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.

Karijini Red and Blue Dawn
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

If you know some great photography locations in Thailand – and Asia – I would love to hear about them! See you on the road.

I once spent a LOT of time customizing the css for my blog so the layout and look would match my main web page. Turns out it matched so well it confused absolutely everyone and no one could tell if they were on my blog or my web page. So I am testing out some new WordPress themes at the moment, which is why you will see the design change quite a bit here as I try and land on something I like. Apologies for the mess while we re-decorate the entire place

My main webpage and gallery is of course at www.FlemmingBoJensen.com

New “real” blog post coming soon, stay tuned.

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.

Springboks in the dunes
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

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:

Images of James Price Point, click to see larger on Vimeo

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)!

Perhaps inspired by my recent CAKE09 tale from Marble Bar, perhaps the reason is something else entirely (really who needs a reason to promote the hottest town in Australia!) – Western Australian photographers David Bettini and Merv French have declared this Wednesday Marble Bar promotion day and asked me to join in the fun! Fellow CAKE09 members and Australia photographers Casey Smith and Rod Thomas are also part of our Marble Bar is Hot day! So step inside, kick back and enjoy Marble Bar in Western Australia. I even dug up a few old slides (yes I have been to Marble Bar twice!) for this special day.

First; the whole town in a big old wide panorama shot from the town water tower:

And another water tower image, this time overlooking the hills surrounding the mines:

What it’s all about – the marble! Actually it is not Marble. They thought it was. So they named the town Marble Bar after the Marble that was actually jasper. Oh well, just another entry on the very long list of Things with Wrong Names in Australia. Here’s the jasper in Jasper Bar from an old slide:

Get up early out of your swag and you may catch a sunrise even in the caravan park!

Marble Bar is surrounded by many beautiful dirt roads and outback landscapes:

And many other tourists enjoying the heat and dirt in this old slide:

But venture a bit out of town on the dirt roads and this is where the real magic begins! Red dirt road to infinity on the Boreline Dirt Road:

Travelling the Boreline Dirt Road to infinity
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

And with a bit of luck your stay at Marble Bar could include you catching the red Pilbara rocks under a huge outback dramatic cloudscape!

Pilbara Outback Magic
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

Marble Bar is HOT!

Fellow photographers promoting Marble Bar today:

Merv French

David Bettini

Rod Thomas

Casey Smith

It is time for another travel story from the CAKE adventures of Rod Thomas, Casey Smith and yours truly.

“There is no caravan park?” says Casey. So begins our stay in Marble Bar and the long overdue follow up to Cake Crew meets Camel Man. We have driven through the entire outback Western Australia mining town of Marble Bar. Took a few seconds. Met about 2 other people. Saw no caravan park. Will we be bush camping tonight under the Marble Bar sky as seen on the right?

“There must be one, there is one, I know there is” I say. “Let’s ask at the tele office we jus passed”. A nice woman at the combined tourist info / tele / internet office informs us that the gone walkabout caravan park is simply down the next street on the right. “Thanks” we smile wondering how we missed that!

The office is a jack of all trades. Three young kids play incredibly violent games on the computers. Info Woman no. 2 sits smiling in the back. Photos on the wall tells the story of the mining town of Marble Bar, one of the hottest places in Australia! They set a world record with 167 days straight with 40+ degrees. A fact they are awfully proud of here. Understandable. You must pick your angle to lure the tourists. Here it’s the heat! A photo shows a large outdoor display at the town playground showing a temperature of 50 degrees. Not a living soul anywhere in the shot. I use the toilet. Casey uses the internet.

“Do you know a good place to shoot the sunset” we ask info woman. “Ooooooh you mean photography” she excitedly asks us and proceeds “you should ask Steve! He’s an amateur photographer! He is REALLY good! He’s just down at the garage’”. “Eh thanks" we excuse ourselves finding it hard not to smile. Now Steve, you may well be the Ansel Adams of the Pilbara region, it just came out so funny! Regrettably we head straight for the caravan park, laughing, and do not stop by Steve.

Caravan Park is remarkably easy to find. When you know where to look. The sign at the intersection has fallen down, the reason we missed it completely. No one is home until the manager opens the shop for us. First visitors today, 3.15pm. Not peak season. 20 bucks for an unpowered site later and we have the whole park to choose from as there are about 2 other visitors here. So we might as well park almost in the kitchen area (in the process borrowing a bit of power for the fridge)!

Having picked our spot we are off to shoot some Marble Bar sunset images! Here’s where we should have asked Steve. We cruise to Chinaman’s Pool. Sun is behind it. Would work in the morning. Casey wants to stay so Rodney and I steer the troopie down a dirt road looking for wide open spaces. A lot of hills and a few mines later and no gorgeous wide open Pilbara outback landscapes and turning back suddenly sounds like a great idea! Back to Marble Bar and “let’s drive up to the town water tower”. Yeah. Well. Steve isn’t here. A telltale sign this is not the best spot. Just to shoot something, I shoot this ordinary view of the Pilbara outback late afternoon:

But wait! The watertower also offers a magnificent view of the whole town including the caravan park. So here it is, just what tourism in Marble Bar needs – a bloody big wide panorama of the whole town!

A stunner I am sure you agree! Try and find the caravan park!

Having done the water tower we pick up Casey and head for camp and dinner. We are here for one night so do not bother with the tents. It is the hottest place in Australia anyway. Well, not at night in June it is not. Gets a bit chilly as seen here in Rodney’s shot of  Casey and I parading around the kitchen area on a very cold morning in a very busy caravan park!

This is just after Rodney and I attempted to shoot a sunrise that never really happened. The cloud image in the beginning of this blot post is the result. I did however secure a 20 cm long scar on my thigh as I almost but not quite successfully jumped a barbed wire fence holding camera and tripod!

On the way out we stop at Chinaman’s Pool and I shoot…nothing. Rodney captures a gorgeous panorama of the Chinaman’s Pool, a shot I did not see at all. I was busy anyway with being 5 years old having fun jumping around jasper rocks like a mountain goat.

And so it ends, our short but eventful stay in Marble Bar. Now I may attempt sarcastic humour but I actually love these quirky small outback towns. Plenty of experience and characters you will not find anywhere else. Beautiful country and extremely nice outback folks and I always love places where you can be as weird and crazy as you like!

Next stop Karijini National Park.  I have already presented images here and here, more stories to come as CAKE Crew Conquers Karajini!

Karijini National Park in the beautiful Pilbara region of Western Australia is home to incredible landscapes and gorgeous gorges’ (trying to be funny here!) that are some of the most photographed sites in Western Australia. The gorges of Karijini are incredible, beautiful and tremendous fun to climb around in but for photography I am going against the grain and prefer the topside. The gorges are cramped, walled in, claustrophobic and below the horizon. Not my style, not my love. I seek dimensionless wide open spaces with a huge sky where I can dream myself into a magical universe with no limits! So here is a slice of Karijini but not quite as most would know it!

A little short on time again; I shall let the images say whatever they have to say this week and just present a slideshow of three topside images from Karijini:

Mt Vigors Sunset
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

Taking in a magical sunset after hiking through the bush and then a great 1 kilometre climb to the top of Mount Vigors with great Phil from RemTrek: highly recommended.  The view from up here is extraordinary offering a stunning 360 unimpeded view of Karijini. We got great clouds and light on this day and I was high on the whole climb up and down and during the shooting. Magical experience. The climb down and walk through the bush in pitch black conditions lit only by torch light and a million stars is a truly otherworldly experience.

Karijini Gum Trees in early morning light
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

Karijini is also home to some very fine gum (eucalyptus) trees and I am happy to have captured this beauty bathed in the morning light.

Karijini Red Dirt Road Dawn Cloudscape
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

On our last day in Karijini a big cloud system moved in and dumped rain on us later in the day. I have already blogged about this brilliant morning here, and present another image of the same morning. I can never get enough of dramatic skies like this one and if you look closely there’s still a touch of rainbow left here.

A short glimpse into my version of ‘the other’ Karijini. If you have been fortunate enough to visit, what is your favourite spot at Karijini National Park?

I am completely taken aback by wide open desolate spaces. The bigger, wider, more open, more desolate the better and it really does take my breath away. It is hard to describe this feeling I get from it but it is the sense of space, the openness and having no boundaries at all. Once I have accumulated a collection large and good enough I hope to share this love through exhibitions and books dedicated to Wide Open Spaces.

The image I wish to present today is from Namibia, from driving through the gravel desert in Namibia. Namibians has a nice expression for this – “Gramadulas” – basically meaning outback or middle of nowhere! You will not find a more barren vast area and I loved every second of this magnificent place. I am however somewhat curious if anyone but me likes this sort of stuff. Into the Wild does not really apply here as there is not a thing here and that is what makes it great. It is more appropriately Into The Nothingness!

Gravel Desert Travelling
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

PS. I am posting slightly less and shorter than normal. Becoming a nomad and starting a new life is hard work and takes up a lot of time; leaving not as much time presently as I would like for blogging. Spare time needed!

“It’s caught me in it’s spotlight. It’s alright it’s alright the moonlight”. A Thin Lizzy hit although I tend to better remember the great Smashing Pumpkins cover. Be thankful that my new version – Shooting in the Moonlight – only exists by my pen (well keyboard) not my voice!

Shooting images in the Moonlight lit only by a full moon is something I wanted to do for a while. You have to get away from most light pollution (cities etc) and find yourself somewhere nice and dark so you can capture a glorious night sky featuring magical stars and a nice moonlit landscape. In April I found myself camping in the Namibian Veld (Afrikaans for bush) on a night with a full moon and wanted to experiment with Shooting in the Moonlight. This is basically what I ended up with after a few tests:

Namibia Moonlit Veld
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

This is in pitch darkness lit entirely by the moon. The image itself is fairly boring but it serves as an example of how a full moon can easily light up a landscape and create a great otherworldly light along with a massive amount of beautiful stars! This image was a 25 second exposure at f/4.0 iso 1250, a full moon is bright but not exactly the burning midday sun. You do need very long exposures and high iso to capture this. A 25 second exposure is too much actually, the earth has already rotated enough to create small star trails, so a faster lens would come in very handy here.

Now that I look at the image I really should have walked up the hill and put some nice rocks close up in the foreground! My mind was frozen as it gets so cold in the veld after sunset. Ah, always great things to learn and improve on. Come next opportunity I hope to have a winning moonlit shot to show you or at least an improved one! Anyone wishing to share some moonlit shooting experiences, please do comment. Take me out to the black!

Moonlit video: For some out of this world time lapse images featuring magical stars and light, this brilliant video by Tom @ Timescapes is pure genius.

In the words of Monty Python ‘and now for something completely different’ – Travel Photography and Ethno Photography.

Bicycle Man, Pangkalan Bun, Borneo
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

While I wait for inspiration to write the CAKE crew in Marble Bar story, and my web host to come back online (major database crash at Pbase.com) I will talk about my new project. Travel Photography and Ethno Photography (roughly translates to photographing people in the world), especially of minorities, is something I want to explore and hopefully learn to do well. Having always been a fan of Travel Photography, my recent work in Malaysia and Borneo opened my eyes to the fact that I should stop just being a fan and dive into it myself. It involves pointing my camera at humans and in that way basically pointing the camera at myself as well. Something I struggle with, but where’s the fun without a new personal challenge! My upcoming Asian Adventure and Photographic Nomadic Journey around the world is the perfect opportunity for this. Would be a crime to not capture people and scenes along the way and improve my travel photography – while still capturing my beloved landscapes as well of course!

A few feeble examples of my travel photography so far. Much more to come.

Masai Women, Kenya 
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

Saving the Kitten, Pangkalan Bun, Borneo
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

Master Chef, Mindil Beach Market, Darwin, Australia
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

Resources: I read The Travel Photographer’s blog, an outstanding blog. The writer, Tewfic El-Sawy, is a brilliant travel photographer, his galleries are here.