Jim Richardson

Support for Uzbek Photographer

The story of Uzbek documentary photographer Umida Akhmedova is sad and appalling.
If you would like to do something you can read more at Global Voices about her saga here:

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/12/22/uzbekistan-criminal-charges-filed-against-documentalist-umida-akhmedova/

And you can add your name to a growing list of photographers worldwide who are expressing their outrage at what the Uzbek authorities are trying to do. Go Here.

I don't know her. But anyone who can look upon everyday life with the love and care that she does deserves our support.

Jim

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Silencing Documentary Photographer in Usbekistan

Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer forwards in interesting (and depressing) piece of news that connects us with a very nice set of pictures.

As Mike tells it: "Uzbek photographer Umida Akhmedova is awaiting trial and is facing a potential sentence of six months in prison or three years forced labor. At issue is a 2007 work called Men and Women from Dawn to Dusk that contains approximately 100 of her photographs of life and customs in Uzbekistan. A special commission tasked by the government prosecutor has analyzed the photographs and charged Ms. Akhmedova with "defamation and insulting Uzbek traditions."

You can see his post here: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/01/umida-akhmedova.html#comments

And you can link to the pictures from there.  Worth a read.  And a photographer worth supporting.

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Mysterious Grimersta: Frame 9,128

©National Geographic Society

Every tale must find a conclusion, and so must my visual tale of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland appearing in this month's National Geographic Magazine.

I found my frame 9,128 -- the story's closing image -- on the Grimersta River on the Isle of Lewis on a foggy morning as waters tumbled over a granite sill.

I would not know for some time to come why this image was so right for the story's ending.

As photography goes, frame 9,128 was a fairly straightforward bit of photographic technique.  Photographers have their array of skills to call upon, just as golfers, violinists and brain surgeons do.  Everyone has their methods -- pieces of a repertoire, so to speak -- and spend time practicing and honing them.

So it was this particular morning. First I put on a gentle half-gray filter to bring down the sky's tonality so that wispy fog, so lovely, would not be lost in the camera. Then I added another neutral density filter, this one very dark, indeed, a full five f-stop black beast.  You can see through it -- but just barely. The advantage is that it forces the use of a long time exposure.  And with a time exposure, the water tumbling over the granite rocks turns silvery and smooth, a bit of poetry about the physics of falling water and fluid dynamics. The resulting picture carried a soft sense of mystery.

- - -

At layout time back at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., the editing team puzzled around with several images for the closer. Nothing seemed to fit just right.   Most were too declarative, too forceful for this place in the narrative. These photographs were fine for carrying the visual narrative forward, but not for concluding it.

Somewhere amid the ferment I put forth the idea of using frame 9,128 in this spot.  This photograph had never gotten much attention before and probably would never have been used elsewhere in the article, I believe.  But as the closing picture, it had a gentle way of punctuating the story.  It was the period to the other photographs' exclamation point.  It worked.

What remained lacking was the narrative justification for this picture in this place. When we show the finished layout to the editor, it is the photographer's job to narrate the showing -- and to make the case for why we are telling the story in this way.  I needed a reason -- something more than a feeling -- that this picture should be the closer.

Finally, that reason came to me (or maybe I just stumbled upon it). While reading about the Grimersta and the fishing lodge for which it is famous, I came across this nugget:  The lodge's guides (known as gillies) are sworn to secrecy about the fishing.  That, I thought, was how it should be.  Places in this world, as well as people, deserve to keep a bit of mystery about them.  Certainly the Hebrides will always be one of those places where mystery will never entirely be replaced by knowledge. It is a place to keep us humble.

- - -

Now, the final act.

With layouts done, I faced the regrettable task of putting the rest of pictures away. Many came so close to making the layout, but now would fade into oblivion. Some would get resurrected for the magazine's web page and some would find a home in the National Geographic Image Collection where they may see use in future publications.

But the lion's share of the photographs that I shot for this story will never see the light of day again. Frankly, some of these images should go straight to the trash. I look at them and wonder whatever possessed me to click the shutter in the first place.

But many fine pictures remain, and every last one taught me something:  If the next picture was better, it was because I learned something by doing the previous one.

Tomorrow I want to wrap up my own tale of this body of work by giving proper homage to the pictures that didn't make it.

Jim

You can see pictures from the article and more on the National Geographic web site, here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/01/hebrides/richardson-photography

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Of Rocks, Time and Life

Off topic but apropos of the Hebrides and their ancient rocks (Lewesian Gneiss dating back 3.5 billion years) is this fascinating look at the timeframe of life on earth. The perspective of passing events puts us in our place -- and makes any reflections on a place like the Hebrides islands even more humbling.

Enjoy and I'll be back to finish the Hebrides series soon.

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_evolution_of_life_in_60_seconds/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed

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Primordial Boreray: Frame 9,300

©National Geographic Society

Heading out into the Atlantic for the distant island of Boreray, I was hoping to see something wonderful.  But I never expected to be met by thousands of gannets swooping off the island's towering cliffs, down through the encircling clouds and out toward the boat.

The evening light, the birds in their multitudes, and the hulking cliffs gave me frame 9,300.  It was a gift.

Boreray, an uninhabited crag 40 miles northwest of North Uist,  had lured me back. Anyone who sees this island is enchanted. It is incredible to consider that islanders from nearby Hirta, near the big island of St. Kilda, came here with ropes and scaled the cliffs hunting for birds to eat. But the human residents of Hirta have been gone since 1930, and no one even tries to get onto Boreray any more. It is a wild place once again.

Local seaman Seumas Morrison had brought me here on his boat named Enchanted Isle, a fitting name for a craft making its way through the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. When light broke through the clouds as we approached the island, I knew instantly just how lucky I was,.  I was determined not to waste the opportunity. Seumas' crew member held onto me as I slid back and forth across the back deck in the wildly pitching seas. I kept my motor-drive Nikon going relentlessly as the magical light played on the face of the cliff.  I shot wide and then tight. We caught a swell and water sprayed across the deck and my camera. The birds were everywhere.

In the middle of it I couldn't help myself and stuck my head into the cabin where Seumas was braced against the wheel. I yelled over the roar of the engine, "This is worth the price of admission!  You done good!"

Then I went back to shooting and drinking it the wonder of it all.

The light lasted another seven or eight minutes. We circled the island a couple of times hoping for more, and I got another frame on the southwest side as the last flash of light turned the clouds red.  (I told of this moment in an earlier posting.) Then the show was over. The light did not return. We put into Village Bay at Hirta for the night with the hope of seeing a great sunrise. We didn't.

The camera survived, though parts have the look of salt water corrosion. I hope to get back to St. Kilda again to see Seumas and catch up on news on the Isle of Harris where he lives. But I doubt to ever have an evening like that again.

I should be thankful. And I am.

Jim

P.S. Traveling to St. Kilda is a great and I can heartily recommend the two boat operators who got me there.  Seumas Morrision goes to several of the islands in the Outer Hebrides.  You can find his web site here:  http://www.seaharris.co.uk/  

Angus Campbell operates Kilda Cruises and concentrates on the St. Kilda trip. You can find his site here: http://www.kildacruises.co.uk/boat/

They're both great guys. And I wish you luck on the weather.

Tomorrow: Morning on the Grimersta River

You can see pictures from the article and more on the National Geographic web site, here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/01/hebrides/richardson-photography

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Inside Fingal's Cave: Frame 12,649

©National Geographic Society

Fingal's Cave first hit the pop chart in 1830 and soon rocketed all the way to No. 1. That's why I just had to be there, the place where I got frame 12,649.

Classical composer Felix Mendelssohn came to the Isle of Staffa in 1829 and wrote his famous overture, The Hebrides Op. 26,  a year later.  Popularly known as "Fingal's Cave Overture," this music has been a popular classical favorite ever since -- and a special favorite of mine since I first started listening to classical music as a teenager.  The rhythmic swells of the music echo the natural sounds of the cave as the sea sweeps in and out. If you have never heard it you might want to pop on over to iTunes and give it a listen.

I was not the first photographer to venture here.  Even Joseph Banks, who is credited with the cave's modern discovery in 1772, knew that it had been a known place of wonder for centuries -- if not millennia. Walking into Fingal's Cave is like walking into the heart of the earth. Here among the towering basalt columns, the visitor stands inside a lava flow.  Magma that swelled up from deep in the earth cooled so gradually that it formed regular octagonal shapes as it shrunk. Now the primordial heat is gone and the sea is at work, eating back into the island of Staffa to hollow out the cave that is now over 200 feet in extent.

It was Mendelssohn's music that elevated the cave to "must see" status.  From then on, all the Victorians were coming here, including Jules Verne, Wordsorth, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Romantic artists J. M. W. Turner and the most famous Victorian of all, Queen Victoria herself.  All of them were overwhelmed by the sight and wrote effusively of how their vision of nature had been transformed by the experience. It was as if there were a contest going on to see whose gushing verbiage could top all others.

Something more important was happening, as well. For it was here in the Hebrides, and often here in Fingal's Cave, that much of the world was learning to see the raw side of nature as inspiring. Before this time, nature itself had been seen as somehow dangerous and evil, in need of taming and civilizing.  Our modern sense of wonder in the face of natural splendor owes much to the emotions of those early visitors to Finagal's Cave.

- - -

How, then, does a photographer come to such a familiar place -- once so haunted by illustrious observers -- and presume to do something fresh?  

That was my dilemma and one that worked over in my mind for a long time, perhaps as much as year.  I had photographed the cave before and always run into the same problem: it's dark inside.  Everybody who has ever photographed it has encountered the same effect. You want to photograph the depths of the cave but the farther back you look into the black basalt, the darker it gets.  Set your camera for an exposure that captures the nearest columns?  The back of the cave is impenetrably black.  

Moreover, I didn't want to do just a record of what it looks like.  I wanted to suggest the timeless inner works of the ever-changing earth that are so obvious inside Fincal's Cave.  The earth is all around you, changing all the time, full of transfiguring energy. If there were ever a place to read J. R. R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," this is it. 

I finally fell upon the idea of lighting the cave -- from the inside.  If light were coming from the back of the cave it would suggest the experience of early visitors who carried lanterns into the back reaches. 

The technical problem is getting sufficient light inside the cave.  The flat-black basalt just sucks up light, and with all the water sloshing around it's not the sort of place for high-powered flash units with high-voltage batteries. I would have to do the picture in near darkness, when my lights would be strong relative to the available light.  I already had two each of million-candle-power flashlights  to illuminate the cave.  But because I largely work on my own, I  had no one to handle the lights while I manned the camera. My solution came from an unlikely source -- the lovely little Argyll Hotel.  I was staying there on the nearby island of Iona. Innkeeper Daniel Morgan suggested that two of his young staff were avid amateur photographers and would be glad to have the chance to spend some time in Fingal's Cave.

Thus, Rado, Digby and I were climbing into Fingal's Cave at 4 a.m., long before the first light of dawn. Intrepid youth that they are, Rado and Digby headed straight to into the bowels of the island.  From there, the flashlights they were carrying stabbed out like beacons.  I was thrilled.

The first images showed real promise.  Exposures were long, as much as five minutes. Because it was so early, light coming out of the cave in was an incredibly rich, predawn blue.  Light from the flashlights was a glowing yellow-orange.  As the waves washed in and out, I shouted instructions to Rado and Digby about where to shine the lights. Each successive picture taught me more about what was needed. 

Then it turned into a race.  Dawn was coming, and the outside light was getting brighter every moment.  By the time we took this picture -- frame 12,649 -- the exposure was down to one minute.  By the time we could take another,  the exposure was down to 30 seconds and the flashlights were no longer bright enough. 

It didn't matter.  By then we had our frames. 

My thanks to Digby and Rado.

- - -

Now let me step back a moment to reflect on something more telling than lighting and cameras.  Technical prowess in photography is both necessary and a potential pitfall. It is a form of hubris that can often lead to the feeling that technical solutions can overcome all problems.  But it is not the application of talent or technology that brings joy of photography to me. 

True landscape photography insight, at least for me, comes from engaging the subject on its own terms, letting the understanding seep in, setting my own clock to the time frame of geology, blocking off the rest of the world, and entering into a sort communion with a place.  If that sounds spiritual,  I suppose in some ways it is.  I know, of course, that the land is completely oblivious to, and has no need, for my presence and feelings. But I have feelings for the land and for the passage of time, and for the honor of being in its presence.

This is the source of my joy.

Jim

Tomorrow: Under the Cliffs of Boreray

You can see pictures from the article and more on the National Geographic web site, here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/01/hebrides/richardson-photography

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Patterns of a Lost World: Frame 4,167

©National Geographic Society

St. Kilda is haunting. Everywhere you look there are patterns of a lost life. I came here for frame number 4,167.

This tiny group of islands 40 miles beyond the last of the Outer Hebrides is more than remote. It is almost alien. In spite of that, people lived there, subsisting mostly on sea birds and nearly wild sheep. When famine threatened, the cluster of St. Kildans summoned help in the only way they could -- with a message in a bottle set adrift in the wild seas.

Finally, battered by disease and crop failures, St. Kilda's  population dwindled to 36 in 1930. That's when the islanders asked the British government to take them off the island. That was August 29, 1930 --  the day when two millennia of occupation came to an end. There are stories that some of the islanders went into their houses for the last time, opened the family bible to Exodus, left it on the kitchen table, and walked away.

In so many ways I was lucky to see St. Kilda. Angus Campbell had brought me out with his load of day trippers and promised to pick me up later in the week. It was a beautiful day but Angus warned me:  "Take advantage of this good weather. It's not going last."

And it didn't.  By that evening it was raining hard. It rained for four days as I tried to eke out images in the murky light.  I stood for hours in driving rain, waiting for glimpses of the sweeping bay.

The generous staff of The National Trust who were stationed on the island took care of me, keeping track of my expeditions into the gloom so that they might come looking if I didn't come back. I had plenty of time to imagine the life of an islander living on a stormy outpost. The thought lost its romantic appeal very quickly.

By the end of the week, it was doubtful that Angus could make it back to St, Kilda to pick me up as scheduled, and I was resigning myself to being there for awhile. But slowly the plain slate skies curdled into patches of light and dark.  With this promise of light came another message from Angus.  He was coming but he couldn't delay the trip back; I'd have to be ready to get off the island.  Given the timing and relative break in the weather,  I sprinted with my cameras up to the Gap, the high ridge above the village.  On one side of the Gap I could look down over the sweep of the bay.  On the other, another step would have sent me tumbling over some of the highest sea cliffs in Europe.  From my perch I could see Boreray four miles away, trailing a cloud more than a mile long.

And then my time was up.  I clambered down.  Along the way I shot this picture, frame 4,167. It was almost an afterthought.

- - -

Months later I was in Washington editing the story when I came across this frame.  I passed it by -- again, almost an afterthought.

Thank God for good picture editors like Sarah Leen.  She resurrected the frame and gently and persistently lobbied to get it into the story. She insisted that it spoke of the harsh landscape the islanders of St. Kilda had made their home for centuries. The stonework circling their fields was the sign of enduring hardships.  In the dots of wee stone huts and dashes of abandoned houses Sarah perceived the message of a lost world.

She was right. What obscured the image in my eyes was the ease and haste with which it had been taken.  Coming after a week of soaking rain and wet cameras it had seemed a rather facile picture.  But it spoke of the lives of St. Kildans -- a great visual aspect and haunting story of human endurance on these most rugged of islands.

Jim

Tomorrow: Inside Fingal's Cave

You can see pictures from the article and more on the National Geographic web site, here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/01/hebrides/richardson-photography

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On the Sound of Harris: Frame 1,303

©National Geographic Society

The west beach of Berneray, which looks out over the Sound of Harris, is famous.  (But it's only famous to those who know about it, and that's not all that many people.) 

I came to this beach for frame 1,303.  And here's the truth of the matter: I didn't do it justice.

On the beach at Berneray I witnessed three miles of the most perfect shell sand, white as snow, and clean. The long crescent sweeps out of sight in either direction. High dunes shoulder close by, held firm against the winds by the beachgrass.  On the other side lies the machair, its soil enriched by blown shell.  Wildflowers riot there in the island summer.

If you were lucky enough to be there on the most beautiful day of the most popular holiday weekend, you might find a crowd of five people. The whole island, just to the north of North Uist, has a population of 136.  Perhaps this is why Prince Charles made Berneray his favorite secret retreat for nearly a decade.

The island's only true fame comes as the home of Angus MacAskill. The late Mr. MacAskill -- called Giant by everyone -- was 7 feet 9 inches tall, the tallest natural giant ever to live, by some accounts. Descendants of his family still live on the island. They are tall.

I feel a sort of duty to places like this -- places of modest distinction, places that never clamor for attention or proclaim beauty without shame. They deserve more that just local fame. I think that's why I lingered so long that evening, alone in that lovely swath of drifting sands, trying my best until the light was no more.

Maybe I don't know how to do such a place justice. Maybe mere photography can never substitute for just being there. Whatever the cause, I felt then and I feel now that the beach at Berneray deserves more.

With luck I'll get another chance.

Jim

Tomorrow: To the lost lands of St. Kilda

You can see pictures from the article and more on the National Geographic web site, here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/01/hebrides/richardson-photography

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The Ragged Shore: Frame 5,744

©National Geographic Society

Mangersta is no more than five miles from Uig Bay, both on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis.  But these two places have little else in common.

If Uig is serene, Mangersta is ruthless.   It was there I found frame 5,744.

Gaelic-speakers call it Mangurstadh.  This spelling catches more of the primordial character of the murderous rocks than the English version, don't you think?  Tucked into a cove along a dead-end road, Mangersta is battered remorselessly by Atlantic waves regardless of season.  For such a powerful landscape, Mangersta is reclusive.  Just driving down the road, you would never see it hidden beyond the machair. 

How did I find Mangersta?  With more than good luck, I can assure you.  The Hebrides are riddled with jagged shores and secret coves.  No one can hope to know this place entirely. Certainly I could not hope to photograph the islands adequately without some sort of guide, and I found a good one:  photographer James Smith. 

As I was doing research for the Hebrides story, I made it a point to review photographs that already had been taken of the area.  I found that the most stunning panorama photographs of the islands all seemed to have the same credit line:  James Smith.  So I dialed up James, told what I was doing, and asked if I could visit.  He graciously agreed.  We met in his gallery -- called Oiseval near the town of Barvas on Lewis -- and in a pleasant morning discussed places to photograph in the Hebrides that James knows so well. 

Much of what I needed for my Hebrides story I had already seen or knew about from earlier trips.  But I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something special.  Although I had earlier worked a couple of the Hebrides'  signature craggy seascapes elsewhere in the islands,  I needed to find the best.   My question to James was direct : Is there any other shore which I should be considering for that rugged look?  Or is Mangersta the one?  James' reply was equally direct:  That's the one.

Over tea he told me how he had come to be a gallery owner on the remote west coast of Lewis.  Long before he retired from his job as a production manager for the company that makes Kit Kat bars, he had become an amateur photographer.  Quickly he moved up the ranks of landscape photographers in the very active system of club photography in the United Kingdom.  When James retired he and his wife found this gallery for sale.  So he's now based near Barvas, where he travels Lewis making stunning photographs -- as well as works out how to make a living at it.  (As a gallery owner myself, I can sympathize with this challenge.)

I tell this tale because the common perception is that the world of photography is competitive -- some would say cut-throat.  Maybe.  But over and over I have found my fellow photographers to be generous.  Perhaps it comes from the shared uncertainty and insecurity of trying to do what we do.  Whatever the reason, most of the photographers I run onto are quite willing to share what they know.

Such was the case with James Smith.  He added several key pieces to my coverage, and I hope sometime I get a chance to return the favor -- or at least to sit down over tea again.  In the meantime, if you long for a wider taste of the Hebrides, James has just about seen it all.   You can find his images here: http://www.oisevalgallery.co.uk/

Jim

Next: To the Sound of Harris. 

You can see pictures from the article and more on the National Geographic web site, here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/01/hebrides/richardson-photography

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One Glorious Evening in Uig: Frames 8,193 through 8,195

©National Geographic Society

A thousand years ago Vikings were playing chess here.  Pleasant to think that the Vikings could kick back after after a hard day of pillaging and have some quiet time. 

I was staying at the lovely little inn called Baile na Cille, situated just out of the frame to the left.  The inn is on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, the biggest of the hundreds of islands and skerries known as the Outer Hebridies of Scotland.  After dinner I went out on the lawn and saw this scene -- the vast Uig Bay.  

Amazingly, Uig Bay drains entirely at low tide, turning it into a stunning beach twice a day.  You can walk clear across if you like.  If you walked about a mile straight into the picture you would come to where the Vikings lost their chessmen in the dunes a thousand years ago.  Known now as the Lewis chessmen, the pieces lay buried until 1831, when Malcolm "Sprot" Macleod found them and then displayed them for awhile in his byre -- a cow barn, to you and me.  Most of the Lewis Chessmen are now in The British Museum.  (A side note:  That the Chessmen reside in London can reliably be counted on to raise the ire of locals.  Some will say that the set ought to be here in the isles where they belong, and I agree. )

On this evening, I was in no mood for ire.  How could I be amid this idyll?  I watched rabbits chase each other around their warrens.  The tide settled itself after coming in, creating a mirror-smooth surface on the bay.  A stone fence carved out a territory for gravestones, once part of a church yard.  Our clue is in the inn's name, Baile na Cille, with the word cille meaning church.

After the light was gone I went back inside and breathlessly told innkeeper Richard Gollin what I had just seen.  He humored me.  He lives there and sees the bay every day.

Now, I should probably recite the technical details of this picture, as photographers are wont to do.  If I did, the rundown would go something like this:  Nikon D3 with a Really Right Stuff L Plate on a Gitzo 1228 carbon fiber tripod with a Really Right Stuff BH-40 ball head,  PCL-1 panning clamp, and MPR-CL II rail so that I could center a 24mm Nikkor PC-E lens over the nodal point.  This, too, was to be a multi-frame panorama.

If you were able to follow all the preceding details, then you already know what I am talking about.  

If not, it hardly matters.

It's true.  All my cameras and tripods and ball heads have plenty of knobs I must adjust, and as good as the equipment is and as much as I rely on it as a photographer, none of it can make an evening glorious.  I'd love for equipment to create a thrilling sky like that I saw in Uig Bay that night -- or calm the waters or make rabbits jump in circles in a way that made my heart glad.

So rather than trying further to explain what is best seen, I suggest relishing the history of the Lewis Chessmen and if you get a chance, go stay at Baile na Cille out at the end of the road in Timsgarry on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis.  Look it up here:  http://www.bailenacille.com/

Tell Richard I sent you.

Jim

Tomorrow: Mangersta on the ragged shore

You can see pictures from the article and more on the National Geographic web site, here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/01/hebrides/richardson-photography

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