Making of 40 Photographs #3

This is #3 in my series 'Making of 40 Photographs'. Sometimes, you can get a photograph to tell a story much easier than the spoken or written word. So in that sense, it's going to be a bit of an uphill struggle for me to write about this one.

This was photographed at the Taj Mahal. It actually 'is' in the frame, but you can't see it due to the amount of early morning thick smog that descends upon the monument each evening.

I came here three times, and each morning I was never alone. With easily 1000 visitors at the gates for 6am, I felt defeated in my effort to get an isolated shot of this place, but the smog turned out to be a blessing.

At each end of the main mausoleum (the white building we all consider the Taj Mahal) are two red sandstone buildings. I was spending some time in these watching the smog swirl and drift into the arch ways and had been attempting to capture people's silhouettes as they came and went. To no avail because I was using my Mamiya 7. It's a terrific camera, but it's not fast. The lenses are f4.5 at the fastest aperture and I had been prohibited in taking in a tripod or monopod to the area by the security guards.

Sometimes you can visualise something happening before it does. I'd noticed this group of tourists wandering around the red sandstone arch ways and eventually they walked out into the open air. I followed them and noticed them all looking in the same direction. I knew they weren't looking at the main mausoleum - it's to the left of them, but for some reason they were all staring into the same immediate distance. I 'saw' this composition forming and it was a quick moment as I re-focused the camera and placed them to the bottom left of the frame.... they're looking right, so they 'should' be at the left of the frame looking 'into' the frame.

But although this image gives the impression of them looking for a hidden Taj Mahal, it's not really what they were doing. But the point is, before I told you that, it's probably what you felt the shot was about.

I took advantage of the quality of the air, the lack of visibility and the abundance of space and 'nothingness'.

Sometimes the simplest scenes are the best. There's not a lot going on in this shot at all, but I feel it's to it's merit rather than its detriment.

In terms of technical data for this, I knew the fog was causing a lot of 'internally reflected light'. All cameras are dumb. A meter wants to turn anything it sees 18% grey. So I added a stop or perhaps 2 stops compensation. One way to know how much to apply is to simply point the camera at the subject, take a reading, then point it at something you 'think' is mid grey and note the difference in stops. I wanted to keep the intensity of the smog's brilliance, so I over-exposed. My recollection of just how much - I can't remember, but I tend to err on the side of 1 stop. However, this was shot on negative film, which has a very wide latitude, so I wouldn't be surprised if I had over-exposed it at +2 stops. No grad filters used, and I shot the lens wide open - there's only one focal plane in the shot, and I wanted to ensure I got a sharp picture.

Bear in mind when you over-expose, the shutter speed gets slower, so you really do need to open up the aperture to keep the shutter speed from going below the threshold of what is possible for a hand held exposure. I was shooting the 80mm lens. The text books tell you not to shoot below 80th of a second for this mm, but the camera is a rangefinder with a tiny shutter in the lens. It's practically silent as well as vibration free. So I can often hand hold well below 80th of a second.

Making of 40 Photographs #2

This is #2 of the images I'd like to discuss, under my series 'Making of 40 Photographs'. I'm a big believer in serendipity. Some images you simply can't plan and this is one of them.

After walking for two solid days on the Patagonian southern ice field, we reached an area not that far away from the Circle of Altairs - a location I was hoping to get to, so I could capture Cerro Torre from the Ice cap. The more popular (and easier) location is from one of the major hiking networks near the town of el Chalten in Los Glaciares national park in Argentina.

In order to get to this location had been a bit of major effort for me. We had to ascend part of the Marconi glacier, which seemed to have fresh remnants of avalanche material strewn across our path. Then I'd had to circumnavigate around some large crevasses (think about the size of a large yacht) and then I'd had to put up with falling into one, which had been pretty frightening. I luckily didn't fall in too deep, being wedged in by my backpack. A few kicks with my crampons got me out of there, but it was unpleasant noticing how dark the hole was, that I was in.

But when we got to safe ground, my guide and porter busied themselves building a snow wall to shelter our tents from the storm that would come later that night, while I stood and watched the sky change colours as the sun began to set.

So where does the serendipity part come in? Well, what I love about the Mamiya 7 is that the view finder is polarised. I had set up the shot and it was only when I looked in the view finder that I saw the sky ablaze. I hadn't expected it. The direction I was pointing in must have been 90 degrees from the Sun - which means that the polarising effect is at it's most acute.

I have a 105mm polariser which bolts onto the front of my Lee filter holder. I'm not one for screwing up exposures - so If I use a polariser (which is not often because it makes the sky very uneven, especially with wide angle lenses), I like to meter through it. I simply hold up my Sekonic 608 and put the polariser in front, rotated to the correct angle first. Perhaps this is a shameful admission, but I'm not there to get off on how well I can mentally work out an exposure, so I will always take the safest and easiest route.

I metered the ground and the sky as I always do to work out the contrast range in stops, and then chose my exposure based on that. I will apply a hard grad ND filter to bring down the contrast range if need be. I will also apply reciprocity compensation and always have a few laminated cards on me with the corrected exposure times. For instance, a 4s exposure in Velvia really needs 5s or better 6s to get it right. I also rate my Velvia at 40 ISO.

I was limited by possibilities for composition. Being stuck in the middle of the ice cap, surrounded by crevasses, meant I couldn't go for a wander. My guide was worried enough so I had to stay where I was and think more 'laterally'. I kept changing direction of where I was shooting, and I kept changing lenses too. Sometime I'd shoot the 150, then the 80 and then the 50, just to get some variety. With wide angles in such a massive environment, I would often let the sky fill the area with a small section of ground at the bottom of the frame. My 150mm lens is not that powerful, so I would have to visualize cropping the scene even further upon my return from the trip.

I shot around 10 rolls of 120 whilst on the Ice cap. My film kept jamming in the camera and I now know that this was because I wasn't engaging the rollers by pressing the release buttons in (under the camera) properly. A lot of the film didn't spool onto the rolls, or jammed mid way so I ended up with a lot of light leaking onto the edges of the frame. Since most of the scenes were fairly minimal (a lot of basic gradual tones), it was easy to restore the damaged ones in Photoshop. But this image isn't one of them.

The light was very clear, and I remember how the tip of Cerro Marconi looked like the edge of a kings crown. You can't see it in the size of image reproduced here. But I do feel I captured the textures and tones well - courtesy of Velvia. I know of no other film which works this well for this kind of wor

I never made it to the circle of Altairs due to the region being so badly crevassed.But the trip was memorable not only because I'd fallen into a crevasse, but also because of the sheer adrenalin experience of climbing a steep glacier, experiencing gale force, howling winds at night, and walking in 2 foot deep snow for seven days with a 90L backpack. I felt challenged and surprised that I was capable of such an effort. I even suffered one of my wisdom teeth snapping in half on my last night on the Ice. I'd been given a bag of nuts to eat, and thinking the entire episode/drama of the trip was now over,  I remember sitting there eating some nuts in the privacy of my own tent only to hear something go 'crack' at the back of my mouth. I waited for the pain to ensue, which luckily did not happen. I seem to have a problem with teeth whilst away and it's not the first time I've had to visit a foreign dentist.

I do remember the feeling of extreme excitement whilst capturing this image though. There are shots you know are worth taking - often because you get that gut feeling, or butterflies in your tummy, and this was one of them.

Making of 40 Photographs #1

This is the first image I'm going to discuss under my new Category of 'the making of 40 photographs'. After spending a few weeks already in Iceland, sleeping in a tent, with eye-patches to help shut out the endless daylight, I found myself in Jökulsárgljúfur national park.

I'd been losing all sense of time whilst in Iceland. Partly due to my immersion into photography, partly due to it never getting dark and also because I was spending a lot of time on my own.

I love to camp when I go away, and spending a few days on my own in a tent is something I really look forward to.

But after a few nights in Jökulsárgljúfur, I did feel that I was going a little crazy. There was no reference point, nothing to say - this is the real world and you're part of it. I just seemed to find that I had all this time on my own to think my thoughts. It's interesting what your mind can present you with when you're on your own for so long. Friends from school days, growing up, being a child, my first girlfriend, first job, where I was now, how I had got there, where was I going.

But I wasn't sleeping too well - or rather, my sleep patterns were becoming more more random and as a result of it, I didn't go out one night to take advantage of the beautiful endless evening sunlight. I stayed in my tent and just did a bit of catching up on my sleep.

I awoke at 6am. I had a nagging feeling that there was something going on outside but not really sure what it was. I peeked outside the tent to find the entire landscape was draped in a thick fog. Normally I'd just turn over and go back to sleep, but when it dawned on me that Sellfoss, or hopefully Detifoss (Europes most powerful waterfall) may look rather moody basked in fog, I was up like a shot and heading the 15 minute walk towards the edge of the Jökulsárgljúfur canyon.

I got there just as the fog was burning off. I'm aware that sometimes I put myself in rather risky situations when making my images and this was no exception. I was literally perched at the edge of the canyon to get this shot. I intentionally shot it in portrait mode and I made a concious decision to go long-shutter-speed on it too. With early morning soft light, it's possible to use a really high saturated film like Velvia to good effect: It picks up the subtle tones in the morning sky and builds on it. I like to spend a lot of time thinking about composition so I used the edge of the canyon as a 'lead in' or 'walk in' into the scene. But I think it was the quality of the light - affected by the fog, that really made this image.

The making of 40 photographs

Ansel Adams wrote a fabulous book titled 'the making of 40 photographs'. It's an enlightening read and I would strongly recommend you buying a copy of it.

I bought my copy in 1992.

In fact, I love photography books - good ones. I'm not a fan of those books which show you pictures of cameras. I'd much rather delve below the surface and try to understand the motivations of a photographer. Well this book is most definitely a 'must read'.

So in light of this, I kind of feel inspired to do something similar. So over the next while or so, I will start to publish a write up about some of my images - the stories behind them, situations around the making of them and perhaps even some of the reasons for why I shot them.

I'm off to the Isle of Eigg this Sunday for a week, during which I won't be able to post. So I hope to publish my first entry sometime later this week.

Costs

I've not been on my blog for a while for the past month, due to being too busy. My schedule is getting rather hectic at the moment and I will be running my first Scottish photo workshop in exactly a week's time from now - on the Isle of Eigg.

So I've had a lot of material to prepare for the trip - I've now got a lot of tutorials for Photoshop editing, understanding exposure, dynamic range and some background to my own approach to landscape photography. All good stuff.

So whilst preparing for the trip, I made an order for some more Velvia 50 RVP. Only to discover that it's gone up 43% in price.

I had an idea that you'd be thinking 'film is dead - it's getting expensive because no one uses it anymore'. But it's not just film that's gone up.

Have you noticed the crazy prices for Nikon and Canon gear, or anything Japanese for that matter? It's the ecomomy that's gone down here in the UK, or the strength of the Yen.

Here's another example: I've been thinking about buying a used Mamiya 7 43mm lens. Admittedly, it's a little bit wider than my usual preference, but I've found recently that there has been a few locations requiring such a wide lens. The eBay price is around £650 for a mint one and if my memory is right, the lens used to be around £1,100 new. Not anymore it isn't. It's £1,700 before vat (15%). Which takes the lens up to £1995. Just shy of 2K for a lens that should be just over 1K.

My Sekonic light meter (L-608) is a bit on the bashed/worn out side these days so I was looking to replace it. It turns out that if I buy the new L-758 from Sekonic, which has more (unwanted) features than you could shake a stick at, it comes in for exactly what I paid for my 608 seven years ago! I'm curious as to why Sekonic's prices have stayed the same when everyone else has rocketed their prices? Is it because external light meters aren't that much in demand?

Photography is rapidly becoming a very expensive pursuit for most of us, and for the pro's, well it just means having to keep running with the same worn out kit for a bit longer - but that's nothing new :-)

September News Letter

Hi All,

Retrospection

This year has seen a lot of activity for me.

In January I went to India followed by a trip to Nepal in February.

Then in March, I spent a month recuperating at home with post-viral 'something'.

I did manage to get up to the Highlands to re-visit the isle of Eigg and the north west, and was greeted with one of the most wintry experiences I've had to date here in Scotland.

April saw me go back to Patagonia where I conducted my 3rd photo workshop there (it was a hoot).

And then I quickly followed that with a trip to Bolivia to photograph the Altipano. A Mars like landscape, otherworldly, only comparable to Iceland for photographic potential.

Summer saw me photograph some of the Scottish islands - Harris, Lewis and also the Orkney's, and this August I went back to the Orkney's to try to get some photographs I'd missed the first time earlier this summer.

Where do I go from here?

And now what? Well, I have my first Scottish workshop imminent - it starts in two weeks on the Isle of Eigg. A small Scottish Island with one of the most photogenic beaches in Scotland overlooking the island of Rum.

I have eight people coming with me - two Danish, one Italian, one Spanish, one Australian, two Scottish and one English.... and of course me :-)

I've prepared a lot of course notes about my 'process'... how I achieve my images, but I'm looking forward to the company and sharing of ideas..... That is, what I feel, workshops are all about.

Apple

It didn't happen. Some of you may remember I was contacted by Apple, with interest in using some of my images for desktops. I presume this was for the now released Snow Leopard Operating System.

Upcoming Talks

I'll be posting late September. Until then, if you live in the Falkirk area or Cumbernauld area, then you may be interested in the talks I have lined up:

3rd September, Falkirk Camera Club 22nd September, Cumbernauld & Kilsyth Camera Club

There are more talks lined up for the rest of the year, so please check out my schedule.

Workshops

As you may be aware, all of my photographic workshops for this year have sold out. I'm now starting to fill spaces for next year's workshops.

However, I do have spaces left on my Isle of Harris trip for this November in the outer hebrides. Harris was a nice surprise for me this year because I'd been wanting to get there for a long time but my Schedule never permitted it. The place is very beautiful - lots of big expansive golden sandy beaches with not a soul to see for miles and miles. It's a wide open expanse of a place with standing stones not too far away on the adjoining island of Lewis. Perhaps you might want to come? More details here.