Iceland - Moody Mountains
In-between the zillion and one things I’ve been working on the past couple of months since we’ve returned from Iceland, I’ve been doing a bit of reading and studying photographers. One of the photographers I’ve respected since I started photographing in the 1970s is Don McCullin. He’s most well known for his work photographing in conflict zones. Think places like Cyprus (Turkey vs. Greece), Vietnam, Biafra, the Congo, Beirut, and Palestine. They are not easy images. One of the first books of photographs I bought was his “Hearts of Darkness.” Another of his books I’m familiar with, the one that introduced him to me, is, “Is Anyone Taking Any Notice?”
Recently an old interview Aperture magazine did with him appeared in one of my news feeds. And then a video interview appeared on our YouTube listings. (Yes, the corporate world and their cookies spy on us in ways the Constitution is supposed to prevent the government from doing.). He’s “retired” now and pretty sure that his work didn’t really change anything for the better, unfortunately. So he now photographs the British landscape around his home and has an ongoing personal project photographing ancient Roman sites throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Don’s landscapes are moody, dark and evocative. Perhaps, he says, it’s a consequence of his career work. But he also notes that normal weather conditions are just not evocative. The conditions don’t move him. He says he definitely doesn’t photograph when the skies are clear and he will wait for days for the weather to turn bad before he pulls out his camera.
His words struck me as I was making my way through my Iceland images, looking for specific images to work on instead of doing the trip story I should be doing. At first it was two images from the same segment of the trip - our run up and back on F899 - one taken on the rainy afternoon scouting trip, and the other the next morning after the weather had passed but before the sun had risen. I converted both to black and white (Don McCullin’s work is all black and white), and they were somehow different. So I worked on them.
The first image captured that sense of cold, aloneness that we felt, far off on the peninsula with nobody immediately around.
The second image, while less foreboding, has a starkness that is present with a quality quite different than its color equivalent.
After working on those images, I started scrolling through the Iceland collection of images looking for (and better appreciating) those images that were moody. I found them throughout the trip, which isn’t surprising given the amount of “bad” weather we had during the trip. Heck, it started with our voyage from Denmark.
And continued throughout the trip. Even when “good” weather would hint at its coming, often the opposite was just as threatening. But instead of seeing these images as harsh and un-photogenic, I began to appreciate the opposite forces at play in them.
These conditions would present themselves throughout our trip, regardless of season or location. Sometimes I’d stop what I was doing and rush out to make an image (or 10). Unfortunately, all too often I didn’t.
I’ve previously posted the image below from or trip to Þakgil. Fortunately, I was smart enough to stop, turn around and pull out my camera as the fog and rain worked its way into the valley.
Other times, such as during our time at the Snaesfellsnes Peninsula, the moody weather was off in the distance.
In that instance there was no rush to get out of bad weather. That gave me the time to change focal lengths and aspect ratios to make a very different image from the same location.
Looking at these images now, I realize how many opportunities to make these types of images I must have missed during our trip. No, they’re not beautiful per se, but they can be good photographs. It’s just a matter of seeing that the conditions are right and then photographing.
I know well enough that weather, like light, can make an image. And that it’s the transitions in the weather that are often the most evocative. I just need to remember that more often when I’m out there. Remember that standing out in the cold and the wind, perhaps enduring a bit of rain, can be worth it. That’s why studying the work of others is so important. Sometimes we need a reminder.