April, 2008

The First Cut

At last, the first edit of the Orkney book has been made. The next book on Scotland is coming together. For the past several months, I have been whittling the choices of images down from over one thousand images. As I write, about 120 of the 5x12 negatives are laid across several tables in the house. After paring this count down a bit more, we will lay out the prime 5x7 images. This book will be more difficult to edit because of the mixed formats, but this time I don't want to exclude an image because of its shape. Although I know that this book will contain more images than TOUCHSTONES, I don't yet know how many. I think the number will fall somewhere between 48 and 60.

From this final group of prints will come a title and a book with its own unique character and style. I see images with light so bright it is virtually blinding and fog so dense that stones weighing tons appear suspended. I see white boats on lochs, rich farmland with light shimmering off ripened barley and people enjoying a beautiful (but cold) day at an August fair. Artists, poets, farmers and fishermen, Orkney has grown from an exotic place where the North Atlantic and North Sea collide to almost a home. Certainly it has become a place where I feel comfortable and welcome, if not even understood.

My Orkney library card has a picture of the Ring of Brodgar on it. I renew it every time I visit. The library offers members an hour of free Internet service each day and this is my connection to home. The ladies at the Laundromat know me by name. I've gotten to know Neil Leask who lovingly manages the Corrigill Farm Museum in Harray. The Corrigill has been a refuge for me on many a cold, wet day. I've brought many friends and students to the museum and Neal opens this world and leads us back in time. The staff at St. Magnus Cathedral, Marita Luck, Liz Johnson and Ross Flett, have allowed me on several occasions to enter their domain and make the photographs I was driven to make. How different my stay would have been without Mona and Jim Swainnie who welcomed me into their home as a guest and treated me like family.

When I look at the photographs arrayed on the tables, I see these people. I remember the places, sounds and smells of Orkney. These are the skeletons that this book will be built around. I see, though, that my job is NOT to pick images that speak to me because of the time of day or how much fun I was or wasn't having or a memory. My job is to select the images that will allow YOU to visually experience what I saw and felt while working in Orkney.

Let me explain with a story. My brother, Bailey, made a trip to Orkney with me in 2005. I had borrowed a 12x20 view camera from my friend, Colin Meyers. It was too expensive to transport my own camera to Scotland and I wanted to photograph the standing stones with a really big camera. Bailey and I set to work as soon as we arrived but being May it was windy and rainy and cold - and sometimes even pleasant. Days had gone by and we hadn't had a good sunset on the island and I wanted an image with the stones silhouetted against that light.

One night it looked like it was going to happen. We could see the edge of the front moving through so we raced back out the stones. We get set up and wait for the wind to diminish, for the light to be just right. I make an exposure to appease the wind gods and hope that by blowing that image out of focus they will allow me to make that one perfect image. All of a sudden, the wind doesn't die but grows in strength and fury. It changes direction and gusts so hard that the bellows becomes a sail and the camera and tripod take flight. Bailey earns his stripes that evening, saving the equipment from crashing to the ground. Photographing is finished for the day. We head back to Mona and Jim's and as the night wears on, the wind grows stronger and the story grows taller.

So, that image is not useable. It didn't even make the first cut. In my other images from Brodgar I will find one or more images that relay the power and magnificence of this wonderful place but you won't see the image directly linked to the memory. This brings me to what I see as my responsibility for putting the images together for this book: to find and craft images that relay my memories, experiences and feelings of Orkney. I want you to look at these images when the book is complete and discover the wonder that I experienced in Orkney. If you do, then I have done a good job.