Vision & Light 15: Alister Benn & William Neill

hi I'm Alastair van and this is vision and light this we can have the true great pleasure of talking to William Neil or Bill as he prefers to be known we had a couple of conversations this week the first one we were really getting to know each other we hadn't spoken face-to-face before and it took us a while to find our flow and to just sort of get comfortable talking to each other really so if you hear us referring to previous conversations then that's what we're doing in this now bill Neil is someone who's been involved in professional landscape photography for nearly 40 years he was lucky enough to work with Ansel Adams and the Ansel Adams gallery and museum 'ti in the early 1980s and the influence that Ansel and his peers had on Williams work was clearly quite incredible he is a quiet voice he deals an awful lot in intimate landscapes his passion for the environment and his very very acute engagement with the things that he's photographing are very much evident in his work we talked a lot about his new book which is coming out very very shortly called light on the landscape which I've been very fortunate enough to have a an advance copy of and it's just an incredible read filled with incredibly inspiring photographs so please click on the link below to visit Bill sight and to perhaps order a copy of that for yourself I can guarantee that you won't be disappointed with that on your coffee table to enjoy at your leisure so another great conversation with an incredible guy let me introduce you now today on vision and light bill Neal [Music] [Music] hi Bill how are you doing I am doing great today thank you it's great to be with you thank you thank you it's it was a pleasure talking to the other day and I'm sure we're gonna have another exciting conversation this time yeah yeah who knows which direction will take well you know that's the thing isn't it that maybe maybe these conversations just mirror our creativity and that's who we are in the moment and and how we kind of connect with what the other person is seeing that actually opens up doors of opportunity that maybe we wouldn't have recognized if we come in with a set of questions well yes and I think we already realized we have similar thinking process and how we proportion are thinking if like emotions over technique is what I'm trying to say right yeah so what I'd like to start with this time is just a kind of you know you've got this long career now approaching 40 years as a professional landscape photographer and I mean there's so much has changed in that time you know from the medium that we're using and also the the overall popularity of landscape photography and just like a little bit of your insight into you know what it was like working with Ansel back in the back in the day and you know how that kind of set you on a path that seems to have allowed you to find your way through the quagmire of of creative work without getting burnt out well it was very fortunate I started working at Ansel's gallery in Yosemite in 1980 and every June for two weeks his workshops would start and all these very famous photographers would show up and so I got to know Ansel and John Sexton and Alan Ross who and working with him but also you know megastars like joel meyerwitz and ernest haas and paul Caponigro and just to meet these people at you know in my bid 20s was enlightening and adults who gave me an idea of what kind of breadth of photography was out there how different people were making it living how they approached their arts and why they photographed so hearing all those amazing photographers speak at an early age was was very very helpful educational to say the least sure sure and so and you know when I mean at the same time though I mean being surrounded by these amazing photographers all the time I mean it was it daunting I mean did you did you feel that going out with your own equipment was was intimidating at that time well I was more stubborn redhead than anything have gone to photographers that I just think of my top favorites Ernest Haas and Joel Meyerowitz came to you Samedi to teach for Ansel and talked about being nervous about photographing Yosemite well you know it's been done sort of thing and this is in 1980 or 81 or mid-80s and I was young enough and and I said well I don't know about that you know I think there's new things that could be done in Yosemite so early on I kind of took on that challenge right and I bet I've been influenced by say the likes of Elliott Porter who did it at landscapes then I started out well before that in the 70s doing a lot of macro photography okay so intimate landscapes were was broadening out for me so it it grew out of a lot of exposure to to some great photography and and learning about like I said why they photographed and I took motivation to not be daunted a sense right I just said four explored Yosemite enough to know that there were things under my feet and up against that wall off trail you know where there's something interesting the photograph and not maybe when I was older you know mid-career I would have felt like I had to lock into something but I didn't at that time and I had five years of being employed as the photographer learning to teach as the photographer without having to worry about what's sold right so dad helped me establish the style and then move past the influences know in terms of I mean obviously I think back in back in the 80s you were you shooting four by five or were you shooting large formats or what was the medium you were shooting back then in 1982 I started shooting four by five and used that primarily for about a little over twenty years okay so being at Ansel's and with all these large format photographers around and seeing the quality of their prints not just because of the darkroom work but just the the resolution the building capability and and it didn't really stop when I bought the four by five that would slow me down but I had that discipline early on where I couldn't shoot a lot I'm gonna have to write I had to save up money to get film processed you know between paychecks and so I learned a really good discipline of seeing and composing you know with my feet I used a couple of focal lengths no zooms right you know you had to head move yourself around and you had to take your time and even when I switch to digital that that lesson twenty-year lesson if you will you know helped me be able to deal with and enjoy faster-moving photography but I still had that skill or the experience of framing up an image and paying attention to all those details that you can see easily with the four by five in the back and and because when you cook a shutter it's a serious commitment yes that's you that helped me early on I also had Polaroid film so I was teaching for the gallery and walking out into the meadows with with a type 55 positive Polaroid film so I could shoot with the 4 by 5 and pull off a print a little Polaroid print and show my students oh here's this composition here's how I metered it and fortunately the Polaroid type 55 had a latitude similar to slide film so it gave me a sense of the contrast issues and it was nice to be able to show students that but I also could also helped me learn because I just jumped into four by five and didn't really know what I was doing were you shared seeing 35ml before that yeah I was shooting film right my first camera was in 1974 so I used 35-millimeter film up to hitting the four by five all right and you know I'm a big kind of one of my big areas of inquisitiveness I suppose is how our personalities are linked with our creativity you know how you know how our personalities and how were motivated and the kind of spectrum that we live on in terms of our emotional spectrum these are all things I'm quite fascinated with and I'm curious because you know you talk about being a fiery redhead and your twenties and and having the kind of sense of will almost to kind of take on these legends of landscape photography in the and theater of landscape photography and obviously at the time you know shooting four by five requires this much slower methodical kind of clear-headed approach you know and and those two things are quite diverse I mean you so do you do you think that these are both the ends of the spectrum that you you kind of you feel comfortable in this is that a strong sense of opinion and will coupled with that kind of steady secure approach to taking your time and being patient I think I learned early on that making mistakes was a useful part of the learning process so I played made plenty of mistakes and I also just gave myself permission to explore to not photograph when I didn't get motivated so I think that's a big factor I'm not sure if I answered your question that not entirely well it's that emotional spectrum that I'm interested in is is that you know do you feel when you go into the landscape especially one that you're very familiar with that this this range of who you are is reflected in the types of things that you photograph on it on a day-to-day basis I think it's reflected in the need for a piece in meditation like a come and a walk through the woods away from the tourists and its restorative in the sense that it's quiet and restorative in the sense that I'm seeking to focus on beauty and that is the comic thing and it's it's the positive thing for me personally and the positive thing to share so early on I had read not widely read with photography but reading with the words we talked about earlier about minor white no be still with yourself into the object of your attention affirms your presence which is basically a non-aggressive probe approach to seeing what you see not over planning not being disappointed if what you planned or hoped might happen doesn't happen and just you know walk around until it hits you right if it doesn't that's okay yes absolutely I mean you know I'm a bit of a Zen meditative sort of individual and and my approach in the landscapes obviously exactly the same by that and it's very much inspired by people like yourself and those we've talked about mine are white and in terms of this when you've had a career spanning four decades we've seen quite a few trends coming along we've seen different styles become fashionable and popular have you found yourself kind of getting caught up in the trends or the the business pressure of having to make photographs in a certain way to be successful or have you felt that you've been able to maintain a certain amount of moral and creative integrity throughout the duration of your career well I I think I learned fairly early to does mistake that my approach because I needed to make a living and I did things that that helped that the line of posters that sold you know widely helped really helped support me a lot in our books and back in the day when you were actually getting advances and you know sold enough books to make you know good royalties but I always had the gallery outlet to to show my desk work I tried to channel some energy towards the commercial side but like being able to show my Cemetery cancels gallery I back then I picked what images went up on the wall and I could make my artistic statement in that venue so these days it seems to be a little more lumped together back then you know you have stock photography or like the posters that mentioned and then somewhere else maybe a gallery like I said that issue to make that a more personal statement so I always had that outlet while I still had I guess the common sense - or the need to support my family so you know what to put yeah that I might not have put up in the gallery it's the compromise for sure sometimes I wish I you know I wish that my best photographs always sold and never had to have one commercial concern but as I was telling you the other day Ansel always talked about his long career as a commercial photographer and he's very proud of it and he didn't want people to think he was just some high highfalutin hardest that never you know what get down the dirt so to speak I mean he did all kinds of assignments then he had a studio in San Francisco so that you know that showed me that there was a way to be somebody like Ansel Adams and still you know he had to support his family and he did commercial work to do that do you describe yourself as an artist self recognized term for you yeah yeah sure I don't have I don't know if I have a a word that I lock into I'm an artist more than a photographer or it's kind of a I have a broad sense of what photographers can be so I don't try to narrow it down too much another photographer that influenced me a lot in that sense was Ernst Haas who was you know what photojournalist doing assignments for places like Life magazine but he did serious art and process and that was a enlightening thing for me to see it any and he was open to photographing lots of different things right I mean if you ever want to see one of the greatest photography books you know look at the creation by Ernst toss and it's wildlife it's all kinds of different things and it's illustrative as well it's a storytelling thing so his his ability to tell a story from his photo journalistic background enabled him to compile this amazing book big influence on me Tokio books I was spend quite a bit of time this afternoon with your a retrospective book and the the thing that really struck me looking through it was a real boldness to put out their images the of extreme minimalism you know really held held together with almost like a dream you know it you know it's just I think it takes a certain type of confidence in your own work to put something down on on print that that can feel either very minimal or you've in demands engagement as well and is this something that you know how important you think self-confidence is in the creative process I think it's a huge thing you want to believe in yourself and and be willing to experiment like I said earlier being willing to fail and and go through the cycle of learning and failing and trying to improve and learning and failing and experimenting and failing and learning and because mr. Gossett debate informing your bill constant loop I'm photographing my irises that are in bloom now and I'm trying all kinds of different things with it just just find it entertaining if energizes my day right it's the the thing with a lot of answers that you're giving is that the the first thing you say trigger something in my mind for another question and then something else comes along during the conversation that gets it completely out of my mind again and another question let me tell you one thing I didn't further answer the question the minute goes I almost would rather take a photograph that asks a question an answer spun right so if you are trying to include all the possible context it has a great value to do that he placed the viewer in the scene but a few are taking things out that and make things more simple more minimalist then you leave some some mystery for the viewer what's first of all scale might be I might skate with play with scale so not putting a reference of a foreground in hmm not putting the reference of the sky in and you you have that wondering what's going on and hopefully it's more than just confusion that it's a sense of wonder quite directly right so this sense of wonder something we talked about quite a lot last time and we before we get on to that again there was the the thing that kind of came into my mind before was that we talked about self confidence and the the needs to fail do you think the contemporary landscape photographers you know us and the here and now are struggling more because of social media and the kind of external validation aspect and the sort of fear of failure in public you know the audience now is so much more huge than perhaps it was 30 years ago you could kind of fail in private whereas now we're all failing and you know it's easier to kind of feel the grand scheme of things with a hundred thousand people watching you yeah the pressure of getting response to your work on social media is detrimental to the artistic process and lots of ways back when I started out you validation came through your a curated system of a book publisher will the editor liked this book idea well the gallery hang my work so somebody else was deciding so it's wonderful that people get to make their own decisions about what they put out there uncreated but if you're just developing and you have the pressure of whatever attention you want to have for your work then you know it pushes you in directions that might be towards the more popular type of imagery and not to what is really deep inside of you know yes absolutely and you know this is a recurring conversation I'm having with a great spectrum of people I was speaking to speaking to Sarah Moreno yesterday and and her beautifully fresh approach to the to the whole genre is so stimulating and exciting and it's again it's someone that's just really sticking to their guns and and creating what they want to create and I think you know one thing I'd feel about your work is that you've been very true to yourself and and you talked when we last spoke about this sense of wonder and would you like to elaborate on that you know you're you're you're taking a hike through the forest on one spring morning and the light is interacting with the the forest and the rocks you know how does your creative awareness awaken well if I go out for a walk I know I'm gonna find something interesting so if say if I go up to you somebody which is an hour and a half from here and it's the dogwood are blooming and that's sort of where my focus is or a certain weather condition is happening I'll get myself out there because of those reasons but I'm always trying to look at things from multiple angles what what about something entirely different than what I would expect it right it's like one of my favorite photograph probably my favorite photograph photograph was my darling Louise yes and it went to Lake Louise like so many - at sunrise waiting for the clouds to pardon the sunrise light to hit the glaciers and you know got up at god knows what our 4:35 to get there pre-dawn you know what I went there I've only been there once to photograph and that that wasn't happening and I don't remember you know rejoicing because what I expected didn't happen but I just watched and I've just wanted to try to see what I could do with what I got what I was given and the exposure was very minimalist and about two minutes long so it was pretty dark and and unexpected results that I had forgotten all about it right on a three-week photography trip and when I got the film back several weeks later I was cooing but I couldn't remember where I was because I'd been sparring like and I'd been to other famous places in that area and a pin to Glacier National Park those things had overtaken my memory of that that dawn at Lake Louise and I took two frames I said get excited I just well let's try it I probably started with a horizontal then I tried the vertical and having some the ground gave a little mystery depth to it anyway that kind of event unexpected turned out to be of my favorite photograph who knew it's in the space in the start of the book it's it's that blue moody sunrise with the the glacier kind of in the shadows in the background yeah just what clouds were down react yes no what one would consider the spectacular sunrise light as for sure right but it worked out so it did work out and before we get on to talk about your book I'm curious to to ask you what's your view on the whole way that photography tends to be taught as a series of repeatable rules I'm curious to hear what your the smile is I don't like I've heard you say that and it's I think they're very useful to have some understanding of how good composition works and I wrote a chapter for a book on composition it was published in England in our spent all this time writing the chapter about placing things in the frame and foreground to the background and all these things and turn it into the editor and that and they said what where's the part about rule of thirds I said why I didn't write about it and I'm not really keen on I'm latching on to that and they said well maybe you could write something so I wrote a very expletive description of what it's about and when I might you know go back and look at images already taken and see how this placement worked well for this design and you know it's it was funny to have to to dig in and write about it but I but I gave a guarded account of my feeling about its value so yeah it's it's a fast track people want to want to get going they want to know how to design a photograph and and knowing some some things like that could be helpful but I taught a lot online for quite a few years I've had people submit portfolios that show every photograph is applying the rule of thirds especially in broader landscape the third foreground third middle ground third sky and you know ask the leading question so so are you applying the rule of thirds here's that's something you're it so I let them know it's if you see 1020 photographs with that same pattern of design and it gets too obvious it's something you know there might have been a shot with incredible clouds then only a third of this of the photograph of sky right so now let's refer back to Ansel's moon rice photograph which is about 2/3 sky mm-hmm and about how top half is nothing the sky yes and the feeling of space is great and and it works well you know it's a curious one because I mean I think you're you're the person with the longest career in landscape photography I think I've ever spoken to because you know we're the kind of I'm 53 and I'm I kind of I'm still a young guy I guess you know in in in sort of landscape photography thing and something I you know I look at your work and I've looked at a lot of your work you know both in the retrospective and in your new book and light on the landscape and there's no evidence in it whatsoever of any formulaic compositional repetitiveness you know there's you see a lot of photographers where as you said every photograph is basically on a grid it's on a template and none of your works like that and my argument is that well are do these they're of any purpose at all otherwise other than fast-tracking people into homogeny well you did FastTrack into a relative success - it's like well that's that's a nice pleasing balance you may not you know give the right emphasis to the sky or the foreground by aiming flat straight ahead it might have been better that foreground was so amazing maybe you aim down a little bit the top quarter or less is the sky and a quarter or less yeah oh my god that's deep again it's trusting your your instincts I'm saying you know what what looks right in the frame it's kind of locking into what's inside that frame and how things balance and and somehow I have trusted those instincts for a long time and God knows why but okay he's worked out that way I strongly suspect that when you're in Ireland you stay with it together next year we're going to have a very long conversation about this I am horribly opinionated when it comes to the whole teaching of rules and actually don't think they serve any good positive value at all and and end up blanking us to other opportunities that may be more natural for us yeah and more suitable to the subject quite yeah I think there's I think the subjects in our relationship with it is is the trigger that creates the composition and the balance and the harmony so yeah anyway we can we can sit and sit in museum until next year and pursue this one further because I'm yeah I'm getting more opinionated the older I get yeah I think I see people that are are less involved and we are about making photographs they're just kind of dabbling and so that fast-track thought is least gets them in the ballpark with you know basic formula of course most people nearly all people would settle in on that formula and not ever try to break out when I critique people's work I see something that I think maybe could have been better so I always ask them what else did you do and they often say that's that's about it right you know I thought that was the composition and I had great confidence so I took it and I said well what about if you had moved to the left or right or so I always encourage people to really work a scene and kind of work through possibilities from focal lengths to where you're standing to depth of field all those things photographing waterfalls in Yosemite when I first started teaching in the early eighties people want us to know what shutter speed to use and I hear still hear people saying well this is the shutter speed I like I never do that that's the rule yep you know this water's thought to be this you know amount of seconds or quarter of a second or whatever and I love digital where I can go take a hundred two hundred photographs with you know dozens of frames even with my Sony I set it up to take five frames every time I trip the shutter when a waterfall or moving some kind of moving water and let the bracket bracket the position of the water like photographing how the spray bounces off a rock you know that there's not there's no way to tell what one shot is gonna quiet cessful if you have ten or twenty you know you got a fighting chance you got a better chance now I've got your secret pal well it's really weird for a for a 4x5 photographer to say that it's really opposite but I've had went to the dark side digital frames but that's going to become the course of this talk is the dark side the dark side and I would like you to tell me a little bit about your new book which you are very kind to send me a digital copy of recently and I had the pleasure of sitting down and looking through it and it's something about a kind of a celebration of your regular article accompanied by some of your amazing photographs so how did the idea come about and and what are you trying to achieve and are you happy with it I'm thrilled with it first of all I started writing for outdoor photographer in 1986 and and in 1997 I started a column they asked me to write a column so the book encompasses sixty essays from the 138 well essays I've written for them so paring it down to the the best but it's a been a great process to force myself to think about what I'm doing is that I don't really like to do all these things I just like to keep my head down and do more work but the article allows me to look at photographs I've taken and say what is in here that what lesson does that provide and I've always tried to make the essays that I wrote for outdoor photographer much more about the creative side than the technical side you know there's information in them about shutter speeds and maybe apertures basic things but it's all within the framework of why is this photograph created really successful if I judge that anyway oh so yeah it's been wonderful to get the articles together and there's a fair amount of new work in it in the more recent columns so there there's a range of work that I'm really pleased with because it shows my impressionistic work for example yeah where some of my lightbox work where the salsify see that's a detail shot that's that's straight into a lightbox or things that I collect around my my property like the elderberry leaves leaves I picked up off the lawn and and put it in the box and photographed and nice light but it's my way anyway this was that sort of range I think is an important part of the book right going on trips to photograph you know lava flows or I'm picking up leaves off my lawn right if something we talked about the other day is that that I've thought about more and more is the need to engage yourself with the beauty around you every day wherever it is if it's you know in the middle of a city and there's a tree sticking out of the pavement and you know you can bring some life to it and in a photograph you know that's that's a great value for yourself to be reminded that that of these things that are you know comforting to us and bring us joy that sounds very much like the meaning of a life to me you know is to see a sense of wonder in the world arriving just on a daily basis yeah as ice as I said the other day it's the ballast there's a lot a lot of bad things out there you know I can go on and on about that and it weighs on people and weighs on me just like anyone and if I'm checking out my irises today and seeing which one's ready to pluck and photograph you know that's where balance things balances things out yeah absolutely and it's something I've been talking a lot about I talked with Sarah yesterday about that guy tell a couple of weeks ago where we're talking about the the landscape being our our kind of emotional ballast and it's the place where you can just go and forget about all or not forget about it but be so fascinated with something outside of ourselves that we don't have time to just continue ruminating and I think your work is a very clear representation of that I think so much of it is just little moments of fascination you know you'd look back now on your your photographic life and is there anything you would have changed if you had a chance or you know do you feel that you've it's been fulfilling and and you pretty much hit it on the head well I do feel like very pleased with what I've been able to do but also I think the way I was able to do whatever I've done is by not looking back is by moving forward so I'm just Protestant work ethic I don't know whatever you want to call it them head down and keep keep cranking out the photographs that's a bad term I don't think that way but the keep look do you keep looking for those things that give me that that sense of wonder and I see a lot more things that give me a sense of wonder than then I could ever photograph in the or then or that would make good photographs there's another conversation in this in in the future I can feel it coming on because we're kind of touched on things today that we didn't touch on a few days ago that are very much my key focuses these days which is the the the the creative process and our engagement and wonder with the world is almost to me more important than the product and the shading and and getting its out there I mean there's there's a definite value in that of course but you know you you're you are a commercial photographer you've made your living as a photographer has it ever got to the stage where the the you work that the pressure to create in a commercial sense kind of got in the way well I think I've been pretty good at giving myself a break on how things are going because I have had a haven't had a regular paycheck in 30-some odd years so it's it's exhausting in many ways after all these years you know things there were the good old days and you know there's so much competition now maybe today isn't uh you know quite the same but like I said I just try to keep engaging in in what brings me joy I mean photographing a flower on a light box isn't particularly most creative process but I I keep trying to inject some ideas into different types of photographs I take taking photographing flowers on a lightbox you know it's led me to photographing trees against the sky and I'd photograph them in color of course and go goddess beautiful green leaves and that that blue just is distracting the hell out of me so I'd go desaturate the blue or overexposed somehow so I photographing trees that really isolate the structure against a white sky like I was against the light box right so my wheels are always spinning and trying to evolve that's so that that keeps me going and the exhaustion sometimes gets to me if sometimes I just wish I could retire and not worry about the Commerce at all but the older you get you know your your time for output shortens so I went for about 17 years without a book coming out right now I have a retrospective and the new one and probably another one next year so all right he'll it feels good to be gathering things from the past and maybe seeing what I can add to and again that the building building themes is something I love to do so that's well I'm glad it does because I'm an avid admire all your work and I know you don't like compliments so I'm not going to embarrass you any further I've thoroughly enjoyed this bill it's it's always just a joy to speak to you and and I think you know you're very understated and quite humble about what you've achieved in landscape photography and but it is appreciated it's very much appreciated your words and your photographs so thank you very much again I hope we get to do this again but obviously we're definitely planning on coming over to the state's next year and I think we're planning on getting together anyway so we all was to you in Yosemite yeah yeah sounds good yeah looking forward to that and the curry the curry will be much appreciated also yes well we'll make sure that comes through my wife will deliver I'm excited that she's a great cook I bet she is I bet she is yes very excited about that well thank you very much bill and I hope you have a great rest of your day and I'm looking forward to our next conversation and thank you very much for all your working words thanks for having me no worries man the words I take your thanks bye bye [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Expressive Photography

Views: 7,386

Keywords: Photography, Alister Benn, Vision & Light, Creativity, Discussion, Talk show, Expressive Photography, Tutorials, How to be, more, Creative, landscape photography, Scotland, Scottish, Podcast, Videocast, Chat, talks with, KASE Filters, Adventure, expedition, photo book, fine art, therapeutic, outdoors, getting outdoors, living, hope, inspiration, Nature First Alliance, Intimate, Small Scenes, personality type, introverted, William Neill, Yosemite, Ansel Adams, Quiet Voice, Small scenes

Id: xfx7mudT4Us

Length: 51min 13sec (3073 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 17 2020