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.
Grassland airstrip, yurt and biplane, Inner Mongolia, China
.
Panoramic view across rural airfield, windsock and yurt terminal in the vast open spaces north of Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
After the choking chimneys, coal mines and endless streams of trucks clogging the Yellow River valley, it’s a remarkable breath of fresh air when you cross the mountains into the sweeping grasslands of northern Inner Mongolia. You get a sense that the China you’d become familiar with is ending and there’s an endless prairie of sandy grass stretching over the horizon all the way to Siberia.
The yurt with its single, surly occupant, serves as simple terminal for this remote landing strip, marked by flags that flutter endlessly in the never ending wind. I presume the ancient Russian biplane brings Chinese tourists from Beijing to experience the Mongolian grasslands and stay in the rough and ready ger (as they’re called locally) holiday camp. A sort of Mongolian Butlins where the usp is you get to see the stars at night. I bet there’s still a KTV though.
Click on the image to buy it as low cost royalty free stock.
1/200 second, f9, ISO200 24mm
10000 x 3665 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, 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.
Bows and arrows of outrageous fortune
Children playing with toy bow and arrows in the forest. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
Every Wednesday I get the comic shuffle. This involves an eager seven year old dancing around my legs demanding, pleading and begging for me to buy them the latest edition of the Beano. Now to those readers outside the British Isles, this will mean nothing. My compatriots however will know exactly what I’m talking about, since there can be barely anyone who spent their childhood here, boy, girl, black, white, rich or poor who wasn’t raised reading this anarchic British institution. There are scruffy piles of them all over my house now from the bathroom to the garden and everywhere inbetween, since they are apparently sacred objects that cannot be thrown away or recycled after reading but must be stockpiled in case of an imaginary shortage of bad puns and excruciating jokes with which to torture parents.
So, you ask, what has this got to do with this picture? Well, most weeks the Beano comes with a ‘free’ gift (they put the price up when one’s sellotaped to the outside) of fantastically poor quality but whose Chinese plasticiness is irresistible to anyone under the age of 10. Fed up being menaced by the bow and arrow set on last week’s cover I decided to try to turn these toys to my advantage and set up the shot above. Not many children were harmed in the making of this picture, but large amounts of Easter egg chocolate were required as bribes.
Click on the image to buy it as low cost royalty free stock.
1/125 second, f6.3, ISO200 50mm
14440 x 3000 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:
Storm clouds over Wall Street, New York
Dark clouds gathering over the iconic skyline of Lower Manhattan and New York Harbor, New York, USA. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
A little bit late to be posting this one here, since the coming storm has developed into a typhoon of financial confusion and money chucking lunacy, but I thought I’d stick it up. This cityscape really misses the iconic towers of the World Trade Center, I’m looking forward to seeing what goes up in its stead when they’ve finished arguing about it. If anywhere needs the boost of some world class architecture it’s downtown New York right now.
Click on the image to buy it as low cost royalty free stock.
1/500 second, f5, ISO200 50mm
10763 x 3000 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
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.
Millenium Bridge, River Thames, London, UK
Vertical panorama underneath the Millenium Bridge over the River Thames from the Tate Modern to the City. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
Along the Thames in central London, now and again you can get down onto the narrow shingle shore that’s revealed when the tide’s low. There’s even a bit of sandy beach beside the South Bank, but you wouldn’t want to sunbathe there. The river is surprisingly clean these days, though because it’s a tidal estuary by the time it reaches the City it’s not exactly a stream of Evian. For centuries is was a stinking cesspool of pollution, whose proximity to those in power eventually caused them to fund the construction of a proper sewage and waste treatment network. Those holes in the road you see everywhere around the city? They’re probably working to replace this ageing Victorian network to cope with the billions of litres of effluent we flush away each day.
The slender lines and graceful struts of the Millenium Bridge were built across the river from the south bank to the City of London in 2000, only to be closed two days later because of pedestrian stomping induced resonance that gave it the nickname ‘the Wobbly Bridge’. The engineers fixed it though, and you can look at the drawings of the bridge and it’s dampening mechanisms here. You get a terrific view along it to the newly renovated facade of St. Paul’s Cathedral and if you want a higher view, sneak onto the balcony of the cafe on the upper floors of the Tate Modern behind.
Click on the image to buy it as low cost royalty free stock.
1/200 second, f11, ISO200 20mm
3256 x 6650 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
Blue dusk, golden tower riverbank Seville, Spain
The ancient battlements of the Torre del Oro overlooking the boats and banks of the Río Guadalquivir and Puente de Isabel II, Seville. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
First of all, let’s get the subject information out of the way. The 13th Century tower was built for the Almohads, Moorish rulers of most of Spain (which they called Al Andalus, leaving us with Andalusia of which Seville is the capital) to control traffic on the river. Today, the tourist cruisers ply their trade up and down the river from here and the rowing clubs sweep their sleek craft under the wrought iron arches of the Isabel II Bridge connecting El Arenal to Triana. In the distant you can see the squat form of the Edificio Torre Triana, one of the few used remnants of Expo ‘92; the site seems deserted and crumbling now, weeds taking over the pavilions and pavements.
Now that’s done we can have a look at why this is a useful stock photo. I’d be the first to admit that this image isn’t the most innovative or radical photo of Seville you could take, but that’s not really what this type of shot trying to do. Designers who buy stock want an image to do a few simple things – make their job easier and their layout look good. A useful library picture is one that tells a story to enhance the mood or message the designer is trying to get across. Here we’ve got strong colors, a tranquil ambience and an easily recognisable location if the message is about Seville. The relatively large area of empty space isn’t a bad thing for a graphic artist, it’s an opportunity to add type or graphics on an evenly colored background. Give designers a helping hand and they’ll appreciate your efforts; clip the top off a model’s head and they’ll pass your work by.
Click on the image to buy it as low cost royalty free stock.
1 second, f8, ISO200 50mm
12455 x 4000 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, 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.
The last freeminers, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire
Coal mining camp deep in the forest. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
There aren’t many advantages to being born in the Hundred of St Briavels. Although it’s a beautiful landscape full of dense woodland, steep hills and narrow damp valleys, good work is hard to find, sophisticated entertainment is thin on the ground and the rich accent is likely to provoke affection but not intellectual respect. However, if you’re a man and you’ve worked underground for a year and a day, you earn the right to become a freeminer yourself, choosing a gale where you think you might strike lucky after grovelling to the forest Deputy Gaveller, your new semi-feudal overlord, who will collect a slice of your earnings for payment to the Queen just as they have done for the past 700 years.
Unfortunately this historic tradition is dying out, not because of lack of coal – there’s plenty of seams still to be exploited under the green canopies – but because the health authority closed the last maternity ward within the boundaries of the forest. No more local-born men, no more freeminers.
Click on the image to buy it as low cost royalty free stock.
1/125, f4, ISO200 28mm
7426 x 3034 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
Lights of LA
Rivers of moving light snaking though city block after city block as this Californian mega-city sprawls off to the distant horizon. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
Ah, LA… the glamour, the gossip, parties and film premieres, pop stars, exclusive boutiques and Playboy Mansion™. I, of course, see none of this. No it’s cheap motels and fast food for me, since all costs come out of my bottom line. However, there is a certain energy, an undeniable, unstoppable momentum to the place that’s infectious. All human life is here, from suburban soccer moms to sparkling starlets with chihuahuas, angry young men on corners to blissed out baby boomers dawdling in convertibles down the palm fringed avenues. You can see it all from up here, as the never ending atoms of humanity jostle and joust as far as the eye can see. It’s not a late night town though – most of them will be home by eleven, ready to wrestle with the American dream for a new chance on a new day.
Click on the image to buy it as royalty free stock from just $1.
15 seconds, f16, ISO200 85mm
9995 x 1694 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
Light and shadows in the museum, Berlin
Sunlight reflecting off the marble floor of the Neue Nationalgalerie in the Kulturforum, Berlin. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
Although this glass walled atrium is ‘only’ the lobby of Berlin’s gallery of modern art it’s easily the most impressive space in the complex, if not in the whole of the Kulturforum, cultural epicentre of Germany’s renewed capital city. Mies van der Rohe created a dramatic yet simple layer that’s full of still light perfectly setting the scene for the world class collection underneath. They keep the glass nice and clean too – the window cleaners do a typically German high quality job.
I really like Berlin, but it took me a couple of days to realise what it was that made it feel a bit different from other European capitals. There’s just not that many people around. Without exception, Euro capitals are bustling, noisy, crowded places; try taking more that three steps in a straight line down Oxford Street or the Avenue des Champs-Élysées without getting bumped into. Sure, you see crowds occasionally, it’s not a ghost town. I was there during the European Cup and it was decidedly punchy on the U-Bahn and riotously exuberant around Zoo Station after Germany beat Turkey in the semi-finals. But there’s a strange tranquility to this city when you’re used to bumper to bumper traffic and teeming masses of humanity. Take this image, looking over the Sony Centre in Potsdamer Platz, the modern business district beside the Tiergarten:
This aerial panorama was shot at 2 o’clock in the afternoon (not the ideal time for a great shot, I’ll admit, but if I’m working, I’m working, if you know what I mean). That’s a three lane highway right in the centre of a capital city – with no cars on it! Where is everybody? Gives you a good idea of the scale of the leafy oasis that is the Tiergarten too, the peaceful green lungs of the city.
Click on the images to buy them as low cost royalty free stock.
Top image: 1/125, f5, ISO200 20mm 6658 × 3000 pixels.
Bottom image: 1/125, f16, ISO200 50mm 9999 x 4206 pixels.
Please don’t steal these images, it’s how I make my living.
Sunlight on the chateau, France
Warm, late afternoon sunlight illuminating the baroque splendour of the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte. Image © fotoVoyager 2009.
A miserable day when I arrived, this shot illustrates the virtue of waiting, watching the clouds and knowing that sometimes the sun will just peek out below them before setting over the horizon. Two minutes later, all was overcast gloom once more.
Although the light makes this image ‘pop’, the building itself is magnificent enough in the flesh to warrant a visit whatever the weather. So magnificent, so lavish and imposing in fact that King Louis XIV’s nose was well and truly put out of joint by his finance minister Nicolas Fouquet’s flash new pad. He had him arrested on trumped up charges, thrown in jail for life and grabbed it for himself. Now that’s how to show who’s the daddy. He then proceeded to further this game of aristocratic one-upmanship by instructing the original design team of Fouqet’s chateau to create something bigger, better, blingier. They built him Versailles.
Click on the image to buy it as low cost royalty free stock.
1/125, f5.6, ISO200 28mm
7929 × 2964 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.
Sunset over Skomer Island, Pembrokeshire, Wales
The orange light of the setting sun illuminating the ocean cloudscape above Skomer Island off the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales, UK. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
As usual, this beautiful, tranquil scene of calming, zen-like nature at its most spectacular belies the frantic truth of its taking. Late, weighed down by equipment and having to bribe, cajole and keep a close eye on my companion to make sure she didn’t fall off the steep cliffs of this rugged coastline (more on her in the next post), I just managed to get set up as the sun dipped below the cloud layer, washing the surf and shore in a warm glow of golden light. Phew. Here, have a biscuit. Don’t go to close the edge! No, I won’t be long, I promise. Yes, you can watch television when we get back. Here, take my coat if you’re cold… NOT NOW! If you’ve got kids you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Skomer Island, a dramatic rocky outcrop separated from the mainland by Jack Sound, a thrashing race of treacherous water full of ship wrecks and seals, is a bird spotter’s paradise with Puffins, Shearwaters and Kittiwakes nesting on its remote cliffs. You can catch a boat from Martin’s Haven and roam over the unspoilt landscape looking for wildlife and signs of its prehistoric inhabitants. Just don’t miss the last boat back.
Click on the image to buy it as low cost royalty free stock.
1/125, f6.7, ISO200 28mm
7500 × 2312 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
Vivid red poppy field panorama
Bright red field of wild poppies filling a rolling hillside with spring colour. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
In the summer I like to wander round my local Cotswold landscape on my bike ostensibly searching for locations and images but actually pretending I’m in a Tour de France breakaway leaving the peloton in my dust. Despite the occasional surges of self-righteous fury as I pass through another village of agricultural workers’ cottages transformed into twee hamlets of shiny Range Rovers and golden retrievers by affluent Londoners searching for some rural idyll that never existed I periodically come across a serendipitous vista that justifies carrying a big camera bag that ruins my svelte, slip streamed profile.
Usually a wide meadow of lush green pasture, this hillside had been transformed into a blaze of riotous colour as these delicate Corn Poppies (Papaver rhoeas) filled this flowering field from hedgerow to hedgerow. Since this species creates a long term soil seed bank that is activated when the ground is disturbed, the farmer must have ploughed the field the year before to allow these beautiful blooms to germinate. As I was shooting, an old local told me that she hadn’t seen this field blossom in this way for twenty years. The next year I returned to this location on the off chance that it had happened again and found the same field filled with a completely different wild flower, ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare):
Just as beautiful and just as temporary. I wonder what will grow there this year…
Click on the images to buy them as low cost royalty free stock.
Top image: 1/160, f11, ISO200 20mm 9869 × 1982 pixels.
Bottom image: 1/160, f16 ISO200 20mm 9999 x 4140 pixels.
Please don’t steal these images, it’s how I make my living.
Plaza de Toros de las Ventas, Madrid, Spain
Storm clouds and sunlight over the ornate arcades of Las Ventas bullring in the Salamanca district of Madrid, Spain. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
Like so many Spanish and Latin American bullrings, Espeliú’s Las Ventas is a riot of geometric brickwork, tiles, horseshoe arcades and Islamic moorish influences in the Neo-Mudéjar style. Sitting in a fairly unprepossessing neighbourhood, the striking arches and wonderfully colourful illustrated fight posters that are hung around the outside make a visit very enticing even if you don’t quite have a native’s strong stomach for traditional blood sports. Next time I’m there on a Sunday, I’m going; Hemingway’s got nothing on me.
Click on the image to buy it as low cost royalty free stock.
1/125, f9, ISO200 20mm
6300 × 2684 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
Empire cloudscape, New York
White cumulus cloud in deep blue skies speared by the antenna array of the Empire State Building in Midtown Manhattan, New York. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
Waiting, waiting, waiting. That’s what you do if you want the shot. The sun to come out, the rain to clear, the Australian tourist to get of the way. Or the cloud you can see coming to drift slowly, oh so very slowly, into position front and centre over the needle of the most iconic building in the Americas. Great stuff, well worth 20 minutes jostling to keep position. One of the most spectacular views in any city, anywhere on the globe.
Ever wondered why the really big skyscrapers are crowded around Midtown and then don’t rise up again until the Financial district? Me neither until the disparity was pointed out to me by one of my friends, then you wonder why, so I looked into it. Unsurprisingly (and reassuringly if you’re stood on the top of one like this) skyscrapers need to be built on solid bedrock and the three types of strata that make up Manhattan island take a big dip somewhere around 42nd Street and don’t come up for air until Washington Square and the glacial rubble that makes up the surface between these areas isn’t solid enough to raise these cathedrals to commerce. The bedrock can be seen in a few places, including this eruption of Manhattan Schist in Central Park:
It was only when I was researching the geology of New York (when I say ‘researching’ like I know what I’m doing, I of course mean noodling through Wikipedia during my morning coffee break) that I realised I had a shot that illustrated the story so well. How fortuitous. Anyway for those of you with longer attention spans, there’s much more about this subject here.
Click on the images to buy them as royalty free stock from just $1.
Top: 1/160, f8, ISO200 20mm 5500 x 3067 pixels.
Bottom: 1/125, f6.3 28mm 9999 x 3315 pixels.
Please don’t steal these images, it’s how I make my living.
Blackpool Tower, Lancashire, UK
Boy racing horse drawn chariot across the beach in front of Blackpool Tower, Lancashire, UK. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
Despite the rain, the chip bag strewn pavements and the frankly worrying amount of rust visible when you get to the top of the Tower, there’s an undeniable charm to this windswept resort on the Irish Sea. Beneath the stocky iron lattice is the Tower Ballroom where you can escape from inclement weather to sip tea and eat home made cake served by waitresses in Edwardian aprons whilst you watch (mostly) elderly couples glide across the 14,000 square foot dance floor with a grace few half their age could muster. It’s a slightly surreal but relaxing way to spend an afternoon.
You would never guess the vast ornate, gilded interior that hides behind the typical English seafront of cheap cafes, amusement arcades and sticky-floored bars. Through the ballroom stage with its soft focus Italianate trompe l’oeil backdrop rises an ice cream Wurlitzer played by a spangle-jacketed organist smiling over his shoulder, whom you could just about mistake for Liberace if you squint. Fantastic. I also enjoyed the clattery ghost train in the nearby arcade but took fright at the thought of spending the night in the Tower Lounge with 1400 stag and hen party revellers. That’s 50 gallons of vomit on the pavement at 2am guaranteed. But the Lounge isn’t the biggest venue by far; the Syndicate behind the Winter Gardens holds 5000. You’d never find your mates again after you’d fought your way to the bathroom.
Click on the image to buy it as royalty free stock from just $1.
1/250, f4.8, ISO200 28mm
1894 × 2997 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
Morning in America
Dawn of a new day as the early morning sun illuminates the white wooden porch of a traditional style suburban home. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
And we’re back, just in time for the Xmas break. After spending a couple of weeks travelling around Florida scouting for locations and shooting in the sunshine I’ve renewed my affection for the States and the political journey it’s taking. This presidential transition period is an appropriate time to re-appropriate Ronald Reagan’s influential 1984 slogan and it fits this image perfectly. Very few societies can produce these inspiring leaders that not only captivate their own electorates but countries and people around the world. Just when outsiders were beginning to feel the beacon of hope that America has been for many was dimming, the voters of this complex and vigourous nation have relit it brighter than ever. Good on ‘ya. It really is ‘Morning in America’ once again.
Click on the image to buy it as royalty free stock from just $1.
1/125, f10, ISO200 28mm
12894 x 3000 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
Glasonbury Tor, Somerset, UK
The roofless ruins of St. Michael’s Tower on top of Glastonbury Tor overlooking the Somerset Levels and Glastonbury. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
This distinctive local landmark is all that remains of the medieval St. Michael’s Church, the rest destroyed during Henry VIII’s smashing of the Catholic church’s grip on power in 16th Century England. He also had the last Abbot of the town’s Abbey, Richard Whiting, gorily executed on the summit. Here, as for centuries past, cattle graze the steep conical slopes munching their way around the terraced hillside. Before the boggy marshes of the surrounding Somerset Levels were drained the Tor would have been an valuable island of pasture rising high out of the wetlands. If sea levels continue to rise, it could be again.
From the summit you get a terrific view over the surrounding landscape and as the Mendips rear up on the horizon if you look carefully you can see the dramatic slash of Cheddar Gorge cut into the escarpment. Glastonbury itself attracts huge numbers of fruit-loops from around the world to cuddle crystals and charge their chakras. You can’t walk along the street without being run over by a rainbow jumper wearing vegan. It’s worse than Stroud. There’s some kind of concert thing on nearby too I think, but no-one seemed to know anything about it.
Click on the image to buy it as royalty free stock from just $1.
1/125, f6.7, ISO200 20mm
7200 x 2584 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.
I’m off on location for the next 10 days, so unless international data roaming charges on the iPhone are miraculously lowered to realistic levels there will now follow a short hiatus.
Gondola workshop, Venice, Italy
The traditional squero of the Domenico Tramontin e Figli boat builders in the Dorsoduro district of Venice. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
Often called the Squero di San Trovaso after the white marble church with leaning campanile behind it, this working boatyard has become a tourist attraction in its own right. One of just three left in Venice, this family company still manufactures and repairs gondolas and other wooden boats in the same way as they have since 1884. As every guide book will tell you, the wooden Alpine chalet style decorations are indicative of the original craftsmen’s Dolomite roots (there were few carpenters in Venice – no trees, see?) though Domenico Tramontin learnt his trade at the Squero Casal dei Servi in Cannaregio, now home to the Arzaná society dedicated to the preservation of local nautical history and customs.
From across the Rio della San Trovaso you can watch these skilled men (women? Doing a traditional job in a family firm? This is Italy, you’ll be lucky) patiently maintaining and re-caulking gondolas. Presumably they need a regular 5000 nautical mile service. It looks like steady and satisfying work; there’s not many 21st Century jobs where you can watch the fruit of your labours bob past and say ‘I made that’. Need a new gondola? Yours for €20,000 – a snip for the 45 days of craftsmanship that goes into making one I’d say.
Click on the image to buy it as royalty free stock from just $1.
1/125, f13, ISO200 28mm
9999 x 3337 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.