Flying over the Patagonian Ice Cap

Hello Friends, I've just arrived in Punta Arenas without my camping gear, tripod and spare clothes courtesy of British Airways.

The trip down from Santiago to Punta Arenas was spectacular. The day was clear and I could see the mountains of Fitzroy and Cerro Torre peaking up from the massive patagonian ice sheet. But the most spectacular view was that of Torres del Paine. The pilot made a bee line for the place and banked the plane so I was looking directly down onto Glacier Grey and the towers.

How I wished I had taken a small camera with me on the plane. And I guess this just goes to cement the idea that a camera should be portable, convenient and with you at all times.

Perhaps next time.

Return to Patagonia

In just less than a weeks time, I'll be back in the southern hemisphere, probably standing at the waters edge of the Straight of Magellan looking out onto a windy sea. I'll of course be back in Punta Arenas, the gateway to the Chilean side of Patagonia.

The destination of my trip is Torres del Paine, an impressive national park situated on the edge of the southern patagonian ice cap.

I'll be conducting a photo workshop here for a full week with a small group. It's going to be a week of photography with lots of chat about the surrounding landscape, photographic techniques and above all else, a group of folk being able to immerse themselves in their passion with no distractions.

Containing granite spires, turquoise lakes such as Lago Pehoe (shown above - yes it really is that colour) plenty of wildlife - Falcons, Eagles, Guanaco - a relative of the Llama and if we're fortunate the Andean Puma, we're set for a great photo adventure.

At the moment, I've had to reduce this trip down to an annual one with the intention that I'll do another one next April. But I'm also thinking that next years trip may be extended to include Los Glaciares national park in Argentina. This I feel would make for an excellent trip because of the mountains of Cerro Torre and Fitzroy and not forgetting the Perito Moreno Glacier. Plans are still tentative, but this is what I'm currently thinking at the moment and when I have firmer plans, I'll be posting them up on the site.

This time though, I'll be away for just under a month.

I have some goals to try and achieve this time round. I'm hoping to climb to the Torres mirador for sunrise. The Torres spires are at the top of a strenuous four hour hike. If the weather is on my side, the towers will be basking in the glow of the sun rise because they face east. I've missed this shot a few times before so I'm under no illusions as to how difficult it is to get it. My plan is to camp just below the mirador for a few days and see what happens each morning.

The remainder of my personal time will be used up going back to the northern part of Los Glaciares national park, to camp and trek below the mountains of Cerro Torre and Fitzroy.

I'll be checking in from time to time on my blog, and intend to upload some posts during the trip so stay tuned!

Until then, adios amigos!

Easter Island

One of the most impressive locations I've ever photographed has to be Easter Island. Situated in the middle of the Pacific ocean, it is one of the most remote places I've ever visited. I'd come here to photograph the island because it is full of petroglyph's, ancient ceremonial places and of course, the famous Moai statues.

I spent six days here and must confess to suffering from cabin fever after three days. Although there is lots to see and photograph, I found the hot days unbearable and the evenings sleepless. Night time consisted of many of the dogs on the island barking until the small hours, and when they did finally stop, the cockerels or roosters would kick in. I nicknamed the island 'rooster island' and for me, it will always remain so.

It's very hard to hang around when I'm feeling like that, simply waiting for the day my plane leaves. Yet, paradoxically, when I returned home to Scotland, I couldn't believe where I'd just been.

To this day it remains one of the most special places I've visited so far.

The above shot is of Rano Raraku volcano. The island is triangular in shape, and each corner is composed of a major volcano. Rano Raraku is a small volcano situated in the south eastern side of the island and is where all the stone statues were carved. Many of them still rest on the slopes of the volcano.

On one of my many trips back and forth across the island (which took no more than 20 minutes one way) I saw these horses grazing below the volcano. The scene just seemed to be begging to be photographed and I had to stop the jeep and jump out. It's a hard thing to do sometimes - think about photography whilst driving (and not crash the car - something that I must admit I have failed to do on several occasions now - but that's another story).

I felt at the time that the shot was going to be a throw away one (trip fatigue was affecting my judgment). But much later, after I returned home and got it processed, I felt very differently about it. This I think, is because when I'm away shooting somewhere, the first few days are fresh, new, interesting. But after a while, the exotic place that I'm in has become my 'normal point of reference'. It becomes so normal in fact, that I start to take it for granted and I loose sight of what is special about it.

It's only when I return home, and have gone through the dreaded 'post trip adjustment phase' which for me, lasts around about a week, that I start to appreciate how special and exotic a place was. That's when it's time to review the photos.

Sometimes it's hard to judge your photos whilst your in the midst of making them. You need a sense of distance to appreciate them for what they truly are.

Placement of ND Grads on a Mamiya 7

I've been asked a few times now, how I manage to use graduated neutral density filters with my Mamiya 7II. So I thought it was about time I wrote an article about it to explain ND grads and how to place them on a range finder camera.

What the human eye sees, and what a camera see are two different things. The human eye is capable of capturing a dynamic range (brightness values from dark to light) that is wider than what a camera can capture. This is why often you will see a shot where the sky is burnt out while the ground is exposed correctly, or the sky is ok, but the ground is underexposed (almost black). Film and digital sensors cannot cope with such a difference in light values between the sky and ground, yet our eyes are able to handle this difference in contrast and make it appear to us as though the brightness is the same between the sky and the earth. In order to bring this contrast or 'latitude' down to a manageable level, so we can 'squeeze' the entire scene into the dynamic range that a camera can record, we use Neutral Density Filters. Neutral means that they do not affect the colour of the scene in any way, they simply darken down an area of the scene (typically the sky) so we can get a good exposure in camera. I use these all the time for landscape work.

With a rangefinder camera, you do not view your scene through the lens. In the case of the Mamiya 7II, the lens contains the shutter and so is permanently closed, until the moment of exposure. There is also no prism or mirror. Which means the camera is a lot more compact and more silent too. But the draw back is that you don't get to see what you'll get when you expose. Most range finders have a side window showing you an estimate of what you'll get with some dotted lines at the edges to compensate for different focal lengths.

Anyway, the problem with using ND filters on a range finder is that most folk think it's very hard to judge the correct placement in front of the lens.

Above are two Lee 0.9 (3-Stop) grad filters. The left hand one is a soft grad, while the right hand one is a hard grad filter (one of my most used grads). As you can see - the graduation of the hard grad is rather dramatic in the middle of the filter. Most folks think that placement needs to be precise, but to be honest with you - it doesn't. When you put something so close up in front of the lens, it becomes diffused. This means that the graduation effect of the hard grad becomes less pronounced. Unless you are really way off with your placement, you're not going to see a problem.

So how do I place the filter? Simple - I guess. If the scene I'm shooting has a sky that is using 1/3 of the area of the scene, then I place the filter roughly 1/3 of the way down. If the sky takes up 1/2 of the scene, then I simply place the filter half way. Etc, etc.

The other thing that I tend to do is take more than one shot of the same scene. If I'm uncertain about the filter placement, I'll take the scene a few times, each time with a subtle adjustment, moving it up or down by a few centimeters. But I've often found that it's been unnecessary.

My favourite ND Grads are made by Lee in the UK. I've tried others such as the Cokin system but found them not as effective. But they are considerably cheaper. As in everything - you get what you pay for.

One last thing, if you feel that placement on a range finder sounds problematic - what I love about such a system is the 'visualisation' process that I go through. I like to 'imagine' the final image, and not having direct feed back (via an LCD screen) is a benefit, also being able to imagine the scene in my head and place the filter accordingly, allows me to remain in the 'creative-mode'. Being confronted with real world feed back takes me out of this 'creative-mode' and into 'editor-mode' which is something that I feel kills my creative flow when out shooting scenes. So yes, it's a benefit to me rather than a hindrance.

March's featured Image ~ Cambodian Rice Fields

A fleeting moment is all it takes. One minute a photo doesn't exist, the next second, something has been born that you never, ever expected.

I guess that's what I love about Photography. The surprise, not knowing what is around the corner.

I shot this scene in Cambodia in 2006. It was the rainy season - October to be exact. I'd specifically gone at this time because I knew the sky would be thunderous and dark in the afternoons. As a result of this, the light would often be overcast and soft. Ideal for shooting in the middle of the day.

I find it interesting when people take their camera out on a sunny day because they think the light is great - it's possibly the worst time ever to shoot. When it's sunny, the shadows are deep and hold no detail, and the colour is washed out. Film, or a digital sensor cannot cope with this harshness.

The light during my visit was often overcast and soft. Ideal for shooting in. Yes, the camera sees differently from how you and I see.

I'd made friends with a local driver at the hotel I was staying at. I'd been in Siem Reap for a few days when I asked Deap where he lived. He told me he lived in a little village outside of the city. 'Do any tourists go there?' I asked to which he said that no one went. So I promptly asked him if he could take me there each day after the monsoon had ended.

So this photo was made on the way to Deap's village. Out in the rice fields people were working, and as we tried to drive through the mud slurry on the road I spotted this woman and her child. They were walking on the roadside and just as we passed, they stepped off the edge of the road into a waterway in the fields.

I could already 'visualise' the scene coming together in my mind. I remember tapping Deap on the shoulder and asking him to stop. I ran back to the scene and was lucky that I had the right lens on the camera. One quick click, and I raced back to Deap and his motto and we were off again.

When I got home, my mind was full of memories from the trip, but I have to say, this was one of them that had stood out and I wondered what the film would show. It was a great pleasure to see this shot when the film returned from the lab.

On a technical note, I shot it on a Mamiya 7II with a 150 lens and Kodak Portra 160NC with a Lee 3 stop hard grad.

You don't need to spend £££ to make fine images

This is the first image I made and thought 'wow'. I was around 22 years old at the time and I didn't know very much about photography at all.

I'd just got my first camera for a year - a Canon EOS 650, which at the time was very sophisticated. It had autofocus and a really impressive built in meter. But I was always coming home with really crap shots.

And that wasn't the cameras fault.

Then one day, I learned something that changed everything for me. I discovered the magical qualities of light and composition. I'd never really thought about it before, but if you get great light, great subject matter and are able to compose a shot in such a way that it just seems to 'work', then you're potentially on your way to creating a very fine image indeed.

So this was shot on Agfachrome, which I bought cheap in a bargain bin at my local photo place, with an EOS 650 camera which you can pick up for around £60 here in the UK, with a wide angle lens on it.

That was it. Oh, and stunning lighting, an exceptionally thunderous August evening around 9pm plus some great subject matter. I'm going to give myself a little credit too - an operator that recognized a potentially good image and after some stumbling around a field searching for a good angle of view, was able to pull off a nice composition.

I took other shots that night and although they all have the same lighting, and subject, this one really stood out because the composition was just 'right'.

So if you want to make good photographs, you just need a tool that you are comfortable with and gives you good enough resolution that you are happy with (I have this printed up to 24 inches wide, framed in my home).

But above all else, you need a desire to get out there with what you have and make pictures. That's what it's all about really.

Iceland Stamp

This popped through my letterbox this morning. I was contacted last year by a graphic design company in Reykjavik called H2H to use one of my images for a stamp. They had been commissioned by Sepac, a partnership of post offices in small countries (Åland, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, Greenland, Guernsey,Iceland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, San Mariono). Each country was to produce a stamp with the theme "Landscape" to be launched in 2007. They chose this one of Jökulsárgljúfur National Park which I shot in the summer of 2004 whilst on a month long photography trip around the country.

Anyway, it was a real surprise to see some real examples and what struck me was the panoramic format they opted for.

The Marconi Pass, Viedma Ice cap, Patagonia

This little spot was my camp site for one evening, during a six day trek on the Patagonian southern ice field. After hiking for two days to get here, where the second day included climbing the steep Marconi glacier to the top of the Marconi pass, we arrived at this spot. It's pretty exposed up here and we used a lot of large boulders to peg down our tents for the night.

We'd hiked up from the pass below using ice axes and crampons. It's a challenge not to impale yourself with the crampon spikes whilst carrying an 80L backpack - and my backpack was by no means the heaviest or largest either. My guide and porter were extremely fit and very experienced. This kind of trek is not for everyone and you need to be versed in the use of crampons and know how to do an ice axe arrest (the final ditch attempt to save yourself when you've lost your hold on the mountain side).

Turning a full 180 degrees around, I had this view (below). This is what I'd come for. On the far left is Fitzroy and on the far right you can just see the tip of Cerro Torre peaking up with it's signature ice mushroom. I believe Art Wolfe has a similar shot, taken a little earlier in the day. It was interesting to find his shot in the book 'Edge of the Earth, Corner of the Sky' a year or so later. I wasn't surprised we'd both shot the same view point because you really can't move anywhere, and there is only one clear point of interest to shoot at.

These shots were taken on a Mamiya 7II camera. I took with me the 50, 80, 150 and 210 lenses for the camera, along with a Sekonic 608 light meter, Gitzo 1228 tripod with a Kirk BH-3 ball head and around 30 rolls of Velvia 50. The entire kit was contained in a tiny Lowepro Orion bag, stowed away in my Macpac Glissade 80L backpack.

The Mamiya 7 lenses are second to none. The wide angles are the best I've ever used with no distortion at the edges. This is primarily because there is no mirror in the camera, so the wide angles can be designed so the back element is very close to the film plane. I've just recently gone back to the 7, because quite franky I've been missing it. Although I do think digital has it's merits (it is the only solution in a commercial environment, amongst others), there is simply something very intuitive about the 7 for me, and the look and feel I get from using film from a 6x7 transparency is something I feel I've been missing whilst using 35mm digital sensors (5D).

I think I used the standard lens for both these shots with a Lee ND 0.9 hard grad to control the dynamic range between the sky and ground. I prefer the hard grads to the soft grads - because when the hard grad is placed so close up to the front lens element, it's pretty diffused anyway, whilst controlling the exposure of the sky. The soft grads are fine for very gradual changes, but I seldom use them (even though I have 9 filters with me at all times - 3 hard ND, 3 soft ND and 3 full ND filters).

I seldom use the built in meter on the 7, except for when I have the 80mm lens on and I'm doing street photography. For landscapes, I always use the Sekonic 608 zoom master I have. The reason for this is that the meter in the 7 acts like a spot meter when you have a wide angle on it, and center weighted with the 80 and an average meter with the 150 and so on. The other reason is that the meter has a scale. It shows me the dynamic range between the lowest value and highest value I want to record on the film. So for instance, if I see that the scene requires 10 stops of latitude, I know that Velvia can handle around 3 to 5 stops, so it's definitely time to put on an ND grad. I then meter for the ground and expose for that.

Preparation is key for a trip like this. I'd done a lot of research into the ice cap, and what I was expecting to see. I'd also been climbing hills for months before hand with a heavy back pack to make sure my fitness was adequate. If your fitness is good to start with, the trip will be enjoyable, but if you intend to get fit whilst doing something like this, you'll have a very hard time.