Landscape photography is pretty much a lonely affair. You travel and hike alone, you find and setup your shots alone. And that is good. I consider it as something very close to spiritual meditation. It is a road to your higher yourself. And if you are lucky enough you may get a companion on this road - a guru, a person who can show you the way, point the right turn on the road, keep you away from the waste of dead ends.

Rodney Lough. The first time I came across this name was last fall in San Francisco. I had been photographing Golden Gate Bridge at sunrise and decided to stop at Sausalito for a breakfast. Right on a corner of Bridgeway and Princess I stumbled across a gallery with magnificent photographic prints in the windows. It was early morning and the gallery was not yet opened. As I stood at awe admiring every detail of the photographs exhibited in the windows a lady came in, opened the door and greeted me in. We got into a two-hour long conversation and Vivian (that was her name) told me the whole story of Rodney Lough. He was the same age as mine, left his daytime job, was doing art shows for awhile and now has 4 (four) his own galleries. Wow, - I thought to myself, - he did it. And I can do it. It was like a light bulb switching on above my head – you can make your living with fine art landscape photography.

Later in November I was in Minneapolis for a couple days. And I spent the whole evening at Rodney’s newly opened gallery in The Mall of America looking at every detail: not only at the prints, but how they are matted and framed, how the light is set, how the gallery is organized. It was perfect. It was something to aspire to.

By that time the figure of Rodney Lough grew in my mind to mythical proportions and he took his rightful place in my little pantheon of fine art landscape photography gods.

Here goes the story…

Last week I was at Horseshoe Canyon in Canyonlands and it was the third time I came to photograph The Great Gallery - an ancient Anasazi pictograph panel. The first time several years ago I had a 35 mm film camera, the other time I came with my first digital camera and this time I had intention to make some multi-row panoramas.

I camped at the rim of the canyon and woke up before sunrise. I rushed onto the trail with the first rays of light in a hope to catch nice morning reflected light on the panel. Three miles hike down the canyon and I was late. The shadow line moved through the panel in a matter of a couple minutes in front of my eyes and the panel was washed out in full sunlight. It happened so fast that I didn’t even have time to setup my tripod. It is what it is, - I thought to myself and proceeded anyway trying to salvage contrast with polarizing filter. Three hours and several multi-row panoramas later I felt exhausted and headed back on the trail.

As soon as I left the panel I saw a funny looking figure walking towards me. White long sleeve shirt, shorts and some kind of high boots. Oh, and a tripod! A fellow photographer! Coming closer. Gitzo carbon fiber. Interesting… Sharp blue eyes, golden hair, short trimmed beard. We got into talking:

- I like your boots.
- Oh, that’s not boots, that’s gators.
- Shooting medium? - I nodded at the tripod.
- Eight by ten, - was the answer.

Suddenly I felt a little cold in my stomach. You can count landscape photographers shooting 8 by 10 with fingers on both of your hands. I leaned forward and asked without any ceremonies:

- What’s your name?
- Rodney Lough.

I almost jumped.

- Sir, I’m honored to meet ya! - I said shaking his hand and immediately poured on him the whole story of my admiration.

- Wow, I’m surprised that you know who I am, - he muffled in response.

To make the long story short I shamelessly stuck with Rodney in the canyon for the rest of the day. I asked questions. He talked, I listened. It was great. It was a lucky chance that made my whole trip.

- Where is the panel? - Rodney asked me.
- Oh, it is right here. Unfortunately it is in full sunlight.
- I can wait. All I want now is to stay in the shade. I saw a beautiful tree against the canyon wall on my way here… Oh, here it is.

Frankly, to my eye the tree was nothing to look at. I just walked by this tree without even noticing it. But Rodney was excited. He started to setup his tripod and unpacked his 8 by 10 from the backpack.

- You see, it is perfect. The color of the leaves. That tree behind – the green is too dark. And it is too close to the wall. That tree on the right – still too dark. And the branches are all over the place. This one is perfect. No wind. Even on one second there won’t be any movement. Every twig, every leaf will be tack sharp. It will look awesome on 8 by 10. It will be on a gallery wall for sure. You’ll see, – and he disappeared under the dark cloth busy setting up his camera.

The light was pretty even in the shadow of the canyon wall. Rodney used his Sekonic to spot meter exposure in control points. He kept mumbling shutter speed numbers to himself, completely immersed in the process and oblivious to my paparazzi clicking.

Pulling out the dark slide. Notice vertical shift to elevate the lens tilting the monorail up and using front and back tilts.

And the final CLICK. The shot is done.

When he was done with his shot we sat in the shadow of the canyon wall for several hours. Rodney was patiently waiting for the shadow to come to the panel which eventually happened in the late afternoon. So I had plenty of time to torture him with my questions. I wish I had prepared the list beforehand because I still have many more.

He candidly told me what my biggest problem as a photographer is. Lack of patience. And it is true. On my photo expeditions I often feel restless chasing the light. I feel like a hunter pursing his prey. It is an exciting feeling but quantity of shots rarely produces quality.

He told me a story which happened to him in the beginning of his career as a photographer. It is a legend. He was at Grand Teton on one of the photographers’ hot spots with majestic overlook of the Tetons waiting for the sunrise with a crowded group of other photographers. To kill time everyone started to introduce himself to the others. The introduction made a full circle and came to the photographer next to Rodney.

- I’m Willard Clay, - he introduced himself.
- Wow! - said Rodney, - Willard Clay! It is honor to meet you. Do you have a business card or something?

While Willard went to his truck to get the card everybody else gathered around and asked:

- Who is this guy? Why are so excited?
- Don’t you know? - Rodney replied - His photographs are in every book and calendar about Grand Teton.

The sunrise was over as well as photographers’ shootout. Everybody left except Rodney and Willard. They had a conversation and Willard said at the end:

- There is one thing I have to tell you, young man. One thing only: wind is your friend.
- What does it mean? - Rodney asked. - Wind is photographer’s enemy. It moves grass and tress, it makes photographs blurry. How can it be your friend?
- By the time the wind calms down every other photographer will leave and now you free to make your shot nobody except you will be able to make. Wind is your friend.

Patience.

That is what Rodney has in abundance. Patience. We sat in the canyon waiting for the shadow to come to the pictograph panel for hours. But when the time came he acted charmingly and quickly.

Those who have been to The Great Galley know that access to the ledge where you can view and photograph the panel up-close is protected by chain rails. All you can do is photograph the panel from far below, from the canyon floor. Rodney was able to charm Bonnie, the park ranger, a graceful lady in her seventies. She unlocked the chain and let us on the ledge. Rodney quickly setup his camera.

There was no time to spare.

- Isn’t it a treat! - he kept repeating.

Notice raised monorail and back tilt used to align ground glass with the pictographs panel. Front tilt is used to increase depth of the field (Scheimpflug rule) for the stones which are almost in front of the camera.

I like the look of a heavy machine gunner looking through the turret of his firearm. The concentration and intensity is the same. The result is quite different though. I wish all machine guns in the world could be replaced with photographic cameras with a simple swing of a magic wand.

It looks like the front frame is too high.

Let’s move it down.

And back to mystery under the dark cloth.

The shot was done and we pushed back on the trail to climb up to the canyon rim to our cars. Rodney invited me to his camper. I showed him some of the ancient Anasazi ruins locations within Cedar Mesa. In exchange I was treated with a real sandwich made by Rodney himself. It tasted like nothing else. Especially after living a week on crackers and cold canned tuna. We shook hands and he took off. I left after him on my way to Factory Butte slowly digesting a great chunk of information I was given.

Life road has turning points. Change. New course towards bright light leaving the dark tunnel behind. Thank you, Rodney, for guiding the way…

Rodney Lough - www.theloughroad.com

Willard Clay - www.willardclay.com

A couple years I was driving from Mount Rainier to Palouse in Eastern Washington. I was looking forward to see for the first time Palouse region which suppose to be looking like my beloved Tuscany in Italy. I wanted to get there by sunset and I was focused on the road and did not pay much attention to surroundings. Till I saw this windmill on a top of the ridge somewhere after Yakima. A flock of perfect puffy clouds was streaming across aquamarine blue sky, endless yellow wheat fields rolled through the hills up to horizon and this windmill - it was like an exclamation point to all this wonder. I stopped my car, got out, tried several compositions and hurried again towards Palouse. What a pity! I found nothing even comparable to this place in Palouse. At least at that day. Now, two years later I discovered these pictures again. I made panorama from seven vertical frames and posted it to my website. And I found myself returning to this photograph again and again. There is something magical in it for me. Even though I am very critical to my photographic creations I must say - I like this photograph. I am proud of it.

Bosque del Apache is national wildlife refuge just one and half hours south on I-25 from Albuquerque in New Mexico. Here, in lakes and marshes along Rio Grande River is a place where tens of thousands of migratory birds including sandhill cranes, Arctic geese, and many kinds of ducks gather each fall and stay through the winter.

The most spectacular thing to watch in Bosque del Apache is the morning flyout. It occurs at sunrise when the first rays of ascending sun hit the Rio Grande valley. Exactly at this moment every morning thousands of geese wake up and take off simultaneously in one thunderous explosion of thousands of wings. It sounds like a jet fighter taking off. It is an awesome sight: the pond empties in only a few seconds, and multiple layers of geese fly low overhead at different altitudes and slightly different headings, frantically calling and honking to keep family groups together.

Bosque del Apache is prime spot for congregation of bird photographers as well. They flock here in dozens and line up every morning along the pond waiting for the flyout. With expensive cameras and huge telephoto lenses. It is a photographic subculture. Everybody seems to know everybody. They come to Bosque del Apache year after year. Oh, and if you have lens less than 400mm you are, well, not really cool.

I was there too. Following the crowd I mounted the biggest telephoto lens I have on my camera and set it up on a tripod. Made several frames waiting for the flyout. And then it came to me - the main subject is not the birds, it is the photographers. Their grotesque silhouettes and silhouettes of their tripods against the bright hues of sunrise sky created a perfect picture. I quickly changed telephoto to wide angle lens on my camera and literally started to crawl on the ground looking for the right composition. I found it with one of the photographers using his handheld medium format camera surrounded with his other two cameras on tripods. And at this moment the flyout happened. It lasted only few seconds but I’ve got my picture: a silhouette of photographer against the mass of ascending birds in the morning sky.

One gloomy October afternoon I found myself on a Staten Island ferry going back to Manhattan. It was about to rain, low heavy clouds cloaked New York leaving no hope for sun, oozing sense of despair into a humid cold air. And then I saw a torch glowing with warm orange light. It was Statue of Liberty. I found a clear spot in scratched ferry window and made several frames. Unconsciously I selected a composition which wasn’t aimed to show Statue of Liberty but rather its glowing torch tiny from the distance. It boldly but helplessly tried to illuminate approaching darkness of night. There is always a hope.

San Francisco de Asis Mission Church in Ranchos de Taos has been photographed many, many times. The most famous photograph is by Ansel Adams showing the back of the church. It gives an impression, at least for me when I first saw it, that it positioned in a vast empty space like many Italian churches placed in front of big piazzas. In fact Ranchos de Taos church is very intimate: there is a very small plaza with crumbled pavement in front of the church. It is surrounded by small shops and houses. La Fiesta Saloon is claiming the other side of the plaza. Church is not alone, it does not sand out, it is part of the community. The place is quintessential New Mexico. With a touch of Italy.

When I first came to the plaza at daytime a small children’s choir was rehearsing inside the church. The sweet sound of their voices was spilling into the fresh winter air. The plaza was empty and I spent about two hours not only making photographs but just walking around and drinking Taos crisp cold air like chilly wine. I came back again after sunset. And again nobody was around, just me. The church was illuminated with floodlights and I caught a moment when luminosity of the church and the sky was the same and made almost the same composition several hours ago in daylight. Sweet memories…

In one of our travels to Tuscany in Italy we stayed for several days in a small village called Lucignano d’Asso. It is hardly a village, it is just a few medieval houses perched on a top of the hill. The whole place is owned by one woman, baroness. She met and greeted us when we arrived late night. The next morning we discovered how beautiful that place was. It was early April, out of tourist season and the village was virtually empty. We had it all to ourselves. We had plans to drive around the country, to Pienza and Bagno Vignoni but instead we stayed and simply soaked the beauty around us. Outside the house there was a patch all covered in flowers. I spent almost an hour crawling around and making pictures. This is a vertical panorama I made from 5 frames. I used 60mm macro lens and changed the focus for every subsequent frame to make the whole panorama tack sharp from bottom to top. There are two different perceptions of this panorama made as a large print: you can look at it from a distance and enjoy the colors and texture and it is totally different from up close when you immerse yourself into life-size colorful flowers.

Today I posted a few photographs I brought back from my recent trip to Greece. Most of them are photographs of stairs from Santorini. It became a surprise even for me when later I looked at the collection: I’m not sure where the theme of stairs came from. I guess it is the way these little villages in Santorini are built: perched on the high cliff above the sea, paths and stairs, dome shaped structures growing on each other. It feels natural as natural world: Santorini is one few places where you feel not aliened by perfect straight lines and forms of modern architecture.

I immediately turned to my bookshelf and found book of legendary Christopher Alexander “The Luminous Ground: The Nature of Order” and turned to the page which offered me an explanation:

Human beings have, in the past, recognized such places as numinous. They are places which carry the spirit. They are places which carry the soul. This language may or may not useful. But what I want to insist on, is only the one thing: some places, some things, are of such a nature that we feel more intensely related to them, we feel a relationship with them, a direct relationship between our self and that thing, that place. We feel it most strongly, and when we feel it we feel that we are connected with all things, with the universe.

Factory Butte just west of Hanksville along Hwy 24 is one of my favorite places in Southern Utah. I love this place to the point of obsession. There is something magical about it, at least for me. To other people it may mean nothing and they breeze through the desert at 65 mph without even giving a glance at Factory Butte rising in a distance.

That spring in 2003 was different than others I have been in Southern Utah. The wind was strong, mix of thunderclouds and blue sky was spectacular. The clouds were moving very fast with rain streaming from them and as quite often in desert it dried out before even reaching the ground. Ancient Indians called these clouds “rain god” and there are numerous rock art panels in Utah with this image.

It was late afternoon and I was trying to find a way so I could make an image of Factory Butte from behind. The picture I had in my mind is the butte glowing in a warm sunset light. I followed a trail which went north and then east of Factory Butte (I checked this trail again this spring in 2006 but unfortunately it was completely washed out by winter storms). Crossing a shallow stream a couple times the trail climbed uphill and abruptly ended at the abandoned well. I was east from the butte all right, but on the other side of the canyon and there was no way to get across. The wind gusts were rocking the car and setting up a tripod was out of the question.

Instead of sunset I found a picture far more exciting: thundercloud shadows and patches of light were quickly moving across the face of the butte. Being almost knocked over by the strong wind I made several compositions and finally made a series of handheld shots for multi-row panorama. And the light was gone.

Later at home I spent several days stitching together 10 frames which made this image. I still think it is far from perfection and I should redo it someday.

I’m back from my travels to Greece. It was fun. Sometimes even with a mild extreme: getting bounced wall to wall in a storm in a small ferry, fighting with a burglar in the middle of the night, and my all time favorite - driving on narrow winding roads with a stone wall on one side and bottomless ravine on the other side. Santorini was the most beautiful island of all we have been to. It is a crown jewel of all Greek islands. It is worth forgetting about other islands and going to Santorini only. I made quite a few photos: over 10,000 in fact. I wish I could have spent more time on photography there, but I unashamedly wasted my time on a beach and simply enjoyed the view without viewfinder. Sorting and developing my photos from the trip will take some time and I will be posting them on my website irregularly…

I will be traveling to Greece for the next 2 weeks or so. We will be doing some Greek islands “hopping”: Mykonos, Paros, Naxos, Santorini and some small islands in between. I don’t think I will have access to Internet there. I promise to answer your emails and get to your print orders as soon as I get back home.