I have a fair bit going on this article; combining a few topics – a bit of a mini holiday and photography location guide, image inspiration and photographic kit overview. Go ahead and work top to bottom or feel free to skip to what interests you; hopefully the article should still flow…
The trip
Technically this was to be a holiday, spending quality time away from the stresses of daily life with my lovely wife Deborah, somewhere with pretty much guaranteed sunshine but not so hot to be uncomfortable. Whilst we had been favouring summer breaks in the UK over the last few years the time had come to venture abroad in the summer again this year, I am not really sure how the decision came about but with some trepidation and anticipation we began the search for a location.
The requirements list for the break grew daily as we combined experiences of likes and dislikes of travelling abroad and around the UK, sadly some requirements like teleportation to cut out the whole flight and airport experience had yet to materialise though! Whilst the usual suspects of plenty of sun, cool sea breezes, places to eat and for the first time – a private villa appeared on the wish list, photographic needs also featured quite strongly as well. With the later I began to see it as an opportunity to get out of my comfort zone a little, so that meant woodlands, babbling brooks, mist and rain, in fact anything that made the UK such a great place to be a landscape photographer was to be off the menu. Also, wanting to keep air travel time to no more than a few hours helped to limit choices, as did not heading North, much as I would have liked to head to cooler climes; the land of active volcanoes, black beaches, ice and gushing waters, etc. that wouldn’t fit the relaxing by the poolside criteria.
So, after a little more research a few candidates began to appear, fortunately Iceland does not have the monopoly on volcanoes and black beaches, there are other places that also fit that criteria so in this case endless blue skies, balmy temperatures and cool breezes won the vote – ‘Islas Canarias’ it was to be. We had already been to Fuerteventura; I had been to Tenerife, so Lanzarote seemed a good blend of those two; with the opportunity to see the unique home and wonderful work of César Manrique swinging it for me. I will talk a little about the different islands later but there is plenty of material out there on the inter-web if you feel the need to do a little more research yourselves otherwise I’ll stick to what I discovered of potential interest to me on Lanzarote. So with everything booked up that just then left the ‘easy’ decision of what photographic equipment to take.
I will cover the equipment subject in more detail later on but as this was not to be a dedicated photography holiday, I was to limit myself to just two morning outings over the 8 days, so combined with luggage restrictions there was no sense in taking lots of gear. On the later subject though, being a bloke and given the destination; luggage weight was never going to be much of a restriction was it? – Passport, money, flip flops, hat, shorts and T-shirt… sorted! All in all this seemed an ideal opportunity to try out a lighter weight 5×4 setup I had been putting together, matched with digital backup of my LX5 compact and iPhone, more on this subject later though.
For those that don’t know the Canary Islands that well, they consist of seven large and several smaller islands, all of which are volcanic in origin. Matched with their position just of the North African continent and according to the position of the islands with respect to the north-east trade winds and Gulf Stream, the climate can be mild and wet or very dry. The result is that each island has a distinct microclimate, the westerly islands are well vegetated even at low levels and have extensive tracts of sub-tropical forest. Travel east toward the African coast and the influence of the Gulf Stream diminishes, and the islands become increasingly arid. The Fuerteventura and Lanzarote islands being closest to the African mainland are effectively desert or semi desert. If you are flying in it is the arid nature of Lanzarote that strikes you most from the air, as well as the volcanoes and ALL the building being painted white that is, although I expect the winter months may be a little greener; we were travelling late June, I expect as the full summer hits the place would only get drier. Looks can be deceiving though, on the ground there was plenty of life to be found as well as a real variety of colour; some of which you can see from some of these pictures is naturally quite vivid.
On with the actual trip then, other than the airline living up to its reputation by arriving about an hour late into Arrecife; thanks Monarch, arrival went well. We had a nice little economical VW Golf, hire company playing
their tricks as normal, collect full and return empty; have you tried emptying a full tank in 8 days on an island just about an hour’s drive in length, we just about managed it though. Coming from the UK you will immediately notice the condition of the main roads and begin to realise where your hard earn taxes supplementing the European economy have gone, they are like billiard tables – mile upon mile of bright shiny new tarmac from the top to bottom and side to side of the island. That said, in contrast when you go off piste it is gravel but good and solid so quite doable in a standard car. They also helpfully tell you where to point your camera to get the perfect picture!
The choice for our accommodation location was selected based on being a holiday rather than a photographic workshop. So we were shacked up in a nice comfortable villa on the outskirts of Playa Blanca at the southern tip of the Island which off course meant heading over the same ground regardless of wherever we happened to visit. Now with prior knowledge if future visits were to be photography orientated I would probably base myself out of the old capital, now a cultural centre, of Teguise. Being pretty much central Teguise is well placed to reach any part of the Island in less than an hour and arguably has the most charm of all towns and villages on the Island. That said, you probably couldn’t go far wrong with anywhere on the Island and for us being able to walk 10/15 minutes (time was wind dependent!) into the main resort and old harbour area suited us well.
Now, weather wise according to some of the local residents we had arrived during a poor spell. Apparently, it was overcast, cold and windy; strange that, we thought it was rather balmy with a nice cooling breeze! All relative I suppose, but for the first few days it did get quite gusty, Deb had fun seeing how far she could lean into the wind before falling over. The wind did settle down to a nice breeze which was quite fortunate as using large format can be a bit of a handful in the wind. Otherwise, the weather did follow a pretty much consistent pattern through the trip; overcast until mid-morning, clearing to bright sunny skies through the day and then clouding up a bit in the evening. Those bright overcast morning did play into my favour though, quite ideal for my ‘style’ of photography. Nice and warm through the day, so shorts and T-Shirt all the way. Local tip: If you were looking for wall to wall sunshine you should consider the eastern resorts, any cloud tends to dissipate as it moves easterly across the island. Looking at a map it’s obvious to see why, with the peaks of the National Volcanic park; Timanfaya, and mountain ridgeline extending to the North giving rise to cloud formation then rolling off into the arid ash, lava flow and dust plains towards the east.
Having settled into the holiday routine for a couple of days it was time to start venturing out of the resort to see more of the island. The great advantage of being an independent traveller was setting your own schedule made all the easier by the abundant amount of information available to help plan trips. All the major ‘tourist’ spots you’re likely to visit are chargeable but there is an option to purchase a multi-stop discount ticket which helps to soften the costs. That said, it is clear some of that money must find its way back into these locations and the island in general as everywhere is clean, well maintained with plenty of facilities available to the traveller. One tip with this ticket is to check at the various locations as to whether it qualifies you for a free coffee, or for us brits a cup of tea! A gotcha though with this ticket is that it doesn’t cover the Cesar Manrique foundation which was on top of my places to visit list. Considering that almost all the other tourist spots you may visit were architected by him that just felt a bit off. If you do plan to visit some of these tourist spots another tip is to either get there early or later on in the afternoon to avoid the scheduled excursions turning up by the bus loads. Of course aside from these half-dozen or so locations you have the rest of the island to roam at your leisure at no additional cost.
Before I move onto the next section I should clear up where the title for this article came from – The Montañas del Fuego (Fire Mountains) were created between 1730 and 1736 when more than 100 volcanoes, covering more than 50 km², rose up and devastated this part of the island (including several villages). Many of these have been encapsulated within the National Volcanic Park; Timanfaya and as you might expect dominate the landscape wherever you are on the island.
The photography; the inspiration
We planned our days out to cover off both the tourist spots and explore some of the more remote spots; I do like to go on little mystery tours to ‘just see what’s at the end of the road’, a great way to find little known places for future photographic reference. Deb has cottoned onto this now, whilst I try and fob of these little forays into the unknown as discovering the real aspect of the island: she now knows them as photography recce’s, which of course they really are! From my perspective I was looking for a spot convenient to our base to head out for a couple of mornings photography and given our location that did somewhat limit my range without having to set off too early, I was after all on holiday so predawn starts were out of the equation. It was on one of these excursions I did find a location within 20 minutes’ drive of our base which would be ideal. It had a number of factors in its favour: a coastal cove orientated facing west so it would provide shade from the sun for a few hours, some protection from the constant breezes, easy access from a car park but more effort required to get up close to the action thereby keeping most other tourists away, excursions typically didn’t arrive until mid-morning, on the coast (I haven’t photographed at the coast for years), looked like nothing I’d seen before and most importantly had infinite photographic potential to explore a whole gamut of geology typifying the island as a whole.
I think it was the fourth or fifth morning there I first headed out to do some photography; in reality equating to just a few hours. From having travelled around the island for a few days I had started to tune in a little to the place and formed a few ideas of how I wanted approach some of the pictures. As I mentioned a little earlier, clearly the striking features are the volcanoes and the vast arid plains of volcanic ash, lava flow and dust, whilst interesting in itself not something I wanted to photograph per-se. In a sense what you see on the surface is the result of the volcanic activity itself, an obvious statement really, but what interested me more was trying to scratch beneath the surface and see what lay beneath. In a way I wanted to capture a glimpse of the volcanic action as well as showing those little unnoticed oasis of vibrant colours that contrast the dominant dull greys and browns of the surface.
The little cove I concentrated on lay at the southern end of the National Volcanic Park; Timanfaya, seemingly carved out of the side of the hill where there looked to be natural join of the very hard solidified lava and softer ash materials. The action of the sea pounding into the softer material had exposed multiple layers of geology, nothing like I had seen before, very striking in texture, form and colour. In fact the colour contrasts in some places were quite overwhelming, particularly where the minerals from the ground had bled into the small pools of water, which in turn had been absorbed by the indigenous plant life which literally fluoresced as a result. Anywhere you can literally get below the surface of the island you will come across the ‘fire’ rocks, these are the volcanic rocks that have held onto the deep crimson colours of the burning volcanoes. There is a strong contrast of these against the blacks of the charred rocks and cooled lava flow. If you’re visiting some of the tourist spots like the themed lava tubes you’ll get to see quite a bit of this, albeit making do with snapshot style photography as the touristy nature of these places limit the use of tripods, etc. As a consequence of all this variety of geology some of the pictures I created are arguably my most colourful to date; even with the use of Colour Negative which is typically low to medium contrast.
Although the environment was completely alien to me and therefore quite exciting to explore I did temper my enthusiasm to immediately start photographing everything in sight. I’ve learnt to take a far more considered approach to my photography and come back with a handful of keepers rather than a memory card full of infinite varieties of essentially the same thing, hoping there will be something good in there – and of course shooting large format film goes some way to forcing a certain approach. Then quite by good fortune, although I’d like to say it was planned (not); the timing of the second photography outing saw me arriving for low tide which then exposed a whole raft of additional opportunities. Shame no-one was about though to capture me paddling around in the warm water of the rock pools barefoot framing up under the dark cloth! On both mornings the weather was in my favour with the light winds dying down overnight to leave still mornings and bright but overcast skies kept the contrast down nicely so the natural colours had a chance to show.
For me Lanzarote proved to be an ideal base to combine both a relaxing summer location and photography. I can certainly see why people would return time and time again to holiday, and given the evidence of a large expat community; to live. In our short time there I barely began to uncover the image making potential on offer, clearly something Cesar Manrique understood and dedicated much of his life-long artistic vocation to. Now having had the opportunity to see some of his work first hand I have begun to understand what it truly takes to interpret the landscape through abstraction; something I aspire to in my own work but have rarely been able to achieve to date through my photography. For more information about Manrique and his huge influence on Lanzarote take a look at the Cesar Manrique Foundation (website)
Equipment
Now for the kit list and how I flew with all this…
As I’ve previously mentioned I planned to travel as light as is practical with a 5×4 large format outfit. Something I hadn’t attempted before but fairly confident about the whole process given I wasn’t the first to ever try this! I also took along a small digital compact camera, a Panasonic LX5; to use for holiday snaps and sketching for the 5×4 images. And of course the camera on my phone: an iPhone 4S. As it turned out the LX5 stayed in the suitcase, not surprising really, for me the iPhone has pretty much replaced everything I needed the digi compact for plus adding a whole bunch of other app functionality suited to my photography.
So on the basis of the above; I’ll focus on the large format gear. I ummed and ahhhhd over which lenses to take, as my photography tends to favour the moderately wide to medium telephoto range I finally settled on four to cover that, in reality I used three. Camera choice was easy; it was to be the Chamonix 45N-2, a lovely feather weight option which I married up with some Chamonix wood film holders which shaved a few more grams of the weight. I only took four film holders giving a potential eight frames per session, splitting the two film emulsions 50:50, so four frames of each. This actually worked out pretty spot on with the subjects I was photographing. If I had been out all day I would have taken my changing bag and film along to keep my film holders stocked up (probably in a cool bag of some sort)
Film choice was fairly straightforward. As I wanted to cover all eventualities I would take slide and Colour neg, with the slide film of choice being Velvia 50. I typically use Velvia for more intimate abstracts of the landscape where the qualities of that emulsion bring vibrancy and separation of tone to an image. For anything else I would almost entirely default to colour negative with its lower contrast and wider exposure latitude being beneficial. Of the colour neg films I use I opted for Fuji PRO 160S to provide a little extra punch and fine grain to capture the surface textures. The film was transported in my hand luggage both outbound and return and looks to have suffered no ill effects from the security scanners. I stored the film in the fridge at the accommodation and kept the unexposed and exposed film separated in their own boxes at all times. I could have saved a tiny bit more weight and space by combining everything in one box but that would have introduced a risk of confusion on my part at a later date.
Dark cloth was to be the Paramo one, can’t praise that product enough, for such a simple thing it is hugely useful in a number of ways and makes using my large format cameras a pleasure. Of course to really save weight I could have replaced the dark cloth with a T-Shirt to double up to wear on the holiday, just a step too far for me though.
Notably, I didn’t take any filters. I use them so rarely now, in the future I may just travel with my Lee 2 stop ND Grad just in case though
Itemised kit list as follows:
- Chamonix 45N-2 camera
- Chamonix film holders x 4
- Chamonix extension block (adds 10cm to the camera base / bellows length – didn’t use it though)
- Paramo dark cloth
- Schneider Super-Symmar XL 110 f5.6 lens (Didn’t use this)
- Sinar Sinaron SE 150 f5.6 lens
- Rodenstock Sironar N 210 f5.6 lens
- Nikkor M 300 f9 lens
- Gepe shutter release cables x 2
- Lee system standard lens hood
- Pentax digital spot meter (plus spare battery)
- Silvestri 6x Magnification Loupe
- Manfrotto tripod 725B (includes integrated ball head)
- Lightweight pop up light diffuser / screen (light shade for close up work, etc.)
- Glif tripod adapter for the iPhone (fitted with the compatible tripod plate for the Manfrotto tripod)
- Tape measure (for measuring bellows length on close up work)
With the exception of the tripod which went into the hold baggage all the above went on in hand luggage and then into a belt pack system when we arrived at the accommodation which I’ll cover later.
Also, kept at the accommodation:
- Fuji Velvia 50 colour slide Film x 24 sheets (4 pre-loaded in the dark slides plus a sealed box of 20 – I used 7 sheets in all)
- Fuji Pro 160S colour negative film x 24 sheets (as above although I used 8 sheets of this)
- Portable film changing bag (the type that looks like a black T-Shirt when laid out)
Like most photographers I’m always on the search for the perfect pack to transport all the gear about, alas, probably always having to compromise somewhere along the lines though! More recently I’ve been experimenting with a lighter weight option with some flexibility about it; this harks back to my time in the armed forces whereby the emphasis was on speed, accessibility and not being encumbered by large amounts of gear. The approach adopted then was a belt pack system with interchangeable packs that clip onto the belt depending on the task at hand. This led me to using something very similar from ThinkTank; the actual starting product I chose was the Speed Demon. This pack comes integrated with the belt onto which you then add other packs as you see fit. In my case I have a few expandable style ‘shell’ packs of varying volumes and shapes which suit the equipment I want to carry. This approach fits my needs really well, specifically by giving the adaptability I need, it’s lightweight, I can even work with large format gear straight out of the system without removing it and it keeps my back and shoulders clear allowing me to also carry a small backpack if I needed to as well.
Even with the above kit in this pack system it gives me a fair bit of capacity to then carry additional items such as a water bottle or flask, some snack bars, additional clothing, etc, or alternatively I can eschew those items in favour of also carrying additional large format lenses as well as a medium format setup of camera, 3 lens, 4/5 backs and additional film.
Overall though, whilst I clearly wasn’t working in the extremes of conditions everything performed really well and I didn’t really feel I had missed any equipment or had to compromise in any way. As a consequence this setup has now become my default go-to gear when heading out to do some large format photography.
I should just mention the iPhone before finishing. As I mentioned this has now displaced my digital compact, whilst the iPhone has some shortcomings; notable optical zoom and higher ISO support, I can pretty much make do with the iPhone for most snapshot needs. Plus the added advantage of support of a number of photography apps I use both for the large format as well as for the camera on the iPhone itself. I’ll burn my bridges now and say I’m unlikely to ever need a compact style camera now, the phone is only going to improve and whilst the entry of android, and in the future other operating system driven compact cameras look appealing; my next digital camera would likely be a large mega-pixel CSC or full format sized sensor rangefinder, or SLR style camera.
All in all both mornings resulted in some of my most memorable photographic outings, I am pretty happy with the results, for me achieving what I had set to portray but welcome to hear whether that translates through in the final images. The issue I have now is I still have at least half a dozen new pictures visualised in my mind from that one area which is going to either haunt me or spur me on for a revisit; which one will win out you’ll have to wait and find out.
The majority of the images shown in this article were all taken with the Chamonix large format camera with a smattering of iphone snaps.