Bolivia, Colour & Form

I think square aspect ratio really works for these images. I love putting collections of images together. In this case, I sometimes feel I'm looking at a colour chart from my local DIY (hardware) store. But Bolivia is like that. The colours and tones that are present on the landscape throughout the early mornings and evenings is something I've not witnessed anywhere else on my travels. I believe it must be due to the high altitude - 3,600 metres to 4,500 at its highest elevation.

I've really enjoyed this week at home. The blinds in my studio have been shut, the ambient music is up loud, and the only light I have around me is the stuff pouring out of my light table and daylight viewing booths. It's a very closed-in, intimate setting in which to lose myself, and get fully absorbed in the editing process.

There have been moments when I thought I was right back there in Bolivia. There have been some revelations too; I feel my photography took on a new direction about 4 years ago when I first visited Bolivia. The empty spaces there called for a more simplified approach to compositions, and I think this was a catalyst for the simplified compositions I've been working on these past few years. Returning back there this June to run the photo-tours, I wasn't sure if I would do anything new, with the same locations. But I think, if anything, I've learned a lot about the direction I'm heading in. I do see a change; I seem to respond more to colour and tone now and in some ways, the compositional elements are less important. I feel using the square aspect ratio helps get the feeling of 'the graphic' over as well. It's been a nice little journey of self-discovery this week, and I find working on the images very therapeutic too.

Laguna Colorada, Bolivia

I don't feel like sorting out my images at all from my south america trips. It's kind of nice to just find something I want to work on and scan it.

I stumbled upon these lovely images of Laguna Colorada, taken on the Bolivian altiplano. We were all suffering from shortness of breath and it was extremely cold here. But I was so keen to get my group here because each night, the light does something very wonderful to the landscape - I've not really experienced light anywhere else quite like this. Everything goes very red as the sun sets.

The lagoon is famous for displaying a red colour throughout the day when there is wind to stir up the sediments lurking below. But when night falls, the wind tends to go, and the lagoon becomes calm. It is at this time that the rays of the sun seem to be absorbed by the surrounding landscape and the lagoon becomes red again. It's extremely beautiful to witness. There are no pollutants in the sky, the altitude is 4,500 metres (yes, that's not a typo - we're at an extremely high elevation here), and I'm sure this is why the light is so spectacular.

I think next week I may get a bit more strict with myself and sort the images into each 'country project'. As I feel this is the only way to create a unified body of work for each place I've visited. I so often dislike working on images in a piece-meal fashion. Today is an exception, and it's nice to just sift through and decide what I feel I'd like to work on, and perhaps more importantly - relive as I look at the transparencies on my light table, and find my imagination being cast back to a special place at a special time.

50 rolls of film consumed

I'm sitting in my hotel room at the Ritz in La Paz, Bolivia tonight. It is now officially the end of a three week photo adventure with six participants.

It's been a great time and I've thoroughly enjoyed my time with the group. Most importantly for me, I've just had the pleasure of re-aquainting myself with two very special landscapes - that of Torres del Paine national park in the far south of Chile and the Bolivian Altiplano - an undervalued landscape that is - to my mind - as impressive, if not more so, than many of Iceland's landscapes. The Bolivian Altiplano is a place to watch for increased popularity for landscape photographers, that I am sure of.

While we were there, we had a full moon, and managed to shoot it during dawn, dusk, sunrise and sunset. The above image was taken on a previous trip way back in 2007. I'm afraid you'll have to wait until later on this year to see my results as I'm heading off to Iceland in a week's time, so I don't have any free time right now to get the films processed and begin work on them.

I'd just like to express my deepest thanks to all the drivers and guides who assisted me and my group through these remarkable landscapes. I'd also like to thank my group for the enthusiasm and commitment they showed on both trips. We had such amazing weather - lots of snow and clear mornings in Patagonia while in Bolivia we had amazing pink hues + earth shadows every morning and evening during sunrise and sunset.

I'm now hatching a plan for two repeat trips for next June, and possibly a trip to Easter Island too. I'm also hoping to spend some more dedicated personal time on the Bolivian Altiplano during the course of July next year. It's an amazing place which I feel hasn't been fully explored by photographers as yet.

I have over 50 rolls of film - Velvia 50 and Portra 160 to process when I get home. But before that happens, I'm off to Iceland for a month of personal photography time to trek some locations I've sorely missed on previous visits.

Life is short. Still,  I guess I can't say I've not used my time unwisely.

I'll be back on the blog in a few days time once I'm home and over my jet lag.

In Argentina now

I'm almost finishing up my Patagonia Safari in a few days time, and we've seen quite a few memorable images over the past week and a half. Torres del Paine national park was a winter wonderland and each morning we had excellent, atmospheric views at Pehoe. We also had a successful sunrise view of the towers through low cloud. It was really beautiful to witness.

My Hasselblad continues to stun me with yet more failures. A spare body has jammed and now a film back continues to pump film through it without ever getting to the first frame. I've also had the wind catch my Mamiya 7II camera and toss it onto the beach. The camera still works, but the rangefinder feature is broken and there's a massive hole in the top of the body. So It will be going back for repair when I get home and I've just bought a Mamiya 7 Mk1 body tonight to help me out as I'm away to Iceland a week after I get home. I've got a month of personal photography time in the centre of the island and also have to meet up with Ragnar Axelsson too, which I'm looking forward to.

Tomorrow morning we are all heading out for sunrise to visit the glorious Perito Moreno glacier - perhaps one of South America's highlights. It is a living, breathing mass of ice that creaks and groans. Large sections of the face of it come off and hit the surrounding water on a frequent basis, often with a deafening crash.

I first visited this glacier in 2003, and made the above image. It's actually a stitched composite of several images (I don't normally do this kind of thing, but in this instance had to, because the glacier is 4 miles wide, and easily takes up over 180º of field of view).

Venturing here for sunrise is great. Tourists don't arrive here until 10am at the earliest, so you have the whole place to yourself. It's winter here, and as it turns out, sunrise is at 10am tomorrow morning, so we will be there for the start of civil twilight. It's a great time to be there as the glacier faces east and it slowly reveals itself to you as the light comes up. At first you can only hear it and that is spooky in itself. As the minutes pass you become aware of the faint glow of the glacier and then as the sun comes up the face of the glacier shifts through the cool colour spectrum and seems to convey many different colours. It's simply wonderful to witness.

We will be heading back to Punta Arenas in a days time, where some of us will say goodbye while four of us continue on to San Pedro de Atacama for a few days before we venture onto the Bolivian Altiplano for a week's worth of photography. I'm having so much fun on this trip I don't want it to end.

Wish you were here!

Stupidity

I got an email last night from a participant from my Harris workshop last year telling me he's in South America. His email told me that he'd been to see the Stone Tree (El Arbol de Piedra) in Bolivia. He told me that there is now a fence around it, because there have been too many tourists climbing on top of it.

Whilst I was there, I did think that it was amazing how the entire stone sculpture was so vulnerable, yet I was grateful that I had easy access to it so I could photograph it. In other parts of the world, we are getting a little too controlling of our heritage - so much protection that it can actually spoil a location.

But I think that in this case, the fence has been a necessity. I did notice whilst I was there, that people had been scratching their names on the stone tree.

I often find this sort of behaviour at odds with a location like this. There are certain kinds of people who come to visit a location of this nature. They appreciate the beauty and rarity of what they find here.

But there must, I fear, come a point when a place gets so popular that it appears on the radar of those that 'don't get it', that will never appreciate its rarity and think that the best thing to do when they get there is climb all over it and scribble their names on it.

That's the part of human nature I find hardest to deal with about such rare and beautiful places like this.

It seems that morons can apply for, and get granted passports too.

Bolivian Village

When I was in Bolivia this April, I spent Easter weekend with a Bolivian friend and her family. They were very gracious and kind to me, sharing what they had. We went north for the weekend, up into a remote village where my Bolivian friend's parents are from. It was here that I spent a rather chilly (altitude 12,000 feet) weekend eating Llama steak for breakfast and also camping under a llama skin that they kindly offered me. It really was an experience I'll never forget.

But the thing was, we spent most of the weekend with everyone else in the village watching friendly football against Argentinians and Peruvians.

My friend's family is rather extensive, and the Bolivians are very close knit in this way : the family is priority. I remember heading up in a packed car to the north of the country and being reminded of when I was a child going on holiday. My family is rather large (by western standards) so I felt right at home. I was perhaps the oldest child in the car, being 41.

Anyway, here's a picture of one of my Bolivian friend's cousins. Everyone eventually got used to me just hanging around; the stranger from out of country with the camera permanently attached to his hand and this is rather a candid shot of her. There's recognition in her face as to who I am, which only goes to show that building up a relationship with your subject can really count.

The image of the little boy with the football came about because he befriended me. Curious as to who I was, he came up to me, offered lots of sweets and I was quickly accepted as his new friend for the rest of the day.

On a technical side, these images were shot (again) with my new love : a Contax 645 camera with standard lens. Film was Kodak Portra 160NC.

Bolivian Altiplano Podcast

I had no idea I was going to be so taken with this landscape.The Bolivian Altiplano brings together a vast expanse of varied geological features under unusual climatic conditions.

For one thing, the altitude of the Altiplano averages around 4000 meters or 12,000 feet. The air is thin here and for no reason I can fathom, this seemed to guarantee stunning light each sunrise and sunset.

Please click on the image to play the podcast

Because of this, I felt that I pushed my tour guide and driver to their limits as we navigated the vast Salar de Uyuni landscape before sunrise and long after dusk. With scarcely defined roads, more a slight suggestion, a faint scar on the desert like landscape, it was hard for me to watch as my driver sped through the darkness with no visible signposts as to where we were, or where we were going.

And we sped on, often to some intangible destination that my driver knew about.

But I was suffering hard. A mixture of slight Altitude symptoms and running around too much, too soon after my ascent onto the altiplano had left me with a thumping headache and slight dizziness - symptoms of mountain sickness.

I felt overawed by the experience. Coupled with my suffering, everything regarding landscape photography seemed inverted. The ground was often brighter than the sky and the sunsets proved to be more impressive than the wondrous sunrises. I was never really just sure how to meter the landscapes for the film I was using.

This is not what I’ve come to expect from most of the landscapes I’ve photographed over the years.

Being so high up, I´d expected to feel cold, yet strangely I didn’t - even though I got caught out. Like a mouth that has gone numb and un-cooperative after a visit to the dentist, so I found my hands unable to operate my camera after being outside for more than half an hour in the dawn light.

As for my most lasting impression, well I must say that I tried one day to walk on the vast salt plain for as long as I could with my eyes completely closed. It didn’t take long for my mind to concoct imaginary obstacles in my path and I had to fight my instincts, which kept screaming at me to open my eyes. When I did, I was greeted with the unchanged, vast emptiness of the Salar and a feeling that I had been tricked. By my own mind of course.

Perhaps this was the Bolivian Altiplanos parting gift to me - a lesson that most limitations in my life come from within rather than from without.

Bolivian Altiplano Portfolio

I just thought I'd drop a wee note to say that I have now published my Bolivian Altiplano images on my site. If you'd like to view them you can find them here.

I'm off to sit down for a well earned rest I think, watch some TV.

I haven't seen much TV in the past three months due to all the traveling I've been doing.... which reminds me... that I have around 100 rolls of film from India and Nepal still to edit and publish.

..... I'll put TV on hold for the moment. Now where did I put those India and Nepal images?......

Laguna Colorada

Sometimes compositions don't need to be too clever. I had a beautiful red lake in front of me with really stunning light. But I was searching for a dramatic composition and I simply couldn't find one.

Photographs work on many levels and often for different reasons too.

Surely it's enough to document a place for what it is?

I loved the light and I loved the colour of the red lake (created by the sediments being stirred by the Altiplano winds).

I just couldn't find a strong composition.

It is what it is.

I gave in to what it was and somehow, I'm no longer angst about not finding that killer composition.

Quality Control

I've just finished editing my images from the Bolivian altiplano and here is a contact sheet of the final 40 images I'm happy with. I was thinking today about how I love the entire creative process: you start with nothing and even trying to visualise what you may come home with is often nowhere close to what you end up with. There's that element of the unknown about the creative process that is intriguing.

But there are some factors which can heavily influence the outcome of a body of work. I don't have a 'formula' as such and tend to like just 'going with the flow' and seeing where my editing will take me. But here is a rough outline of what happens for me:

1. I get home with a massive pile of films processed. I don't look at all of the sheets in one sitting because I'll be overloaded with the need to work on too many images.

2. I'm patient. Good work is not rushed and rome wasn't built in a day. So I just consider that each image takes time to be born correctly, and if there are golden nuggets in the pile of transparencies I have, then I will find them : at the right time, when I'm in the right mood to approach them correctly.

3. Sometimes I'm not sure how to approach an image, how to edit and this can be when I'm tired, done too much editing, or I'm simply not feeling inspired enough. Taking a break, heading outside for a walk, a cycle, or doing something else with my life completely seperated from my photography is the only way of approaching my images with a fresh and keen eye.

4. I work on a sheet at a time. I don't peek to see what else I have. I take each contact sheet on it's own merit and work on the best images from that sheet. This allows me to find images that I'd easily forget about if I found something better underneath.

5. I ruthlessly throw images away. For instance, on a contact sheet all the shots of the same location may be excellent, but there may be one or two that stand above the rest. Those are the two images I will work on. The others are stored away, but not used. If an image is not working, and I've tried a few things, given it some space, etc, then it will be discarded. If there is a glaring problem with focus for instance, then it is discarded. If the composition just isn't working, and no amount of cropping helps - then it's discarded. Sometimes I have a nice image, but something causes it to be discarded because it's simply too much effort to get it right. Good images should not take a long time to edit. They should just come together smoothly.

6. Quality Control. Ok, so I have say 40 rolls of film, each with 10 images on them - that's 400 images. I'll edit it down to around 80 images. Those that are really standing out mixed with those that are nice. Some may stay because I want to show an aspect of a location that is not already covered by the proposed final portfolio. But I will keep editing down, until I have a smaller number of images. If you want to be a good photographer, you have to be objective about your work and maintain a certain level of quality. Only release what you are truly happy with (unless you suffer from very high expectations in which case you are in trouble).

7. Be kind to your mistakes, try to see the images as someone else would. Some flaws are acceptible, and if the image still conveys a spirit or 'feeling' that you like, even though it's slightly blurred due to camera shake - then it's an image that still works. Images should be read on face value. Pixel peeping is not a productive activity. See the wood, not the trees.

8. Live with the images for a while. You get a sense of distance from the whole process and can then be more objective about your work.

I've taken around three weeks to produce 40 images. To some digital shooters, this is not a way forward, but for me : it IS the way forward. Good images, ones that I can live with and feel close too, can only be born correctly if I am receptive and nurtiring with what I do.