“To know a place, one must be more than simply familiar with it.”
Although landscapes are evolving moving things, with changeable weather, varying atmospheric conditions, and different seasons, there is a degree to which one gets to know a place if they keep returning.
But whether you can ever get to know a place entirely, to know all its moods, to experience all its seasonal faces is unlikely. There is always something kept back that you will most likely, never experience.
I say this with the understanding that I have been coming to Torres del Paine national park since 2003. Not every year, but certainly enough times now that I have lost count of my visits here. Although I would not say I know the place enough to fully understand it, I am at least familiar with many of its attractive view points. Familiarity is different in my view, from knowing a place. To know a place, one must be more than simply familiar with it.
What I find most intriguing about returning to a familiar landscape is that it can act as a reference point for the changes in my photography over the years.
In the most obvious way, I look for different things now than I once did. But also, I recognise now, that some of the features I wished to capture back in 2003 and failed to do so, were simply never going to be possible. At the time, of making images for just 3 years, I did not have the experience to know that something was not possible.
For instance, the mountain range faces north yet the sun for most of the day moves behind it. The mountain range is always backlit. The only way to make the mountains work for you is to hope for a cloudy day as cloud causes the light to scatter everywhere and appear to come from all directions. When it is not cloudy, light is extremely directional. If you’re shooting towards the light on a cloudless day, then you end up with backlit subjects.
I did not have the basic knowledge to understand this back in 2003 and I suppose in a way, I didn’t want to understand it either. I was more driven by an idealistic view of what I was hoping to shoot. The amateur in me hadn’t learned to submit to what the landscape offers. Instead I was very much hoping that the landscape would give me what I was hoping for.
As the years have gone by, I have learned that it is best to go with what the landscape offers. Turn up with as few preconcieved ‘wants’ as you can, as they only serve to get in the way.
Another way to put it would be to ‘get out of your own way’ when making photographs.
I am less in need of sunset or sunrise light. These were attractive reasons for shooting Torres del Paine that were a big draw for me back in 2003. Not now. These days I prefer to go with the natural nature of a landscape and In my view Torres del Paine is a monocrhomatic landscape of greys with colourful hints and shades of turqoise in its lakes.
I am more drawn to its natural muted palettes of it’s granite and gabbro-diorite rock. I love how the muted rock colour acts as a neutral reference point, to showcase the beautiful coloured lakes of the national park: Nordensjkjold’s greenish turqoise, Pehoe’s radox blue, and lago Grey’s grey. Along with its black beaches, Torres del Paine is a monochromatic study for me, with just a dash of lake colour.
And yet that is not what I originally came for.
So, this is my 22nd year coming here and I am wondering if I will see anything new in the familiar vistas I have visited many times? I think the answer is that something new is always on offer. It’s up to me as to whether I will be receptive to seeing it.
That remains to be determined. All I know is, that often when I think a landscape has changed, the real truth of the matter is that the landscape has changed very little. What has instead changed, is often how I am seeing it. This is often the most evident in places where I keep returning, and returning, and returning over the years.