Ripples, Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, 2004
I seldom rely on special effects to enhance my photographs. I prefer to keep things pretty much as I saw them. But every now and then an opportunity comes along to try a graphic technique that might help tell my story more effectively. Such is the case here. The key to this image is the flow of the ripples in the water of the Beagle Channel, a vital waterway which carried our ship from the end of Argentina into the Drake Passage and on down to Antarctica. The procession of soft horizontal ripples covers more than half the picture. The sky also seems rippled by two horizontal clouds. In between them, snow-clad mountains plunge straight down into the water. The ripples have a calming effect. To intensify the calmness of the scene, I needed to simplify an already simple picture to an even greater degree. In effect, I needed to recompose the picture by removing every superfluous element I could. To do this, I removed all color from the image in Photoshop, converting it to a black and white picture. This offered a very clean, abstract look, but it was still a bit too harsh for the point I was trying to make. I then added brown to the mix, making this photo into a duotone. Brown is a warming color and calming color. The ripples became as soft as velvet – exactly the effect I wanted. I had captured feel of the Beagle Channel as I remembered it on that evening – almost as smooth as glass. A far cry from the churning waters of the Drake Passage that lay dead ahead.
07-JAN-2004
Icebergs Everywhere, Antarctica, 2004
Composing a picture from the deck of a moving cruise ship is a difficult task. The problem is lack of compelling foreground subject matter. Most pictures made from cruise ships are flat because they lack depth perspective. There must be either a strong texture in the foreground body of water, or else there must be a progression or layering of subject matter from front to back, such as we can easily find on land. Layering subject matter provides depth, perspective, and scale contrasts. I saw the immense iceberg pictured here getting closer and closer to us as we progressed through the icy seas off the Antarctic Peninsula. Its shape reminded me of a huge sunken freighter. I realized, however, that unless I could get something else between my camera position and that iceberg, my picture would be flat, and lack perspective. Fortunately, a much smaller iceberg was also moving closer to us as we approached it, and it was much closer to the side of our ship as well. We could almost reach down and touch it. It made a perfect foreground layer, leading the viewer’s eye directly to the big iceberg, and providing a scale contrast indicating just how large that distant iceberg really is. I shot just as the reflection of the foreground iceberg appeared in the lower right hand corner of my picture. It rhythmically echoes the triangular shape of the big iceberg in the upper left hand corner, which in turn is repeated by the same shape at top center. If we drew a line connecting these three triangles, we would create still another triangle diagonally tying this image together.
27-DEC-2003
Shopping Mall, Iquique, Chile, 2003
This image places us within an improvised shopping mall comprised of very small shops in a quiet corner of one of the hottest, driest cities in the world. The Atacama Desert is just inland, and its dust coats everything in town. These merchants have raised a canopy over their street, hoping to ward off heat and dirt. This canopy gives the photo great depth perspective, as well as a flow of pattern to lead the eye where I wanted it to go. Sunlight pours through the canopy at an angle, creating a ribbon of white light down the middle of the dirt street, leading the eye deeply into the heart of the picture and stopping virtually at the feet of a woman who stands before a tour agency, probably waiting for customers. The receding row of doorways along the left side of the picture also draws us into the photo. Everything leads us to the patient woman and the signs that surround her.
21-DEC-2003
Unloading the Catch, Manta, Ecuador, 2003
Powerful abstraction and diagonal composition turns a mundane task into a heroic image. This fisherman is moving hundreds of tuna from the depths of a fishing boat to the bed of a huge truck. He does it with a hoist, a net, and a lot of strength. As he pulls on the big net, he creates a diagonal thrust moving from the lower left hand corner of the picture into his hands. The hoist behind him is tilted at the same diagonal angle, creating a rhythmic, repetitive flow of line that glues this picture together. In between, we see the shining tails of abstracted fish, giving context and meaning to the picture. But the core of the image is the man himself. My low vantage point has thrust his abstracted body against the evening sky. His bent leg echoes the diagonal lines of both net and hoist. Much is left to the imagination of the viewer. How does he feel about what he doing? What does he look like? How many fish are there? It is a photograph that asks questions and invites viewers to answer them with their own imaginations.
25-DEC-2003
Cemetery, Poncochile, Chile, 2003
"You die here, you dry here," they say in Chile’s Atacama Desert. There was not a blade of grass in Poncochile's Cemetery. It does not rain here. This the driest desert on earth. I saw this cemetery as a series of layers in space, and created the perception of depth by relating one layer to another. A wideangle perspective is essential. Using a 24mm wideangle converter lens on my camera, I anchored the shot around the boulders in the foreground. These boulders echo the shapes of the hills that rise in the background. Instead of centering the boulders in the frame, I move them off to the right, leaving a path on the right for the eye to flow into the image. The middle layer is the cemetery itself, frail wooden crosses adrift in a field of sand. The third layer is a progression of the rolling barren hills of the Atacama itself, where nothing lives – an eerie echo of the nature of the cemetery itself. All three layers interact, supporting each other to express the nature of this place. Poncochile is a small town in a very hard place, and this is where it buries its dead.
09-AUG-2002
Chukchi home, Yandrakinot, Siberia, Russia, 2002
Many photographers will automatically place their center of interest in the middle of the picture. I prefer off-center placement for most subjects because it gives the viewer a better chance to compare and contrast elements within the picture. For example, in this shot of a Chukchi house, I am trying to make the point that it must withstand some of the most severe weather on earth. Their homes have no landscaping, and can't hold a coat of paint. Yet some of the Chukchi, such those that live in this house, manage a bit of decoration by putting plants in their windows. The off-center placement of the window allows for a stronger comparison with the crumbling siding on the right.
25-APR-2003
Staircase, Melk Abbey, Austria, 2003
To me, the most amazing sight offered at the Abbey of Melk is this spiral staircase that connects its library to its church. Awestruck, I stood at the bottom, looked up at the golden spiral exploding in a burst of painted illusions, and created one of my favorite travel images. The subject itself is very disorienting, and I wanted viewers to feel its dizzying pull. However, I also wanted to make sure that the picture was organized simply and cleanly. To do this, I start the spiral on its merry way by placing it in the lower left hand corner of the frame, and letting it explode diagonally upwards and to the right, until it comes to rest under a decorative orange dome just to the right of center. Most of my pictures have a focal point, a place for the eye to go. In this shot, it's that orange dome, which also makes the point of the picture. The orange dome is much smaller than the flights of stairs that lead to it, and its relatively small size shows us how large this staircase is -- a remarkable feat of engineering for its time.
28-DEC-2002
Congress Building, Montevideo, Uruguay, 2002
Fifty different types of beautiful Uruguayan marble can be found on the walls, pillars, and benches that line Uruguay's Congress Building. Instead of trying to show all of them, I move in and simplify my image by taking a closer vantage point. I want this picture to express the beauty of these decorative embellishments and the workmanship that went into them. I contrast four different kinds of marble with each other by leading the eye into the picture at lower left, then moving into the picture along the marble railing to the black diamond -- the focal point of this image. The diamond provides a strong contrast to the three different kinds of marble that flank it.
03-MAY-2003
Cafe in the Jordaan, Amsterdam, Holland, 2003
Known as "brown cafes", Amsterdam's popular local pubs offer cozy surroundings, warm hospitality, good food, and plenty of Dutch beer. Often located in old canal houses, they are usually smoky and crowded. This one in the tranquil Jordaan neighborhood is neither -- it's a bit too early for lunch and much too late for breakfast. The boss has borrowed the bar for a temporary office. Although the boss is small and backlit, he is my focal point. I bring my wideangle lens to within inches of those glasses on the right, and sweep the eye deeply into the picture to the boss by using the entire bar as my leading line.
30-APR-2003
Evening on the canal, Amsterdam, Holland, 2003
Amsterdam's canals are lined with more than 3,000 houseboats, most of which have postal addresses and use city electricity. If this picture showed only the canal and its houseboats, the eye of the viewer would go right to the "hole in the donut" -- the water. I needed a strong focal point and had to wait a while for it. Eventually, a boat full of tourists passed under the bridge I was standing on. A guide in the front of that boat made a perfect focal point for my shot -- his body language and authority come through even though he is quite small in size. He provides a good scale contrast to the crowded banks of the canal -- the point of my picture.
26-APR-2003
Medieval carving, St. Paul's Church, Passau, Germany, 2003
I was astonished by the lifelike quality of this carving, and moved in as closely as I could to capture it in detail. The first few photos I made of it were more descriptive than interpretive. To make the image more dynamic and give it a sense of movement, I did two simple things. First, I moved back a bit to add a touch of context, and give the head a bit more room to work within the frame. Then I tilted my camera slightly, so that the carving flows diagnally from corner to corner. Diagonal flow can often add a sense of movement through the heart of an image, adding energy and vitality. That's what happens here.
29-DEC-2002
Cat of La Boca, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2002
Good luck comes to those who work at it. After shooting several hundred digital images in La Boca, a Buenos Aires waterfront neighborhood known for its colorful buildings, I was on my way back to our bus when a black cat ran in front of me and took a perfect position on a multi-colored fence in front of a multi-colored building. However, I had to do a bit more than just get the cat in the frame and take the picture. I wanted to relate the cat to its context as strongly as possible so I moved my camera position until I was able to create this double diagonal flow of energy through the picture. The line of the cat's back runs on the diagonal. And the green, blue, and orange painted structures create a diagonal series of steps through this picture as well. This little exercise in organization provided one of my favorite pictures of Buenos Aires. So much for that "Black Cat" myth.