The roaring cascades of Fjallfoss Dynjandi waterfalls, Vestfirðir, Iceland
Getting a sense of scale of the torrents in the remote Westfjords of Iceland. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
Once you’ve got over the sense of awe that these magnificent waterfalls, far in the northern wilderness of Iceland’s Arctic Circle landscape, induce in any visitor, as a photographer you’ve got to figure out a way of illustrating the thundering vastness of this natural phenomenon. The images I’d seen of this location before coming here didn’t prepare me for how huge these falls are, since they’d failed to convey any sense of the scale of them. Luckily I had my portable scale-giving device beside me, who’s happy to work for sweets and treats and I soon had her installed in various (safe) positions around the mountainside. Hopefully this gives you an idea of how high these rocky cliffs and falls are.
To get this far north in Iceland requires a bit of a drive if you’re travelling from Reykjavík. Many of the roads away from the N1 hringvegur ringroad are unpaved which, given the extraordinary cost of car hire in Iceland, means a few days of bumpy riding in a Nissan Micra entirely unsuited to the lava desert terrain and a nervous few minutes back at the rental counter when you return it as you wait for the verdict on the damage you’ve done. The locals have huge off road vehicles with balloon tyres that wouldn’t look out of place on the surface of the moon.
Click on the images to buy them as low cost royalty free stock.
Top image: 1/250 second, f9, ISO200 24mm 10000 x 4084 pixels.
Left image: 1/250 second, f10, ISO200 70mm 4000 x 13000 pixels.
Please don’t steal these images, it’s how I make my living.
Sunburst on Lake District mountain pass
.
Sunlight flaring over the narrow winding ribbon of the Wrynose Pass, Langdale Pikes and traditional dry stone wall, Lake District National Park, Cumbria, UK. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
Despite being chock full of picturesque scenery, I find the Lake District quite hard to get great pictures in. First, of course, is the weather. I’ve been there three times already this year and have only got great light on a couple of days. It rains. A lot. Seathwaite, just on the other side of these peaks, is the wettest place in England, and you can tell from the lush pasture that this valley sees its fair share too. It can get very hazy and on a weekend the roads are almost gridlocked with daytrippers. But when the light goes in your favour, it can be the most glorious place to be. This was one of those days.
Although a common sight throughout the British Isles (and therefore almost invisible to the indigenous population), dry stone walls seem to hold a special attraction for overseas visitors who find their simple charm and construction on impossibly steep slopes fascinating. I remember reading a quote from a postcard photographer when I was younger saying ‘dry stone walls and sheep always sell well. If I could get a shot of a sheep on a wall, I’d be rich.’ I always keep an eye out for that rock climbing sheep, but I’ve not found it yet.
Click on the image to buy it as low cost royalty free stock.
1/125 second, f13, ISO200 24mm
10000 x 3679 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
Mountaineers exploring white wilderness
Climbers trekking through the crisp snowy landscape of the Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales, UK. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
Like many places on this crowded island, these mountains can be overrun with garishly coloured kit junkies and locals in flip flops up from the valleys below come a sunny summer weekend or bank holiday. But midweek in winter is a different story. The deep snow and freezing wind chill keeps all but the most committed off the high ridges – this pair were the only other people I saw on this remote ridge and I had to get my camera out in a hurry to catch them trudging through the monochrome landscape.
Later, as I often do round here, I passed the sweating army recruits in last stages of their basic training yomping over the icy cols laden with humongous rucksacks and assault rifles. The rural farm boy leaders were grinning with elation at being in front, the poor pasty urban teenagers bringing up the rear crying with exhaustion as fierce sergeants with neatly clipped moustaches bellowed in their ears. I would have taken photos but I didn’t fancy being on the receiving end of a tongue lashing myself. Plus, they were armed.
Click on the image to buy it as low cost royalty free stock.
1/125 second, f10, ISO200 20mm
6502 x 3400 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
p.s. As I don’t have a links column on this blog, I can’t easily offer readers links to other sites. So I don’t. However I’m so impressed by this guy’s efforts to dig himself out of a big (and I mean BIG) hole, that I’m going to encourage you to follow his progress. He shows a remarkable lack of self pity and a huge amount of determination couple with straight forward common sense advice. I wish him luck. Read his blog and I defy you not to be impressed with his efforts:
Snow summit sunburst, Lake District, UK
Sunlight flaring over the crisp white cornices and rocky ridges of Helvellyn, Cumbria. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
Ever since I first clambered along this famous ridge as a child with my father I’ve wanted to climb it in winter in the snow. Usually, the inclement weather of the English Lake District prevents it during the short visits I’ve made in the years since, with mist, rain, wind or (more usually) lack of snow in our globally warmed winters frustrating my efforts. But finally, this year my one day stop off on the way to Scotland coincided with fresh snowfall and a beautiful blue sky day to photograph this terrific trail. In the half size blow-up of the right hand image you can see a couple of mountaineers carefully picking their way down it – on rocky crags like this you never know whether you’re stepping onto firm ground or an ankle snapping crevice filled with soft powder. Trekking poles and long ice axes suddenly become much more useful.
In the top image under the deep blue skies you can see the distant shores of Ullswater, the fells of Martindale Common and the snowy summits of High Raise and High Street whilst the escarpment and round sides of St. Sunday Crag curve off under the bright sun. A rare wonderful weather day in a truly magnificent location.
Click on either image to buy them as low cost royalty free stock.
Top image: 1/250 second, f11, ISO200 20mm 11833 x 3000 pixels.
Right image: 1/500 second, f10, ISO200 50mm 4000 x 10000 pixels.
Please don’t steal these images, it’s how I make my living.
Sunlight in the glen, Highlands, Scotland
Rays of light illuminating the dramatic pyramidal peak of Stob Coire Raineach, Glencoe, Scotland. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
I know I’ve been remiss in posting entries recently, but in my defense I have been busy shooting images like this one in Scotland, UK and in Seville, Spain (more on that next time). Winter is also the time when I try and work through some of the huge backlog I build up over the more photogenic summer months, but I’ll never get it all done. Who knows what masterpieces lie undiscovered? Stop laughing at the back.
Anyway, I could go on once again about the necessity for patience in this job to wait for the light to favour you, but I imagine I’ve mentioned it on just about every other post so I won’t bore you with it ad infinitum other than to say I waited 5 hours – 5 HOURS IN THE RAIN – for this to happen. God, I was bored. There, I feel better now I’ve got that off my chest.
The Highland mountains always look better with a bit of snow on them I think; in the summer you can safely clamber all over them without danger of avalanche or hypothermia, but they tend to be a rather boring uniform green with odd splash of purple heather if you’re lucky. So we climb in the cold and wait. And hope. And sometimes you are rewarded with scenes of magnificent, wind-whipped beauty that make this remote landscape one of the most stunning landscapes in Europe.
Go see for yourself, but don’t say I didn’t warn you about the rain.
Click on the image to buy it as low cost royalty free stock.
1/125, f6.3, ISO200 20mm
6600 x 3232 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
View to blue
Child sat on mountain top looking over green patchwork landscape under blue panoramic skies. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
In order to balance my domestic responsibilities with the professional, I sometimes have to combine them. Luckily for me that means I get to enjoy the company of this model in some glorious and not so glorious places. When I was a child, my father dragged me over mountains despite my plainly stated desire to sit in front of the television the entire weekend and now I find the pattern repeating itself. It’s for your own good! You’ll thank me when you’re older! It can only be a matter of time before I start saying ‘when you’ve got your own house, you can do what you like’ and ‘what do you mean you don’t know what time you’ll be back?’. I guess the love of exploring seeps into your bones even if you try to resist. That’s my plan for child rearing anyway. Tonight I’m dragging them out of school to watch Barack Obama’s inauguration and last night I made them watch MLK’s I have a dream speech on YouTube as a primer. They’ll thank me when they’re older…
This landscape is also the setting for my favourite book of last year, Resistance, a beautifully written piece of prose by the poet Owen Sheer. As well as making me drag reluctant assistants up the steep escarpments of the Black Mountains, it also inspired me to schlep over to Hereford Cathedral to view the Mappa Mundi, a fantastically bonkers piece of illustrated medieval map making. You’ll have to read the book to see how that’s relevant. I heartily recommend it.
Click on the image to buy it as low cost royalty free stock.
1/125, f13, ISO200 20mm
7250 × 2810 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
Cuillin ridge, Isle of Skye, Scotland
Mountaineers climbing the dramatic rocky spires of the Black Cuillin high above the Hebridean shore of the Isle of Skye. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
I got lucky with this climb. A colleague of my brother who comes here every year at this time to tackle the iconic traverse had never seen weather this good. For sheer jagged wildness and inaccessibility there’s not much else in the British Isles to match the basalt pinnacles, stomach turning drops and plunging corries of this range. Although the peaks aren’t high, it’s still hard work and as you can see from the climber in the 1:1 inset above, the scale is pretty impressive.
This image was taken on the summit of Sgurr Alasdair, the highest point along the ridge looking east towards the blue bay of Glenbrittle (where I camped) and up the scree slopes of Sgurr Dearg to the famous clamber of The Inaccessible Pinnacle, whose name should tell you all you need to know about that big lump of fun. Beyond, all the other summits march away to their eventual end at Sligachan where the hotel bar is full of exhilarated conquerors reliving their adventures.
Click on the image to buy it as royalty free stock from just $1.
1/250, f10, ISO200 28mm
9999 x 2266 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
Mobius Arch, Alabama Hills, California
The first glint of sunrise bursting over a natural arch in the Owen’s Valley, California, USA. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
I’d got up early to take the classic shot of this eroded granite arch framing the summit of Mt. Whitney as the sunlight illuminates the rocky spires of the Sierra Nevada and had got all the usual shots like this:
Which is a great shot, but not exactly original. As I was dawdling down the gravel of Movie Road to get into position, a huge SUV roared past in the dark, pulled up at the wash out and another photographer began hauling a large amount of equipment out of his vehicle. I gave him a cheery wave and commented that it was now a race to the rather small space underneath the arch. He growled something bad temperedly about never losing and rushed off into the desert. When I got to there he was fussing with a huge amount of camera stuff and a tripod that must have weighed more than several small children (my usual unit of measurement, learned from back-breaking experience). He wasn’t very pleased to share the space and resisted all overtures at conversation, but when he realised I was taking panoramas he suddenly perked up and wanted to know all about it then proceeded to take some himself. Cheeky git.
Anyway, I got the core images then left him to his old school landscape bagging. Remembering one of my cardinal location shooting rules I climbed round to the other side and got the far more dramatic sunburst shot at the top. Always look behind you, you never know what you might be missing.
Click on the images to buy them as royalty free stock from just $1.
Top image: 1/125 second, f13, ISO200 20mm. 7000 x 2738 pixels.
Bottom image: 1/125 second, f3.3, ISO200 20mm. 3200 x 2200 pixels.
Please don’t steal these images, it’s how I make my living.
Loch island light
Crepuscular rays silhouetting the rocky peninsula of Ploc an Rubha, Wester Ross, Scotland. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
If there’s one image that exemplifies my basic photographic philosophy of ‘be there’, this is it. I’d been driving around the remote north west Highlands for a few days, climbing the odd mountain as the weather lifted then scrambling back down in white-outs as it kicked me off for my presumptuousness. My Landrover was leaking like the unrefined sieve that it is, dripping freezing rain onto my neck but I was determined to explore the rugged coastline between Gairloch and Ullapool (great Youth Hostel, friendly staff, highly recommended) when I wound round the road hugging Loch Ewe to see this wonderful sight developing out of the passenger window. I threw the cursed truck into the ditch (there’s no-one else on the road so you can stop where you like, a rare pleasure in the crowded and micro-managed UK) jumped out, got instantly soaked, jumped back in again to change lenses etc., then grabbed this shot as the sunlight illuminated the dramatic Inverewe Gardens landscape, carefully wiping the water drops from the graduated neutral density filter between sections.
Two minutes later the clouds closed in again and the heavenly light was gone. Sometimes you just need a bit of luck, but you always need to ‘be there’.
Click on the image to buy it as royalty free stock from just $1.
1/320 second, f6.3, ISO200 85mm
7374 x 2500 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
Mont Blanc La Traversée route
The snow capped domes of Mont Blanc, Europe’s highest mountain, towering over the glaciers and pinnacles above Chamonix, France. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
This is one of my favourite images from this trip; not because it’s the best, but because of the incredible amount of detail you can resolve with the latest digital cameras and good lenses. This picture show pretty much the whole of the Traversée or La Voie des 3 Monts route from the precariously balanced Cosmique refuge (how they built this huge three storey building so high and in such a remote location I cannot imagine), over the avalanche strewn snow fields above the Vallée Blanche, the ridges and folds of the massif to the summit high above.
On the high resolution version you can watch the climbers as they create zig-zag trails all the way up the mountain, dwarfed by the huge scale of the white landscape around them. The enlargement inset shows a couple of intrepid mountaineers as they thread their way between huge slabs of ice, returning from a dawn summit bid I would imagine.
It’s easy to underestimate the difficulty of climbing in such an environment on a beautiful, clear day such as this, but just a few days later several mountaineers were killed in an avalanche on these very slopes. You can read about it here. Even if you’re skilled, experienced and well equipped these high mountains can be treacherous. 20,000 climbers reach the summit of Mont Blanc by the various routes each year.
Click on the image to buy it as royalty free stock from just $1.
1/320 second, f11, ISO200 85mm
4084 x 16560 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.