An Interview with Landscape Photographer Mark Sunderland

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Jul 18th, 2008 | By admin | Category: Interviews

Mark Sunderland | Landscape Photographer | Interview

Photo of Whitby Sunset, Whitby, Yorkshire by Mark Sunderland

Whitby Sunset, Whitby, Yorkshire, England

An Interview with Landscape Photographer Mark Sunderland

I decided to ask Mark Sunderland some questions about his work after seeing some of his beautiful landscapes in several photography magazines. What really caught my attention is that he’s making a living selling fine art prints, postcards, greetings cards, calendars and so on, and that he’s promoting himself by selling photos and articles to photography magazines. Here’s the interview:

How would you describe your photographic vision? What kind of look/atmosphere/feel do you try and create in your photos?

I like to describe my view of the landscape as “observational”. Whilst the wide view of a huge vista can be spectacular, I generally prefer to get in a bit closer and seek out hidden shapes and patterns which may not be immediately obvious. I am most definitely a colour landscape photographer, so good colours and colour combinations are essential elements in my photographs.

A sense of scale is of little importance to me in this style of work, so I’m happy making abstract, even visually confusing images and now I’m working digitally I am experimenting more with camera movement to simplify and abstract the landscape further to impressionistic areas of colour.

I admire Joe Cornish’s work very much, though I think I’ve developed a somewhat different style in my landscape photography. I attended a Light and Land workshop in Cornwall led by Joe when I was just starting with large format photography and his insights certainly helped to inspire my photography of Britain.

I love the abstract sandstone patterns explored in the work of Linda Waidhofer, which I found very inspirational when exploring in the American South West.

A special mention has to go to Nigel Turner whose studies of the American South West and in particular the wonderful foliage colours of Zion Canyon set me on the road to becoming a landscape photographer.

Tell us a little about your workshops in the western United States with Nigel Turner. I’m assuming you were a student on the workshops. What did you learn from them? How did working in this beautiful area affect your photographic development?

My first trip with Nigel was on his Canyons of the South West tour in the summer of 1995. Around this time I had started exploring what I wanted to do with my photography a little more - up until that point I’d been happy shooting anything and everything.

I was astonished by the beauty of the landscape in the south-west; the sandstone formations illuminated by clear desert light at sunrise and sunset were an amazing sight. And Nigel’s prints of some of the locations we got to visit were equally impressive, so I listened carefully to what he had to say.

It was this trip that made me realize I wanted to specialize in colour landscape, and I returned a number of times on workshops with Nigel, and also meeting up with him and other photographers I had met through the workshops on smaller trips we organized ourselves to explore some of the more out of the way locations.

All of this prompted my move to large format (an old Deardorff 45 Special) in 1999, which I continued to use for my landscape work until making the full switch to digital in 2005. I learnt a lot about exposing slide film in this period (essential when using Velvia Quickload with only 20 sheets to a rather large box) and the switch to 5×4 slowed me down a lot, so I thought very carefully about what I was doing. Although I now shoot digital, this was vital experience which I still apply today.

You recently travelled through Chilean Patagonia with American landscape photographer Linde Waidhofer. What’s the story behind the trip? Why did you choose Patagonia? How did working in this beautiful and wild place, so remote and different from the landscapes of England, Europe and the United States, affect your photography?

I was first drawn to the landscape of the southern Andes when I had one of my American sandstone images in the 2000 BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition. A shot of the Cuernos del Paine in Torres del Paine National Park in Chile was also in the exhibition, and I thought “one day I’m going to go there!” I managed this on an adventure tour in Patagonia with Explore Worldwide in 2003. This was more of a walking trip, so I just took a light 35mm kit with me, but it was a good introduction to the area.

It had been Nigel Turner that had introduced me to Linde’s work on my trips to the south-west USA, particularly her inspirational book Stone and Silence which has some wonderful sandstone images. So when I heard that Linde had been exploring the southern Andes and was now running workshop trips, I decided to go back with my 5×4 kit. The first leg of the trip explored the “unknown Patagonia” of Chile’s Region XI, around Lago General Carreras.

Accommodation in this area consists largely of fishing and climbing lodges, and as we arrived in autumn just after the season had closed we had the place pretty much to ourselves, which enhanced the feeling of remoteness and isolation. It was a wonderful and peaceful place to photograph.

A different approach was certainly required to photographing in the desert atmosphere of the western USA, given that the weather is so changeable in the Southern Andes. We still planned sunrise and sunset shoots, which were very unpredictable weather-wise, but there was probably more to photograph during the day, given the constantly changing light, provided we were prepared to move around a bit.

Although the scenery was vastly different, in many ways a similar approach was required to photographing here in Northern Europe! One most unexpected way in which this trip affected my photography was that Linde was shooting fine art landscape with a Canon EOS 10D, which astonished me at the time, as I had turned up with my Deardorff and a few boxes of Quickload!

I borrowed a Canon Digital Rebel (300D) for our boat trip on Lago General Carreras (large wooden cameras and small boats don’t really mix) to photograph the stunning blue Marble Caves. Combined with Linde’s husband Lito Tejada-Flores’ in-depth Photoshop knowledge, this made the trip an ideal primer for my switch to digital over the next year or so.

How much research do you do before undertaking a trip? How important is preparation to the commercial success of a trip?

Planning is very important in making a trip worthwhile. Guide books and maps are very useful in putting together a general itinerary before setting out, and the wealth of information available on the internet often means that it’s possible to have good sunrise and sunset locations in mind, even on trips to places I’ve never been before, which can help when planning where to stay and if accommodation needs to be booked in advance.

I try to have a few ideas in mind for image usages or potential articles before setting off, and I make sure to check if any of the libraries I supply are looking for specific images from the locations I’m visiting, so I can keep all this in mind when I’m out shooting.

What’s your approach to photography once you’re in the field? How do you maximise the photographic opportunities that you have?

It generally depends on the weather! If I’ve done my planning well I’ll have a few different options in mind for each location I visit so that there are opportunities whatever the weather conditions. Obviously there are times when the conditions are so bad that it’s not possible to shoot anything much, but there are actually fairly rare.

If I’ve got good sunny weather I try to cover off all of the stock shots that I had planned as soon as I can which will leave me with some time to explore a bit deeper and maybe find something unexpected or unusual. I’m not too rigid about this though - as I produce fine art prints and cards I also need to be able to respond to what I see when I’m there and explore things artistically when the opportunity arises.

What is the key to making your work different to the work of other fine art and stock photographers? What do you do to make sure you come away with photos that are beautiful, sellable and unique?

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me about landscape photography is that you can place a group of photographers in the same place at the same time with the same striking subject and they’ll come up with a set of completely different images.

With my fine art work I don’t make a conscious effort to be the same as or different to anyone else, nor do I follow any rigid compositional rules; I just go with what feels right to me at the time.

With stock work I try to have a more commercial approach and cover the right set of subjects and angles, vertical and horizontal compositions, wide and close-up views, but at the same time I try to look a bit further and come up with a few slightly abstracted compositions, which also adds an element of fun to what I’m doing!

You sell fine art prints and greetings cards through your website. What are the keys to doing this successfully? How important are your exhibitions to marketing and promoting your work?

A website is a vital part of any landscape photographers marketing effort, but I really see it as supporting the other things that I do. So I see exhibiting as being the primary marketing effort for my fine art work with the online presence being there as a backup for interested buyers to browse at a later date.

Having said that, the website does generate sales in its own right, so I think it’s important to have a clean well-designed and consistent interface, accept credit card payments and most importantly get the text and keywording right for each image page to maximise visibility.

You sell you work through Alamy. What changes have you seen in the stock industry over the last few years and where do you think it’s headed in the future?

I’ve been increasing my stock with Alamy for the last four years or so, so I came to the stock industry pretty much as it was moving to a digital only environment, so I guess the changes I’ve seen are relatively slight compared with those that came into the industry supplying transparencies.

I guess there is more effort involved for the photographer with digital asset management and keywording of images, but I’m quite happy with doing that, and capturing good keywords for each shoot and recording them once against my master image files is as useful to me as it is for the stock agencies. I guess one thing I’ve noticed in the short time I’ve been involved is the inevitable downward pressure on prices, which I expect will continue and probably make smaller, more selective specialist libraries and agencies of more interest to photographers like me.

Finally - your dream assignment? What is it?

I had a one week trip to Iceland just over 10 years ago and have always wanted to go back and explore that landscape further. I just stuck to the south west of the island, around Reykjavik on my first visit, but if someone out there would like me to return to do a complete circuit of the island and document its landscape I’d be happy to oblige!

Contact Details

Mark Sunderland
+44 (0)1423 550138

Email: contact [at] marksunderland [dot] com

www.marksunderland.com

For news updates see http://marksunderlandphotography.blogware.com/blog

Photo Gallery

Photo of Rio Ibanez, Region XI, Chile by Mark Sunderland