Using the camera as a painter's brush

Published on Sunday 27 July 2008 23:25

TED LEEMING'S pictures constantly fox people, from art specialists to casual viewers. In some, the colours have the smoothness of acrylics. In others, they have the soft translucence of watercolours, or the textures of pastels. So what are they? Well, here's the surprising thing: they're photographs.

The 42-year-old Dumfriesshire artist has spent four years developing a style which he believes takes Scottish landscape photography in a new direction. The launch of his Impressions collection this week at the Robyn Rowles Photography Gallery in Edinburgh is the first time a significant body of the work has been shown in Scotland.

Many of these images were taken within a short drive of his home. A delicate study of trees was taken in the wood behind the house. Another image shows the local hills silhouetted by evening light, another Arran from the Ayrshire coast, reduced to abstract bands of colour: water, land, sky.

In taking these pictures, Leeming says, he had to question everything he had learned about photography, using the camera "more like a painter's brush than a recording tool". "I am trying to get a more painterly style. Now I spend as much time looking at painters' work as photographers' for ideas.

"There will be people who will hate this stuff because it doesn't follow the conventions. Some people just prefer a straight image. But what I'm trying to do is explore new boundaries and see what comes out."

Scotland's dramatic landscape means that it has been a draw for landscape photographers since the 19th century. Today the images by photographers such as Colin Baxter and Colin Prior – peachy lochs at sunset, islands materialising out of the mist, dramatic panoramas of mountain ranges – are so ubiquitous that they define our visions of the countryside. It's hard for new landscape photographer to find a niche.

"It's very difficult," says Leeming. "The Highlands has been captured by many people. It's very hard to find something unique in that field. But I think there is more scope for personal expression in the more abstract work."

His first landscape photographs were "classic" images, water rushing over stones, mountain panoramas in the Cairngorms and Torridon. But he quickly realised he wanted to do something different. He experimented with elements of nature in close-up, concentrating on colours and forms, and tried getting rid of that piece of equipment considered a staple by all landscape photographers: the tripod.

"It took a long time, but bits and pieces of the jigsaw came from those early explorations and studies. I went over to digital photography four years ago, so I had to learn the ways that can work, the different style and approaches you can adopt, and how to use them to ask the questions I want to ask about the landscape.

"It helped that my partner, Morag, started taking photographs too, she had some interesting ideas. Now we work collaboratively as well as working on our own images."

Leeming's overall title for these portfolios is Inner Sense, a probing of the mood in a landscape, a pushing towards the abstract. The branches of a tree on a stormy day are captured in motion, so that they look like a flock of birds in flight. In a few images, recognisable forms almost disappear, leaving only suggestions and colour.

Some people have assumed that the images have been manipulated digitally, but Leeming is quick to point out that they are "almost entirely created within the camera".

"Any changes that I make in Photoshop are exactly the same as I would do in a dark room. The emphasis is on being out there capturing the moment.

"As with all landscape photography, you need to be very precise. You still get as many days when you walk home and go: 'OK, that's just not up to standard'. Whilst the pictures are abstract, issues of light, balance, colour, tone, contrast and composition are still just as important."

Leeming, who studied history of art and visual anthropology at Bristol University, worked as a photographer in London in the early 1990s, but gave it up for a career in the renewable energy industry. He and a friend started a company, Natural Power, which became one of the leading consultancies in Scotland and now has over 100 employees.

His early photography had included trade magazine work, actors' portfolios and documentary shots of the poll tax riots, but he quickly realised these were not where his interests lay.

"These kinds of photos weren't the sort of photos I wanted to take. If you don't take the sort of photos you want to take then you'll never really take exceptional photos."

He quit photography and moved back to Cornwall, where he grew up, with the intention of learning to surf, and instead started work in renewable energy, before moving to Scotland.

"I'd always had a thing about environmental issues. It was finding the area that I wanted to be involved in. It's now well established, it doesn't need the likes of me. At first, there was a crowd of us who were doing it very much for environmental reasons. Now it's big business, it will take care of itself, as big business does."

He took a year's sabbatical from the company in 2004, living in a camper van and taking photographs of Scottish landscape. He was back behind the camera, this time on his terms.

At first, camper-van life was a shock to the system. "I was in a very, very fast-paced business where you hardly had time to think between one moment and the next. Solitude and patience where the first two things I had to learn. Photography is all about patience. Learning to slow down and give it time and think."

In fact, to be a landscape photographer in Scotland needs patience in the extreme. Leeming describes a panoramic image of the Assynt mountains which took four visits and about 28 days, until a collusion of light, clouds, weather, time of day and time of year produced the moment when all the elements came together.

He learned to rise before dawn, sometimes to climb a mountain in time to capture the light of the sunrise.

"Sometimes I'd be back in the van by 6am, have downloaded the pictures and be going back to bed. Your whole way of life changes." As he headed towards his second winter, he admits he decided to make for Morocco "just in search of somewhere I could wear shorts and a T-shirt".

"I could be up to two weeks not seeing anyone in the winter in Scotland in some remote place and I would end up going slightly mad. After three and a half days, I started speaking to myself out loud. After about 10 days, I just had to get out of there.

"At times it was quite tough, but it really was a fantastic period of my life. At the end of that year I decided that I'd much rather be out taking photographs. It wasn't an easy decision – there are probably as many out of work photographers as there are actors – but it was worth it."

Now, for environmental reasons, he photographs close to home as often as he can. He and Morag plan to build an ecologically friendly house in Dumfriesshire. His says his images reflect his view on the natural world.

"There is an environmental element to all the work I do, that influences the kind of image I take. You're expressing what is around you.

"You can only take really good photos that have a real soul if they are subjects you want to be capturing."

&#149 Ted Leeming: Impressions, is at Robyn Rowles Photography, Edinburgh, 1 August until 4 September. www.tedleeming.com