The tough task of Thinking Slow

"Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it."

Daniel Kahneman

The bridge was around ten to twelve feet long. Around three feet wide.

I stood at one end, hands in my pocket, my camera on its tripod, a grimace on my face and a louder one on my mind.

In front of me, lay spread out a wide expanse of rocks. There was a prominent and deep gash right in the middle. White frothy water gushed over this wide expanse of rocks but not as one gigantic monolith of water. It had identified specific channels and grooves which it felt most comfortable in moving ahead and the result was an array of smaller jets of water leaping out. Right where all these innumerable jets fell, naturally the water was a white frothy turmoil but just a little later, its colour changed to a lovely striking shade of blue.

It was enchanting.

And, I had no idea how to capture it.

 What a truly incredible sight this was !

I had tried different shutter speeds and identified the one that I felt comfortable with the effect. So far, so good.

But what next? There has to be something beyond the right shutter speed! I didn’t have a clue!

We were in Iceland mainly to photograph the Arctic fox at Hornstrandir but it would have been rather silly to go all the way to this remote country and not roam around looking at its spectacular landscape.

And since we naturally have our cameras, why not take a detour into the unknown field of landscape photography?

My struggles began from that moment.

On the very first day, I stood on an empty beach where the water lapped tentatively at the edge of my feet. The road behind me ran straight for a while before taking a rather spectacular turn into the hills on my right and vanished. Small hills stood on my left, slowly petering down to the beach.

At any other time, the scene would have felt calming.

At that moment, however, I felt anything but calm.

I was hurriedly checking out opportunities, possibilities, perspectives and coming out with absolutely nothing that made sense. I changed positions. I knelt down. I went back to the road and climbed some rocks behind me. Nothing was working.

That, I realized later, was the one big difference between the two genres of wildlife and landscape.

Everyone knows that wildlife photography requires patience. We wait for hours for a subject to arrive. Or for a subject to wake up and start moving. But when the moment arrives, your mind moves into a blur of action.

Your mind orders your fingers and they are moving incessantly across the camera controls. You are constantly weighing dozens of options of composition, discarding most of them, trying out a few of them. You are following the subject as it moves, and you are figuring out where it could possibly be a few minutes later so that you can be in the right position to capture the perspective you want.

You need to make that fleeting moment count. Your mind is in a constant whirl of evaluating options, discarding and choosing. Gear, settings, compositions...the number of decisions that you are making constantly is actually mindboggling.

Looking back, I realize the mistake I was making.

I was taking the same approach to landscape photography. My mind was working at the same speed that it does to capture an image of the wildlife.

I wasn't slowing down my thinking.

Landscape photography requires a lot more deliberation. It’s a lot more immersive. Nothing much really changes. The rocks, the mountains, the water…its been around for millions of years. It’s not going anywhere. Yes, light will change, but that need not happen all the time.

You need a meditative approach. You need to slow down your thinking. You need to sit still and observe a lot more, calmly study the options and reach out for your camera only after your thoughts are clearer. Your composition is very deliberate. The attention that is paid to the edges of your frame is as much as to where the focus is.

Working the scene, as the experts like to call it.

As I write this, I remember that Jack Dykinga’s brilliant book, Capture the Magic, is on the bookshelf behind me. I reach out and thumb through it.

In the chapter, Working the Situation, he talks about how a curved plant popping out of the dunes in New Mexico appealed to him and how he spent hours trying different compositions using the changing light to compose differently.

Hours. With just one plant.

He uses these words – ‘… I enjoyed the slow, deliberate and careful composing of phototographs…”

Slow. Deliberate. Careful.

These were not adjectives that would have applied to how I was taking images in Iceland. My mind was racing. I was impatient that no composition was coming instantly to mind. I didn’t slow down. I didn’t sit and wait. I wanted instant ideas.

A thought struck me.

It would be an interesting experience to go on a landscape photography trip. That would be such a different and educational experience. A very careful approach to composition, with a lot more attention to the edges would definitely have a positive impact on the way I create wildlife images.

Worth a try.

In the meantime, these are some of the images where I did absolutely no justice to the beauty around me.

The view of the falls if one steps back a little bit...

...and if you change your position

...and when you go low ( this shot came from a suggestion from our guide who asked me if I took this angle when I got back to the car...I ran back!!! )

...and if you zoom in away from the centre of the falls...ok enough of these falls

In retrospect, I should have framed this better...that triangle in the centre could have been complete

I loved that rock perched on top

One can't not fall into the lure of a sun burst opportunity

This place looked so pretty...definitely a place where one should spend hours and hours

The last waterfall pic, I promise...what a sight, isnt it ?

I wanted the people in the frame to provide a perspective

We were returning from a futile attempt at shooting the Icelandic horses when this scene struck me

I was so badly tempted to write some corny line about the long road ahead in this genre

but I shall stoutly resist :) ( This is a screenshot from a brilliant video that my friend Vishnu took )

What do you think about what I have written about landscape photography ? Would love to hear from those who focus on this genre.

Cheers !!

Ashok