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Photos to Inspire: Steve Gosling
By Lynne Eodice | Photos to Inspire |
Dec 20, 2008
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 CLICK HERE TO SEE A GALLERY OF STEVE GOSLING'S IMAGES
All images © Steve Gosling
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| Calanais Standing Stones |
Steve hails from England and shoots some beautiful landscapes, some with a pinhole camera. His work has been published widely in various magazines throughout the U.K., and he has a new book entitled The Lensless Landscape.
Double Exposure: What (or who) first sparked your interest in photography?
Steve Gosling: There was always a camera around when I was a child, and my grandparents had a huge collection of family photographs going back years that I would spend hours looking through. So I grew up with photography and a fascination with the photographic image.
I also had two close relatives who were keen amateur photographers—they took me out with a camera when I was very young (7 or 8 years old) and also introduced me to the darkroom process. As I moved into my early twenties, I combined my interest in photography with my love of the outdoors and began to concentrate on landscape photography.
DE: Are you shooting commercially and/or selling your images as fine art prints? Who are some of your clients?
SG: There are a few different strands to my business. I do a lot of work for most of the major photo magazines in the UK – writing and illustrating articles. I also run an extensive programme of photo workshops each year, supply a number of picture libraries with stock material (e.g. the National Trust, Trevillion Images) and sell fine art prints (either directly from my website or through galleries & exhibitions).
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| Autumn Dawn |
DE: Do you travel often? Where do you travel to shoot your images?
SG: On average, I go away for at least a week every month to various locations in the UK. My favorite places are the Lake District, the Pembrokeshire Coast, Northumberland & Scotland. I’m also very lucky because I have the Yorkshire Dales National Park on my doorstep—it is less than one hours drive from home—so I can get there for regular day trips. However, I am starting to travel more widely overseas for my photography and have a major project planned photographing European cities with my pinhole camera.
DE: When did you become inspired to use a pinhole camera?
SG: I read a review of the Zero Image pinhole cameras in a photo magazine about 4 - 5 years ago and was intrigued by the photographs I saw and the beautiful cameras (they really are lovely—made of teak & brass) that produced them. I wondered what I could do with these cameras to take landscape photographs—what sort of images could I produce. So it started as an exploration and an opportunity to push myself into a new creative direction. Most importantly it started as a bit of fun.
However I’ve fallen in love with pinhole photography. I particularly like the wide angle of view, the infinite depth of field, the slight softness of the photographs and the long exposures that record not one but a succession of ‘decisive moments’. The lengthy exposures (from several seconds to minutes or hours) and the absence of a viewfinder mean that the exact nature of the final image cannot be pre-visualised. It’s a complete contrast to the precise and predictable world of digital photography. Pinhole photography has become a significant strand of my mainstream work, featuring in several exhibitions, numerous magazine articles and most recently a book & a range of greetings cards.
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| Two Seats |
DE: Tell me about your book, Lensless Landscapes. Where can people purchase it?
SG: I’ve built up quite a collection of images in my ‘Lensless Landscapes’ series and although they have been seen in many different formats (see answer to Q4) they’ve never been seen as a complete body of work. A book was my way of bringing them all together and in so doing, hopefully making them accessible to a wider audience.
I also wanted to create something more permanent, something that had a life beyond the immediacy of a magazine article or the short life of an exhibition (perhaps it’s my naïve play for immortality!). A book is something that can be returned to time and time again; because of this I believe it encourages a deeper exploration of the photographs. And there were, of course, commercial reasons. I’m not aware of anyone else who has built such a large body of landscape photographs taken with a pinhole camera and presented them in monograph form – there seemed to be a gap in the book market.
The book is available directly from me via my website: www.stevegoslingphotography.co.uk
DE: Are there any upcoming projects you'd like to discuss?
SG: I’m currently working on a number of ideas/themes. For example, my project on photographing coastal locations in the UK with my pinhole camera is ongoing (some of the images from the initial stages of this project are in the book).
I’m also producing a series of photographs exploring aspects of time & motion within the landscape. I’m particularly interested in examining how a single image can illustrate the vitality, dynamism and constant state of flux that characterises the natural world. I have an exhibition planned on this subject for September 2009. I also have an interest in minimalist images and a few years ago I posed myself a question— ‘how few elements do you need in a photograph for it still to hold visual interest’. This led to me starting a project photographing just sea & sky—the horizon line always features somewhere in the frame but the images are essentially about those two elements. I’d like to spend more time progressing this work in 2009.
Inside Steve Gosling's Camera Bag
"In addition to my Zero Image pinhole cameras (I have three, including a zone plate version) I mainly use a Hasselblad V system with a Phase One digital back – this gives superb image quality and I enjoy combining the simplicity of a mechanical body & lenses with the flexibility of the latest technology. The camera bodies are the 503CW and a 903SWC (my favourite ‘normal’ camera, with is wonderful 38mm Carl Zeiss lens). On the lens front I like to keep choices to a minimum – in addition to the 38mm on the SWC I have 80mm and 150mm lenses. I think that having too many options over complicates the picture making process.
I also have a Canon digital outfit—mainly for when I want the extreme wide angle or long telephoto capability. The body is a 1Ds Mark II and the lenses are all L series and range from 17mm to 400mm."
See more of Steve Gosling's work at www.stevegoslingphotography.co.uk
CLICK HERE TO SEE A GALLERY OF STEVE GOSLING'S IMAGES
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Last Updated: Jul 10th, 2010 - 16:19:44
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