Panoramic Puffins
Wide, Wild Life
This is the first post about the results of revising my film archive through the means of DSLR scanning. I’m seeing photos in a way I’ve never seen them before, and I’m exploring shots that I would never even have bothered scanning before. It’s quite an experience.
The photos here take me all the way back to 2004, when I joined the first (I think) of the late, great Michael Reichmann’s “workshops” to Iceland. It cost about $4000, which was a lot to me then - indeed it would be even more to me now - but probably nothing to what he would be charging today if he were still with us. I was actually very naive, I imagined that “workshop” meant that there would be an element of teaching, that I would learn from the master. Actually no, “workshop” meant “subsidise a well-known photographer to travel in luxury and bask in his reflected glory”. With some notable exceptions, it still means much the same today. In fact the “workshop” was a wild ride around Iceland at breakneck speed, trying to reach a ridiculous number of locations, and leaving participants (and one co-leader) too shattered to actually enjoy photography. Even the choice of locations was largely eccentric, and another co-leader, a native Icelander, had his advice and suggestions largely ignored by Reichmann. Still, sometimes we had fun. The most extreme location we visited was Latrabjarg, at the extreme west of Iceland’s West Fjords, famed for it’s spectacular bird cliffs. It was a fantastic place to visit, but we travelled there in 1 day from Arnarstapi on the south of the Snaefellsness peninsula, stayed one night, then travelled all the way to Blonduos (via some pointless detour all the way up Arnarfjörður), arriving about 1am or something. Insane. But Latrabjarg is the setting for this story.
At the time I had recently succumbed to peer pressure, especially the pressure I felt from this trip, and had “gone digital”. This, I reasoned, would also help for the expected learning process. As ever my tendency to plow my own furrow dominated, and rather than the near-universal, Reichmann-approved Canon whatever-D, I turned up with an Olympus E-1. Actually, the ruggedness of the E-1 made it a far more suitable tool for Icelandic conditions than the plastic fantastic Canons, but certain other aspects such as the auto focus were not Olympus’ strong point. Anyway, at Latrabjarg I bolted on the obvious choice of lens, the 50-200 zoom, and started trying to photograph close-ups of the hordes of puffins that surrounded us. At some point, disaster struck - my E-1 announced that it had run out of battery power, and my spares were either depleted or back at the campsite. Certainly we’d had no time to do any charging (although I think the vehicles had converters), and I was too dazed to have got my act together.
So, to some considerable mirth from leaders and participants alike, I switched to my Hasselblad XPan, loaded with 100 ASA slide film. Birding? With film? With 100 ASA film, in evening light? And with (ultra) wide angle lenses? This was never going to work, they said. But, actually, I think it did.
There were always a few shots I was happy with, but having now re-visited the whole set, there a quite a few I like. Of course, none of these are going to win any wildlife photography prizes, or indeed any prizes at all. But I think they do maybe give a better feel of the magic of the place than highly detailed, technically perfect puffin and razorbill shots.
The whole set was shot on Fuji Velvia 100F, a long-gone film that for some reason was widely disdained (probably because it was actually nothing like Velvia). I liked it a lot more than Provia 100F. It had a similar feel to my all-time favourite slide film, Kodak E100G.
I’m not sure if we returned for a second visit with Reichmann. Probably not, we were too much in a hurry to see if things were happening somewhere else. I returned myself, with my girlfriend, a couple weeks later on a far more relaxed and enjoyable tour. But by then I had fully charged batteries for the E-1, and anyway we spent more time enjoying the puffins (they’re very tasty) than photographing them, so as far as I can tell I didn’t repeat the crazy XPan experiment. A pity. But I did get a few highly detailed, technically perfect puffin shots.
I did actually learn a few lessons from the other co-leaders. From one, to value the experience and memories over the photos, from the other, two things: “don’t be greedy - work out what most attracts about a location, concentrate on a few shots around this, and back off”, and the other “never mind that everybody has a shot of Location X, this is your shot of Location X”.