Fox at Grey Revisited

I just got an e-mail from Roger Pool today, one of the participants from my workshop in Patagonia this March. Roger has put his images on SmugSmug and they're excellent. To view them, go here. In the e-mail he sent me, there was a picture of the fox we had the great excitement of photographing while at the edge of Lago Grey one morning.

Yep, that's me on the right side, with my ear-wind-shields up on my hat, crouched over my tripod.

I love this image because it shows how close we were to the fox. The image I created from this shoot is here. I was struggling because I had the entirely wrong kind of lens on my camera... a wide angle when the fox appeared. It would have been very tempting for me to zoom right in, but I'm pleased I was restricted to what I had.

Gaucho

As part of my romance with the Contax 645 system, I now have multiple film backs for it, which is a really nice way to go if you want to shoot different types of film. This is the nub for me. What I love about film is the different characteristics that each type produces. Velvia is supersaturated, unrealistic in colour providing vibrant landscapes, Portra has great skin tones and then of course there are a myraid of black and white films to choose from... each with their own look and feel.

This was shot on Kodak Tri-X 400 and scanned on my Nikon 9000 ED film scanner with ICE turned off. What this means is that I had to go around spotting all the dust and dirt on the negative after scanning. It was a pleasure to do it. Perhaps I'm too old school.

While I was on my workshop in Torres del Paine national park, Chile, I like to take the participants along to see some real working Gauchos in the park. There are a few locations where it's possible to do this.

Anyway, I shot many images on Portra but also tried out Tri-X. You might argue that I could have shot this on colour film and then desaturated it in Photoshop to make it into a Black and White. You'd be correct, but desaturated colour films don't have the same grain properties that Tri-X has. For me, grain is part of the artistic look and feel of a picture. I've tried all those software emulators with digital, but have to say that it still looks digital. If you want the film look, go shoot some film.

Isolate

Hi All, On my recent trip to Patagonia, a member of the trip told me he tends to try to 'get it all in'. We were standing on a little bridge over to a small island in Lago Pehoe at the time.

What I recall about this little discussion was that I thought we had both 'seen' the same thing. I took my shot and then went over to see what he was doing, only to find out that he was trying to get the lake, the mountains and the hotel, situated on the small island into the shot. I showed him what I had composed (see below), and his comment was 'you go for very simple compositions'. It was a concise point. He was concise with his words, whereas I tend to be quite verbose. But in terms of picture composition, he was pretty verbose while I was concise.

I think the strength of an image lies many times in what we exclude from it. Putting more things into a scene can often dilute the strength of the message. Keeping it simple is key.

With the image in question, what I was grabbed by was the sweeping curve in the dark sand in the foreground. I'm a sucker for composing landscape shots in portrait mode. I'm convinced this is because of how I actually interpret scenes, but also, because the 6x7 aspect ratio lends to this. I tried to compose the same shot using a 5DII while I was there and it simple didn't work. Too much height - too much sky and too much forground. I find 35mm aspect ratio of 3:2 not conducive to how I think about objects and place them within the frame. But that's just me.

Focus and isolating down to the barest components of a scene is the way forward to making a strong image. When looking at a scene next time, try to think about what it is you are actually drawn to, and whether everything in there actually needs to be there. Remove items and reduce. Isolate and improve impact.

Fuegan Fox at Grey

Now I'm back 100% to using film, I can't help wonder sometimes if I've lost the ability to shoot quickly. With the participants of my tour of Torres, I was aware that there were shots I was not getting. Here is one example. We were at the edge of Lago Grey, shooting the surrounding, all-encompasing Paine massif one morning, and I really wasn't sure if Velvia film was really going to cut it. The light was still relatively soft, but I kept thinking 'digital would cut this no problem' whereas I only ever shoot Velvia in the very early mornings and late evenings when the light is very, very soft. So I felt frustrated.... damn, being using a digital SLR for too long and I've started to rely on the histogram too much. Plus, the Mamiya 7 sucks at telephoto support and fast lenses. I felt weighed down, I felt I wasn't going to get my shot

And then out of the blue a fuegan fox appeared on the scene and litterally walked in from the right and departed from the left of my scene. My temptation was to have a telephoto there and then to get in close to the fox, but I'm so glad I was constrained. As much as the fox is tiny, the resulting photo I feel, works well. The mountains are commanding, they are certainly a major point of interest, and perhaps without the fox, the landscape image wasn't really strong enough. Putting the fox in there, as small as he is, doesn't demand too much attention - there's no conflict between the fox and the mountains for attention. The fox is complimentary to the mountains by adding some foreground interest at the right proportions and from the foxes point of view, it's good to have a background that can be used to convey a sense of scale. Sometimes, isolation, reducing down a photo to the most interesting element (fox) is too drastic. Sometimes you need to step back and let the entire landscape in. For that reason, I'm glad I was stuck with my Mamiya 7. I had to make use of what I had, and hopefully use it well.

Patagonian Ice Field

Going to extreme lengths to get a shot of Cerro Torre, I ventured onto the southern Patagonian ice field. In this podcast, I explain why sometimes, I go too far in the pursuit of an image.

Please click on the image to play the podcast

Patagonia Workshop Photos '08

My photographs from the recent Patagonia workshop are now online here. I love Patagonia, it's barren, unforgiving, dramatic, contemplative and hard. You can work hard and come home with nothing, and then sometimes, just to show you that it has its own mind, Patagonia will give you a gem or two.

Once in a while.

But every photographer I speak to who has been there, says they want to go back. I guess it's because each time you visit, you see a different face to the landscape and when you do get a good shot, you can't help feeling you've been rewarded.

Los Glaciares Portfolio

I've just uploaded a new portfolio of Los Glaciares national park, Argentinian Patagonia. Sometimes, no matter how prepared you are, you come home empty handed. I've been to Los Glaciares three times now, each time hoping to get good shots of the mountains Cerro Torre and Fitzroy, only to return home empty handed.

I've had many e-mails from other photographers saying that all they saw when they got there was low cloud and the edge of a lagoon. This, is no surprise to me as I'm fully aware of how the odds are stacked against you if you want to get great photos in this region of the world. But that's part of its charm too.

I'm much happier about these shots compared to my first few attempts. I think its really helped to have a good selection of lenses this time - from extreme wide angle to 400mm. But its also helped greatly, being familiar with the terrain and how unpredictable the weather is. I came home exhausted. Trekking isn't easy with a pile of camera gear, bad weather and a short timescale. But I also came home satisfied that I'd got my shot of Cerro Torre.

Grey

What does this image say to you? Aren't the bergs almost like figures? I think so.

Photographed in Patagonia this March, I've shot glacier Grey in Torres del Paine several times, and each time, it brings something new.

I think that what is beautiful about glaciers in photographic terms are the endless possibilities of shape. Not only is each berg different, but also bringing them together can create some interesting compositions. In the above shot, notice how there are a lot of diagonal lines leading through the entire shot. Then there is also symmetry - each side of the shot is weighted by a similar sized berg and right in the middle, there is a little one, just to fill in the foreground a little. That's already just fine as it is, but adding a hint of mountain top into the background just helps make the whole composition sit well with the eye.

The boat was moving, but as it did so, I kept shooting this same scene until I felt everything had just 'clicked' into place. Photography is not just about light, but about composition and balance.

Lago Grey & Icebergs

This was shot on a very dreary day. We'd had a lot of bad weather for the week in Torres del Paine, but every cloud has a silver lining, and in this instance, the inclemental weather was adding drama and some fleeting moments of very nice light.

Its almost back lit, as the sun is coming in from the left, but obscured by all the low cloud over Glacier Grey (which you can see in the distance). The mountains are part of the Torres massif, and I think this is part of Paine Grande. We were walking along the beach on our way to taking some shots of the bergs and the weather just seemed to do a few drastic changes in the space of about 15 minutes. Calm and serene and then by the end of it the wind had kicked up and the lago was filled with big waves. It was hard to stand up, let alone use the tripod.

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.