Finding isolation

Sometimes a situation occurs when you need to photograph a particular location that is very well known and prone to crowds and groups of cellphone-camera-toting tourists. How do you create a sense of isolation? How you get photographs without hordes of people in them? There are a few simple tricks that can be of use in situations like these.

First of all, let me say that guide books are a wonderful resource. Everyone buys them and some people follow them religiously. I don't mean to discourage the use of guide books, quite the opposite... often times they will let you know exactly where the crowds will be and (depending on the level of detail contained in the book) exactly when too. Some titles give recommendations on when to visit certain sites for the best sunset, best view, etc. This will help you become aware of when crowds are likely to congregate and how to time your shot list (you do have a shot list, don't you?) Also, look at the brochures of local tour companies. They usually print a schedule with times, places, etc. and if they're a successful company, you'll be able to count on crowds at these times.

Let's say you're at Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the Lonely Planet says that the temple Ta Phrom is best at sunrise, try visiting at sunset instead. Your photos will look completely different from what the masses are capturing and you have a good chance of having the place to yourself. Many historic sites are marketed as a "circuit" to help the flow of tour groups. The order and direction in which they are visited is often based on convenience and not on the best available lighting or time of day (great photos are not convenient). Scout your location the day before and then arrive the next day well before sunrise or linger on after sunset. Most tourists won't put the time in to get a great shot so make these your prime time office hours. The following examples were shot at the "wrong" time of day according to the guide books.






With that being said, often times there is a reason why guide books recommend visiting sites at a particular time of day... LIGHT! Sometimes it's just going to be impossible to avoid the crowds. One of the most beautiful (and most photographed) slot canyons in America, Antelope Canyon, is only accessible with a guide and only at certain times. There is a 'window' of about 15 to 20 minutes during the day when the sun is directly overhead and creates those amazing shafts of light in the haze of the canyon... and everyone else knows it too. You'll run into all sorts of people from pro photographers to groups of tourists with kids. In this case you'll have to resort to a different technique.

Try putting the camera on a tripod and opening up the shutter for a longer amount of time. By exposing for 10 or 15 seconds or longer, most people will simply blur out of your photograph as they walk into your shot and you'll never be able to notice that they were there. The use of a Neutral Density filter may help facilitate this if there is too much light to expose for longer periods. These filters effectively decrease the amount of light reaching the sensor in your camera allowing you to open the shutter for longer periods of time to get the right exposure (and they do wonders for moving water too, creating a soft blur instead of sharp ripples). Cokin makes very affordable resin filters that slide in front of your lens with the use of their filter holder. There are other companies that make glass filters too but these are much more fragile and expensive. The following images are examples where people have walked through my shot only to blur out in the final image. It's even hard for me to tell which ones had people in them at this point.

The Philippines and the island of Palawan

When the sweat starts to roll down your forehead at 7am and you hear the hot breeze blowing through the palm fronds, you must be in Palawan, a beautiful and still untamed island located in the southwest of the Philippines. It's a place where village life still prevails and the daily rush hour consists of ambling water buffalo and the occasional motorbike on a dusty road.

With the local past time being cock fighting, many families raise fighting roosters which means that days begin very early on Palawan. It's not uncommon to hear the first strained crow begin around 4:30 in the morning, and once the first one starts, it's only a matter of a few moments before the whole chorus joins in.

Midday brings the soaring heat and thunder clouds roll in for late afternoon relief. The clear turquoise waters of the South China Sea are the only escape, an underwater world seemingly made from every color in Mother Nature's palette.

...And we're back.

After an 13 month hiatus from blogging I'm finally joining the online world again. A lot has happened in that time... I finished my trip in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam... packed up and went to India, Nepal, and Turkey (featured in Traveller magazine)... returned to Seattle and then drove across the country through the Southwest to Santa Fe, New Mexico for a photography workshop with Dan Westergren (Senior Photo Editor for National Geographic Traveler) and Jim Richardson (veteran National Geographic photographer). I made some wonderful friends there. After the Southwest, I ventured to Colorado to the Great Sand Dunes National Monument with my friend Kennley (where we shot some amazing photographs).

Winter in Seattle meant that it was time for my annual pilgrimage to Lake Charles, Louisiana to visit my Dad and to Steamboat Springs, Colorado to visit my Mom. After returning to the gray and drizzly Northwest, I packed up once more and set out for the Philippines for a month to shoot another story for Traveller magazine. It is an incredible place with the clearest water that I've ever experienced (blog entry to come).

Upon returning, I made another quick trip to Louisiana to shoot some of the rural culture there (an ongoing project of mine). This time I was able to venture deep into the swampland of southern Louisiana along the Intercoastal Waterway, the Old Spanish Trail, and River Road (home to some of the last remaining plantations in their original condition). To say that I met some "characters" is quite an understatement. After catching 93 catfish in one afternoon, a successful wild boar hunt, photographing alligators from 36" away, and visiting the Tabasco factory on a 250 acre nature preserve, I can safely say that I was able to capture the "flavor" of Louisiana.

Tea in the Himalayas

I woke up early to get to the airport on time but one can never plan enough for the unpredictability of Delhi traffic. It is anarchy at it's most eloquent, chaos in it's most precise and purist form, where near misses are measured in millimeters not car lengths, and traffic laws are for the timid and inefficient. It resembles a school of fish that numbers in the millions, all moving, turning, merging as one living being. It's how traffic was intended to be, the way nature handles traffic.

The journey to Darjeeling, home to some of the world's finest tea plantations, took nine hours by car, airplane, bus, taxi, and jeep, with the last kilometer or so on foot. I passed through rolling farmlands that led deep into massive jungles with huge vines and giant trees and finally rose up into the foot hills of the Himalayas... the front row seats to the most magnificent show on earth.

The small town of Darjeeling is like something straight out of a fantasy. All of the precariously perched buildings cascade down incredibly steep slopes covered in lush greenery. They're connected by thousands of winding steps that lead up up up (Doctor Suess would be proud). The people are a mix of cultures including Tibetan, Mongolian, Bhutanese, Bangladeshi, as well as Indian. There are Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims all living amongst each other and there are large, mountain-hardy smiles everywhere you turn. When planning to walk to a particular site or temple the distances are deceiving. You have to take into account the elevation gain and loss along the way which basically doubles your distance.

Darjeeling sits squarely facing four of the five highest peaks in the world, each one being lit by the early morning sunrise in slow succession. The mountains stand like the dissonant tones of a symphony before the conductor taps his wand and brings the whole world to attention in a moment of sacred silence. Every morning hundreds of people take jeeps up to a point in the mountains called Tiger Hill which is supposed to provide one of the best views of the nearby peaks. My driver told me that I needed to wake at 3:45am in order to get to the hill in time for the sunrise.

The next morning was quite the spectacle. Hundreds of jeeps racing towards the hill, passing each other on the curving bends in the road as it wound higher and higher. The beams of our headlights bounced and cut through the darkness over the rough roads chasing the red taillights in front of us. "What's the rush?" I thought as we honked and zoomed past another jeep full of affluent Indian tourists. "It's 4am. The sun doesn't rise for another hour and a half and it's only 10 more kilometers to the view point".

In the next few minutes I found out what the rush was. Once we made the final turn we reached a traffic jam... in the dark!!! There were hundreds of jeeps stopped in the road and thousands of people all walking among the traffic to the top of the hill. Once I reached the top it was like being at a huge outdoor concert. People were crammed in tight and pushing and shoving there way into position. It was nothing like what I had pictured. I thought I was going to experience a peaceful sunrise in relative silence with time to drink in the significance of the moment. Instead it was like being at a circus. Families posed together for cellphone camera portraits. Relatives yelled across the crowd at other relatives to get a better spot. And all of this for what? A thick bank of clouds covering everything within site with the exception of only the nearest trees. I waited it out until well after sunrise hoping to get the shot of a lifetime and nothing... only clouds and crowds.

Even though the trip to get a shot of the mountains at sunrise was a bust, I did get some amazing photos of the monasteries along the way back. My driver, Kumar, took me through his small town named Ghoom which was an incredible slice of village life. I was able to see a temple full of about 300 young monks all chanting their morning prayers. As one of them slipped out a side pathway to fetch something for one of the elders, I walked around the side and caught his attention. With his permission I was able to get a single quick shot... one of my favorites so far.

The view from the window of my room at the Hotel Dekeling looked out on all of Darjeeling. It was in the attic of an old building high above the streets below. And when I say high, I mean very high... it was 112 steps to get up to my room. The winding staircase passed two restaurants and another hotel on the way up. Finally it passed the lobby of my hotel, then the kitchen above the lobby. And as the staircase climbed it got narrower and narrower. It continued up and passed the living quarters of the employees before finally reaching my room at the very top. I loved having the crow's nest but it had it's drawbacks. It had a corrugated tin roof and the young girls who did the laundry each day had a habit of spreading it out to dry in the morning sun right on my rooftop. Let me tell you, it's nearly impossible to be quiet while walking on a tin roof, especially in the early morning before the sounds of the day start to assault your senses. All in all though, it was a wonderful place to stay.

First week in India...

Best seat in the house! Seat 31h is an exit row seat about midway back on a Boeing 777. It's got about an acre of leg room. After extending my legs as far out in front of me as they'd go there was still about 5 feet of room until the bulk head wall to the bathroom and the self-serve drinks.

The flight was full of Indian families who had no regard for "FAA regulations" and the flight attendants knew they were up against a losing battle. They would emphatically demand that the bearded man with a white turban and pointy shoes take his seat, they would pass a labored smile to the woman with screaming children banging on the tray tables, they did their best to keep up with the overflowing trash heaps collecting around the exit doors, the floors splattered and stained with white yogurt.

The very moment that the wheels touched the ground everyone began milling around despite the flight attendants shouts and PA annoucements to "PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS NOW!!! WAIIT UNTIL WE'VE COME TO THE GATE AND THE SEATBELT SIGN IS TURNED OFF!!!". Their pleas, lost in translation, fell on deaf ears and they finally gave up and retreated to the back of the plane, frazzeled from the last 14 hours in the air.

The first breath of Delhi air can only be described as a rotting garbage dump set ablaze into a huge bonfire. Although the temperature was about 100 degress when we landed at 8:30pm it wasn't overwhelming, it was the smell, that thick burning trash heap smell. It felt like each square foot of air weighed ten pounds. When I left the airport terminal there were hundreds of people waiting for the arriving passengers, much like my experience in Kathmandu. I was pleased to find that my hotel had sent the driver as promised. Miraculously, I found my name on the sign he was holding among hundreds of other signs, each with hand scribbled names, hotels, and travel services. It read "Jayle Rivyers", interesting spelling.

He was a nice kid about 18 years old who was eager to speak English with me. It took me a while to understand him though, he used the words "in the" with everything... "In the flight, you have good flight coming in the Delhi? In the... uh... traffic, many traffic to in the hotel. You have many good time in the India. Thank you sir." The ride to the hotel was chaotic... dust, cows, buses, bicycles, rickshaws, tuk tuks, horns blasting and hundreds of near misses, all in one nocturnal mosh pit pulsing to the strange syncopated rhythm that is India.

The next morning I hired a driver from the hotel to take me to Lal Qila, or Red Fort, a remnant of the Moghul Empire finished in 1648. The imposing complex stands on an octagonal 2km plot with sandstone walls and fortified with turrets. Next was the Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque, that soars above the old city. After climbing the mountain of stairs to the entrance, it opens into an immense stone courtyard large enough to hold 25,000 worshippers.

Upon arriving I got out of the car with my camera bag on my shoulder as always and he told me to wear it on the front, warning me of pick pockets and theives. "This is India" he said with a bright smile. The Red Fort was nice but nothing I hadn't seen before in Nepal or Cambodia or Thailand. The mosque, however, was incredible. There was beautiful light and I think I got some great shots. With the early morning sunrise filling the cavernous stone halls and archways, the only fitting description is tranquilty incarnate.

The next morning I ventured out on foot among the "pick pockets and thieves" that I was warned about. There was no problem at all. I've figured out that the hotels try to scare you with scandalous stories so that you'll eat at their restaurants, use their drivers, and stay at their hotels (all at higher prices). When I was finally out among the people on the streets, I had no more problems with hawkers or scams than I've had in Bangkok or Saigon or any other big city. Staying insulated from the people of a county leads one to develop an "us and them" attitude that never really lets you see the country and the culture for what it is.

Week One: San Francisco to Tokyo to Bangkok

Leaving at 11am is definitely the way to go. After getting checked in through security, we boarded the plane and proceeded to find all of the empty seats. I had seven in a row to myself so I took an eight hour nap while heading across the ocean.

We spent several days in Bangkok exploring the area and one of the highlights was seeing Muy Thai (or Thai boxing). We had ringside seats for 10 matches and it's every bit as brutal as people claim. Hearing the pounding of fist or knee into muscle or bone is an intensley jarring experience. The crowd is yelling and shouting for their favorites and waving hands histarically while betting on the toughest fighter to win.

Another equally entertaining experience is watching Chad try to determine if the girls walking down the street at night are ladyboys or not. Some of them are quite convincing and could fool even the most trained eye. Their persistance is unmatched as proven by the fact that Chad had to use more force than he was accustomed to in order to break free of the clutches of some of them. "You want good time? You want boom boom fuckie fuckie?" This is their usual sales tactic and it must work some of the time because there are quite a few of them roaming the crowded areas of Banglamphu as foreigners spill out onto the streets from chic lounges and clubs looking for the next party.

The flight to Ko Samui is a short one, only one hour. But during that hour we were served a snack, drinks, a full meal, and more drinks before touching down in Thailand's paradise island. Even while waiting for the plane at the gate visitors are served orange juice, pastries, small sandwiches, and chilled bananas, all for free. A short mini-bus ride to the dock puts you on the boat to Ko Phangan. Landing at Hat Rin, we are greeted by touts calling out destinations on the island. We followed the guy shouting Ao Thong Nai Pan Noi. The beach is actually two beaches separated by a headland of huge boulders that spill into the sea atop which sits a beautiful five star resort. We stayed on the smaller of the two beaches which faces east into an oblivion of green glassy sea and big blue sky. The beach is dotted with longtail boats anchored in the bay and the sound of the breeze blowing through the palm trees invokes dreams of utopia.