“Its presence was so intense that I was compelled to grab my camera and start photographing”

Features
By
published

In The Art of Seeing #47, Benedict Brain reflects on a chance find in a car park, and how to convey a sense of place

Art of Seeing by Benedict Brain
With some careful angle selection, Ben captured this evocative shot while obscuring the surrounding car park. Fujifilm GFX 50R with Fujifilm GF 63mm f/2.8 R WR lens. 1/180 sec at f/8, ISO 125 (Image credit: Benedict Brain)
About Benedict Brain

Benedict Brain with camera

(Image credit: Marcus Hawkins)

Benedict Brain is a UK-based photographer, journalist and artist. He is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society and sits on the society’s Distinctions Advisory Panel. He is also a past editor of Digital Camera Magazine, and the author of You Will be Able to Take Great Photos by The End of This Book.

Believe it or not, this image was made in a car park, on the side of the A5 in north Wales, with Llyn Ogwen to my back and looking towards Glyder Fawr. I was en route to run a workshop for The Royal Photographic Society in and around Llyn Idwal, in the shadow of the Devil’s Kitchen. It’s one of my favourite parts of the world, and the perfect setting for a workshop called ‘A Sense of Place’. 

I was running early, so I pulled over to finish my coffee, and to take a peaceful, solitary moment before the workshop began. The weather wasn’t looking great. While sipping my coffee and contemplating the wet day ahead, I noticed the rock you can see in this image. Its presence was so intense that I was compelled to grab my camera and start photographing. Its sheer volume and wetness resonated with the vibe of the wider area, and spoke to the sense of place I feel when I’m in the Welsh mountains. 

By carefully selecting the right angle, I was able to arrange a composition that obscured any sign of the car park or the A5 beyond. The mist created a wonderful sense of depth and separation between the foreground and background. 

The rock has a presence in the frame that echoes how it made me feel at the time. I enjoy the idea that it is composed to give the impression it could have been taken in the remote wilds during an epic adventure. Such deception. However, as humanity’s relationship with nature and the environment is a core theme that underpins much of my practice, I also made images that included the rock, the car park and the road. These are arguably more interesting images, albeit more bland aesthetically speaking. 

Perhaps it’s odd, but I feel that the workshops could have been just as effectively run at this stop-off point – but then, who would want to attend a workshop in a car park?

Read more:
• The 50 best photographers ever
• 100 best photography quotes from famous photographers
• The best coffee-table books on photography

Benedict Brain
Benedict Brain

Benedict Brain is a UK based photographer, journalist and artist. He graduated with a degree in photography from the Derby School of Art in 1991 (now University of Derby), where he was tutored and inspired by photographers John Blakemore and Olivier Richon, amongst others. He is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society and also sits on the society’s Distinctions Advisory Panel.

Until July 2018 Benedict was editor of Britain’s best-selling consumer photography magazine, Digital Camera Magazine. As a journalist he met and interviewed some of the world’s greatest photographers and produced articles on a wide range of photography related topics, presented technique videos, wrote in-depth features, curated and edited best-in-class content for a range of titles including; Amateur Photographer, PhotoPlus, N-Photo, Professional Photography and Practical Photoshop. He currently writes a regular column, The Art of Seeing, for Digital Camera magazine.