Making of 40 Photographs #12

This is #12 in my series ‘Making of 40 Photographs’. Patagonia is a region I simply can't stay away from. Stunning scenery and the climate is very similar to my home land of Scotland.

I'm not one for giving up on a shot, yet the northern region of Los Glaciares national park in Argentina had pretty much defeated me on three separate trips to Torre lagoon in order to get a sunrise shot of Cerro Torre - one of the most difficult mountains in the world to climb.

In the 1950's, an Italian mountaineer called Maestri claims to have climbed Cerro Torre with his partner Tony Eger. But there is no evidence of their full assent because Eger died on the way down and he had the camera with him. It's pretty much taken in mountaineering circles that a mountaineers word is all that's required.

Then in the early 70's a team of American's made it to the top of Cerro Torre and the found little evidence of Mastri's ascent. Even his descriptions of the mountain didn't tie in with what they found, and there was only evidence of his climb for a 1/3rd of the height of the mountain.

I find this compelling because the mountain is a bit if a mystery to me also. I've had a hell of a time trying to get a decent sunrise picture of it. Situated right on the very edge of the southern Patagonian ice field, the region is notorious for ferocious winds, inclement weather and poor visibility. I've had countless e-mails from fellow travelers who pretty much say the same thing: 'I got there, but couldn't see a thing for days'. This pretty much mirrors my attempts at getting a clear visible morning to shoot this mountain and I've often come home defeated, run down (after weeks of camping out in cold conditions waiting for the light that would never come). It was so cold in fact at one point that the shoe laces of my walking boots had frozen so hard that I could stand them upright. It was like looking at two squiggly straws.

So in 2008 I went back to this region, knowing full well that the weather is very fickle here and if I got anything at all, it would be down to luck more than anything. Things went pretty much as I expected too: I sat in a hostel at the base of Cerro Torre in the small town of El Chalten for four days in the howling wind, rain and zero visibility waiting for the weather to clear. You can forget weather forecasts here. You can often tell an outsider because they ask what the forecast is for the next few days while the locals raise their shoulders and gesture 'who knows - it's anybody's guess'.

I get pretty depressed sitting around for days upon days waiting for decent weather and on my 5th day, I decided to call it quits and head back to El Calafate. It's slightly further south and the weather is often clearer here. But I had another week to spare and decided that if I was here in Argentina, I should make the most of my time and try to go back to the base of Cerro Torre and wait it out.

I'm glad I did. I only had one clear morning in the entire time I was there and this shot was made then. I climbed down the glacial moraine from the camp site at Laguna Torre to the base of the lagoon early one morning and looked for some suitable foreground interest which I found in the shape of the ice berg you see in this shot. The berg was perhaps the size of a small car, situated not too far away from the edge of the lagoon. I placed my camera very low down on the tripod - perhaps only a few inches off the ground. It's a struggle to get down that low to check the composition, and you must always ensure you're not looking in side ways as this can affect your judgement. I remember checking the composition completely upside down because I couldn't get below the camera. This way I was able to check that the horizon was level.

And then I waited for the sun to appear and it was pretty brief. For a few minutes the glaciers on the far left were aglow and the sky brought some cloud interest into the top right of the frame and I shot a few exposures using a 3 stop hard ND grad on the camera. I was shooting a 5D and had noticed from previous trips how terrible the Canon wide angles are - they are pretty soft and require to be shot no less than f5.6 to avoid diffraction too. So this was shot at f5.6 and I also used a full ND to slow the shutter right down so I could get that glaze on the water too.

And then it was gone. I retreated back to the camp site to find everyone else still in their tents and when I asked if anyone had seen the sunrise, I was told that some of them had checked the light and felt it wasn't worth getting up for. This is perhaps rule no.1 of Photography : always go, even if the light doesn't seem good. You don't know how the light is going to change over the course of your visit, and besides, not going means you don't get. When I showed members of the camp site this shot - they were stunned at what they'd missed. Personally, It is perhaps the most satisfying image I've made. I felt that I'd worked at getting this image over the course of three or four years and the waiting was worth it.

Making of 40 Photographs #11

This is #11 in my series ‘Making of 40 Photographs’. I went to Cambodia in 2005. I'd wanted to go for a long time to photograph the temples there, but when I got there, it found myself more drawn to the people than the ancient ruins. In the picture below, we see a small child on the front of her father's moto. The whole Cambodian family can be seen 'living' on the back of motorcycles in Cambodia and in this picture, you can see her father and brother too.

So why did I take the picture? Well sometimes all I know is that I'm drawn to a subject without any clear conscious decision. But I think in this case I was definitely after a shot of a 'mobile Cambodian family'. I'd had weeks of seeing whole families - up to six people or more clinging onto the back of a motorcycle scooting along the Cambodian roads, dodging cattle and large farm vehicles.

But I didn't really quite get what I'd intended (as is often the way with Photography) and although at the time I felt I'd failed to get that 'mobility', I did however on reflection get a shot of daughter being soothed and calmed by her father. Just look at his gestures to her: I'd approached and he was very happy for me to take the photo of them, but when I raised the camera, she started to look afraid. I'm not one for making people feel uncomfortable so I often retreat and will immediately retract. It's just my way. I'd much rather everyone was happy than make a photo and feel I'd upset someone.

But it was a few years later, when reviewing some images from a trip to Cuba that I noticed a parallel photo. The image you see below was taken in Trinidad. This time I was still drawn by the 'mobile family' theme, but I was also taken by the timelessness of the Cuban people. Have you noticed for instance how most Cubans are always well dressed? Stylish, yet they don't have any money? The bike was ancient, and yet, the little girl (who looked distinctly Cuban) was wearing the most shiny shoes. 1950's shoes. They hark back to a time that Cuba is stuck in. Everything about Cuba's architecture and its people is glued firmly in the 50's at the time of the revolution.

But I digress slightly. The reason why I bring both these photos together under this single posting is that they show a common theme: the bonding of father and daughter. If you look at both of them, you can see the fathers hands are a soothing, calming influence on their daughter.

I didn't think this was what I was trying to achieve, and perhaps you feel the photos are about something else entirely. Perhaps they're really about families transporting their children around, but to me, a man with no children, I see a bonding between father and daughter. Perhaps some day if I ever have children of my own, I'll be able to feel and understand that bonding, but until then, these photos give me the closest thing to it.

September News Letter

Dear All, Just a quick update on what your budding photographer has been doing this September.

Isle of Eigg Workshop Completed

Last week I spent a really nice time on the Isle of Eigg conducting my first ever Scottish photographic workshop.

I'm not new to doing workshops, but doing them on my own turf is something new, and I feel very lucky to have had such an enthusiastic bunch of people. Many thanks Andrew, Calum, Christian, Luciano,  Peter, Sam, Stephen & Torben.

We spent the entire week covering many aspects of landscape photography. What was interesting for me was how I saw participants images improve over the space of a week. We spent a bit of time each morning after breakfast doing a solid 3 hour critique of images and this really helped everyone pick up new suggestions for things to try later on that evening.

Workshop Feedback

I've updated the testimonials on my site with feedback from the guys on the trip. You can find it here, should you wish to get more of an insight to the trips and what's covered.

Harris Workshop - 1 space left

I'm only sad now that the trip is over, but I'm excited about the trips I have lined up for the remainder of the year. I'll be going to Glen Coe, Torridon and also Harris & Lewis. All the trips are full now, with the exception that the Harris trip has only one space left : so if you've been thinking of coming - now's your chance to get that last space :-)

So what's next?

I'm just very busy at the moment. I seem to have a lot of plans on, including setting up some further trips to Harris for May next year, the possibility of a trip to the isles of Arran, Skye and Assynt - one of my favourite places in the north west of Scotland.

I hope you've been keeping up to date with my postings - 'the making of 40 photographs', should you wish to find out more about how I make my images. I do plan to publish the final content as an e-Book later on in the year.

Until then, I hope this news letter finds you well.

All the best, Bruce.

Making of 40 Photographs #10

This is #10 in my series ‘Making of 40 Photographs’. Glencoe is perhaps Mecca, for any budding Scottish landscape photographer. It is bleak, wild, highly photogenic whilst also being highly accessible too. All these components make it a magnet and with this in mind, it is a challenge to come here and shoot something a little different from what thousands have done before.

I guess this is my message for this entry: when visiting an over photographed place, we should be aiming to be ourselves, to see it anew.

Using a 50mm lens on my Mamiya 7, I looked for some foreground detail. When using wide angle lenses, it's important to fill the foreground. But you have to do that effectively. Sometimes you can fill the foreground with minimalism, other times you need to fill it with something, but the main thing to keep in mind is that there should never be any conflict. If you fill the foreground, then make the foreground the 'reason' for the shot and ensure that everything else around it supports it rather than distract.

I have a tendency to put things in the middle of the shot too. But this really depends on balance: what is on either side of the frame. I've had a lot of people say that I should be putting things on one of the 3rds (if you don't know about the rule of 3rds, then I suggest you look it up on google). I like the 'rule of no rules'. Often a picture works, and there's no amount of reasoning behind why it does: I put the foreground rock in the middle simply because I felt that's where it should be.

This was also my first roll of film using ND Graduated filters. I'd been up in Glencoe about one month before and had come home with burned out moon shots from this location. Upon viewing this shot for the first time, I was struck by the ability to see detail in the moon (too small to reproduce here). That was the first time I realised just how big a deal ND Grads were, and since then, I've not looked back.

Making of 40 Photographs #9

This is #9 in my series ‘Making of 40 Photographs’. You can't plan some photos and it's really a case of simply being in the right place at the right time. I know this because I've been to the Isle of Eigg here in Scotland many times, but I've never seen the Cuilins of Rum (the island mountain range you see on the horizon here) covered in a dusting of snow before.

You might be surprised to know that winter in the 'true' sense - those snow covered, wintry shots, are brief here in Scotland. Our winters seem to be mainly damp affairs with some extremely clear light and blue skies too. But snow? Well, it's brief - if it falls, it's here for a few days and then it's gone.

So it was with such surprise for me, this march to encounter a dumping of snow up the entire west coast of Scotland whilst spending time in a nice damp caravan on the isle of Eigg. I was here on a reckie for a workshop I was doing later this year.

It rained and rained for several days and I was slowly developing a mild case of bronchitis whilst lying in my sleeping bag in the damp caravan. With a lot of time on my own, I spent it watching my breath as I breathed out into the dampness of the air. There was a collection of damp books in the caravan too for company, and I found a rather nice one - the Shipping Channel by Annie Proux to read. It has now become a marker for me, a moment in time when these images were created.

I had taken some images in the gloomy weather, often having to wipe the rain of the ND Graduates on the camera, and by the time I'd shot them, the camera was so wet, it needed a good drying off.

A lot of photographers think that cameras need to be put away as soon as the rain comes on, but they're a little bit more robust than one would imagine. I've had my Mamiya 7 completely soaked on a Glacier in New Zealand 7 years ago, and it is still working to this day.

So it was with great surprise when I awoke one morning (after a chilly night), to find that the bay of Laig had been transformed from the gloomy (moody) shot (the latter shown here) to the former shot.

I guess it just goes to show that sometimes when the weather is so dire and you think it simply can't get better again, it often will.

Making of 40 Photographs #8

This is #8 in my series ‘Making of 40 Photographs’. Anchoring a shot is important.

Whilst in Cambodia, at the Angkor wat temple complex, I came across a group of girls who wouldn't leave me alone. I would get my moto driver to stop at a small stall near the royal lake 'Sra Sang' just after sunrise so I could have breakfast, and these little girls would be keen to sell me bracelets and postcards.

The beauty about returning to the same location time and time again is familiarity. Not just by myself, but also from any people in the location - they get to know you and eventually, the get bored of you too.

So that's pretty much how I managed to get this shot. The girls eventually stopped trying to sell me photos and bracelets, and one morning I found a couple of them perched at the edge of Sra Sang, fishing.

So what do I mean by 'anchors' in a shot. Well, every shot needs to have something that links it to the outside world. There is often something in a shot that leads out of the scene, or leads you in. In the case of the photo I'm discussing now, it's the lower part of the scene that has an anchor. The stone pier that the girls are sitting on leads into the frame. But I think why this image works so well is because there are no other anchors. It's disembodied to a degree - the left, right and top edges of the frame have no context so it's easy to feel that the water is actually sky.

I was taken with this when I saw it, but it wasn't until I got home and saw it on a contact sheet that I realised just how powerful it looked, disembodied from the rest of the real world. I didn't really intend it, but the texture of the water - brought about by the texture in the sky being beautifully reflected by the soft morning light works really well.

I shot this image on a little Voightlander Bessa R3a, with a standard 40mm Nocton Single coated lens. I think it was shot at f1.4. I have a tendency to shoot wide open and I think it stems from a worry that hand holding the camera is going to result in a soft image. But it does mean that focusing has to be spot on.

I love the little Voightlander Bessa R3a. The view finder is a 1:1 magnification, so you can have one eye up at the view finder, and the other left open at the same time to watch things come into the scene. However, I felt upon returning home that I was able to get these kinds of shots with my Mamiya 7II, so eventually I sold it off.

I should note that the Mamiya 7II has never been considered a portrait or people camera and I'd agree with that in general. Poor close focusing and slow lenses, but I find that the resolution of 6x7 far makes up for the limitations over 35mm.

Further, I would also add that now I've used something like a 5D for a couple of years, I much prefer 35mm film over a digital sensor. This is not meant as bait to those of you who love digital. It's just my feelings on the matter.

Making of 40 Photographs #7

This is #7 in my series ‘Making of 40 Photographs’. I love Torres del Paine national Park. There's something very surreal about it and barren. Perhaps its the barren aspect of it which makes it surreal for me. I'm not sure.

So I thought I'd discuss two images in one post. I'd like to see which one you prefer, because for me, I've always thought that quality of light wins over subject matter. But in this instance, my preference is for the more 'natural' day-lit image you see here:

As opposed to this shot (see below).

Yet the thing is, I love early dawn light and had always hoped to get a nice sunrise shot of the Cuernos (horns) of Paine from the edge of Lago Grey.

Which is exactly what I managed to do one morning this past March while back in Torres.

But I think the top image wins for me, because I feel shape wins over light. That curve in the shoreline pulls me into the shot. Admittedly, the light is still rather nice too - very soft overcast light - just after breakfast in fact - helped the image.

We were leaving the little island in lago Pehoe on our way back to the van when I saw the curve shape of the black sand beach. I showed this location to another member of the workshop and tried to illustrate how often, all you're trying to do with photography, is make converging lines and shapes fit in a very simplistic way. Of course great light helps as well and the top image would have been spoiled if I'd taken it even half an hour later..... I know this because I hand held this shot, and was so worried that I'd messed it up, I went back 30 minutes later to take it again, only to be greeted with an unpleasing scene. The light by this time was now harsh and the stillness of the water that is often evident (more so) in the morning than at night (due to the earth having cooled down and therefore no wind).

I rarely shoot hand-held, but the top image was really a case of that. I do remember working out the hyperfocal DOF for it, and realising that it would happily fit into f5 on my 50mm wide angle lens. The shutter speed was just about OK too, but what I forgot to do was re-set the focus on the lens (It's a rangefinder, so I can't see through the lens) before I shot it. Hence why I wanted to go back to shoot it again.

I did use a grad too - a 3 stop hard grad and it was easy to place because there is a definite line on the horizon (waters edge). I didn't have my light meter with me, so I simply pointed the camera around the scene until I felt I got what might be a mid tone and took it from there.

Making of 40 Photographs #6

This is #6 in my series 'Making of 40 photographs'. This is Elgol, one of the most over-photographed regions of Skye, an island in the north west of Scotland.

It's over-photographed because it seems to feature quite heavily in a lot of the Amateur photography press.

I've seen countless images of this place all taken in exactly the same spot where Joe Cornish made his landmark image. I guess if you love reproducing an image that someone else has done, that's fine. But for me, I'd like to come home with something a little bit different. So i'm keen to get 'my' view on a location, particularly a famous place, if possible.

This leads to some issues, as some places are simply too distinctive to do any other way (take the Taj Mahal for example).

Anyway I digress a little here. We're after all discussing the making of this image.

I shot this on an Ebony 45SU large format camera. Large format is, without question, a beautiful format. I however had difficulty with it and afte 2 years, I decided to part with it. This image is one of my 'hits' as opposed to the many 'misses' I had with the system.

What I love about LF is that you can alter perspective. I used a little bit of fall to keep the perspective (no converging lines) straight - literally pointing the camera exactly at 90 degrees to the horizontal,  while still being able to look down. That's how I got the foreground perspective of the rocks.

I think that with most wide angle shots, the key to success is to fill the foreground. There's not a lot going on in the sky, so the majority of the composition is around the coast line. But I did keep a fair amount of the sky in the shot too, because I liked the smooth tones that were happening, and I needed a bit of colour in the shot too. It's almost mono-chromatic. As is often the case with a nice image, it's a really simple shot. There is interest in the foregound, mid ground and then the horizon has some really interesting mountains.

So I shot this with a 90mm lens (equiv to 30mm in 35mm land), Fuji Veliva, an ND grad on to control the sky, and exposed for the foregound.

Making of 40 Photographs #5

This is #5 in my series 'Making of 40 photographs'. I came to people photography late in my Photography. I'd been shooting landscapes since I was 21 (I'm now 42).

I think that this is often the case. Most folks who get into photography start by appreciating landscapes. They're a lot easier to control (to a degree) than people are, and of course, it takes a while to get over the hurdle of asking people too. Not all of us are comfortable getting involved with strangers and I think this is partly due to how we ourselves feel when someone takes a photo of us.

I don't think most folks in the west are comfortable being in front of a camera, so they tend to project that feeling onto their subjects too - similarly, it's often an issue as a photographer because we've not learned how to approach people correctly either. It's an us-them situation most of the time. And it needs to be broken.

So the reason why I want to discuss this image is because it came at the very end of a long afternoon with these two monks at Angkor Wat. We were at a stage where we were on comfortable terms with each other.

I'm always looking for an image, without being too aware of it. I just 'see' something and tend to get an immediate feeling that I need to record it. This is what happened here. We were leaving part of the temple complex and as I turned around, they were just standing there looking at me, framed by the door way. I'm convinced that there is something 'obsessive-compulsive' about the act of photography and I'm sure my mind has to 'put things in place'. Or to 'make a balanced picture' out of what is happening around me. I saw the framed door way, and there were a few things that struck me - the colours were all very complimentary - being primarily a light blue door way and the red of their garments. The background is black, making their garments and the door way more pronounced. And then there are the skin tones. These I feel are only recorded beautifully using Portra 160NC over a digital sensor.

So the shot is about colour and a frame-within-a-frame too. It's very simple really and there's nothing too distracting or conflicting going on. Add to that the warm look on the foreground monk and his calm posture and we have an inviting image.

From a technical point of view, I shot this wide open at f4, standard lens on the Mamiya but I had it tripod mounted. They were happy to wait for me while I set up the tripod and I gestured to them to keep where they were. Some shots require a lot of interaction and guidance by the photographer, and I'm very comfortable in that role these days : I know what I want, and I'm very considerate to my subjects feelings.

I do feel that being a good people photographer is as much about managing the expectations of the subject, and in that point, it will only do you well to build up a rapport with your subjects and be considerate. Don't be greedy. Photography should not be a greedy (acquiring) pursuit, but you should almost feel that you are part of the shot, even though you're not in it.

My subjects after all, are simply reciprocating my own relaxed and friendly state.

Making of 40 Photographs #4

This is #4 in my series 'Making of 40 Photographs'. I travel with a fairly lightweight and compact Medium Format outfit: Mamiya 7II. I have three lenses for this outfit: 50 (wide), 80 (standard) and 150 (telephoto). It's fairly restrictive in terms of long distance shots since the 150mm lens is equivalent to a 75mm lens in 35mm land.

Considering that everything in Photography is a compromise, I made a decision years ago (which I still fight with) to try to travel as lightly as I can. I hate having too much gear on me and I'm a believer in having less equipment (to a degree) means you produce better results. You have to put up with the limitations of what you have, and work within those constraints. It isn't easy, but neither is having too many lenses and too many choices either.

So I guess you're wondering why the preamble?

Well I do think that sometimes you're forced to making shots that you wouldn't ordinarily choose if you had more options, and this image is a perfect example of that point.

To set the scene: I was in Bolivia earlier this year on a two week scouting trip in the south west of the country. It's an incredible landscape, otherworldly, surreal, mars like, whatever. The place in the photograph is Laguna Colarada. It's a sedimentary lake that is often red when the wind is blowing and there are often lots of Flamingoes there too.

We'd got there early and I had a couple of hours to kill until the light got really special, so I decided to research the basin and see what might come up later on, when I noticed the moon was visible. It's great to try and get the moon in your shots, but often it's hard to get detail on it because it's a day lit subject and the contrast range is too wide. Not in this instance.

being restricted to no prominent features in the basin, I decided to set the moon at the top of the frame and show a bit of the lake in the bottom of the frame, hence the portrait composition (apart from the fact that most of my images, inc landscapes are portrait anyway). I stuck on the 150mm lens to try to get the moon a little bit bigger in the shot, although I knew that with such a weak telephoto, it wasn't going to be that prominent.

And it was just as I was going to make the shot that I heard a group of Flamingoes take flight and head into the area of my frame. I was already thinking how I needed to capture them just as they passed but I also knew my shutter speed was too slow to freeze them. I placed a 3 stop hard grad over the top of the frame and had metered it with an external light meter before hand. Something I tend to do is keep re-metering every few minutes to notice if the light is changing. It was fairly constant during the late part of the afternoon, but I knew it would start to change quite quickly as sunset began.

So this is the result of a 'chance' encounter. I already had the strongest lens mounted on the camera, and although I would have been tempted to zoom in for the flamingoes as they went by (had I an SLR zoom on me), I'm glad I was restricted. I had to make a shot about the moon and the birds, not just the birds, which I feel is much more interesting than just a close up picture of the birds. I like context to an image or a subject. I also love primes for the fact that they force you to work withing the confines of a preset mm.

Like I said, having less equipment is often a blessing.