Keep Shooting at the End

A 4 image panoramic stitch of the Church at Alta in the blue glow of twilight.

Going on a photographic workshop can be exhausting. You’re up early, you’re out late, you’re constantly exercising the creative muscles in your head in crafting compositions and thinking about exposure. It’s no wonder that at the end of any such trip it’s really easy to put the camera down and not think about photography for a bit. Unfortunately the mindset often sets in before you’ve even left the photography location.

A quick three image handheld stitched panoramic of the centre of Alta during the middle of a snowstorm that grounded aircraft and had our group stranded and unable to head home.

This happened to me on a recent workshop to the north of Norway. Traveling in the Arctic is hard. It’s draining on the body because of the temperatures and the weather. It’s especially taxing if you happen to be the photo instructor on a trip. You’re thinking, breathing, speaking, and doing photography constantly. You’re helping others with their images and when you are not, you are either shooting your own images or discussing technique, theory and aesthetics with the participants. It’s a non-stop photographic mentality that can sap the will to keep shooting. This is really unfortunate.

Often the last day of a workshop is the least productive (ironically it’s matched by the first day of the workshop where everyone is still trying to find their legs and where they fit in with the group). It shouldn’t be though. This came to light for me towards the end of our Arctic adventure since we were forced to exit the location we had been shooting in due to the bad weather that was forecast over the next few days. Gusting winds, driving snow and a complete white-out had us heading for the hills in an attempt to get back to the nearest town where the airport was. Our concern was that the pass we would have to travel through would be snowed in and the photographers in the group wouldn’t be able to get to their return flights home. It was a good call to exit early, not that it helped as ultimately half of the group had to stay even longer since the poor weather meant that flights were cancelled (apparently flying a Boeing 737 in a raging snow-storm isn’t such a good idea).

Thick snowfall on the streets of Alta in the northern most part of Norway

While watching the snow building up on the walkways and streets below the hotel it struck me that this was great photographic material. Why on earth was I holed up in the hotel reading a book (it was a good book to be fair). So, almost too late, I started wandering the snow-clad streets of Alta looking for some interesting images. Sure the images weren’t the most amazing scenes that I have shot, but it actually felt cathartic to get out and shoot at the tail end of a trip when everyone else was packing their cameras and thinking of home.

If there’s a lesson to be learned it’s that the camera should stay out, even if the workshop is at an end. Sure, there are no set locations that you are visiting, but it’s still a holiday of sorts in an interesting location. In this regard I think of one of the Nature’s Light instructors, Cornelius Muller, who always carries a small Fujifilm x100T camera with him. When the workshop is at an end, or the serious location shoot is over, he’ll keep snapping with his ‘fun’ camera. The interesting thing is that at the end, when you are looking through the images, sometimes those grab shots and walk-around scenics end up in the final cut of imagery. Most important though, is that as photographers on a specific workshop we often forget that we are visiting a location, a town, or a country, for more than just the images. We’re also visiting to experience a place and space…or at least I hope we are.

The famous Oslo Opera House after finally managing to leave Alta and spend a day in Oslo on the way back to the warmer climes of Africa