I learned many things during our Laos trip and one of them was to really appreciate gorgeous mountains. As every reader knows by now I tend to go on (and on) about wide open dimensionless desolate flat spaces. But driving around the incredible gorgeous mountains of East Laos blew my mind. Everywhere, absolutely everywhere my eyes darted, majestic mountainscapes were present. Another added bonus of mountains and the air in these altitudes were the incredibly blue sky and simply stunning cloudscapes masterly painted onto the big big sky.
The mountains pose a challenge though, finding somewhere to shoot! Driving on a small path in a 4WD, most of the time there are bushes, trees and all sorts of stuff in front. To get a clear shot requires testing gravity or towing a really tall ladder! Or just the patience to wait for a spot to pull over where the view is unimpeded. One afternoon as the sun was low and setting we were treated to some ethereal rays of lights shining through the clouds and I created this image:
This is just a single image slightly cropped. There was not always time to setup tripod and shoot stitched panos etc. The important lesson here is take what you can get. I have warmed the colours some, in the original it has a more cold cast to it but I feel perfectly fine about altering the look of a scene like this. I am attempting to create art, this is not a documentary nor photojournalism. I was able to capture the dynamic range in one raw file and then worked the image in Lightroom and Photoshop to bring out the deep in shade foreground slight and warm the colours. What do you think of the result?
Quick, have a look at this image, do not look at my post title. Where would you guess this image was captured? Oh bugger, I put the country in the image title as well. But, would you ever guess this was Laos and not outback Australia or Namibia? Also reminds me of some images from Chile I have seen.
Driving around the town of Phonsavan in Laos for about half an hour we suddenly find us in this amazing arid area completely covered in deep orange coloured dust. I mean covered. Every hut was orange, every tree was orange. The clouds were magnificent and it all added up to a classic (cliché?) me shot – outback dusty road, this time in Laos! I will do a book on Wide Open Spaces someday when I have enough material, I cannot get enough of these dimensionless magic open spaces!
This image is 7 or 8 images stitched in PTgui. Composition is extremely important to me and I sometimes struggle with it in stitched panoramas. Simply because one cannot see the end result in the viewfinder. But here I feel I came reasonably close to achieving that envisioned. I want a composition where the road runs into infinity, where the viewpoint is low, where all leading lines start at the corners and pull you into the image, where the sky itself is also leading lines pulling you into the magic (getting carried away here). Only thing I am unhappy with is the lower right corner, that curved line is from stitching with a very wide view. Should be straighter. I always shoot a single image 17mm wide angle shot as well in case I do not like my stitched composition. I have often thrown away the stitch and gone for the single image as composition is king for me. There’s a big difference between a good photo and a detailed photo. Stitch may have more details, but it may not be the better image.
If possible, I always have to get myself a road / driving shot. It says movement to me, travel, new opportunities, new horizon. This orange dusty outback road in Laos is already one of my favourite road to infinity images!
A book on My Wide Open Spaces – would you be interested?
“I’ve…seen things you people wouldn’t believe”. Classic line, classic movie. And when you stand on the balcony of your friend’s flat on the 21nd floor and look out over Bangkok I instantly think about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – better known as Blade Runner. All that is missing is Vangelis brilliant soundtrack and some rain.
“If only you could see what I have seen with your eyes!”. Well you can or at least you can see what my camera saw! This is a 9 image stitch at roughly 35mm, shot on my 17-40mm L lens. Stitched perfectly on PTgui and the detail in the original is amazing. I still need to work a bit on the sky before printing, it is so hazy here that the city lights up the haze and create banding. Adding noise actually helps defeat banding when printing. Oh, and in this blog version I could not resist adding in a few flying Blade Runner “spinners” via some crude Photoshop work!
Bangkok defies description. Houses more people than all of Denmark. And when you walk the street it seems they are all on the same sidewalk as you. It is awful. And awfully fascinating for a day or two as everything reminds me of Blade Runner. Much too big for me though. Much too big for it’s own good, traffic can be impossible. So loud. So noisy. Then again, I endure cities, I love them not. I love nature. Cities are an evil necessity. Mother Nature will get revenge someday I hope!
“The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long”
“All these moments. Lost. In time. Like Tears. In the rain!”
Clichéd title. Probably even used it before. No matter! My writing will not make me rich and famous anyway, might as well recycle my own clichés! Anyway to become a cliché it has to be extremely good. Or popular. Wish I could become a cliché!
This particular Field of Dreams is a rice field in the mountains of East Laos, driving towards the village of Nonghat close to the Vietnam border. After one day in the capital Vientiane – awful touristy place, more on that later, whoever rebuilt this city ruined it – we flew to the remote town of Phonsavan and met our car, driver and guide. We drive up the mountains on curvy small roads snaking their way through gorgeous landscapes and charming villages with nothing but wooden huts, smiling villagers and simple country living. I never want to leave. As the sun starts setting and golden hour is upon us we start scouting for a nice location. Being me I want a big wide open space, not easy to find in mountains. But suddenly this beautiful flat dry brown rice field appears as if someone heard my request. Perfect timing, perfect location. Perfect colours as the dry orange rice crops really pick up the colour of the setting sun. Perfect moment that I captured this way:
You are not really supposed to walk off road or off path. Laos is still home to so many unexploded bombs dropped by USA during the Vietnam war. US Airforce used Laos as a garbage bin, you don’t want to land with bombs on your plane so if the pilots had any leftovers returning from raids in Vietnam, it was dumped unexploded on Laos before returning to base. Thanks USA! So any step off track could be your last. Here, it is a rice field though so plenty of footsteps before me and I was careful to only walk on the paths.
This is a stitched panorama of 7 or 8 images, developed in Lightroom and stitched in PTgui. Images like these are easy. Nature is the artist. I merely composed, shot stitched, colour balanced and also painted a bit with light to enhance the hut. But Mother Nature is the artist here, love her to bits!
Field of Dreams in Laos was truly beautiful. Stay tuned for the sequels, Solitary Tree in Laos and Outback Road in Laos. I warned you I am a cliché!
I have just returned to my home in Chiang Mai, Thailand after some mindblowing days in Laos. Most of the time was spent in remote hmong hilltribe villages in absolutely drop dead stunning mountain landscapes in the Xieng Khoung province. Driving through these mountains in a 4WD through stunning mountainscapes and then visiting villages so remote the kids had never met a "white fella” before. The joy, innocence, strength and laughter from these kids were moving and inspirational and hard to stop smiling and laughing. Naturally, the camera and watching themselves on the lcd screen caused a lot of stunned laughs from the kids!
I am nursing a hilltribe cold (warm in the day but at night in these mountains in a guesthouse with no heating and no windows – COLD!) so more to come later, more stories and many more images. Here’s one of the hmong tribe boys who instantly took to the camera, he tried to pose and appear in every shot:
I am off to Bangkok today and tomorrow into Laos for an exciting 4 day expedition. Should hopefully have some interesting images to show you as I get back online in a week or so, see you then!
By far the easiest and funniest way to get around Bangkok from the Ramkanphaeng area is using the canal boats. Full throttle pedal to the medal they get you up and down the canal in no time! The boats run at great speed and as they pass each other up and down the canal remember to pull the cord to raise the blue striped plastic cover on the side of the boat – or you may find yourself soaked by a big wave. To keep the speed up the boats stop for just 3-4 seconds and hardly even stand still at every stop. You have to be quick and agile to jump on and off quickly and hopefully avoid a swim in the canal! The canal boats also offer an interesting very different view of Bangkok and the suburbs.
The boats are staffed by these incredibly skilled ‘Ticketeers’ (my word for lack of a better one). Wearing helmets they run and jump around the boat in perfect balance, collecting money, handing out tickets and helping people on and off in the 3-4 seconds where the boat lies reasonably still at the stops. They are a great fun to watch, I am a big Ticketeer fan!
Ending with another street scene from where I lived. Notice the power lines, how they ever get these to work is mind boggling!
When they actually have to repair these it is incredibly they ever find the right power line. Also; watch for hanging live wires – could give you a bit more energy than you would like!
Randomness
I am now based in Chiang Mai, have my flat and an outstanding 10th floor view from my balcony overlooking Chiang Mai and all the way to the hills where the sun rises every morning and the weather is perfect.
This means I am sorta taking it slowly, finding my feet, will be a bit before I get to landscapes (this is probably hardest on myself as I have little patience!) so for now it is just my average travel photography I post. Last 4 months = hectic. So my balcony is presently my favourite place in the world I must admit.
Nomad. Basically means either a pastoral nomad, moving his herd every day in search of food, or a hunter gatherer nomad moving with the wildlife. Bruce Chatwin was forever fascinated by nomadic life and once spent years and years writing a book about his own thesis on ‘the nomadic alternative’. This brick of a book was according to his publisher almost unreadable and Chatwin ended up instead traveling Patagonia and writing ‘In Patagonia’. The rest is history.
I have spent the past 4 months attempting to realise my own Nomadic Alternative. On Monday the 23rd of November dreams become reality as I board my plane to freely travel the world, photograph, experience, write and live! New life. The road is the home. Nomadic Alternative.
I now own basically what I can carry. Well, carry with some help as there is an awful lot of camera gear, laptop, books and clothes. Still, my life and possessions is reduced to a mobile state and I have no home but the world, the road. Nomadic alternative. These are truly exciting times! Complete freedom and total liberation! I do know how lucky people consider me to be and I will live up to it. But I have basically created this situation myself and I believe everyone can do this or parts of this. Most of what tie us down are in our minds!
While I do call it my Nomadic Alternative, like Bruce Chatwin would say, that is a truth and a half. Chatwin liked to say he was travelling with just a notebook and a backpack. In reality he carried a whole home with him, including a ton of books. In reality I will be jumping from base to base as a place to sleep is always quite nice! My first base will be with friends in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. A dear friend from Copenhagen will also join me in Chiang Mai and together we will explore Asia for the next 4 months. Thailand, Malaysia, Borneo, perhaps Burma, Laos and a little gday to Australia as well could be on the menu. No plans, except to live! photograph, experience, travel and be free, free!
“Not all those who wander are lost.” – Tolkien
"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun." -Chris McCandless
The road is home
Let us conclude with the road, in this case a lovely red dirt road from Karijini, Australia. Red and blue dawn at it’s finest. Into the Wild.
Apologies for not blogging much lately, battling fatigue, a cold and a headache after pushing myself a bit too much changing my life completely. So I will let a lovely African image speak for itself today. Gorgeous Springboks in front of a huge wall of sand at Namib Naukluft National Park in Namibia. Springboks and antelopes are an absolute joy to watch as they playfully run and jump around the plains of Namibia simply toying with gravity.
This image originally had another crop where a sliver of sky was visible. Turned out on second thought that this actually hurt the image, it is much more open and expansive with just the wall of sand and no sky visible. This way there are no borders to the sand. The art of cropping, possibly the most dramatic improvement you can do to your images is a perfect crop in my opinion. The art of cropping – will be the subject of a longer article sometime soon.
Recently I finally found some time to get creative with video editing, something I have wanted to do for a very long time. The result of my video editing baby steps is just a very basic little movie of the absolutely gorgeous pristine coastline of James Price Point, Western Australia. Edited entirely in iMovie from a Canon 5D Mk II recording and featuring a few of my landscapes from James Price Point and the wonderful music of James Newton Howard from Blood Diamond soundtrack; this is Images of James Price Point:
I use Vimeo.com for hosting videos although I feel out of place as Vimeo has so many extremely talented videomakers uploading absolutely magical videos. Have a look at my ‘likes’ on Vimeo and you shall see some amazing stunning work by people like Tom @ Timescapes and Mike Fletcher.
The first of my video editing attempts but definitely not the last. Now that I have experienced how much fun video shooting and editing is I wish I had shot a lot more on my previous trip and will surely shoot a lot on upcoming adventures!
Shooting video with the Canon 5D Mk II
Finally; I want to share some of my experience with shooting video on the Canon 5D Mk II on an actual production. During a corporate shoot in Malaysia and on Borneo in June 09 with Michael Rastrup from Danish Tv2 and Georg from Livingfilms.com we used my 5D Mk II quite a bit for the video as it soon became apparent the quality blew the JVC proHD camera away. Here’s a few of my experiences:
It is fun! It is an incredible amount of fun to be a still photographer and suddenly finding yourself shooting video on your still camera! I loved it!
Can’t do both simultaneously. Video shooting is incredibly time consuming and it is hard to try and do landscape photography at the same time.
The firmware allowing complete manual control of video shooting had just been released and I installed it on day 2 of shooting. It is absolutely essential, giving you complete control of exposure and aperture during video shooting.
Mounted on a great Sachtler tripod with a fluid head you forget it’s a still camera. The 5D Mk II becomes a video camera – but a good video tripod is essential for any sort of shooting and panning. The 5D is really terrible to handhold while shooting video, impossible to keep steady.
We were a bit perplexed at first trying to get footage from the 5D to co-exist in Final Cut with footage from the JVC. The 5D footage kept skipping. 5D shoots at 30 frames, cannot be changed, JVC shoots at 25 or 50 frames. We ended up using MPEG streamclip to convert all 5D footage to 25 frames and that solved the problem. There are rumours of an upcoming firmware for the 5D allowing us to shoot at 24 and 25fps also – highly needed!
Internal microphone is useless and the mini-jack microphone line input probably not a lot better. You really need a separate recorder I think. We actually recorded the audio on the JVC as that had XLR inputs and a headphone monitoring option, essential.
Shallow DOF created by 35mm sensor and shooting at f/4.0 is amazing on video! We shot some awesome close ups and over the shoulder shots.
High iso rocks! We shot indoors in offices, blinds closed, just a tiny spotlight and got beautiful results.
Shooting video eats the battery quickly as is to be expected and I only had one battery, this was back when Canon could not produce batteries. Re-charging at every chance possible was essential.
I can’t show the footage so you will just have to take my word for it – video on a 5D shot at 17mm from the back of a jeep driving through a palm plantation looks mindblowing! 17mm looks amazing on video as well as stills.
Oh one final tip, mostly for myself, try not to walk into tripod while you shoot (something I did several times)!
