are like-minded and so we'll list his social media links as well. Uh Ran, awesome job. This has been a great mail time today and uh I want to thank everybody who sent stuff in. Um I really love it when I get days like this that are diverse and everything's good and it's all inspiring. So of course I would love to hear from you guys. So drop me a comment if you have any questions and I'll see you in the next video. Until then