Alister is a Scottish landscape photographer well known for his honest and open discussions about the artistic world of photography. Alister love to empower people to use their cameras to authentic express themselves and on this episode he shares his personal journey with us including his life changing trip to the Gobi Desert and how he now dedicates his working lifer to helping others tap into their creative self through photography.
Topics Covered
Connect with Alister
Website: https://expressive.photography/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alister_benn/
---
Website: https://www.photographicconnections.com/
Join the Photographic Connections community:
https://photographic-connections.mn.co/
Wellness Photography Weekends in Scotland:
https://www.photographicconnections.com/photographyweekends
Follow the journey
Instagram: http:/www.instagram.com/photographicconnections
Follow Kim's photography journey and offerings
Website: http://www.kimgrantphotography.co.uk
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@kimgrantphotography
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/kimgrantphotography
Music by Mark Robinson
Song: A Thousand Lifetimes
Website: http:/www.markrobinsonmusic.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRobinsonMusic
Alister is a Scottish landscape photographer well known for his honest and open discussions about the artistic world of photography. Alister love to empower people to use their cameras to authentic express themselves and on this episode he shares his personal journey with us including his life changing trip to the Gobi Desert and how he now dedicates his working lifer to helping others tap into their creative self through photography.
Topics Covered
Connect with Alister
Website: https://expressive.photography/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alister_benn/
---
Website: https://www.photographicconnections.com/
Join the Photographic Connections community:
https://photographic-connections.mn.co/
Wellness Photography Weekends in Scotland:
https://www.photographicconnections.com/photographyweekends
Follow the journey
Instagram: http:/www.instagram.com/photographicconnections
Follow Kim's photography journey and offerings
Website: http://www.kimgrantphotography.co.uk
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@kimgrantphotography
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/kimgrantphotography
Music by Mark Robinson
Song: A Thousand Lifetimes
Website: http:/www.markrobinsonmusic.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRobinsonMusic
Kim Grant (00:02.407)
Alistair, thank you so much for coming on the podcast this week.
Alister Benn (00:05.642)
You're more than welcome. Pleasure to meet you.
Kim Grant (00:08.03)
And you, it's a really pleasure to connect with you. I feel we're gonna delve into some really interesting things today because you're a very open and honest photographer who really wants people to fully express themselves and explore their creativity. And that's something that's really fond and close to my heart as well. So I'm looking forward to delving into that with you today. But before we do, I wondered if you could go back to the beginning of your journey and share the story of what got you into photography in the first place.
Alister Benn (00:37.758)
Right, I'm excited about where we're going to go with this conversation too. I love it when we don't have a plan. And in terms of my photography, I first had a camera in my teens. I was probably about 13 or 14, I think, when I first got a little SLR. And I was living in the southern highlands of Scotland. We'd moved up from Glasgow when I was 12.
and we'd sort of moved into sort of Perth shirt, which for Scottish people know it's a beautiful, beautiful part of Scotland, really where the Highlands start. So I would just run around pointing my camera at things I thought were cool really, with no technical skill whatsoever. And then of course that's very much play, it's kind of serious play I think when you're a child.
And then I didn't really pick up a camera again until my 30s. You know, you head off to university, you get a job, you get married, you have kids, you know, and before you know it, you don't have a lot of time to go and play or even to be creative and so forth. So I didn't really pick up a camera again until 2001. So by that time, I was in my early to mid 30s.
And it was bird photography that was my passion back then. I've been a really, really keen birder since the age of about three and travelling around the world looking at birds and with work. And I really just picked up a camera then partly to.
to be fascinated with the subject and to take really close personal images of beautiful birds. I was living in the Far East by this time. And secondly to relieve stress from work. I was in a very stressful career. I was in international finance and I was doing a lot of maybe a hundred long haul flights a year or so. I mean I was really on the road all the time, flying all over the world and I had a very stressful life and I'm sure will come on to
Alister Benn (02:44.964)
point in the rest of the conversation but without going too deeply I was pretty stressed. So obviously picking up a camera was a great opportunity to lose myself through the barrel of the lens and get out of my own head for a few hours when I had some free time. So that's the kind of potted history of how I started and obviously that was the beginning of a 20 year
Alister Benn (03:15.146)
and has changed my life extraordinarily, really.
Kim Grant (03:19.278)
Hmm, yes, I love that you had that connection to nature and photography from such a young age. I got into photography when I was 16 so I can kind of relate to that getting into it when you were a teenager and that going out and just playing and interacting and being in Perthshire as well. I mean that's such a beautiful part of the country that I can totally see why you were so inspired by that. It's lovely.
Alister Benn (03:42.455)
Yeah.
Kim Grant (03:43.938)
So how do you think, because you of course now do photography professionally, so where did that transition come for you between doing it for play and that connection and mental health benefits into making a living?
Alister Benn (03:57.928)
Again, that was quite convoluted.
Quite quickly I realised that photography was a very important part of my life. I was kind of fortunate by the mid 2000s that I was running my own business, so I was my own boss, so I wasn't accountable to anybody. So I could take extended periods off work without having to explain to my boss where I was. And I found that was where I was most happy. I was most happy when I was playing rather than working.
As I approach my next birthday, which is at the weekend, in the diary it just says Alistair 16 again. And that hasn't really changed much since I was a kid really. But probably by the mid, probably about 2007, 2008, I kind of thought, listen, I think I might be able to do something with this and it could be quite interesting.
And the thing that was the transition for me was that I had gotten to landscape photography by about 2004, 2005. I'd been living in the Himalayas for quite a long time. I'd been living in Tibet for quite a long time. And I did a lot of night photography, but there was no learning material for night photography at that point in time, just like nothing. So I spent about three years just researching.
going out at night, photographing under all sorts of different conditions, trying to work out all this stuff out from first principles about how to get good exposures, how to focus, how to manage depth of field. So quite a technical deep dive into night photography. And I published my first ebook in 2012. So that was the first step. And.
Alister Benn (05:49.722)
I didn't know if I was going to sell any at all, but Michael Reichman, who the late Michael Reichman, unfortunately, who ran Luminous Landscape, I sent him a copy of it and he wrote a very, very glowing review in Luminous Landscape. And I remember the morning waking up and just seeing email after email after email of sales for this ebook. And it just took off because it was the first ebook really about night photography back in 2012. And that was it.
this is really easy, I can make money doing this and basically haven't looked back since. So I'm very fortunate that we make a good living from our work.
Kim Grant (06:29.622)
Wow, that's incredible. And it's so beautiful from such a, you know, just to create that one thing and the first thing you create has such a positive response. I mean, that must've been such an amazing feeling for you. Yeah.
Alister Benn (06:31.644)
Hahaha
Alister Benn (06:38.517)
Yes.
A shock. Yeah. Well, the problem is that it set a precedent that hasn't been repeated since. Yeah, I should have quit earlier.
Kim Grant (06:49.334)
That's always the, yeah, it's like we peak too soon, don't we? Yeah. It's very clear from your story that you've done a lot of travel around the world. And how do you think that has really fed into to what you do now? Because you clearly have a very open mind, but also a very deep understanding for the world. And, and I just feel like you're going to broad open mind plays a really deep
connection with now how you work with other people, but also how you express yourself in your images.
Alister Benn (07:19.278)
apologies, you broke up a wee bit there. There's this storm that's raging around me here on the Isle of Lewis. So I'm sorry, I'm going to have to ask you to repeat that question.
Kim Grant (07:26.558)
It's okay. I was just saying it's clear from your story that you've done a lot of travel. So I was wondering now you clearly have a very open mind in your photography and both with how you express yourself photographically but how you encourage others to express themselves. So how much do you feel your travel has impacted what you do now in terms of this open mindedness that you have?
Alister Benn (07:52.234)
Right, I think I'm a firm believer in the combination of nature and nurture. I think we do have a character to us and I think even as a child I was quite emotional, quite empathetic, quite compassionate, quite interested in the feelings of others, very aware of other people's feelings and I think I spent a lot of my younger years really not
really trying to not upset people and to be a positive influence rather than a negative influence. I think anyone who's been bullied as a child realizes just how toxic
our relationships with other people can be even when we think we're being playful. We can actually be very hurtful. So I think I've always been quite sensitive in that nature. My father was a marine engineer. He used to spend most of his time traveling around the world with his work.
And I was fortunate as a kid to go out to sea quite often with him. So we'd go to the States and we'd go to Africa and all over the world with him. And that kind of gave me that wonderlust, which in conjunction with my birding, just gave me an excuse. It was just like, yeah, I want to go and see birds in China or I want to go and see birds in Borneo. But then with my work, I was able to go and do lots of interesting things. Travel is.
a very interesting way to tell you who you really are when you're faced with different cultures and different races and different ethnicities and faiths and religions, particularly in places like Tibet, you know, where it's very, very evident that you're dealing with people who are fundamentally so different from Westerners. And I built a very strong relationship with
Alister Benn (09:50.898)
my feelings and emotions and how that dictated who I was as a person and who I thought I was as a person. And I think many of us grow up with a very strong sense of expectation about what we're going to achieve or how successful we're going to be. And I think a lot of us kind of get stuck in a rut trying to...
out achieve our own expectations, be they financially or emotionally or whatever. And I think I'm very happy that with the adult I've grown into become. I've never been happier in my own skin than I am.
today really. I think I know who I am, I know my strengths, I know my weaknesses and I know what I can do to help other people to break down those barriers between the idiot in their head that talks down to them all the time and talks negatively about them all the time and reminds them of their failures all the time. And the problem with that is that we listen to that 24-7 and the bottom line
simply isn't true. And as an artist or a creative person, and you'll know this yourself, that we're so... people can become very reliant on external validation or what other people think about us or what other people think about our work. And...
Unless we're happy with ourselves, every rave review from outside is pretty meaningless, really. Don't read the good ones, don't read the bad ones. It's kind of that sort of position. So I think, yes, travel has been a really important part of my life and my development, but equally so has been moving back to Scotland. It's 10 years ago now, just over 10 years since I came back. And honestly, if you'd asked me 15 years ago,
Alister Benn (11:48.802)
you know, oh do you think you'll move back to Scotland and live on the west coast? It'd be oh no never, you know, I'm going to be a vagabond living in the far east or wherever. So you know being prepared for unexpected turns is always interesting. I kind of came back here by accident but yeah, you know, the short answer to your question is I think what art is a way for us to articulate
Kim Grant (12:05.562)
Mm-mm.
Alister Benn (12:16.29)
perspectives and things we've learned about life and dealing with life and showing other people that we can change, we can develop, we can grow, we can have a different relationship with ourselves and in doing so it gives us a different relationship with everything. I'm like a Scottish bald Barbie doll, pull the string and I'll talk. So apologies.
Kim Grant (12:34.747)
Mm.
Kim Grant (12:43.69)
Oh, no, it's good. It's good. I love these deep dives that people go into explaining things because it's, yeah, I mean, we have to go away sometimes, don't we? In whatever way that is for us personally to discover ourselves and to understand the world. And as you rightly said there, you know, we never know what the future holds, where we're going to end up or what we're going to do. And I think it's just about being open to all of that.
Alister Benn (12:50.352)
Hahaha
Kim Grant (13:08.282)
And I just love how you speak there about the artistic side of photography and that expression and, you know, showing ourselves and understanding the world through our images, because, you know, it's so true. And I don't know, I mean, I guess this is my own insecurities and my own upbringing. But like when I got into photography, I felt very restricted because I saw it as a very technical pursuit. And this is how you do it. And, you know, there was all this kind of feedback.
coming in and judgment about certain things. And it's only been since I've gone back and reconnected with almost like my inner child and that emotions of actually what got me into photography that I feel the images I create now were so much more true and authentic. And they might not be everybody's cup of tea, but it's like, I don't care anymore because it's like, to me, they're much truer. But it's like getting past that hurdle. Did you ever feel that when you were getting into photography?
Alister Benn (13:43.118)
Mm-hmm.
Alister Benn (14:03.178)
Yeah, when I first mentioned my early teens, I talk about running around and pointing my camera at things that are cool. And when I got back into photography and started doing landscapes, I mean, bird photography is really easy in a way. It's technical, but you've got a clear focus. There's a clear subject. It's about the bird. Whereas landscape photography is a bit more abstract, even if you're photographing big scenes, because...
There's no metaphor, there's no story, there's no, you know, people talk about building a story into your photography and stuff, but at the end of the day, you're just pointing your camera at stuff you think is cool. You know, that's it, really. And any metaphor or feelings or emotions or stories that we build into that are purely internal. And it's up to each viewer to look at that scene and it's what they bring to it is going to be what that photo is about. So you can photograph a tree leaning over a smaller tree.
And some people might see nurture or care or age or generational differences, or they might be thinking about a grandparent that's just passed away or something like that. The sort of nurture elements just where you have something big and something small, there's a relationship there. And relationships are the fundamental part of humanity, really. So I think when I got back into photography and back into landscapes, I literally...
started where I left off when I was 14 or 15 years old, which is, hey, that's cool, I'm going to point my camera at it. And I wasn't thinking about pleasing other people or rules or guidelines or conventional aesthetics. And I joined a forum, I joined naturescapes.net in 2004 and started posting images, mostly birds, but occasional landscapes. And...
people would start giving me critique and saying, oh, well, this is very unconventional and this doesn't work and you can't do that. And like an idiot, like an insecurity, I listened to them and started to learn. I started to study. I started to read every book on composition that's ever been written and went through a period of about 10 years, really, where I think I became a very classical photographer,
Alister Benn (16:25.264)
and structured to create images that most people would find attractive. And it worked. I got really well known. I gained a certain amount of notoriety in the industry. I think I grew up at a time where it was easier to do that. Friends like Mark Adamus and Guy Talle and Bill Neal and Alex Noriega and the list of my buddies, Adam Gibbs.
you know, the list of my buddies is like the who's who of contemporary landscape photography. And we all grew up to kind of together. And I got to the point in 2016 where I just thought, I hate this. I hate these images. They mean nothing to me. I'm making the same composition again and again and again, just with different stuff in it. It's very formulaic, very structured and you could go anywhere and make a good photograph, but they didn't.
I didn't feel they were mine in a way. And that was the cusp, that was the transition that took me to the Gobi Desert in January 2017, and then everything changed. That was the, that's where my life just suddenly went from.
a complete breakdown of who I was into this new person who, what is it now? So that'll be three, six, six and a bit years, nearly seven years. It'll be seven years in January that I went to the Gobi for the first time. That seven years has changed me so fundamentally as to who I am. And I pay a lot of respect to my work as a creative person as the catalyst for that change.
Kim Grant (18:06.978)
Hmm. These shows there, doesn't it? How life, like, I think we go through this a couple of times in life, don't we? It's like we're almost like reborn and we rediscover ourselves in different places. What was it about the Gobi Desert that was just like so mesmerizing and life changing for you?
Alister Benn (18:22.786)
Right, well, the long answer is in my book, which is the obligatory product placement in any conversation. Yeah, I wrote a book called Out of Darkness.
Kim Grant (18:27.862)
Hahaha
Kim Grant (18:34.026)
Yep.
Alister Benn (18:40.766)
which is my first printed photo book. And I tell the story in great depth and incredibly openly. I got some feedback from a buddy of mine saying that's an incredibly harrowing read. So it is quite a deep story. So in short, I've suffered or had suffered quite badly from anxiety and depression for about 30 years. Started when I was in my teens.
Kim Grant (18:53.387)
Mmm.
Alister Benn (19:08.994)
very much through my 20s. And even though I was functional, there was definitely a shadow kind of hanging over me for most of my adult life. And it was getting worse. So even though I was doing work that I loved doing and running workshops, which I really enjoyed and sort of hanging out with people, inside my head was a bit of a mess. So in January of 2017, I said to my then wife,
ex-wife who was Chinese that I needed to get away. So she'd done a bunch of research about the Gobi and literally three days later we were on a plane flying across northern China to go and spend about three weeks in the desert. And as a classical landscape photographer using a 14mm lens with that classic sort of foreground, mid-ground, background, I was lost in this big empty space.
And so I decided rather than having a complete existential crisis that I would try something different. So I just thought, right, I'm going to go back to what I used to do, which is if I think something looks cool, I'm going to point my camera at it. I'm not going to think, I'm not going to analyze, I'm not going to compose consciously. I'm just going to let everything be as intuitive as possible. And I did that for three weeks.
Mostly with a longer lens, like an 80-400mm, so a lot of those images are sort of 3-400mm. So just picking out tiny little details in the landscape. And when I got home from that trip, I kind of realized that I really liked the images, first of all. I felt a very, very strong connection to them. And I almost felt that they were playing out my relationship with my anxiety in that
Some of them were really dark, really, really dark. And I mean, not depressing. There was always a ray of hope in them. There was always light in them, but they were dark. And others were really light and airy and soft and frivolous almost. And I think they were just painting this emotional spectrum, the picture of my emotional spectrum or an articulation of how I felt, both the dark and the light.
Alister Benn (21:26.554)
And I started to analyse, well, why did I point my camera at that? You know, what was it about that scene that made me just think, right, that is so cool, I want to do it. So I started analysing all the images and I only had about, I ended up over the next two years, I ended up going back to the Gobi seven times. So once I'd been once on my own, I started running workshops there. So I went back seven times in total, the last time being like.
February 2019. So over that two year period, quite intense periods of time in the desert. And every time I went, I would do the same thing. I would take photos that just spoke to me aesthetically. So in 2018, I started to sit down and kind of work it all out and came up with five attributes of the landscape that make you engage with it.
And I've written a lot about this and talked a lot about this and made videos about it. But basically, the five triggers are luminosity. So light. Contrast, which is obviously a big description. There's lots of different types of contrast and color, atmosphere and geometry. So those five things, every scene you look at are made up of those five things. Luminosity, contrast, color, atmosphere and geometry. And that oddly became.
Alister Benn (22:52.57)
I have found another couple since, but I don't talk about them yet because I'm going to write a book about it. But basically those five attributes guide us through the landscape and they're also a mirror to who we are in any given moment. So if we're feeling down, you know.
Kim Grant (22:59.174)
Ha ha
Kim Grant (23:10.67)
Mm-hmm.
Alister Benn (23:13.738)
You might be drawn to darker scenes, you might be drawn to lighter scenes, you might be drawn to soft curves, or you might be drawn to more angular.
challenging structures, you know, and being open to all of those means that you're open to your full potential. You know, if you only photograph one type of thing and you only ever photograph one type of thing because you think that is either what you're known for or what people are going to like, then you just become a facsimile of yourself. You know, you just become, that's an old word. We don't use that anymore, I guess. But you know, you just become a cliche.
Kim Grant (23:48.037)
Hehehehe
Alister Benn (23:53.708)
you just become stuck in this very narrow, this is what I want people to think I am. Whereas now, I'll literally, I've gone back to just pointing my camera at whatever I think is cool because they're for me anyway. So yeah, I mean, you know, it's a long convoluted and quite complex story. But.
I strongly believe in art, creativity, expression, emotional articulation as catalysts and passports to a better future for ourselves. And the people I work with now in terms of mentorships or on the Express to Photography Forum that I run, the changes in people are remarkable. From being agoraphobic.
you know, just nervous wrecks to being mentors themselves, you know, in three years, it's staggering to see the change in people. So yeah, I'm clearly passionate and convinced of the value of what we're trying to do here. And that's hugely satisfying.
Kim Grant (24:56.735)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Grant (25:08.695)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was going to get on there to the work that you did on helping other people, but you know what you just said there, it's something that's really hit home to me this year. Like I've really started to realise that when we really connect with our intuition and create from that place, the emotion in those images, I find it doesn't just mean stuff to us, but what I, I've a few times now I've shared images side by side, images that I've created from a place that I feel like this is how we're told to do photography.
and then from a place that comes from the heart. And everybody will say that the image that's created that comes from the heart, they feel something when they see it. And it's like got this added extra. So I very much believe that when we really connect to our emotions and that intuitive sense of what's really bringing us in, that emotion we're feeling is just energetically imprinted into the images that we end up creating.
Alister Benn (25:49.419)
Right?
Kim Grant (26:05.03)
And that's one thing I've seen on the Photographic Connections community. We only began in March this year, but, you know, in that short period of time, the people that have been there since the beginning, the changes in them has been unbelievable, the confidence they now have and the expression they have and the ability to go out and just respond to whatever they love. And it's beautiful that, you know, we both have a kind of overlap there with what we're doing in our work. So, yeah.
Alister Benn (26:29.042)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, and I think this is the important thing these days. And when I started out in photography 20 plus years ago, quite a lot of people were kind of guarded about their influence. They were guarded about their own communities. They were guarded about their own customers or clients. Whereas now, I find there's so much more openness in that, you know.
I work with Adam Gibbs on a regular basis. We help each other out all the time. I've got so many friends who we support each other because we realize that even though we might be sharing a similar message.
Some people are going to hear you and resonate with your message more than mine, even though we're saying something fundamentally quite similar. Just because of human nature, you know, you're going to be more useful to them than I might be. And likewise, there might be people who I'm more connected to than you might be, you know, just because that's the way communities work. You know, so I think that diversity of what I'm happy is, is that we seem to be leaving behind
the generic form of photography that became, I think that kind of peaked maybe about four or five years ago. And what's happening now is that because it's harder to become established as a photographer in 2023 than it was in 2003, external validation is so much harder to get than it used to be. You know, I mean, I...
I don't have a huge audience on social media, but I've got a pretty loyal following. You know, people know who I am, but I'd hate to be trying to start out today. You know, that would be really depressing. So I think we have to take back ownership of photography for ourselves. And even those of us who have a degree of influence now, authenticity seems to be the key word. We have to be authentic. When people just think you're being generic or you're just...
Alister Benn (28:33.286)
producing images because you know they're going to be well received, I think people kind of lose a bit of respect for you as well. So I think we should lead by example and I think being authentic and being real and being free and not manipulative and you know, trying to play the algorithms and all of that type of stuff. If I had £5 million in my bank account tomorrow, I would leave social media in a heartbeat.
I would just leave. I have no love of it as a way of expressing myself or talking to an audience. But that unfortunately is the curse of what we do at this point in time.
Kim Grant (29:02.658)
Hmm.
Kim Grant (29:17.658)
It's an interesting one, isn't it? There's a part of me, like I personally, I love posting videos on YouTube and Instagram, but it's like I think it's from the place that I maybe come from now. Like I felt a lot of pressure in the past and like Facebook, for instance, I hate it. I'm off of Facebook now. But there's something about putting these messages out there and, and I guess positively.
positively reaching people in some ways to maybe think about their photography a bit differently, you know, and you'd mentioned there about collaboration like you do with Adam Gibbs. And, you know, some people see this, especially the YouTube world as like competition, but I'm like, no, there's space for everybody. And like you'd said earlier, you know, some people will resonate with what you're saying more than me and more Adam, more than you and all that kind of stuff. And I think the more of us that
Alister Benn (29:59.436)
Yeah.
Kim Grant (30:04.63)
put that positive message out there and the more authenticity people see in the photography worlds the more authentic they'll become in their own self-expression and I think that can only be a positive thing.
Alister Benn (30:16.278)
100%. And, you know, I agree that the videos I enjoy making the most are the ones that I enjoy making. You know, the ones that I'm just talking about my own point of view. Yeah, as soon as you start crossing that line between business and personal pleasure, there's always going to be a bit of a conflict there somewhere along the line.
You know, working a business is different from just being free to do exactly what you want all the time. But yeah, on the whole, I do enjoy that process. It's. Yeah, so I agree 100 percent that, you know, we're as long as we're all there's more and more people who are preaching that positivity now. And I think that's a really good thing.
Kim Grant (31:04.794)
Mm.
Kim Grant (31:07.862)
I think it's really interesting as well, like you'd mentioned this shift that maybe happened in the photography world about, you know, four years ago. You know, when I began photography, my dream was always to win a competition or to have an exhibition and stuff. But for me, it's
Alister Benn (31:18.646)
Mm.
Kim Grant (31:20.466)
that doesn't interest me much at all anymore because I think what I really want to do with my photography is touch people's lives so that they can see photography and the healing benefits it can bring them. So it's more about the sort of helping others than my own professional work and kind of being accoladed and put out there on the big screen so to speak. Are you finding that because of your community and all the work you do with other people for you now do you feel
Kim Grant (31:50.42)
in my work, but do you feel it's actually that opening up other people and helping other people that your most joy comes from rather than maybe your own imagery?
Alister Benn (32:01.31)
In terms of, you know, I think when being a creative stroke educator is your work, then my own personal images are somehow a little bit detached from that now. You know, my images aren't my product, perhaps as much as they were.
six, seven, eight years ago. You know, I had a really successful workshop business and your images are your calling card. You know, people come in your workshops because of that.
Whereas I think more often now people come in the workshops, not just because of the images, because of what they think they're gonna hear or how they're gonna, the experience they're gonna have while we're on the road together. So, you know, it's much more whole, it's a much bigger thing than just the photography. It's much more, you know, the stuff that's locked up inside my head. And that's really important. So I think in terms of my work, I consider my work to be
helping other photographers develop their unique and not just making better photographs, but making more meaningful photographs to them, you know, and understanding the role of their creativity in their personal development. I think that's my work now. In terms of contests and so forth, I think it's a natural thing for most people.
You know, we can't deny that photography is a luxury. You know, being able to spend...
Alister Benn (33:39.362)
X amounts of money on cameras and lenses and tripods and other gear, and then travel somewhere to go and make photographs and just have the free time to go and do that is a luxury. You know, there's billions of people on this planet who, you know, food, water, shelter, health is far, far more pressing to them. And the whole concept of exploring their personal development through their creative aesthetics is meaningless in many regards.
instantly think of ourselves as fortunate and what that basically means is that the creativity in this form you know using photography is open to us
a relatively small percentage of people who can afford to do it. You know, they've got the money to pay for the gear. They've got the money to go to cool places and they've got the money to take time off survival to actually just go out and be creative. So we're kind of lucky. You know, we're in a we're in the we're in the lucky set of people. Now, a byproduct of having that degree of security and financial ability is that we have an ego.
you know, because we've been successful enough in whatever it is we've done in our lives to have the money and the free time to go and do these things. And I know there's a lot of people out there, and myself included probably when I started, where being liked, being acknowledged, being praised and winning contests was...
was all part of, yes, I have mastered this. I'm good at this. And I did it. I think 2012 I entered my first contest and right through 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, I think was the last time I entered anything. I did pretty well and won some awards and stuff like that. But now it doesn't interest me at all. In fact, I...
Alister Benn (35:42.942)
I think there's a limited number of people who are truly qualified to critique images, meaningfully critique images, in terms of they actually understand that an image can be incredible even if they don't like it. And people often confuse critique with opinion. You know, oh well if you did this, this and this, then it's good. Well that's not necessarily the case. You know, that's, I always say it's like if people walk into my party at our house and
Kim Grant (35:58.503)
Mm.
Alister Benn (36:12.47)
they don't like the music that I'm playing in the house and they change it to something that I don't like is the ambience of the party better because they've got to decide what they want everyone to listen to? If someone tried to do that in your house, you'd throw them out, you know? But we do it with our creativity all the time. You know, we take that so personally. So, I don't believe that contests are necessarily beneficial.
Kim Grant (36:28.983)
Yeah.
Alister Benn (36:41.718)
to people's development. I've judged enough of them in my time to know the flaws of them in terms of defining what is the best photograph or who is the best photographer who's presented their work. So that whole thing to me, I just think is meaningless now. I think most of us have...
fairly unhealthy relationships with ourselves. You know, we carry a lot of baggage from when we're kids. We carry a lot of baggage from our own expectations of who we're gonna become and what we're going to achieve with our lives. And as we get older, it's easy to look back with regrets and all of these types of things. And I think...
Creativity is just a catalyst. It's a way to tap into who we really are as opposed to either who we think we are or who we want to be. And those three things are completely different. You know, you've talked about reconnecting with your inner child as a creative, well, a way of tapping into a more creative version of yourself and...
Kids don't need to be taught how to be creative. Kids are creative. You know, we, I remember clearly, you know, lying on the floor of our house, playing with boxes and zoo animals and soldiers and all of this type of stuff. And the flights of fancy in your imagination are running through the woods with a stick, pretending you're chasing dragons or whatever. So kids don't need to be taught how to be creative.
But adults need to be retaught how to be children, I think. And it is, you know, that idea that we need to be serious all the time. And it's a juxtaposition between...
Alister Benn (38:39.474)
frivolity and lightheartedness in a very dark world at times. You know, there's a lot of horrible things going on all over the planet right now, from the conflicts in Israel, Gaza, Ukraine.
any number of other little mini wars going on and then all the pandemic situation and then obviously climate change and all of these things, you know, there's a lot to be kind of miserable about but you know, so to be frivolous and playful almost seems a bit disrespectful in that context but
You know, we've been making art ever since we first worked out how to make a handprint on a wall of a cave. And it's a fundamental part of us understanding our place in the world and our perspectives and then sharing them with other people. And I think as artists, we have an obligation to do these things because we can.
You know, we can articulate, we can express, we can share how we feel. And that openness that you mentioned earlier in the podcast, I am super open because I think it empowers other people to be open. And that, I think is that is better than being closed.
Kim Grant (39:58.614)
No, definitely. I mean, that openness, it's like you say, it encourages other people to be open and it also, it gets to the root of what it means to be human. I think we live in such a disconnected world nowadays. Of course, not everybody is disconnected, but there is a lot of people out there who feel very alone and lonely and not seen and not heard and who also...
you know, just don't know how to express themselves. And I found in my own life that the art, writing, photography, you know, all these different, everything really artistic. And being out in nature as well has given me the gift of being able to speak, you know, because like in my story, I didn't have a voice. I didn't feel like I had a voice growing up. And it was through photography and being able to connect with the world that I was able to visually have a voice. And then starting YouTube was like...
I could now physically speak and I feel it's so important because I've looked at my health throughout my life as well. And when I didn't have a voice, I was always ill. I caught every bug, virus, I had infections all the time. But the moment I started creatively expressing myself, it was like that emotional release and all that energy being released into something. And that's just listening to what you were saying there about art and being able to articulate and.
I just feel it's such an important thing for everybody to have something, you know, there's so many different creative pursuits. So to find something that works for you and that speaks to you and to find the time to do it because it can play wonders, I think, to everybody's life.
Alister Benn (41:31.646)
100%. And I mean, I've been playing guitar since I was 14. I mean, that's been my other big creative outlet pretty much my whole life. Even on holiday, I brought a guitar with me, you know, because it's so I'm still plugging in and playing, you know, just we need we need a release, you know, otherwise it's too easy for us to just get locked up in our own heads the whole time.
And like I said earlier on, I mean, I just think we can be quite unreliable in terms of appraising our own value and our own strengths. It's easy to see weaknesses all the time and to feel small.
It's funny because I'm 5'9 in height, which is 176 centimetres for those living in the 21st century. And my wife's six foot, so she's 181 centimetres. So she kind of towers over me a little bit. And I couldn't imagine doing that when I was 17.
you know, to have a partner who was clearly a lot taller than me, you know, because it's like, oh, it's shattering your ego and you know, you're just a wee guy and all of that type of stuff. But now it's great. I think it's the root of all my back problems, of course, but you know, looking up all the time, but you know, it's, you know, to just accept.
Kim Grant (42:50.571)
Hahaha
Alister Benn (42:56.914)
ourselves for who we are, you know, we're not going to, I'm not going to change my height. So why, why worry about it? You know, it's, we, we stress out about too many things. The world's bad enough as it is without inventing stuff. Was it Hemingway? I think it was Hemingway. It was either Hemingway or Mark Twain. I can never remember which, which one it was. He said, I've endured some terrible things in my life and some of them even happened. Um, you know, and I think that's, that's really...
Kim Grant (43:04.046)
Thank you.
Alister Benn (43:24.438)
It's like a light switch going on once you realise that you create your own life through your thoughts and that is not a reliable representation of A, who you are or what you're experiencing or the reality of the situation. It's almost like flicking a switch or turning a coin over.
is that all of a sudden darkness can become light and you know melancholy can become joy. You know all of these are just perspectives so yeah I'm super excited about my work and super excited to where things are going to go over the next few years and I've got a lot of things I want to do so there'll be no retirement in this house.
Kim Grant (44:05.614)
good though you know because you're passionate about what you do you've got this positivity and almost this purpose you know and you're helping humanity which is beautiful and I think on that note I think everyone I'm sure will be really excited to see where things go for you Alistair because you've got a very a very clear vision I think and a very honest and authentic way to approaching your photography and your work so I know I certainly am looking forward to seeing where things go so I just wanted to thank you for your yeah.
Alister Benn (44:28.75)
Thank you.
Alister Benn (44:32.502)
Me too. Ha ha ha. Ha ha.
Kim Grant (44:36.007)
I just wanted to thank you for your time today and for those who have really resonated with your story and don't already connect with you, where can they go to find you?
Alister Benn (44:45.71)
The best home is expressive.photography. That's our website. On there is everything that we do, be it ebooks, videos, workshops, the Out of Darkness book, which was a labour of love beyond all compare.
Yeah, whether I do another book or not really depends on how long it takes me to recover from doing this one. But yeah, expressive photography and then from there you'll find me on the usual social media type platforms and stuff like that. But yeah, our website is the best home to go to.
Kim Grant (45:24.194)
Brilliant. Well, thank you again, Alistair. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Alister Benn (45:28.682)
Yeah, thank you so much for your time. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you.