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Here in Bali I am Mr David. They don’t seem to do last names here. Today, that has somehow evolved into Mr Rabbit. How? I cannot tell, these things happen in Asia. It goes with the territory, along with brushing teeth with bottled water, women carrying huge loads on their heads, rice fields and noodles. The buzz of Asia; I love it.
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Rice farmer, nr Ubud, Bali, Indonesia.
Canon EOS 1Ds mkIII,
85mm f1.2 L lens,
1/1000 sec @ f1.2, ISO 200 |
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But I’ve been here 24 hours now and am not yet a Happy Traveller. The interminable flights delivered me here pale and blotchy, puffy faced, with streaming sinuses, incoherent with exhaustion and jet lagged. And the meter is running. I’ve not yet got that crucial first exposure nailed and I’m twitchy, edgy, and impatient to get going. You would think, wouldn’t you, that after 25 years of doing this I’d have learnt to be a bit more laid back about it all? But no. There is always that pressure to hit the ground with my feet running. I could of course just point my camera at a random scene and expose, just to get the first one done, but that’s cheating. No, it’s important to kick off in style. Then I can start to ease into the trip. Last night, wide awake at 2 am, I lay listening to the circling mosquitoes, pondering where to go for the first shoot. I’ve not yet scouted the lie of the land. I need a plan. But already one uncomfortable realisation is starting to dawn on me; Bali is empty. There’s no one here. Is it the global recession, or have I come at the wrong time of year?
It’s the rainy season. I knew that before I came. I’ve been to tropical destinations around the globe in the rainy season, deliberately. An afternoon deluge with dramatic skies and horny light before and after; that’s the usual wet season routine that’s suited me well from Tahiti to Kho Phi Phi. But maybe I’ve become a little casual with my pre-trip research, because that doesn’t seem to be the order of things here. A glimmer of sun in the morning followed by leaden grey skies more reminiscent of Capel Curig than Bali has me pondering my wisdom. It’s a long way to come, but its still early days.
I have found a rooftop with a commanding view over the rice fields around Ubud. On the skyline is the brooding presence of Gunung Agung, I think. Actually that’s me waxing a bit lyrical as it’s an imagined presence so far, I can’t see the volcano at all. It’s lost in the black clouds. But hey, a photographer complaining about the weather is like a fisherman moaning that the sea’s wet; pointless. I’m here, have a location sorted and just need to now get on with the job. I may need to be patient, but as it says on the tin and the cover of my book (http://www.davidnoton.com/wftlbook.htm ), waiting for the light is what I do. But I do need to make that first exposure, to draw first blood; I crave it.
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A farmer working in the rice fields
nr Tirtagangga, Bali, Indonesia.
Canon EOS 1Ds mkIII,
85mm f1.2 L lens,
1/2700 sec @ f2.2, ISO 160 |
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So I’m taking the bull by the horns and am heading out of town into the rice fields on a whim to see what I see. The contents of my bag have been stripped down into Light mode; a body and 3 lenses are all that weigh me down; no tripod, and the collar’s off my 70-200mm. This sort of approach rarely works for landscapes, they are mostly the product of meticulous location searching, previsualisation, planning and persistence, but for random encounters with earthy farmers it’s sometimes the way to go. Ever tried walking across rice fields top heavy with a Lowepro? Narrow earth banks barely wide enough to balance on divide the terraces, I’m frequently toppling off to sink shin deep into the ooze of the rice fields. In amongst the terraces are tiny bamboo shacks, and there, as they are every day of their working lives, are the farmers.
An hour in, sweating and covered in rice paddy ooze, I come across my first bemused farmer and the first exposures are made. Blessed relief floods through my body. It won’t be the shot of the trip, in fact it probably won’t make it past the first edit, but at least I’ve pressed the shutter release. As I gamely try to gesticulate my gratitude for this first encounter I picture doing this at home. How many Somerset farmers have been accosted in their fields by wandering foreign photographers marching across their land? No one bats an eyelid here, in Asia I do things I’d never dream of at home.
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Workers threshing rice in the fields nr Sibetan,
Bali, Indonesia.
Canon EOS 1Ds mkIII, 16-35mm f2.8 II L lens @ 18mm,
1/100 sec @ f9, ISO 100, Lee 0.6 ND graduated filter |
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I move on. Around my neck is the 1Ds mkIII fitted with my favourite lens for this sort of agricultural paparazzi work; the 85mm f1.2. The light is steely grey; flat and diffuse, lousy for landscapes, great for portraits. I meander across the fields, scrambling through ditches and across streams. In a clearing stands a semi-naked farmer, gesticulating and shouting at me. Is he telling me to piss off or come on over? I can’t tell, but ignorance is bliss so I press on. He stands, leaning on his scythe, peering intently at me, slightly hostile, or perhaps just baffled. I point to my camera with a slight quizzical look on my face, the standard international photo request signal. The barest of nods comes back. I raise the camera and compose as I’m activating the auto-focus. I’m shooting wide open at f1.2 for the minimal depth of field feel this lens delivers at maximum aperture. The eyes are sharp, not much else is but that’s the look I love for portraits. This lens cost a fortune, is heavy for its focal length and is difficult to use at this aperture. No matter how sound my technique if I’m working quickly at maximum aperture a fair percentage of exposures will have the focus point not quite in the right place; like on the ear or tip of the nose. I need to be so careful with the focusing but it’s a peach of an optic, stunningly fast and crisp, and for travel portraiture is my lens of choice.
Compose, focus, expose. I sweep my eye from corner to corner of the frame, how can I make this better? The background is a lovely green blur and the shot is a pleasing arrangement of shapes. The best shots are always the simplest. I expose five frames before the moment has passed, but I know before I check the glowing monitor the shot has worked. I trudge back in the fading light, filthy but happy, for now. I’m underway.
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The terraced rice fields near Tirtagangga at dawn with the sun rising
over the volcanic peak of Gunung Lempuyang, Bali, Indonesia.
Canon EOS 1Ds mkIII, 16-35mm f2.8 II L lens @ 22mm,
1/85 sec @ f6.3, ISO 100, Lee 0.9 ND graduated filter |
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It’s a whole week later and my mood isn’t quite so chirpy. I’m sat on a balcony at Tirtagangga in eastern Bali watching the rain dripping from the lush vegetation all around me. Its been raining incessantly for days. I’m hardly testing the capacity of my back up hard drive, I’ve shot virtually nothing since that first muddy foray. I had to move on from Ubud to preserve my sanity; too many evenings were being spent balefully losing the will to live in restaurants sparsely patronised by honeymooning couples staring into each other’s eyes. When things are going well these trips develop a momentum, which is unstoppable, and good photo sessions come thick and fast. Life is never better than during those rare and all too brief interludes. Conversely when the Gods of Light are in a strop a trip can stall fatally. Well OK, not fatally, we’re only talking pictures here, but when you’ve travelled across the globe just to stand by the tripod in a rice field it’s difficult to be philosophical about the endless black clouds and futile vigils. This trip has stalled. Its not working. What can I do? Drink beer whilst sinking into a morose torpor? Or stay positive and keep doing what I do; plugging in the location searches, never letting an opportunity pass, using my time productively and just trusting that sooner or later the clouds will part at the right time to bathe the verdant landscape of green terraces tumbling down to the Lombok Strait in gorgeous golden light? My phone bleeps. It’s a text from home; Wendy is out shooting in perfect snowy winter conditions in Dorset. That’s it, tonight the beer option wins.
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A dramatic sky with lenticular clouds over the volcanic peak of
Gunung Agung and the rice fields near Ubud, Bali, Indonesia.
Canon EOS 1Ds mkIII, 24-70mm f2.8 L lens @ 62mm,
1/50 sec @ f8, ISO 100, polarising filter |
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The day dawns on the last morning of the trip; tonight I fly home. I’m back on my rooftop near Ubud for one more try. The intervening 2 weeks since I first did this have not been a total waste, I’ve shot images, mostly under grey skies, and caught up with the writing. There will be some images and tales from Bali for the Road Show (http://www.davidnoton.com/roadshow.htm). But it will be a bugger to leave without shooting this one location that I found on the first day; it’s a belter. I trudge up the steps in the darkness more out of habit then hope, there’s heavy cloud overhead. Another dawn patrol, another tripod vigil; these are the routines of my life. I set up the Giotto but opt to keep the camera under cover; more rain is inevitable. Or is it? To the west the sky is clear. Will that gap reach the eastern horizon in time for a rendezvous with the rising sun? There is hope. To the north the pyramidal peak of Gunung Agung looms large, dominating the landscape. I know exactly the shot I want; the first direct sunlight of day sidelighting the rice fields with a dramatic sky and a slightly long lens perspective emphasising the scale of the volcano on the skyline. This in a nutshell crystalises how I work; start with an idea, do the legwork, find the location, previsualise the image, plan the shoot and then keep coming back until Mother Nature obliges. It usually works. Sometimes it doesn’t, and I leave rueing the shot that got away. Right now, at 5.30am on a rooftop in Indonesia, waiting for the light with my iPod on, shuffling by the tripod, I’d say I’ve a 50% chance of exposing this morning. I’m now getting the buzz of a possible shot coming together.
The dawn sky is evolving into a masterpiece of nature. Lenticular clouds are forming over Gunung Agung. The camera is on the tripod now, with a spirit level in the hot shoe, the cable release on, all framed up and composed with the 70-200mm f2.8 IS L lens on, mirror lock activated, aperture priority AE, a polariser and a twitching photographer. Check all settings; ISO at 100? Check the tripod is tight. Check again. Look to the east. The light is coming. Happiness.
Persistence is a landscape photographer’s greatest asset. So, two weeks and some 16000 miles of travel for one shot. Worth it? You bet.
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