There is a common misconception in photography that to make an image powerful, it has to be dripping with drama. We chase the golden hour, we hunt for explosive contrast, and we angle our lenses to create dynamic, emotional narratives. But lately, I’ve been drawn to a completely opposite philosophy. A genre that looks you dead in the eye, refuses to smile, and demands that you look at the world exactly as it is.
Welcome to the world of deadpan photography.
There is a distinct vulnerability to shooting vintage film, especially when you’re standing on a windswept hillside in the Highlands with the cloud cover changing every thirty seconds. You set up your shot, you look through the viewfinder, and then comes the great calculation: Is this 1/128th of a second? Am I pulling enough detail out of those moody Scottish shadows?
There is a distinct pleasure in bucking the trends. While the modern world obsessively chases more pixels, crisper formats, and algorithmic perfection, my creative home here on the blog has always been about something different: texture, atmosphere, and the joy of the process.
There is a distinct difference between what we want to do and what we ought to do. In the creative life, balancing the romantic pull of a fresh DIY project against the ground realities of landscape ethics and financial sanity is a constant, shifting equation.
If you’ve been following my recent creative shifts, you’ll have seen the moniker "Man of 2 Worlds" popping up. It’s a title I’ve given to a series of silent videos I'm in the process of creating, but as I sit here in the Ayrshire quiet, reflecting on where I am at 60, I’ve realised it’s much more than a branding exercise. It’s a philosophy. It’s a way of standing with one foot in the digital future and the other in the soulful, analogue past.
