Patagonian Ramblings

I was lucky enough to spend the last month of 2006 exploring the wild landscapes of the deep south of the Patagonian region - The legendary wilderness straddling the southern tips of Chile and Argentina.

These ramblings have resulted in me writing sections of text for a couple of books released worldwide by New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd. The latest of these being 'Walking the World's Natural Wonders' which is now available to order through amazon.co.uk and other bookshops - online and on the high street.

The synopsis of the book is as follows:-

Aimed at the burgeoning adventure travel market, this book focuses on hikes, treks and walks that explore some of the earth's most spectacular wild places, and particularly natural wonders such as volcanoes, glaciers, unique rock formations, rivers and great lakes. This book is not aimed at expedition-type trekkers. Although some of the places are remote, all have basic visitor infrastructure, with option for a variety of walking trips. Destinations are drawn from all over the world including North America and Asia, with a significant proportion of European destinations.

I supplied the images and the text for the 'Torres Del Paine National Park' chapter, which was somewhat an honour as the fellow contributors included Tony Toole, Cameron Burns, Ronald Turnbull, Kev Reynolds, Gillian Price, John Bannon, Roly Smith and Roger Bray - with Jon Sparks supplying all other text and images as well as overseeing the complete project.

The other book featuring my work, and in this case only my words, was released earlier this year. New Holland approached me last year to write the introductory essay for the English translated version of 'Patagonia: Nature's Last Frontier' by Argentine photographer 'Marcos Zimmermann'. I have included a taster of the essay below:

Every single step forward felt like a huge achievement. Gale force winds were being channeled through the sheer valleys walls of the Fitzroy range, and with every particularly large gust we were being blown three steps back from our destination, a small ridge of the summit of the glacier moraine. Our quest to view the azure colored glacial lake was going to be somewhat of a struggle. However this was to be expected in Patagonia, a place where nothing is easy. A land where struggle is an essential part of everyday life.

If you would like to read some more, you will have to buy the book!

In Search of Spirit

Since my last post, I have had the pleasure of exploring what I consider to be finest landscape to be found in England, The Lake District, in search of new images that have that elusive photographic element - Spirit.

In my honest opinion, capturing the essence of a location (a.k.a Spirit) which I visit is the most important aspect that I try to convey in my images. For example, a clear, summers day spent photographing landscapes in the UK will often produce pleasing results. But this does not mean that the true character of the landscape is revealed. My favourite working conditions are during unstable weather fronts as I find that it helps me to (sometimes) capture images with the required spirit.

Take this image captured last weekend from Hardknott Castle Roman Fort looking towards the highest mountain in the region - Scafell Pike. As any visitor to the Lake District will tell you, it more often rains than shines in the Lakes meaning that a Lakeland shot in the heat of the afternoon sun will rarely convey any mood or suggest any essence. However, if you are mad enough to stand near the edge of a crag whilst a near gale force wind nearly knocks you and your tripod over, then maybe you may just capture some of that spirit.

This was the last trip for my forthcoming book 'Spirit of Cumbria' and I must admit that I have been very pleased with how the book has been taking shape. I will now spend the next few weeks processing the RAW files and scanning some of my old panoramic images before the completed project is passed to the safe hands of my publisher.

I can't wait to show you all the results!

HDR - The Lightroom Way (Sort of!)

I am going to be honest. I am not really a great fan of HDR images, I personally feel that they can sometimes look flat, artificial and lack the punch that I try to get from my images. However, a number of my contributors are now supplying a few HDR images and I have to say that if the process is carefully considered that in some instances HDR can look great. Personally I would still prefer to use ND grads in the field as I am already spending far too much time behind the computer screen and I still feel that grads look far more natural, but photography is all down to personal preferences.

But what happens when you are in Borneo and you realise that your NG grads are in Thailand? Hmm, I wonder who this could be? This was the situation I found myself in last year when I was photographing a sunset off the west coast of Sapi Island in Malaysia Sabah. This is one situation where HDR images are definitely not suitable - the crashing of the waves means that the various images required to form a HDR image will not be identical. So I couldn't use HDR and my grads were locked up in a hotel in Bangkok. There was only one choice - shoot to my heart contents whilst ensuring that I exposed all of the images with the view of preserving the high-lights. Then I could weave a little magic back at the Mac.

Nearly a year later I have finally managed to be able to process the above image. The exposure was fairly simple - The band of cloud helped to shield the setting sun so it was easy enough to retain the details in the high-lights of the image. Once I had imported the image into Adobe Lighroom, I created a 'virtual copy' and then processed the two files very differently. With the first image I 'developed' the sky and with the second I concentrated on the foreground interest. This technique utilizes one of the great advantages of digital photography compared to shooting transparency film - a greatly improved latitude of exposure. Simply put this means that a digital camera will record more detail than slide film without loss of quality. Once I was happy with the settings for my two files, it was simply a case of merging them. Photoshop! I hear you scream... No, Lightroom!

Enter the LR/Enfuse plugin for Lightroom from Timothy Armes Photography. This plug-in, like the others available from the Timothy Armes website, was a breeze to install and just as simple to use. Now back to the two selected images, in Lightroom I selected 'File > Blend exposures using LR/Enfuse' and created a preview via the plug-in control panel. Once I was happy with the look of the image, I proceeded to click OK to create the full size file which I saved to a folder on my desktop called HDR. Then it was simply a case of importing the finished file into Lightroom.

So I am back to where I started. The image has worked and is a great improvement on the single exposure but I can't help but think that it would have been easier to achieve and possibly a superior final result through the use of ND grads. What do you think? I would be interested to read your comments!

What summer?

We should not complain really. I know that most of the UK is receiving rain but lets face it we have had a cracking spell of weather, or dare I say it, summer!

There are some advantages when it rains. It often means that I am less inclined to take my camera out into the great British summer and that I can continue to work my way through the 3000+ images left to process from my around the world trip last year.

Dom from Kidderminster recently sent me an email asking how I managed to shoot, sort and store my images whilst on the road. I decided that he was asking some valid questions so I am planning to write an article for a forthcoming 'Blog' spot so watch this space!

But in the meantime I have had the pleasure of re-living the trip through processing a selection of my images from Chile, Bolivia, China and Australia. Don't forget that you can keep an eye on my latest processed images by clicking here (don't forget to bookmark the page!).

Inevitably, there will be some folks across the UK complaining about the weather this weekend - It is what the British are famous for! But before we live up to the title of 'whinging pommes' maybe we should spare a thought for this little fellow, a Tasmanian Pademelon, who has to brave far worse weather conditions than we do through the month of August!