High up in the altiplano plateau, within the Salar de Uyuni, there is a train graveyard. Rather than methodically removing locomotives and wagons, the local rail service instead runs them off the end of the line and leave them to rot in the salty desert.
The first time I visited this place, there was a simple yet eerie sense of otherworldliness. However, upon my return, all the trains had been graffitied and the whole area had become a huge rubbish dump, which was a real shame.
For the last couple of weeks before Christmas, I was in China on business. I spent my time in Shanghai and Qingdao. Unfortunately, in Qingdao, I did not have the chance to take any shots. However, I was fortunate enough whilst staying in Shanghai to have a day when the smog was not too heavy and the sun was out, albeit briefly.
After taking lots of shot of the river and Pudong, from the boulevard on The Bund, I spotted a raised platform and included the foreground Christmas bustle. To make the image more interesting, I used a combination of filters including a Polariser, Big Stopper and 0.9ND. I was fortunate that the lady in the yellow jacket hardly moved whilst I took this long exposure, which really anchors the shot for me.
I was in Stockholm at the end of last week and wondered down to the harbour in search of a morning shot before the working day commenced. The weather forecast had stated it would be a clear, sunny day, yet as I stood on the quayside, it started to snow gently. As the opalescent cloud drifted off in a south easterly direction, the dawn light emerged along with some dawn colours.
The second shot below I took a short while later, with a Lee Filter Little Stopper (x6 ND filter), to lengthen the exposure. I lost the colour in the clouds but the movement of the ferry and sky made for an interesting alternative version of the same scene.
A sky full of clouds.
After crossing Europe on my bicycle in 2009, I took the Hurtigruten ferry from Honningsvåg (and the North Cape) to Tromsø. I was only on the ferry for a day but the landscape in mid summer was stunning. As we were north of the Arctic Circle, we did not lose the light. The shot above was take somewhere in the archipelago around 10pm.
I aim to return in the winter, when the landscape is covered in snow and under the Aurora Borealis.
Strange shapes in the desert. Whilst crossing the Atacama desert in Bolivia, I passed through the Salar de Uyuni salt flats. In the vastness of the white desert, strange shapes were cut into the floor. Blocks of salt were extracted and left in the sun to dry before being removed and sold. The remaining angular shapes were gradually filled with the water that lingered beneath the surface.
In the wet season, the floor of the salt flats becomes flooded and the looks like an impossibly huge mirror, making it hard to know which is heaven and earth.
Low tide on Exmouth beach over the weekend. The water was low enough to reveal this concrete jetty, covered in very green seaweed. A long exposure blurred the sky and left the water a milky, glassy texture. You can just make out a seagull at the end of the jetty. It stood there almost motionless for the 260 second exposure.
After waking up early for a dawn shoot, I was a little dejected by the lackluster weather. However, using a Lee Filter Big Stopper to slow the scene down and generate movement in the clouds, whilst making the sea turn more glassy.
The delicate orange glow below the morning clouds, behind the pillar of land at Ladram Bay in Devon made for a rather haunting scene.
The dawn of a new day in southern Patagonia. This shot pf the Moreno Glacier was taken a few years back when I was working and travelling around South America. I purchased a lovely Fuji GW690 that took no time at all to get the hang of, along with a huge bag of medium format, 120 roll film all around the continent.
This shot was taken a short while before the sun progressed over the mountainous horizon behind me, illuminating the whole Moreno Glacier in a glorious morning, amber light. Definitely should be a place one’s bucket list to visit and watch sunrise.
On my last trip to Peru, a few years ago, I was trekking in the Andes surrounding Cusco in the south central mountains of the country. The area is awash with Inca ruins, including Machu Picchu. I hired a motorbike for the day and drove around the city, hoping to find something interesting, when I stumbled across this place. I have no idea where it was but there were no tourists there, just a few llamas.
The shot below was taken on a trek around Huaraz, north from Lima in the Andes, close to Chimbote. I was pretty high when I took this shot, around 4500m above sea level. Both shots were taken on my Noblex 612 film camera.
All Terrain Photography 