Being an avid student of our medium, I’m constantly looking at ways to add new types of images to my portfolio. It challenges me to find new boundaries and pushes my creative side into overdrive, as the stimulus of a new genre makes me feel quite a newbie again.
So I headed out east with Mr Hougaard Malan to one of our countries largest spectacles- The Blyde River Canyon to see what it had to offer in terms of river scenes, waterfalls, misty forests and of course, spectacular cliffs that have been eroded by the winds of time.
I can easily say we were not disappointed; the place is crawling with great images. However, in addition to taking great images in a genre I’m not used to working in. I found that traipsing around and through mountainous country has to be one of the most inspiring aspects of living in South Africa. Each morning (see 04h00 starts) and afternoon we would be walking to our hearts content searching for compositions. On one afternoon this transpired to a 45 minutes and 200m covered; so impassable was the terrain. We were lucky to stumble upon an opening a few minutes later, but we left many a piece of flesh and sweat in that head high fynbos… and for that we left elated.
There is something about mountains that makes you stop and recollect. My main purpose for the trip was to get images. But I also returned with a soul refreshed and a mind clear of the daily worries. If the goal of photography can do that, then Ill be happy to be out and walking in mountains a lot more in my lifetime…
Here are a few images from our ramblings.
2 comments:
Damn I have not been up in that part since 2002. I really need to make a plan again one day and take a month and jut be... Thank you for reminding me of the panoramas of life :)
I have to agree with you about mountains - those big open views really do help fix one's head!
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