The Doldrums

Towards an Iron Age hill fort, Somerset, 1991.
Copyright Don McCullin

The last couple of months have been a real struggle for me, photographically-speaking. Late winter is normally my favourite time of year for taking photographs but inspiration has been lacking. I have phases like this from time to time and it's never easy to put my finger on the source of this "staleness".

There are a couple of things that I think have been contributing to my malaise - one is an absence of transport and the other, perversely, is an over-abundance of gear. My stock advice to anyone starting out is to keep it simple with one camera system, one film and one developer. Maybe I should start listening to myself.

I've sold off a lot of stuff over the past year but I still have far too much. It's not just the number of cameras but the number of formats! I'm up to four now - 35mm, 6x6, 5x4 and half-plate/5x7. If you just have, say, the 35mm format to choose from, and you have a few different systems then you ask yourself which camera and lenses you want to take with you for a particular outing. Having to select from a few 35mm systems can be bad enough but having different formats to choose from as well just adds another layer of complication.

I keep thinking back to that BBC documentary a while ago about Don McCullin. He was filmed walking in his beloved English countryside with a Mamiya Press and a 75mm lens around his neck. What a great way to work. No complicated choices, no big heavy bag over the shoulder, no tripod to set up. Just one camera, one lens and a big, flexible 6x9 or 6x7 negative to work with. Looking at Don's landscape work, it certainly hasn't held him back.

I'm regularly finding myself tempted by Don's more minimalist approach, especially since we're looking to downsize to a smaller house and space will be at a premium. There's now just the three of us rattling about in this big, old house. A condition of any move, though is that I have to have a darkroom, albeit it will most likely be in a garage. But there's no doubt that I'll have less room for cameras and enlargers so something will have to give. Four formats and three enlargers is just a bit over the top!

Don and I seem to like the same sort of landscapes, too. Looking at some of his pics on a website, I was struck by this comment he made:

"I’m probably the only person in England who’s anxious for the winter. As soon as the leaves of autumn start falling from the trees, I become reactivated, the opposite of a hibernating animal. I know that I’ve got four long months of darkness, wind and cold to exercise my masochism. The English landscape’s known for its Constable summers but I’m obsessed with photographing it in the dead of winter, at its hardest ... I love the winter – not the climate, but the struggle, its abrasiveness, the nakedness of the landscape."

I've said something myself a couple of times in posts here, if not quite so eloquently. That's why it's all the more frustrating that I'm missing opportunities to be out photographing in the type of weather that gets me going. And that means I have less material to post here and write about.

I'm still posting three times a week but not really the kind of articles I'd wanted to. I like writing about darkroom work - the kind of thing that Omar does so well - but newly developed negatives are my inspiration to do some printing. When I'm not producing fresh negs there's less of an incentive to go into the darkroom.  I occasionally dig a neg out of the files and try printing it in a different way but there's no substitute, as far as I'm concerned, for a regular supply of new material.

Somerset, 2004. Copyright Don McCullin

The transport problem is also sapping me of get up and go. We've been in Carnoustie for ten years now and I've photographed everything within walking distance over and over again - and there isn't a lot to photograph in the town to begin with! Needless to say, I can't be bothered to re-photograph the same subjects. Sometimes I wonder if that's the main reason for adding different film formats: it's an excuse to photograph the old, familiar scenes in the belief that something new might emerge. I have access to the car at weekends but Saturday and Sunday seem to fly by in a whirlwind of shopping and family stuff. None of this is good when you have a blog to feed three times a week!

So what's to be done? Well, I'll just need to get the finger out and apply myself, I suppose. Sometimes art has to be worked at as I'm sure everyone reading this will agree as we're all prone to a spell in the photographic doldrums from time to time. However, as far as this blog is concerned, hang in there. I'm sure normal service will be resumed before too long.

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