If there is one piece of music that I continually enjoy listening to, it‘s the main title soundtrack from the 1958 film The Big Country. Jerome Moross’ Oscar-nominated score, suggests to me the existence of possibility, of big skies and the great plains of America. Everything, that to me is exciting and positive. A landscape to be explored, with infinite adventures. It lifts my heart, mind and spirit. If you don’t know it, check it out, (www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQTH3a0mjR8) it may do the same for you.

What has this got to do with photography? Well, to me it is its foundation, the bricks the medium is built upon. Without the feeling of possibility there is no photography. The idea of a big country waiting to be explored is how I see photography. Its past, present and future. The big country, is the big picture. Physically big, but also spiritually, intellectually and emotionally. However, it is not easy to remain outside the minutae of photography and focused on that big picture. The constant barrage of opinionated noise explaining how, why, where, when and how some people seem to see the medium creates confusion and diversions from what is truly important. Much of this noise is sadly uninformed and overly opinionated, some not, but the majority is too far into the weeds of subjective detail and ignores the aspects of photography that are so important.

Cameras, F Stops, depth of field, ISO, tripods, bags and lenses, are all concerned with the micro of photography. Not the macro and it is the macro view that we need to adopt. I’m not talking about macro photography here. I’m talking about understanding photography in its fullest sense.

That means all areas of practice, all areas of engagement and all areas of implementation. Let’s dissect that sentence. By all means of practice, I mean every one who makes a photograph. All areas of engagement, includes everyone from the professional to the person who has to take photographs of their package drop offs. Implementation, includes everywhere you see photographs. That is the big picture. To not address photography across all of these touch points is to dismiss its importance in our daily lives. To silo its relevance into preconceived ideas of what we think a photograph is, how it should be made and how it should look. In my opinion, any such restraints can only be detrimental to creative exploration, and therefore should be avoided at all costs.

I believe in embracing what photography is today, with an education in its past. Too often photographers become overly obsessed with niche, style, genre and specialisation and forget that everything has been done before. This is not however a negative. The more we know about photography not only proves this assertation, it also provides us with an awareness of how what has been done can be evolved. Not copied or imitated, but evolved.

All art forms evolve through their practitioners and photography should be no different. However for this to happen the practioner has to be able to focus on their work and the wider context in which that work sits. When an Amazon delivery driver takes more photographs in a day than a self-proclaimed photographer, then we have to accept that as fact and respond appropriately in our own practice. In essence this means being excited by photography and where it is going, rather than the miniutae of one process and an obsession on what it once was.

I am always writing about the importance of being open-minded and in a sense I am saying the same thing here again. Just in a different way. The big picture, is a state of open-mindedness, as is the concept of the big country, and that is a place I like to live. Would you like to join me there? Maybe we could build a community…

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020) and Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, (Orphans Publishing 2024). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

© Grant Scott 2026