benshotme urban landscape photography before SCUL
Recently Tom asked, “What does SCUL mean to us?”
However, maybe we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Who is Tom? He, along with Yanny, are the co-founders of a growing photography community here in the south of England. South Coast Urban Landscape Collective (SCUL) meets regularly for walks and it is in this context that– camera in hand– I joined my first walk back in March 2024. More than the walks, it’s an active group of photographers sharing their passion for photography.
Since joining I have been trying to determine if I fit in. If so, how, or even why, or do I shoot in a style that compliments the group’s goals? So yes– Tom, what does SCUL mean to me? Perhaps I am over-analyzing what appears to be the quintessential “SCUL” image. Or perhaps I got stuck on the term urban landscape and what urban landscape might be. I didn’t consider this a style I was personally working in. And as often happens when you join a new group, self-doubt grew, the proverbial, “do I even belong here!?” Or should I quote Dante, “I’m not even supposed to be here today.”
So far, if I were to try to use the words to define this genre of photography, Urban Landscape attempts the visual organization of the unnatural in a way that demonstrates the overlooked beauty that surrounds our civilization, even when it has reverted to its seemingly most simple, ordinary and degraded states.
It was as I came to terms with the term Urban Landscape that I realized that maybe I was a sometimes urban landscape photographer. I aggressively tried to adopt some of the style I was seeing in the group, learning pretty quickly that this style didn’t diverge too far from some existing aspects of my photography, this drove me to dive into the archives to find my own personal urban landscape photography that was shot before my first walk.
In review of all of my photography leading up to meeting the scullers the images newly rediscovered include, power lines, trash bins, litter, inside things outside, outside things that should have been brought inside a long time ago, signs of signs and the life of signs. It’s architecture photography where the architecture does not matter, it’s an element as the subject and without an element. It’s the splash of unnoticed artificial color that time has blended into a natural color. These images often cross over with and into, or in many cases compliment, my street photography. I think they are often shot as a warm up to my street photography, the melodic warm up octave before belting into song. In total I have found over 4000 images in the archives and I share these here* now.
But that is not what I am here to talk about. What I am here to talk about is how appreciative I am of having a photography community again. I’ve missed having photographers in my sphere of influence.
To answer Tom’s question, the SCUL Discord channel is where I want to share my good images first, more importantly it is where I want to share my average and bad images. To my fellow Scullers – my apologies if I am sharing too much and my heartfelt thanks for not saying so if I am. The group has become integral to my recent photography thinking and is helping lift me out of some very dark days. So Tom, Yanny and all the SCULITES, thank you for your eyes, thoughts, and companionship.
*note – normally I share images here at the website, in this case the link above brings you to a Flickr album, this is because 4000 images are not supported well here at the www or alternatively, on a computer, you can arrow through the images below:
