I got an email last night from a participant from my Harris workshop last year telling me he’s in South America. His email told me that he’d been to see the Stone Tree (El Arbol de Piedra) in Bolivia.

He told me that there is now a fence around it, because there have been too many tourists climbing on top of it.

Whilst I was there, I did think that it was amazing how the entire stone sculpture was so vulnerable, yet I was grateful that I had easy access to it so I could photograph it. In other parts of the world, we are getting a little too controlling of our heritage – so much protection that it can actually spoil a location.

But I think that in this case, the fence has been a necessity. I did notice whilst I was there, that people had been scratching their names on the stone tree.

I often find this sort of behaviour at odds with a location like this. There are certain kinds of people who come to visit a location of this nature. They appreciate the beauty and rarity of what they find here.

But there must, I fear, come a point when a place gets so popular that it appears on the radar of those that ‘don’t get it’, that will never appreciate its rarity and think that the best thing to do when they get there is climb all over it and scribble their names on it.

That’s the part of human nature I find hardest to deal with about such rare and beautiful places like this.

It seems that morons can apply for, and get granted passports too.

When I was in Bolivia this April, I spent Easter weekend with a Bolivian friend and her family. They were very gracious and kind to me, sharing what they had.

We went north for the weekend, up into a remote village where my Bolivian friend’s parents are from. It was here that I spent a rather chilly (altitude 12,000 feet) weekend eating Llama steak for breakfast and also camping under a llama skin that they kindly offered me. It really was an experience I’ll never forget.

But the thing was, we spent most of the weekend with everyone else in the village watching friendly football against Argentinians and Peruvians.

My friend’s family is rather extensive, and the Bolivians are very close knit in this way : the family is priority. I remember heading up in a packed car to the north of the country and being reminded of when I was a child going on holiday. My family is rather large (by western standards) so I felt right at home. I was perhaps the oldest child in the car, being 41.

Anyway, here’s a picture of one of my Bolivian friend’s cousins. Everyone eventually got used to me just hanging around; the stranger from out of country with the camera permanently attached to his hand and this is rather a candid shot of her. There’s recognition in her face as to who I am, which only goes to show that building up a relationship with your subject can really count.

The image of the little boy with the football came about because he befriended me. Curious as to who I was, he came up to me, offered lots of sweets and I was quickly accepted as his new friend for the rest of the day.

On a technical side, these images were shot (again) with my new love : a Contax 645 camera with standard lens. Film was Kodak Portra 160NC.

I had no idea I was going to be so taken with this landscape.
The Bolivian Altiplano brings together a vast expanse of varied geological features under unusual climatic conditions.

For one thing, the altitude of the Altiplano averages around 4000 meters or 12,000 feet. The air is thin here and for no reason I can fathom, this seemed to guarantee stunning light each sunrise and sunset.

Please click on the image to play the podcast

Because of this, I felt that I pushed my tour guide and driver to their limits as we navigated the vast Salar de Uyuni landscape before sunrise and long after dusk. With scarcely defined roads, more a slight suggestion, a faint scar on the desert like landscape, it was hard for me to watch as my driver sped through the darkness with no visible signposts as to where we were, or where we were going.

And we sped on, often to some intangible destination that my driver knew about.

But I was suffering hard. A mixture of slight Altitude symptoms and running around too much, too soon after my ascent onto the altiplano had left me with a thumping headache and slight dizziness – symptoms of mountain sickness.

I felt overawed by the experience. Coupled with my suffering, everything regarding landscape photography seemed inverted. The ground was often brighter than the sky and the sunsets proved to be more impressive than the wondrous sunrises. I was never really just sure how to meter the landscapes for the film I was using.

This is not what I’ve come to expect from most of the landscapes I’ve photographed over the years.

Being so high up, I´d expected to feel cold, yet strangely I didn’t – even though I got caught out. Like a mouth that has gone numb and un-cooperative after a visit to the dentist, so I found my hands unable to operate my camera after being outside for more than half an hour in the dawn light.

As for my most lasting impression, well I must say that I tried one day to walk on the vast salt plain for as long as I could with my eyes completely closed. It didn’t take long for my mind to concoct imaginary obstacles in my path and I had to fight my instincts, which kept screaming at me to open my eyes. When I did, I was greeted with the unchanged, vast emptiness of the Salar and a feeling that I had been tricked. By my own mind of course.

Perhaps this was the Bolivian Altiplanos parting gift to me – a lesson that most limitations in my life come from within rather than from without.

I just thought I’d drop a wee note to say that I have now published my Bolivian Altiplano images on my site.

If you’d like to view them you can find them here.

I’m off to sit down for a well earned rest I think, watch some TV.

I haven’t seen much TV in the past three months due to all the traveling I’ve been doing…. which reminds me… that I have around 100 rolls of film from India and Nepal still to edit and publish.

….. I’ll put TV on hold for the moment. Now where did I put those India and Nepal images?……

Sometimes compositions don’t need to be too clever.

I had a beautiful red lake in front of me with really stunning light. But I was searching for a dramatic composition and I simply couldn’t find one.

Photographs work on many levels and often for different reasons too.

Surely it’s enough to document a place for what it is?

I loved the light and I loved the colour of the red lake (created by the sediments being stirred by the Altiplano winds).

I just couldn’t find a strong composition.

It is what it is.

I gave in to what it was and somehow, I’m no longer angst about not finding that killer composition.

I’ve just finished editing my images from the Bolivian altiplano and here is a contact sheet of the final 40 images I’m happy with.

I was thinking today about how I love the entire creative process: you start with nothing and even trying to visualise what you may come home with is often nowhere close to what you end up with. There’s that element of the unknown about the creative process that is intriguing.

But there are some factors which can heavily influence the outcome of a body of work. I don’t have a ‘formula’ as such and tend to like just ‘going with the flow’ and seeing where my editing will take me. But here is a rough outline of what happens for me:

1. I get home with a massive pile of films processed. I don’t look at all of the sheets in one sitting because I’ll be overloaded with the need to work on too many images.

2. I’m patient. Good work is not rushed and rome wasn’t built in a day. So I just consider that each image takes time to be born correctly, and if there are golden nuggets in the pile of transparencies I have, then I will find them : at the right time, when I’m in the right mood to approach them correctly.

3. Sometimes I’m not sure how to approach an image, how to edit and this can be when I’m tired, done too much editing, or I’m simply not feeling inspired enough. Taking a break, heading outside for a walk, a cycle, or doing something else with my life completely seperated from my photography is the only way of approaching my images with a fresh and keen eye.

4. I work on a sheet at a time. I don’t peek to see what else I have. I take each contact sheet on it’s own merit and work on the best images from that sheet. This allows me to find images that I’d easily forget about if I found something better underneath.

5. I ruthlessly throw images away. For instance, on a contact sheet all the shots of the same location may be excellent, but there may be one or two that stand above the rest. Those are the two images I will work on. The others are stored away, but not used. If an image is not working, and I’ve tried a few things, given it some space, etc, then it will be discarded. If there is a glaring problem with focus for instance, then it is discarded. If the composition just isn’t working, and no amount of cropping helps – then it’s discarded. Sometimes I have a nice image, but something causes it to be discarded because it’s simply too much effort to get it right. Good images should not take a long time to edit. They should just come together smoothly.

6. Quality Control. Ok, so I have say 40 rolls of film, each with 10 images on them – that’s 400 images. I’ll edit it down to around 80 images. Those that are really standing out mixed with those that are nice. Some may stay because I want to show an aspect of a location that is not already covered by the proposed final portfolio. But I will keep editing down, until I have a smaller number of images. If you want to be a good photographer, you have to be objective about your work and maintain a certain level of quality. Only release what you are truly happy with (unless you suffer from very high expectations in which case you are in trouble).

7. Be kind to your mistakes, try to see the images as someone else would. Some flaws are acceptible, and if the image still conveys a spirit or ‘feeling’ that you like, even though it’s slightly blurred due to camera shake – then it’s an image that still works. Images should be read on face value. Pixel peeping is not a productive activity. See the wood, not the trees.

8. Live with the images for a while. You get a sense of distance from the whole process and can then be more objective about your work.

I’ve taken around three weeks to produce 40 images. To some digital shooters, this is not a way forward, but for me : it IS the way forward. Good images, ones that I can live with and feel close too, can only be born correctly if I am receptive and nurtiring with what I do.

I kind of feel I’m at the end of a journey at the moment.

After traveling to India, being sick for three weeks, then onto Nepal where my condition just got worse, then back home for 1 month reccuperation only to be told by my doctor that something wasn’t right with my liver, then back to South America to go to Patagonia, then onto Bolivia…. . I just feel…. exhausted.

But you have to get things out of your system and I certainly feel I’ve been doing that lately.

So why do I do it? Why photography? Why go to far flung places? Certainly, when I’m fatigued I certainly start to question my motivations and it’s often at a dark time, when I’m feeling really under the weather that I just want to jack it all in. It is, after all, just photography.

But I think it’s an inner drive thing. If you really want to create something, make a statement, you have to go with what your inner voice tells you. Perhaps this sounds a bit too philisophical, but in order to create good images, you have to be in touch with something more than just wanting to go out and make images. I’m unclear as to why I do it. I like to think I’m quite a modest person, pretty unassuming. I just so happen to be a little bit mad when it comes to photography. Obsessed I guess.

So what’s your reason for doing photography? I’d love to hear about it.

I’ve only scratched the surface of what I’ve shot in Bolivia, but thought it would be nice to post the very first scan I’ve made.

This is the largest salt plain in the world – the Salar de Uyuni.

I shot this around 4pm in the afternoon. I was camping on Pescado Island and decided that since sunset was around 6.30, I should head out into the massive salt plain to see where the edge of the island was, so I could determine if I would have a good shooting vantage point facing east (away from the sunset) and of course west (into the sunset). Preparation is everything and I ended up walking a great distance.

I have to admit that I loved doing this. It’s not often I get the chance to stand in such a place and enjoy it on my own. I was completely alone for 3 hours,  absorbed in the landscape and the far of distance signs of rain.