Rauðfossar, Central Iceland

I love to make up stories, whether it's verbally, or visually. Tonight I've just got my 8-rolls of film back from my little jaunt around the central highlands of Iceland over the past two weeks.

There's not much in the rolls of film I came home with. I didn't expect there to be, because I don't think I was operating on full-cylinders for the first week and a half. Partly due to tiredness from all the traveling I've been doing, and also because the weather (Iceland had been having a terrific summer up until I arrived), was pretty miserable and lacking colour most days.

Until that is, I visited Rauðfossar waterfall in the Rauðfossafjöll range (central highlands). It came at the very end of my trip, and talking to a friend of mine about the experiences, she said to me 'it seems you enjoyed your last week in iceland, and I'm sure you'll look back on it fondly'. Well, I guess that's very true, as I'm particularly happy with these three images (or stories as I like to think of them, because I feel they illustrate some aspects of Rauðfossar's character - the waterfall is very difficult to photograph in its entirety, as it's so large and looks like a rather messy spiders web from afar).

But up close, the waterfall is a wonder. There was even a tiny glacier in the river bed (the remnant of last winter, that still hadn't melted away). And although it is called Red falls, it actually has a lot of orange stone in it (the image on the far right has not been messed about with to make that foreground rock look as orange as it is, that's really mostly how it looked + velvia saturation).

This has been a place I've been trying to get to for the past eight years. I'm surprised that it is not on some central highland-tour stop. None of the buses stop here, there isn't a campsite at the base of the falls (I have an epic tale to tell of how I managed to get here), and it's not even featured on most of the postcards you see in Iceland. In short, unless you're really into studying Iceland a bit more than the average tourist, you'll probably not know anything about this beautiful place.

Now, in terms of my little epic tale - of how I got here. I'm embarrassed to say that I had to ford three rivers to get here, and maybe walk around eight miles in total. Most of the wardens in Landmannalaugar don't know of it's existence, and it was only by spying a map in a little cafe that I saw the words 'raudafoss' and said - oh - where is that? There seems to be a campsite near by', and before I knew it, I was packing my my tent and heading for a bus that would drop me off at the particular campsite. I still had no idea if I was going to get to this waterfall, but I felt that if I got to the campsite 'near' it, I might get a better informed opinion from the warden there to how it might be possible to get to the waterfall - which is exactly what happened. I was informed upon arrival at the new campsite that the waterfall was 'just around that bend, maybe 8km away, easy to get to (yeah, right!), and maybe a little stream to cross (yeah, right - ha ha ha).

I made it to the waterfalls around 9pm after crossing three rivers, some large expanses of moss and not another person to be seen for miles. I also add that on my return just after midnight, I had to cross the same river (almost waist-level in places) without my trousers on and boots held high in the air (as well as camera bag), and me cursing myself for being so daft to get myself into this situation (the amount of times I get myself into stupid situations for the love of a landscape photograph).

I got back to my tent near 1am, dirty - the river was full of black sand and silt. But happy, because I knew that I'd finally made it to the waterfall I've been so wanting to visit for years.

Madness, but then again, isn't that what all landscape photographers are?

In terms of compositional information.I seemed to be attracted to rocks that had a degree of separation from their surroundings. Either in space (solitary rocks), or more often in terms of tonality. Playing in a landscape like this almost felt like I'd been let loose in a sweetie-shop (candy store). It felt like it was easy pickings to go find a rock that stood out - some were yellow-gold, and others were bright orange. It would be a great place to teach people about composition from the point of view of using colour and space for separation.

(ps, if you click on the image - you'll see a nice big jpeg of the three images of the waterfall).

Iceland book progress

Yesterday I paid the final balance due for the printing of my second book. The book should be here by the end of October and I will be illustrating a sample copy of it - possibly around August time. I've prepared a little video of the proofs for the book. Please accept my apologies for my self-depreciating humour - I often like to tell everyone how brilliant I am (clearly a joke), but some folks tell me I'm hard to read and they don't often know when I'm joking or not, so thought I should let you know that I'm really not being serious at all : ). You can view the video here:

[vimeo 45629937 w=400]

Below is the specification that has been printed onto the top of the slip-case design they've sent me for evaluation. The color is not the final choice - it's just a sample, completely empty, nothing printed on it, so I can get a feel for the quality and weight of the final product.

Below is the slip-case design, and to the side you can see the book as it is slipped into the side of the case.

A sense of dislocation and of being found

A friend once said to me - recognising in me what was in her - that we were both searchers. Travellers are not restless when they travel, they are often at peace with themselves because they are free to explore and discover their world.

Note that I said ‘their’ world. We all live on the same world, but each and every one of us has our own perception, and our own special way of being wired into what we see, hear and above all, feel.

When I travel I’m often at peace. When I am stationary for too long, I can’t find balance in my life because things are too static, staid perhaps.

I’ve just returned from a month long journey. Along the way I’ve changed. I felt new things, met new people I had not encountered before in my life, saw familiar landscapes in different moods, brought on by visiting in different seasons. I felt I was alive.

And returning home has caused me dislocation. The feeling that familiarity brings, is no longer familiar. I have not lived in a predictable environment for some time, and I’m finding it difficult to adjust to the static aspects of a life routed in one spot.

I thought I should be over this by now. I’ve lived a very travel-intensive life the past three or four years and I’d gotten used to going away, only to come home again. To flip between a life of new experiences and a life of familiar friends and family. Sometimes I thought I was becoming two people. Two separate lives. Where in fact, I was just coping with the sudden change of atmosphere. Moving from one environment of change to another of familiarity.

It shouldn’t bother me so much now, after all this time. I should have grown a thick skin to my sensitivities to the slight or sudden changes to my environment, but I’m glad in a way that I havent. Because it means I’m still sensitive to my environment, and my environment is all that I have to relate to when I photograph.

I don’t think most people out there realise the stresses put upon someone who has to move from a state of constant change, to that of being stationary. Those that don’t do this, think it must be a terrific way to live - ‘seeing the world is so exotic’, they may say. While those who do get to experience it often feel dislocated: each time a major trip comes up, I feel it looming for weeks, and I know that I will have to tear myself away from any feelings of being settled that I’ve built up over a few weeks of being back home. The flight tickets are booked and they are fixed in time, yet they seldom synchronise with my moods. If I don’t feel ready to go away, it’s a huge bind for me to do so. Like a child that doesn’t want to get into the bath, I too don’t want to go to the airport. And after a few days or perhaps a week on the road, I slowly realise that I’m actually enjoying my new freedom. I’ve become someone else through spirit of travel and all the new senses it provides. My old self seems like an distant memory - ‘was that really me who didn’t want to leave home’?, I ask. Now I’m in the bath, there’s no getting me out of it.

So I often wonder just why I find the transference from static to mobile so hard at times. I absolutely love traveling but I also really love being home too. I love my friends and my family, yet at the same time, I often find myself hatching new plans to go somewhere new. I think this is nothing unusual for most photographers - when we’re at home, we so wish to be away, and when we’re away, we can often wish to be home.

I’ve realised that I live a life very different from a lot of my friends now, and it’s very different from the life I used to lead when I worked in an office in Edinburgh. I feel I’ve changed as a result of my life-style. For me at least, it’s given me confidence in myself and a broader outlook on just what life is all about. As much as I can feel a sense of dislocation in those ‘transfer moments’ whilst moving from my home life to the life I have on the road, I feel I have found myself many times too, through the experiences that this ‘transference’ stage has offered me.

I can lose myself if I’m stationary for too long, and I can find myself when I put myself in new environments. And the opposite is true too. However, each time I move, I’m challenging my perceptions and I think that’s maybe why I love doing it: travel is perhaps just another way of making photographs. Instead of making visual images, I make emotional 'imprints' in my mind - they are what I like to call emotional-images. Less tangible perhaps, but equally valid.

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.

Eigg Workshop - 1 Space available

I have one freed up space for my Eigg workshop this September (10th to 15th). This is an extremely popular trip and it's full every year, so if you had your eye on coming this September, but noticed that it had been fully sold out since earlier this year, now is your chance to grab the last space :-) You can find out more about the trip, and also book here.

I also have another cancellation for my Arran trip this August (13th to 18th). Perhaps if the Eigg trip doesn't fit your schedule, you can maybe look at the Arran trip instead. More details can be found here too.Signing off from sunny Bolivia, where I am currently enjoying the sun, waiting for the 2nd part of my South American Safaris to begin in a few days time. We will be heading over the Bolivian Altiplano in two Land Cruisers, guide, cook and two drivers. I have six participants with me where three of them came with me from Patagonia to Bolivia. We've been discussing how different the landscape is up here. We've gone from winter and inclement weather to dry desert and blue skies. Looking forward to returning back to the Altiplano. It is my first trip here since first venturing here in 2009.

Wishing you were here,

Bruce

In Patagonia

As landscape photographers, we need to feel a connection with the places we photograph. We have to surrender ourselves to the smells, moods and feelings of a place and let the landscape pervade our own thoughts. I've been in Patagonia now for just over a week and familiar 'feelings' that I've experienced whilst here on previous trips (this is my 7th time here) have resurfaced. A place can be like that - like a familiar piece of music that you haven't listened to in a while, you are instantly transported back to a mood, a time, a feeling upon hearing it. It's been just great getting re-aquainted with this old friend of mine now. So this week I couldn't help myself, but buy a second copy of Bruce Chatwin's 'In Patagonia'. It cost me around £28 believe it or not, but I had to have it. Reading about Patagonia whilst here seems to be the perfect thing to do and Bruce's book is a great (if highly inaccurate account) of Patagonia. What Bruce does with this book is set the tone of how Patagonia feels to the traveler.

I'll admit that I'm not too keen on the fact that there are many lies contained within the book. His meetings with people who live here are often more fable than fact, but he does do a good job of giving you an impression of a place that is remote, lonesome, possessed, and one which can possess you.

As is quoted in Bruce's book - Patagonia is a magnet for those who's malady is 'the horror of one's own home'. Restless people come here and I feel I can relate to that. As much as I love being at home, when i'm there, I'm often wishing to be away, and when I'm away - I'm often wishing to be home.

If you're thinking of going somewhere, I can think of no better thing than to buy books about the place. Photography books might give you some idea of what is there, but the written word has a better chance of helping you get into the mindset of what lies before you. Maybe it might help settle you into the mental adjustment an undertaking of this magnitude will have on you: going away for a prolonged period of time can be overwhelming. My way of life in Scotland is so far removed from many of the places in the world I visit, and I'm often confronted with having to rip myself away from my home life, to be replanted elsewhere. Reading books about my chosen destination before I go, often helps me with the adjustment and they're also great devices to help me slowly untangle myself once I've returned home too.

In a few weeks I will be back in Scotland, in my old routine, but I will have Bruce Chatwin's 'In Patagonia' to help me slowly disengage from the life that I am leading right now as I type this post from my hotel in deepest Patagonia.

Wishing you were where your heart wishes to be.

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!

HiTec 10 stop ND filter

I had a Lee Big-Stopper filter, which I don't use much, as my film cameras go into seriously long exposures due to reciprocity effect, but I do use the 10 stop now and then. Well, I used to, because mine shattered to pieces. I love the Lee filter system. It's extremely high quality, but I've always gotten along fine with the resin filters they do, so I don't own any glass ones now (broke them all), whereas my resin 3 stop is still going strong after many years of service.

I just learned today that HiTec do a 10 stop filter made of resin, that you can buy (in two variants - one for the HiTec holder and the other for use with a Lee filter holder). I've just ordered one and hope it will have many years of service (for the rare times I intend to use it).  The good news is that it's also cheaper than the Lee Big-Stopper too, and it's widely available. I was able to place an order on Teamwork Photo's website today for two of them and they're dispatching tomorrow!

If your Lee Big Stopper is still in one piece, may I suggest you get some hard case for it, to protect it. Mine broke simply because it was in the pouch that Lee provided it in, tucked inside my camera bag. I've heard similar stories from others too.

Good luck!

Patagonia Calling

I'm in Punta Arenas, the gateway city to Chilean Patagonia. Tomorrow I head up to Torres del Paine national park for the next two weeks of a safari based in this beautiful part of the world.

I'm very pleased to be back here. It is winter time in the southern hemisphere, but despite this, it is very mild here in Punta Arenas. I've just met up with my guide for the week and she has told me there was plenty of snow a few weeks ago, but that the wind has taken it all away. She showed me some of her photos and It was amazing to see how much snow there had been.

The best thing about being here in June though, is that the sunrise and sunset times are very sociable - sunrise is at 9am (bliss - I don't have to get up so early - yes I'll admit - I'm not a morning person - probably much to your surprise). And sunset is just before 5pm, so the day is nice and short with a low lying sun.

It's been five years since I was last here. I can't believe it's been that long for me, and it's only become possible to return due to client demand. I've had so many clients over the past three years of running workshops in Scotland ask me when I was hoping to go back that I knew I'd have enough interest to run the trip.

So thanks Jez, Adrian, Leslie, Polly, Bo and James for wanting to come with me.

Easter Island, 2nd time round

Way back in 2003, I visited Easter Island. It had been some place I'd wanted to go for as long as I remember. As a child, I had a small globe of the world in my bedroom, and I often used to look at the tiny dot of Easter Island on it, and wonder what it was like to be there.

I'm now back there this week. It's my second trip to the Island. It's a beautiful island, and quite strange too. It also has some of the most challenging photographic light with which to work.

Firstly, I felt way back in 2003 that the entire place should really be photographed in black and white, not colour. The subject matter looks very displeasing in colour, simply because stone and grass aren't that interesting to look at. I found my initial attempts at colour images of Easter Island somewhat lacking. It was hard for me at the time to consider taking all my velvia images and converting them into black and white, but that's exactly what I did with them, and after a lot of wrestling, felt that the entire project had been a disaster for me.

Roll forward to 2012, and I've been back on Easter Island for the past two days and I don't think my judgement was all together constructive. I felt that if I returned, I'd know how best to shoot the locations now, and would approach them from a 'black and white' perspective from the onset, rather than considering taking colour photos and trying to 'will' them into being something else (black and white) later on.

So it's been very liberating knowing that I can shoot it more extreme light, and not care too much about colour, just thinking more about form and tonality. I've discovered that I didn't get things so badly wrong on my first visit: this is a very hard place to photograph. The light is harsh and intense for most of the day, and when the light does become soft, often the statues are so dark that it's not possible to render any detail on them while holding the values in the sky too.

This has led me to go back to looking at my earlier work and reconsider that maybe what is required is a more deft hand at the darkroom end of the process. To be blunt - I didn't really know much about tone and form in 2003. I had only been shooting for a few years, so when I was faced with working on my images in black and white - it was a form I knew very little about in terms of manipulation to the picture to bring out what I was trying to say. In other words, I lacked the skill and experience to do the images justice.

So I'm now very keen to return home and go back to the original negatives that I made on my first visit. Some of the problems I had at the time, are still evident in the locations now: statues have no discernible features until the sun is up, and when that happens, there is so much contrast, that there are blocked shadows everywhere.

But I'm happy I came back to Easter Island. I do feel I've been capturing new images, and along with fresh memories of familiar locations, I've been able to reinterpret the scenery in a new way. The light is still harsh for most of the day, but on this trip I'm seeing a lot of rain in the mornings, which is helping diffuse and bounce the light around the landscape a bit more.

On a different note, the island hasn't changed much in almost 10 years. There's little in the way of development which is just great to see, but if I were to criticise anything, it would be CONAF's treatment of the historic locations. Many now have really ugly wooden fence posts around them, which make for difficulty in shooting, and they don't discourage people from going in and touching the relics either. So nobody wins. That nice shot of the stone circle you see in this very post is now no longer possible because of some wooden fence that looks like it was put up by my neighbour after a visit to Homebase.

A few days a go, I wrote on this post some misleading information about the access rights to Rano Raraku. I said:

"The other thing that is really quite upsetting about this, is restrictions now to Rano Raraku (where all the stone heads were carved and many are still to be found). To get in here, it is now a $60 USD entry fee. That is fair I feel. I think it's good that they charge a price for the upkeep of these historic areas, and the ticket does last for 5 days. But what I really object to is that the ticket is only valid for one entry only. If you want to go back again, it will cost a further $60 USD, which feels as if someone at CONAF was in a very petty mood at the time of the ticket price and rules review."

It turns out that this is not correct - access is for multiple times over a 5 day period, so I think the price of the ticket is very reasonable indeed. CONAF told me today that the price of the ticket was $10 USD for around 20 years, so they needed to upgrade the price, which is understandable, but the main argument I had was access only once. It isn't true, and seems to be a story that is propagated on websites and also through word of mouth via tourists on the island.