For years I struggled to find a theme and style for my photography. I’d go out for a day and come home with a handful of nicely composed images of blue skies and waves crashing on rocks. I even spent some time trying to take the ultimate picture of the iconic Peggy’s Cove lighthouse, the subject of millions, if not billions of photographs.
My work bored me. When asked myself “why am I taking this picture?” I didn’t have an answer.
It was time I spent in Iceland that coalesced scattered thoughts I’d been having about my relationship to Nature. The singular vision those trips gave me changed my life and changed my photography.
The landscape in Iceland is intimidating and threatening. There is a sense that something catastrophic could happen at any moment. Relentless natural forces are everywhere in evidence. Volcanoes, earthquakes, glaciers, waves and waterfalls, working away at the landscape, building it up and, almost simultaneously, tearing it down again.
Then there’s the absolute and utter silence. Occasionally you hear the distant call of a bird or the rumbling of water somewhere. But it’s easy to find places where, even if you listen very carefully, you hear nothing. Nothing at all. In the absence of sound you are left with nothing but your self.
I found myself very much attracted to Iceland’s landscape precisely because, like the ocean around my Nova Scotia home, it holds potential for so much sudden ferocity.
Nature is benign and cruel, soothing and frightening, a combination of reassurance and of violent threat.
Real beauty in nature embodies both the light and the darkness. I want my photography to reflect that dichotomy.