Panoramic at Sarmiento

Sometimes, it just doesn't fit into the frame of your camera. You have to look outside the limits of the view finder and visualise it in a different aspect ratio. Here's a shot from my workshop trip to Patagonia. Taken first thing in the morning in very blue light. I decided to crop it at the top and the bottom and make it a panoramic. Admittedly, it's a homage to Paul Wakefield's shot of the very same rock and scenery.

I love coming home and editing my photographs. Just stopping at the shooting would be only half the story for me. What love doing is collecting the best shots together and piecing together a body of work that works as a nice collection. I'm almost done now, and can't wait to show them and discuss them at some talks I have coming up soon. I guess that's just the way it is - being excited about your most recent work.

Anyway, here is another shot of Lago Sarmiento. I love this one because I don't normally put the object of focus above my point of view, but in this shot, it just seems to work nicely. Both shots were made on a Canon 5D, and I've cropped to suit my preferred aspect ratio of 6x7.

All change for Film

Well, it's been an inevitable eventuality for me. To go back to film. Not that I'm abandoning digital in the slightest. But today I was happy to receive a Nikon Coolscan 9000 scanner (it's been a long road trying to source one). You see I was missing my Mamiya 7 so much, that I opted for shooting with it and nothing else while I was in Morocco in February. So I have a batch of Moroccan portraits to process and scan now. Yes, I never got them processed at the time, because I would have been frustrated at not being able to scan them in and publish them.

It will be an interesting few weeks ahead for me. Going back to looking and admiring the smooth tones and grain of a 6x7 negative. And how I will feel about finally being able to look at the Morocco images I shot.

I loved shooting in the dark. I had no idea, no immediate feedback whether I'd got my shot and that was just fine. I was free to focus on shooting and immersing myself in my surroundings. It's a luxury to know you can't see what you got - it's one thing out of the way. No distractions. Just you and the camera and what is going on around you.

I'll be posting a Morocco portfolio at some point over the next month or so. I had a 'gut' feeling at the time that I'd managed to get a few very nice portraits. And the fun will be finding out what is hidden in the rolls of Portra that have been stuck in my fridge for the past few months.

Success at Laguna de los Tres

Now that I'm back home, and have had some time to go through my images, I couldn't help resist posting these two shots of Fitzroy. The mountain is part of an impressive mountain range in the northern region of Los Glaciares national park in Argentinian Patagonia.

It's a bugger of a place is Laguna de los tres. This view point is at the top of a very steep hill which takes around 1 hour to climb. There had been a lot of snow fall during the week and the weather had been so bad that I'd given up. After 4 days of sitting around a hostel with nothing to do or see, I had returned to Calafate. But after a few days I decided that I needed to give it one last attempt (my third visit to the region). So It was with great surprise that on the morning I woke up at 6am, I started to climb up to Laguna de los Tres with my head torch and lots of warm clothing on. The path was very icy in places and I couldn't help wonder to myself why on earth I was doing it....

But I think the results speak for themselves. I feel grateful that it had been snowing. The entire landscape was covered, and it was such a beautiful moment to watch over an hour as the light began to hit the tip of Fitzroy and work it's way down the mountain. The snow was so deep that I couldn't really move around too much, so I just picked the best vantage point I could and tried portrait as well as landscape shots of the same scene. Notice the change in the mountains between both shots.

This has been a trial that I can now thankfully say is over. I've hoped to get these sunrise shots for over three years now and I think I can finally lay it to rest. Happily.

Success at Cerro Torre

I'm just back from el Chalten, the northern region of Los Glaciares national park. This is my third time here, because every other time I've come, the weather has played tricks with me - as it has done with other photographers and climbers alike. This region is notorious for really unpredictable bad weather, so I had no idea if I was going to strike lucky this time.

This is a file, straight from my Canon 5D. All I've done is set the levels in Photoshop.

I'm pretty knackered. I've spent three days hiking around this area with an unusually heavy backpack that has contained all my camping gear, head torch so I can see where I'm going in the mornings before sunrise, and of course, a lot of Canon lenses including a 400mm.

I've had mice rummaging around my tent at night - they've chewed spoons, cups and the nozzle of my camelback water carrier, and I feel sleep deprived - it's hard camping out when the temperature at night plummets below zero. I think it must have easily gone past -5 as winter seems to have come early to Patagonia. Then there has been the early starts, getting up in the cold, to trek over some glacier moraine with a head torch on in the dark, so I can make photographs. For what? I must be bonkers.

But it was a beautiful sight. Once I had chosen my spot (the foreground iceberg was so beautiful), I just watched as the light hit the glaciers (on the left hand side of the shot) and watched as everything just came together so nicely, almost like it was a film set.

In the image you can see Cerro Torre mountain set in the background to Laguna Torre which has some ice bergs in it. Last week the weather was so foul here that the entire Laguna froze up. It's a very wintery shot this, and I can vouch for it in terms of how cold I was in my sleeping bag each night.

All I did for this shot was put the tripod down very, very low, used a 17-40L lens at around f8 for 10 seconds with a 3 stop hard grad on and a polariser. I'm not usually a fan of polarisers, and even though this scene is directly facing east, the polariser really does change the blues in the sky to a more saturated colour.

And the last thing I did was shoot constantly. I was scared to move because I felt the composition was so good, and the light would perhaps be gone in a few minutes time... so I just shot, checked the composition and kept on shooting some more.

When I review the images on the screen of the 5D, it's interesting to see how the light changed so fast and how the best colours were so fleeting.

I'm over the moon about this shot. It's taken me 3 years, and three return trips to this godforsaken place to get this image. I couldn't have imagined it being any better.

Glacier Lagoon O'nelli

Most folk want to shoot in sunny weather. I love shooting in overcast light because there are no deep shadows. The light is much kinder to the camera's eye, which essentially isn't as dynamic as our own.

You have to treat the camera's eye with care and attention. Always looking for a moment when the sun has gone behind a cloud, or using early morning light to it's full advantage.

Of course, the problem with overcast skies, especially during midday is that there is often a lack of colour. That's why sunrise (personally, the best time of day - better than sunset), is so important. You get those soft tones, with no deep shadows, and if you're lucky, you also get very warm colours.

But beggars can't be choosers and if you find a strong composition during the day, and you're only there once - you have to shoot it.

In the case of this image, I spend a whole day in the freezing cold out near the face of many of the glaciers in Los Glaciares national park. This scene is from Lagoon O'nelli. It's basically the mouth of a lagoon where several glaciers deposit lots of bergs. The beach was littered with bergs and it just took a while to find a really nice composition.

And of course, to wait until the sun had done behind a cloud.

I'm off back up to el Chalten to sit around in the freezing cold in my tent for 4 days. I will be making prayer offerings to the gods in the hope that they show me just one morning's sunrise view of the mountains.

Wish me luck.

The highs and the lows of travel photography

I think we all at some point feel like we want to give up. With me, I tend to find the combination of travel and photography a double edged sword. On one side it is exciting, adventurous and when the good images happen, I get a real sense of satisfaction.

But when things aren't working out, I can reach a real low point.

Waiting for days for cloud to clear, or for the rain to stop can be soul destroying. I'll try anything to take my mind of it - try to read a good book, talk to fellow travelers that I meet. But because of the displacement, I feel like an outsider and the fact that the photography isn't working out the way I wanted it to - just seems to cement the idea that I shouldn't have come in the first place.

I know that deep down, these feelings are inevitable. If you really care about what you do, and strive to create something that really means a lot to you, you can't be flippant about it. You have to accept that along with the highs, there will be lows too.

That's just part and parcel of the art of Photography.

Part of the family

I love pets, and even though I don´t have one myself, when I was growing up, we always had dogs in our home. Each one of them had their own particular personality and character. I know, you´re wondering why I´ve gone all soft when this is supposed to be about wilderness and photography and adventure!

I couldn´t resist this shot. There in the cafe, before my eyes was a Guanaco, quite at home. Everyone who came in was quite shocked, but the family either had Guanaco blindness (a rare disease down here - see how they are looking the other way!), or the Guanaco is a corner stone of their family life. It probably has a name too.

Lago Sarmiento

I’m a real sucker for stones. As much as I love the work of other landscape photographers, I try to do my own thing, but we all seem to have one thing in common; coast lines and rocks.

Perhaps this is because of an appreciation for the natural world, we as photographers see symmetry in nature. Stones and rocks have geological patterns, curves and different coloured contours that just grab our eye.

Lago Sarmiento is one such place where there is an abundance of geologically rich formations to photograph. I’ve been here a few times now, initially attracted by the work of Paul Wakefield, it is a place where I could easily spend a few hours.

With the Paine massif in the background, the very large calcium carbonate deposits around the lake edge make for striking compositions.

Chewing the Fat

I guess even Gauchos gossip. These guys certainly seemed to be dishing the dirt about somebody somewhere, or perhaps they were discussing the current political climate?

As part of the workshop, we were 'scheduled' to take photos of the Gauchos at an estancia at laguna Verde, but it turned out they weren't there. So it was with surprise that on the very last day we found them at Las Torres.

Below is a portrait of the Gaucho who you can see above on the right. Normally, I'd use an 85 or 100 mm lens for a shot like this, but I really do rate the Canon 70-200 lenses. I've owned the f2.8 (personally, too big and too heavy) and I now have the tiny f4 (Ideal for travel). They are both optically identical but the weight of the litte f4 brother is just right for lugging around when I'm off on my travels.

Anyway, the Gaucho is quite flamboyant. I mean, does he dress like that just for work, or is he looking for some attention?

I'm off to Argentina tomorrow to the northern edge of Los Glaciares. It will take me three days to get there due to the condition of the unsealed roads down here. When I get there, I'm intending on camping and trekking around the base of Cerro Torre and Fitzroy mountains. Last time I was here, I came home pretty much empty handed, so wish me luck.

Dingy flying over Lago Grey

A few days ago we took the boat up to the face of Glacier Grey in Torres del Paine. Most of the trips had been canceled that day due to 80km winds that were racing down off the Patagonian Ice cap, and onto Lago Grey. It was a hectic journey on the boat with everyone staggering back and forth on the upper deck or hiding under the roof to shelter from the spray and winds that would often take us of our feet. Literally.

At one point I managed to make my way to the back of the boat, and to my surprise I could see the dingy that was attached to the back of the boat almost flying in the sky. I know, it looks like it's been superimposed, but my workshop amigos will vouch for me on this one. It really was taken in one go. A lovely rainbow in the sky, a 17mm lens to get it all in, and an air born dingy.

I'm always intrigued by what is round the corner. I could have never anticipated this shot.

Now, if only my workshop amigos had captured me whilst I was outside trying to save my camera bag from disappearing over the edge of the boat in a pretty awful storm. I thought I had managed to rescue my bag whilst maintaining a degree of dignity (I got completely soaked!). I returned to the cabin where everyone hadn't seemed to notice, only to discover later on at dinner that everyone on the boat had been watching me with mouths agape, wondering when I was going to go overboard along with my camera bag.....