There are some spectacular drives in the world- probably too numerous to mention, and varied in their beauty and uniqueness.
I reckon I’ve had a chance to enjoy a few of them- but not nearly as many as I’d like. Among those that spring to mind immediately include the highway between Lausanne and Montreux, along the northern shore of Lac Leman with the Alps rising from the opposite shore (in fact, almost any road through the Swiss and French Alps would have to qualify, including the highway entering Chamonix from direction Annemasse, and the road that snakes into the Val d’Aosta from the Tunnel St. Bernard); PNG’s North Coast Road between Madang and the Ramu River after dawn, with the coastline gleaming in tropical sunlight; the desert track that winds through Niger’s rugged and barren Air Mountains; the road running into Yosemite Valley via Tioga Pass- a truly jaw-dropping scene as you finally round the bend and catch your first glimpses of Half Dome and El Capitan; the Nairobi-Naivasha road as it drops into the East African Rift Valley with sprawling, cloud-speckled views of Lake Naivasha, Longonot Volcano and the plains; and almost any road you care to mention in Ethiopia once you’ve cleared Addis Ababa.
Among my very favourite is the road running between Canmore, Alberta, and Golden, British Colombia. Taking in the length of Banff National Park, it is an unending array of glorious mountain peaks one after the other that tower into the sky in dizzying proximity. The first time I drove it end-to-end was an early March morning after a heavy snowfall, when the sky was almost indigo, utterly cloudless, and the peaks sagging under a fresh carpet of white. It was so crisp, so utterly beautiful that at points I had tears in my eyes just watching it slip by.
(A little aside for any skiers among you: Kicking Horse Resort, above Golden, would have to be the greatest on-station ski terrain I have ever come across. Make it your Mecca.)
I haven’t had much chance to spend time in the Rockies of late, but a brief detour from a business trip let me spend a couple of days with dear friends in Calgary who, knowing my love of all things vertical, took me for an afternoon drive out to Banff. We had a lovely time, and it did my soul good to be back among mountain peaks. I find myself inspired when I’m among them, more in touch with my spirit. Mountains are my church and my cathedral, a place where I feel closer to God and most inspired to worship.
The photographer in me was stoked as well. My last trip to the Rockies, my equipment had been a Canon Powershot G6. It was fun for some skiing snaps and a bit of backcountry footage, but having a serious camera with me this time made me hope for a repeat of the scenery I saw those years back on that brittle spring morning.
Alas, the weather was not on my side. I didn’t end up with that aching blue sky, nor the fierce light that makes the snowcaps shine. We had patchy cloud, a finger-numbing wind, and shifting light.
But I wasn’t disappointed. As a photographer- literally a ‘writer of light’- you adapt. Photography is about making the most of the conditions you have, and while I’m not adept enough to come out with anything truly great if the conditions aren’t precisely in my favour (heck- I’m not going to come out with anything truly great even then), one thing I feel I’ve been blessed with is the ability to see beauty in nature under most circumstances.
While patchy cloud doesn’t necessarily allow the most spectacular nature of the mountains to be showcased, it does lend a drama to the scene that a blue sky doesn’t. Not only that, but the shifting cloud means no two pictures are the same. I mean, a blue sky is a blue sky- a plain backdrop that looks more or less the same. The angle and colour of light and shadows might change with the time of day. But with blowing cloud, the mood shifts from one minute to the next. And while colours may not sing out in the most vibrant fashion, the sense of contrast, depth and darkness- white on black- make for some great black and white shots. You get to celebrate texture, detail and form in a way that hones the eye, and which can be lost by the distraction of colour.
I took a lot of these shots at the time with monochrome in mind. It was clear looking through the viewfinder that they were only going to be a step or two above dull in colour, but the potential to celebrate the contrast was evident even at the time. As a photographer, you compose the image you want in your mind even before you look through the viewfinder. You look for form, for light, for colour. It takes only a subtle shift to turn those colours into a greyscale palette as you look at them, and once you’ve done that, you can appreciate a view in a whole new way. And while the electronic conversion of the files from colour into black-and-white happened after I loaded them into my computer and post-processed them, the conceptual conversion happened before I pressed the shutter release.
The photos are nothing more or less than a record of one of my favourite drives, an afternoon spent with friends (even if those friends don’t appear in the image, they were at the heart of that afternoon), and my own take of what I was seeing. In that sense, they are neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’- they just are, and I think anybody who enjoys creating should try and see their work in that light. I’m no Ansell Adams. I flinch at every flaw and shortcoming in my own work, and want to go back to do better. I also want to go back and take more photos under different lighting conditions. Heck, I just want to go back and enjoy the mountains. There are few places that draw me more fiercely than the Alberta Rockies. Cham maybe. Nepal. The Southern Alps. At least on a par.
Regardless, these are a few of the gorgeous peaks, dressed in a particular fashion and captured, like models, in a particular moment of glory. And for me, just another opportunity to work with the light I’m given, and learn.
NB: A couple of these photos I’ve linked to the original large-size image so you can explore the detail- it’s well worth clicking through and taking a look, in my impartial opinion as the photographer… 🙂
The first landing in Kabul is white-knuckled and spectacular. Beneath us, the azure blue of the Straights of Hormuz have given way to the wind-scoured deserts of Iran, then the frozen plains surrounding Kandahar, before the Hindu Kush erupts upward like a thrusting knife that threatens to cut us from the sky. I spend the flight with my face glued to the window. Images remain with me. The mountains outcrops of Oman’s Musandam Govenorate that jut from a sea of liquid silver like so many flooded peaks. Dust-storms racing below us across the cold brown plains inland of Bandar-e-Abbas. The spectacular faulting of the landscape, of Bazman’s rugged and striated peak, vast salt lakes along Afghanistan’s southern border, and the smattering of tiny muddy hamlets somehow eking survival from wildness. As we bypass Kandahar, subdued under a riming of frozen snow, I notice an object hovering a few thousand feet below us and see the dull, unmistakable silhouette of a military drone.
Kabul Valley seems to have just one way in and one way out. Nestled in a crook of the Hindu Kush, the peaks here have not forgotten that they are the tail end of the Himalaya. They are fierce and snow-capped, and for the first few minutes, while we are still twenty minutes out, I watch them, enthralled.
Then we drop down, and the cloud rolls in.
We’re still at twenty-some thousand feet as I catch sight, through a hole in the grey, that shows a finger of rock and ice jabbing up at us, not very far away at all. As the plane kicks in the shifting air currents, I begin to pray that the pilot has good GPS. We bank and circle, looking for our path through the rock-studded clouds. When visibility next opens up, we’re slipping through a pass into the valley, and there’s a peak perpendicular with the starboard wing, another straight off the port. The pilot’s found his way in, and there’s not much wriggle-room.
In late February, Kabul is still very much in the grip of the winter air that floods down the mountainsides and pools in its wide dun basin. The ground is hard with frost, desiccated with sheaves of windblown dust. The city itself has a squat profile, walled compounds and wide avenues punctuated by minarets and guard-towers. In the harsh afternoon sunlight, the mountains that peer down are crisp and severe.
The tension here is felt as soon as we disembark the aircraft. It’s an unspoken recognition that the context has changed. No longer Kansas. This is my first trip to Afghanistan, so if arriving here has always felt heavy, I have no idea. Multiple friends have reported that since last month’s deadly assault on the Taverna du Liban, a popular expatriate hangout, there has been a particularly sombre feel in the international community. Regardless, Afghanistan is heading for a choppy season- pending elections and an anticipated drawdown of foreign troops are likely to see an increase in destabilizing attacks. The place exhales a sullen anxiety.
It’s not helped by my immediate circumstances. My choice of reading on the plane in is Washington Post journalist and Pullitzer Prize winner Joby Warrick’s The Triple Agent, a gripping telling of the al Qaeda operative who blew himself and eight CIA officers up inside an FOB in eastern Afghanistan. As we stand in line to have our luggage collected, C. passes round his cell-phone. His team survived a suicide bombing here some years back, and he’s jokingly showing off images he’s snapped of the head of the hapless jihadi, neatly separated from its shoulders.
His subtext is clear. This is where we are, boys.
For all the callous joking, I like my team. C. is a gruff bear of a guy, ex-serviceman and a veteran of hard times and places both in the military and as an aid-worker, all but unapproachable any hour prior to noon, but knowledgeable, jovial and with a story for every occasion.
R. is newer to this line of work- like me this is his first trip to Afghanistan, and like me he’s a little edgy at first- but you wouldn’t know it to speak to him. He’s smart, sharp, a real pro, and good-natured to round it all off.
K. is from one of the ex-Soviet republics and a former special forces operator. He’s cool and switched on, with a sense of humour as dry as triple-distilled vodka, so that the only way you can tell he’s joking is the sharp little gleam in his eye and the suggestion of a curl at one corner of his mouth. I ask him if he’s ever been to Afghanistan before, and he looks at me a beat before replying,
“I don’t remember.”
Given that the country is about to celebrate a 25th anniversary commemorating getting rid of the Soviets, I remind myself not to stand too close to him.
Blackhawks are circling as we cross the concrete to the domestic terminal. Two of them to begin with, then joined by two more, then two more, and, finally, a pair of Mi-8s, all filling the city air with their thrumming, doing loops of the metropolitan area. I note the two observation blimps with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. Their purpose is obvious, but it’s still a little odd to see them hanging in the blue, oddly out of place above this cold, dusty city.
We stop for a cigarette break. I’m the odd one out here, the token non-smoker. We stand on the flat expanse of the airport forecourt, the air cold but the sun strong. The threat of car-bombs means that no vehicles of any sort can approach the terminals, and there’s a straggling line of arriving passengers and their luggage picking their way across to the first of many checkpoints leading into the city.
K. smokes thin little cigarettes.
“0.01 percent nicotine, 0.01 percent tar,” he tells me happily, and smokes two for every one that C. and R. light up.
I’m reluctant to board a domestic Afghan airliner- I have heard only bad things about Ariana- or, as it’s less affectionately known, Scary-ana- but the MD-11 is in decent shape (on the outside at least), and after a while circling the valley, we clear the mountain pass.
But not the mountains.
I’ve flown over the Rockies, over the Alps (northern and Southern), flown in and out of the Himalaya. I love my mountains and make no secret of it. So when I say I’ve never seen mountains like these before, I’m not being dramatic.
We fly for an hour westward in a commercial jet. During that time, the mountains don’t stop. Peak after peak, gashed ravines and wild peaks. Winter seas them blanketed in white, so only the sharpest ridgelines stand out in rocky contrast. We fly at 25,000 feet, and the crests seem to break not that far beneath us. Habitation is all but nonexistent. There are no roads, no towns, no evidence at all that people live here, or ever have. This place defines rugged. I am awestruck and spend the flight peering from the porthole.
The sun has fallen when we land in Herat, and is nothing more than a crimson smudge backlighting an outcrop several hundred feet high. The mountains have given way at what feels like the last minute to a snowless plain. We disembark into cold night air. Helicopter gunships lurk like oversized wasps on the apron.
We’re met by J. and A., our local fixers. J. has a face round as a moon, with intelligent eyes and a warm, patient smile which he shares with us often. Clean-shaven with short dark hair, he looks less like the typical Afghans portrayed in the media (most often the Pashtun from the east of the nation), and more Iranian. Herat is a border-town, with solid road links to both Iran and Tajikistan, and this difference- both cultural and economic- has made all the difference to the relative stability of this western province.
J.’s offsider A. is a small, slender man who has a constant sense of doing about him. During the week we spend with him, he becomes our go-to guy to get things happening, and he is never off his cell-phone, to the point that I’m convinced he’s running a business- or three- on the side. Hopefully in the saffron trade. A. has two wives and eight kids, the youngest of which we learn was born just a day or two before we arrived. He later informs us with a sheepish smile that he’s done with having children now.
The four westerners cram into an unmarked SUV, while the Afghans chase ahead in a red sedan with sunken suspension. The airport is twenty clicks outside town, joined by a single straight stretch of highway.
We race into the darkness, swerving around trucks, or vehicles stalled at the roadside. The Kandahar Highway has all the hallmarks of a popular target. Passengers from every flight- including expat aid workers, contractors or government officials- have no choice but to take it. It hasn’t been bombed in about six months, when an IED went off next to the police checkpoint at the end of the bridge. As J. pointed out to us in his written briefing, there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s a wrong-place wrong-time equation, but the odds are good these days. We don’t slow until we hit town.
Herat is Afghanistan, but not the Afghanistan portrayed in the media- of constant suicide bombings, complex insurgent attacks, and soldiers in body-armour patrolling dusty laneways. The city sits in the valley of the Hari River, where the Hindu Kush peters out into a series of serrated spurs and finally crumble to dust. From a good vantage in the city, you can see mountains on three sides. To the north, a low brown ridge like crushed velvet catches the morning light in folds in its flank. South and east, snowcapped ridges and peaks dominate the horizon, and only westward, towards Iran, is the landscape calm.
The Hindu Kush makes Afghanistan. It has carved a tough and resilient mountain people, at home in a harsh climate, and all the tougher for it. It has contributed to the rise of clans and tribes, separated by valleys and by winter snows that isolate them for months at a time and so make them fiercely independent and cohesive. And it has in effect created two nations- one to the south and east of the dividing range, and another to the north and west.
Security is tight in Herat. There are armed opposition groups in the surrounding countryside, hostile to government and to outsiders, and anybody perceived as helping them. Variations on the Taliban-allied militias have their reach even this far west, as well as local militias, disenfranchised tribal leaders and criminal gangs. The fragile government in Afghanistan is a breeding ground for this low-level anarchy, and Herat has had its share of bombings, kidnappings and assassinations, the most recent of which occurred a fortnight before our arrival when two election workers were shot dead.
None the less, it has none of the obvious trappings of a war-zone. There are no soldiers in evidence on the street, no coalition convoys or overt military presence to be seen. Compounds are walled and wired, guards standing watch, but life goes on in the streets much like it would in any other south Asian city.
There is bustle and there is energy, and the economy is reportedly in a solid upswing. This bodes well for stability. The streets are full, traffic is congested, and about the roundabouts and streetsides, shops are full of household goods and thronged with pedestrians. Little red motorbike tri-shaws, the trailers oddly tipped back at an awkward thirty degrees, run about laden with passengers and boxed cargo, while battered Toyota Hi-Ace vans, tailgates open and innards stripped out to cram fares, are the workhorses of the city’s public transportation network. Off-street shopping malls house glass-fronted stalls loaded with consumer electronics, children’s clothing and kitchenwares. Life goes on.
We don’t meander and we don’t loiter. We move quickly from compound to compound, and our observations of the city itself are snatched during moments when our scanning for threats lapses. While the city might be stable, we know that there are still hostile elements here, and an SUV full of expats makes for a valuable target. We travel in unmarked, unarmoured vehicles without any form of protection other than anonimity- as it should be- but we’re not silly about it, and we know we have no real protection if something should go wrong. The atmosphere, however, is one of focus, not of fear, and the vibe we get off the city is generally good.
If there’s an exception, it’s at the Blue Mosque.
We’ve taken an hour off from work and A. has offered to show us a little of the city. We visit the spectacular Citadel, a grand sandstone-brick structure first laid down in the time of Alexander the Great and more recently restored to superb condition courtesy of the Aga Khan Foundation. We wander the footpaths and battlements, enjoying the sweeping curves of the architecture and the prominent views it allows from its higher towers. Frozen snow lurks in the shadows. We look out across flat-roofed houses pierced by minarets, and cooking smoke hangs with a dusty haze in the still air. The sky is an aching blue that leaves outlines so sharp they look as though they could cut.
On the northern edge of town we see the Martyr’s Museum, a monument to those who gave their lives fighting the Soviet invaders during the 1980s. In particular it commemorates the Herat uprising of 1979, when the people of Herat rose up against the Soviet-backed government, and were subsequently brutally repressed, with as many as 25,000 killed. Ismail Khan, now a local legend, rose to lead one of the most significant anti-Soviet Mujaheddin, and later allied himself with Ahmed Shah Massoud’s Northern Alliance against the Taliban until fleeing to Iran. He returned to Herat to support US action against the Taliban, and in late 2001, Herat was liberated and Khan became provincial Governor.
(As an interesting aside- the liberation of Herat from the Taliban by US and coalition troops reportedly involved covert action by anti-Taliban factions within the area, but also Iranian operatives who crossed the border in support of US intervention. Amazing.)
The Museum is a large rotunda with Arabic calligraphy adorning the tiled outer walls. Captured Soviet-era weaponry- everything from small mortars and anti-aircraft guns, to an unmistakable Mi-24 gunship- are scattered about the grounds. Inside, the main hall has another display of weapons, from flintlock rifles of the 1800s, their stocks meticulously inlaid with mother-of-pearl, to real [deactivated] landmines, PPSh World War Two-era submachine-guns and modern PKM drum-fed machine-guns.
Upstairs, a circular diorama, a combination of fresco wall-paintings and scale models, depicts the Herat uprising in gruesome but startlingly powerful detail. Painted portraits of mujaheddin who gave their lives fighting the Soviets line the walls, each name prefaced by the title Shaheed– Martyr.
On a hill along from the Museum sits the US Consulate, notable for being the target of a complex attack in September. Ten assailants in suicide vests and driving VBIEDs attacked the compound with bombs and firearms, killing a number of local security forces and bystanders, but failing to gain entry to the compound itself.
The attack- otherwise unremarkable in a nation that has seen dozens like it over the last decade- is notable more for understanding the intelligence behind it. Media reported that all ten attackers were killed, while apparently in reality, two were seized alive but reported killed by local forces, and now languish at the pleasure of the Afghan Government in a facility somewhere.
Afghan and US intelligence forces both reportedly knew about the attack beforehand- right down to the number plates of the vehicles involved, and the names and profiles of the attackers. The decision was made to allow the attackers to converge on the Consulate and carry out their attack, knowing that adequate defenses would prevent them breaching their target. This was preferable to attempting to thwart the attack early and having the bombers detonate in a less controlled environment or, worse, risk them escaping into the city where they would be uncontrollable. The decision cost the lives of six local security guards working at the Consulate, but such is the harsh mathematics of counter-terrorism.
Four ancient minarets stand crumbling, outlined against the crisp sky. Vast and without structure to support them, they look almost like abandoned chimney-stacks, the remnants of some industrial complex relegated to history. We get out of the cars and observe them briefly, standing next to a man selling oranges from a bicycle stall. The British allegedly used the grand structures as targets for gunnery practice during their war with Persia in the mid-1800s. The pock-marks remain. It’s sad to see such treasures so degraded and disrespected.
When we finally make it to the Blue Mosque, the al-Asr prayer is finishing, and the devout are streaming out beneath the blue tiled minarets. The structure is grand and imposing. Delicate calligraphy patterns the walls as though a thousand small birds have dipped their feet in ink and run riot. In the deep shaded courtyard, snowdrifts have frozen like mounds of crystalized salt, treacherous underfoot.
It’s one of the few moments I feel more than just wary in Herat, but outright threatened. I’m no paranoiac- I have deep respect for Islam and its practitioners, and the years I’ve spent in Muslim countries and with Muslim friends and colleagues leave me with no doubt as to the peaceful heart of the vast majority. But in a nation where a fundamentalist insurgency preaches violence against foreign occupiers and their allies, I have no doubt there are people walking past us who would happily see harm come to us- a sensation I’ve never experienced walking into a mosque before.
We four westerners glance at each other and exchange a few words to the effect of, “This is a bad time to be here,” and promptly lead A. back out onto the street and to the vehicles.
The days are gentle, cloudless with bright sunshine that leaves the sky blue like an ink-pot and shadows black like ravines. Stone walls gleam until the eyes hurt. Everything tastes fresh. I sleep well, leaving my hotel window cracked to allow the freezing night air to trickle in as I tuck down.
The mornings are bitterly cold. I join C., R. and K. as they have their post-breakfast nicotine fix, and the sun isn’t above the blast-walls yet. White smoke billows upwards. K. loves his thin cigarettes, and has A. pick up two cartons specifically for K. to take home with him.
Our last night, we have dinner at the team house. The food has been delicious throughout- meat so tender that it drips from the bone under its own weight when you pick it up, aromatic rather than spicy, all accompanied by fresh naan and yoghurt. We start the evening sharing conversation around a shisha pipe, sitting in the courtyard under blankets against the bitter night breeze and blowing smoke-rings as the air stills. The local variant has a lemon twist to it, fresh and delicious. Exhausted as our mission comes to a close, I fall asleep early.
I have a restless dream in which a familiar, rhythmic sound won’t let me settle. I come to slowly with a sense that something is not right. I’ve not been asleep long, and as my mind focuses, I hear a sharp tok-tok-tok-tok-tok in the middle distance.
Bursts of automatic gunfire, unmistakenly Kalashnikovs, volley back and forth.
I listen long enough to know it’s not happy fire. The chatter is interspersed with throatier bangs. I raise myself up at the window. Maybe a mile west, straight up the main thoroughfare, I watch the flash of a grenade exploding. That deep pop follows, and then more shooting.
I don’t stay at the window, but move to where my clothes are already laid out and dress in the darkness. I put my shoes on, pocket my flashlight and two phones, grab my bug-out bag and lie back in bed, listening.
A major attack isn’t likely in Herat, but we’re staying in one of only a couple of expat-standard hotels in the city, so it’s obviously on the target list. I try to make sense of the action, but it’s at a distance. Certainly not a threat where we are. I’m listening to see if it’s coming any closer.
The bed is in the dead space against the corner, below the window. That way if the windows are blasted inwards, the glass will fly over the top of me and I won’t be lacerated. I’d already done that calculation when I first moved in at the start of the trip, and each night as I’ve bedded down, I’ve settled right into the very corner, just in case. The way my mind works. I lie there a while, and after some time, the shooting fades.
My local mobile buzzes. It’s J.. He tells us there’s an ongoing assault on a checkpoint in District 7, but we should still be able to make our flight in the morning as the airport is in a different direction.
Whether it’s a local feud, a deliberate attack on a government position by armed opposition, or part of a bigger operation isn’t clear right now. I keep listening. With no further shooting or blasts, I eventually remove my gear and fatigue takes me into a light sleep. Car tires crunch the gravel roundabout outside the hotel, and every crackle jolts me awake again, my nerves on edge. Come five a.m. when we have to get up to catch our flight, I’m not feeling very rested.
Seven of us squeeze into the SUV as we race back to the airport. I note the driver sticks stubbornly to the middle of the broad, empty avenues- standard practice in an environment notorious for roadside bombs, but we arrive without incident. The access road to the airport is a snaking maze of guards, boom-gates and 12-foot cement blast walls that make the approach feel like a level to Castle Wolfenstein.
A sign scrawled in front of the first checkpoint reads “Switch off ECMs”- the electronic counter-measures that block radio frequencies in an attempt to thwart phone-triggered booby-traps. Military convoys carry them. The envelope of supposed safety they create is called a ‘bubble’, although allegedly, insurgents are now setting up devices with long leads that run out to receivers planted outside the bubble’s perimeter, still allowing devices to be initiated remotely.
From 20,000 feet, the pre-dawn haze clears, and I watch the Hindu Kush slip by just underneath us. They keep my attention for the full hour. I find myself fantasizing about returning when there is more stability with my backcountry skis. Some of the lines look spectacular.
It’s dusty in Kabul. The mountains are lost behind a brown murk. We clear checkpoints and meet our driver in an unmarked pickup truck who slips us through the streets. It’s a Friday morning, so traffic is light.
We spend the hours before our flight out working at the team house. Blast-film covers the windows, to prevent them flying inwards in lacerating shards should a bomb go off nearby, as one did not too long ago.
During our brief passage through the city, Kabul looks to be one long stretch of blast wall. Grey cement fronts the avenues, topped with sandbags, concertina wire and guard-towers. Armed personnel stand watch at every gate and atop many of the walls. The thin weekend traffic gives the city a slightly abandoned feel, as though everybody is bunkered down.
The haze begins to clear. The morning air is cold and refreshing. We stretch our legs on the roof of the compound, from which we can see the old fortress, Bala Hissar, dominating the city skyline. Further round, and TV Hill bristles with antennae. Squat, one-storey flat-roofed dwellings crawl up the slopes like a moss. Everything is brown with just a frosting of rotten snow lining the shadows.
My folks lived here, back in the ‘70s. While the geology of Kabul might not have changed since their time here, I reflect that they probably wouldn’t recognize the city as it is today. With the changes brought about during the Soviet occupation, its widespread destruction during the civil wars of the 1990s, and now the reconstruction in an era of deep insecurity, both the vibe and appearance on its broad streets must be a world apart.
Getting back to the airport is a gauntlet of security checks. Vehicles are searched for explosives and magnetic limpet-mines. I receive the cosiest pat-downs I’ve had since a thorough fondling I was given by Ethiopian security back in 2003. K. counts of 12 separate security checkpoints, the first beginning a good mile or more out from the airport proper, and the last being as we stand on the tarmac at the foot of the stairs to the plane.
At one security checkpoint, the gruff guard calls out to him,
“Where are you from?”
K. tells him, a little reluctantly.
“This you bag?”
He nods.
The guard eyes him with suspicion for a few moments, and we all have a brief what now moment.
“You have smoking problem,” the guard says, referencing the two cartons in K.’s luggage, and we all break into guffaws.
Standing next to me as we board the plane is an Afghan family- father, mother, daughter and son. The girl is maybe five, the boy three, but what’s striking is the little girl’s blonde hair and blue eyes, compared to the rest of her family’s more typical dark colouring. She has their rosy cheeks, and she is chattering away in Dari, a cute little thing in pigtails that so clearly belongs and yet looks so thoroughly different. I presume that both parents have some Russian genes in their recent history- they are both young- but it also reminds me that the term ‘Aryan’ arose from this corner of the world, and that it’s not uncommon to find Afghans with green, grey or blue eyes. I wonder with amusement whether the bigots of the Aryan Nation ever realise that Afghanistan’s national airline- Ariana- draws its name from the same origin as theirs.
I get glimpses of the city as we fly out that afternoon, where breaks in the clouds let me peer past the towering pyramids of the Hindu Kush and into its dusty basin.
It’s been strange for me being here. I grew up on slideshows from my parents’ time here. A little faded with time, and 1970s imaging processes, I credit hearing tales of Afghanistan when I was a young boy with the start of my journey to becoming an aid worker. My parents adored the place, and they still talk about it with wistfulness, seasoned heavily with grief at what the place went through after they left.
It’s a place I’ve wanted to visit for many years, and in my brief visit this time, Afghanistan had a disproportional impact on me. The wildness, the ruggedness, the beauty, and the resilience of the people I met, all left a mark. I both hope and believe that this will not be my last trip to the place. I truly wish that when I next visit, its people will be in a securer, more stable environment than they are now. I’m no fool. I understand well many of the complex dynamics at play in this nation that undermine dreams and efforts towards a lasting peace. None the less, that’s my prayer, and one which left my soul earnestly as I watched the last of the mountains slip away beneath me, and I said au revoir to Afghanistan.
NB: Please forgive the over-processed images. I didn’t have my full camera gear with me, only the camera on my iPhone, and a little GoPro. Bored, I played with a new filters app called “Stackables” which has jazzed them up a little, at the expense of my usual style…
Most digital cameras these days have a ‘White Balance’ setting (usually indicated by a series of icons signifying sunlight, light-bulbs, strip-lights and so-forth). This can be set manually, left to the camera to determine automatically, or addressed in post-processing. The function is often used interchangeably with the term ‘colour temperature’ which may appear on some post-processing packages.
White balance is yet another aspect to photography that is important to understand, at least if you want to step away from using automatic settings all the time. It relates to the fact that different light-sources radiate electromagnetic energy (including that in the visible spectrum) at different ‘temperatures’- essentially, different portions of the electromagnetic spectrum that mean that different hues and casts are emphasized over others. The sun emits radiation at a colour temperature of around 5,800 degrees Kelvin (K), although the colour temperature of the sun will vary according to time of day, angle of the sun and cloud cover, for example. Incandescent light-bulbs emit around the 2,700K mark, fluorescent lights around 3,000K, and moonlight around 4,000K. The ‘cooler’ the colour temperature, the greater the yellow/orange casting. The ‘warmer’ the colour temperature, the greater the blue casting. This may feel a little topsy-turvey.
Our brains automatically correct (to a point) for variations in colour-temperature when we observe things. While a light-bulb may appear to cast a slightly yellowy feel over a room, on the whole our brains are able to correct for the cast that this places on objects, and we observe them in true colours relative to that light-source. A camera, however, has to be told what colour-temperature to scale its interpretation of colours to.
This means that shooting in broad daylight on a sunny day (colour temperature ~5,800K), if the camera is told that these are the conditions (or allowed to recognize them itself), it will ‘zero’ or ‘balance’ the white tones in that image to be perfectly white, and accordingly adjust all other colours in the image to enable them to be as true as possible.
However if that same camera is left assuming that it is still shooting under daylight conditions, but is moved indoors to shoot under an incandescent bulb (colour temperature ~2,700), it will mistakenly adjust the colours against an invalid starting point, and the resulting image will have a yellowy hue. All the colours will be cast in that yellow tone, but it will be most obvious on white objects, which will appear the ‘purest’ representation of that colour temperature.
Adjustments for this can be made in-camera, either manually selecting the appropriate white-balance function, or leaving the camera on auto-white-balance. Back in the days of film photography, when digital manipulation of this sort could not occur in-camera, this could be corrected to a point in development, but the surest way of dealing with it was to use filters or gels over the end of the lens to compensate for the differing light quality. For example, you could fit a tungsten filter onto your camera, and if you then shot under tungsten lights, the light hitting the film plate would be filtered such that it recorded white as true white, and the film would not be cast.
With post-processing software, adjusting for colour temperature is generally managed by use of a sliding scale (usually demarcated in degrees Kelvin), and by sliding the scale from left to right, the editor can compensate for any colour-temperature cast issues. The aim of this process (artistic vision notwithstanding) is to return the white values as close to a true visual white as possible. Once that’s been achieved, all other colours in the image should be more or less true as well.
From an artistic perspective, adjusting white-balance can be used to slightly ‘warm-up’ or ‘cool-down’ an image subtly, or to throw a bolder cast if desired. The most common use I’ve had for adjusting white-balance has been in underwater photography. Shooting underwater (the deeper, the more pronounced the effect) gives everything a heavy blue cast and overwhelms the natural (and beautiful) colours at the bottom of the ocean. It’s amazing what pulling the white-balance up to adjust for this actually does- even bringing out colours not visible to the naked eye down there.
The above two photos were taken a few hours apart. The first, at around midnight, as snow was falling on a Calgary suburb. The yellow-orange hue across the frame is a result of the camera thinking it is shooting in artificial light (automatically set at 3,550K), but in reality it is shooting in light cast by sodium street-lights (around 2,100K). Because of the light being reflected by the falling snow, the cast of the sodium light was pronounced across the frame. Note that the scene did not look like this to the naked eye- light was subdued, but snow looked white. But when I saw the effect of the light on the camera, I kept taking photos, and got a fun set of sodium-hued images of this suburb in the snow.
Its sister shot, underneath it, was shot the next morning. The camera adjusted for shooting in bright daylight conditions (~5,500K), and the whites returned almost perfectly white.
Note that in both shots, the true colour of the scene didn’t change. But in one, the camera interpreted the data based on an erroneous assumption, and adjusted the image accordingly.
By shifting the colour temperature of the night-time shot to 2,100K (the colour temperature of sodium lights) when I processed the RAW image using photo-processing software, the image returned the whites more or less to white, as shown in the adjusted image below:
Most of the time, with colour temperature/white balance set automatically by the camera, this isn’t something that casual photographers need to know much about. However, in those instances when the conditions exceed the automatic metering of the camera (e.g. dim/overwhelming artificial light, underwater, etc.) it can be helpful to understand how to solve the issue of unwanted warm or cool casts on the image.
My trip to Nepal remains among my favourite of all time, and sits right at the very top of my want-to-go-back-to list. Each year that passes makes me itch a little more. I revisit my photos often as they trigger an array of memories and feelings. I’ve posted quite a few from Nepal over the months on this site, so here are a few more which take my fancy, and I hope interest you as well.
The image at top is of the unmistakable Macchapuchare, also known as Mt. Fishtail. Nicknamed the Matterhorn of the Himalayas, it is one of the singly most beautiful mountains on the planet, in this blogger’s humble opinion. At 6,997m high, it isn’t among the highest peaks of the Annapurna Massif (many of which tower well into the high 7,000s and even top 8,000m), but its prominence is so striking and dramatic that it remains an icon for all those who have visited this region of Nepal. I couldn’t get enough of it.
Here, early-morning side-lighting shortly after sunrise casts horizontal shadows across a rural landscape. These little stone cottages made a lovely foreground to add a sense of place to the dramatic sweep of the Annapurna Range at back. The vista includes (from left to right) Annapurna South, Annapurna I (at 8,091m barely visible behind the peak of Annapurna South), Hiun Chuli, Annapurna III and Gandarbha Chuli (tucked into the saddle between Hiun Chuli and Macchapuchare), Macchapuchare, Annapurna IV, Annapurna II and Lamjung Himal. Note that the Annapurnas are listed not according to proximity or geographical succession, but altitude, with I being the highest and IV being the lowest (not that at 7,525m we would call Annapurna IV ‘small’).
Here, early morning dawnlight catches on the south face of Annapurna South. At 7,219m, Annapurna South is one of the smaller peaks in the Annapurna Himal, but its presence is a constant during the 10-day Annapurna Base Camp trek, never absent for more than a few hours at a time while behind an inconvenient shoulder. Burning like vapourize copper in the angular light of a rising sun, the fierce edges of a mountain scoured by millenia of wind, ice and crustal uplift can be seen in dramatic contrast. Poking into the jetstream, high-altitude winds whip past the peak tearing off a tail of snow and ice granules which hang like a blowing scarf in the morning air. Up close, the sound is audible as the roar of powerful engines, but at the distance I took this shot, the calm quiet of a village dawn belied the fierce battle taking place among the jagged heights.
(click to see detail)
This next photo for me captures three things that make my heart ache just a little. The first is the beautiful north-east face of Annapurna South (and across to Annapurna I at right) as viewed across the dry basin of the Annapurna Sanctuary. It remains one of the most beautiful, spectacular locations I have ever stood in in my entire (and moderately well-travelled) life. The second is the marvellous blue sky which accompanied us for most of the trip and made both the trekking and the photography so memorable. The third are the prayer flags, so symbolic and such a powerful marker in my memory for that place, as well as being a visual feast with their bright colours, and their ethereal spirituality in the face of such intense and tangible physical beauty.
Back in the lowlands, and I snapped this rather undramatic shot of the terraced fields which are the only way in which villagers can farm a living out of the steep-sided valleys. Among the foothills of the first few days of the trek, before the landscape gave way to rock and glacial moraine, these terraces were the main geographical marker and the symbol of a hardy resilience that the mountain peoples of the Himalayas have had to adopt. I enjoyed the play of afternoon light across the terraces, and wish I could have done more exploration of them, both on foot and with my camera.
Perched in a village on a rideline overlooking Annapurna South and Hiun Chuli, the name of the teahouse at centre is “Nice View Lodge”. Talk about understatements…
(click to see detail)
Trekking into the Annapurna Sanctuary, one of the joys was that after five days with the mountains slowly getting larger, but appearing largely unchanged in terms of appearance, suddenly we had come around behind the peaks we had been watching during our uphill slog, and they appeared totally different. While not the tallest mountain in the Sanctuary, Annapurna South viewed from the north-east was certainly one of the most beautiful of the peaks we saw, with a certain elegance to its primal and inhospitable face. I loved shooting these mountains in the strong sunlight against a blue sky, as it cast the details of the rock and ice into sharp contrast and allowed for some lovely textured detail.
(click image to see larger)
And back to the prayer flags. I really can’t get enough of them. I took a series of shots of Annapurna I viewed through the tangle of prayer flags at the shrine above Annapurna Base Camp South, and the combination of vast mountain (8,091m), blue sky, white ice and coloured flags was spine-chilling in its impact at the time. I could post these images all day long…
Nepal is a spectacularly beautiful country, with photographic surprises around every corner, and so much to explore. As you can see from the amount I post & talk about it, it impacted me deeply. I am still plotting my return…
Despite having my camera break half an hour after arriving at Annapurna Base Camp, I still have truckloads of photos from the Annapurna Sanctuary Trek still to upload- and maybe a story or two as well.
A. brought this photo to my attention as one of her favourites a couple of weeks back, and as she explained why she liked it, it grew on me as well. The prayer-flags among the Himalayan peaks are always a delightful scene- the colour contrast against the stark blue and white of snow and sky is dramatic. But it also captures a series of elements and dichotomies- between the man-made flags and the natural mountains; spirituality reflected both in the prayers and in the majesty of the high places; the hard rock versus the flowing flags; wind and earth; man’s efforts and God’s creative power; the list goes on.
Really, each photograph is up to the individual to appreciate however, and so I shall leave you to do so. Or otherwise.
There is a silence that settles in the mountains like something tangible. It’s hard to really explain unless you’ve experienced it yourself. It’s the combination of the muffling effect that thousands of acres of snow has on sound propagation, the white background noise of steady mid-altitude winds rumbling past peaks, and the utter paucity of any human-made sounds such as highways, airplanes and air-conditioning units.
It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.
I took this photo on day 3 of a ski-touring trip with my dear friend Mackie, which you can read about in this string of posts here, here and here. We rose early on this morning, a crisp winter’s day in the Alberta Rockies. The sun was shining but periodically subdued by passing mountain cloud. We had put the worst of the ascent behind us climbing up onto the Wapta Icefields, and were now on the icecap itself, gliding along the smooth surface on our quest to find epic powder. While we were moving, the sounds we heard were of the snow-crystals whispering beneath our skins, the hissing of our ski-pants rubbing together as we trekked, and our own heavy breathing. And when we stopped, that beautiful silence.
On the icefields the isolation was magnificent. It was Mackie, me, and what felt like a million miles of nothing. No other humans. No other tracks. Just smooth snow as far as we could see, ringed by inviting mountain peaks that formed something of a bowl and only served to enhance that sense of being cut off from the rest of the world. The peace out there is intoxicating, simply exhilerating, and I can truthfully say that few moments on earth can compete with the pure joy of being up in the mountains, trapped by the glory of creation, simply surviving in that wild landscape.
We spent the first three days of our snowkiting tour in a small hut atop a rounded mountain ridge somewhere in the Crown Ranges vicinity, not far from Snow Farm. I like mountain huts. I like that they give instant access to views and terrain to play on. I like that they are remote and cut off from the complexities of life. I like that you get exposed to all sorts of wild weather conditions that you don’t find down in the valleys. And I like that they cut through all the crap and return you back to what’s important about living: Survival.
To say we stayed in a hut isn’t quite true. We actually stayed in two huts. One was a corrugated tin cylinder, like a can turned on its side, which had beds down either wall, gas-rings and basin at one end, a cast-iron wood stove at the other, and webbing hanging from the ceiling to dry gear in. It was warm, cozy and pretty comfortable. The other was a glorified aluminium shed with three bunks, no heater, and no facilities. There was already a group in the first hut, so we got the second. When we moved in, the door hadn’t been closed properly, and wind-blown snow had caked one interior wall of the place and had to be swept off the floor. When we got up the next morning after spending a night in the place, the snow was still caked over the wall.
Hut life revolves around staying warm, dry, fed and watered. Basic tenets of survival. When we’re working in refugee camps we’re looking at pretty much the same stuff. Shelter, water, food. The huts themselves should provide the shelter. There’s nothing quite like being esconced in your sleeping-bag, listening to a raging windstorm rock the mountain outside. I love it.
Warmth is a bilateral job. If there’s a fire in the hut, then a steady provision of wood (or sometimes, gas cylinders) will do the trick. It’s also up to you to bring the right gear. A good warm sleeping bag. A down jacket. Some good layers. Some hut booties. It’s also a good idea to keep at least one set of clothing dry and for hut use, because there are few things more demoralizing than sitting in a mountain hut, wet and cold and unable to warm up.
Food you pack up with you. You can go from the very basic (dehydrated rations and muesli bars) right through to the gourmet (I once saw a group in a hut preparing sushi rolls), and it depends on what facilities are available and how hard you want to work for it. Water is a more basic mechanism, but luckily in the mountains in winter there’s usually lots of it around. You just have to melt it first. So we keep pots atop the stove, slowly cooking away, and every half hour head out and top them back up with snow we shovel from designated ‘clean’ spots outside.
The other necessity is the toilet, of course. This tends to be the least appealing part of any outdoors trip, never a truer statement than in the mountains in winter. In this case, the toilet was in a standalone stall sheltered behind the huts, caked in snow and ice on the inside, which presented some comfort challenges. Not the worst I have had to use. That award goes to the dunny in the Arrowsmith Ranges behind Christchurch. As well as being a hundred yards away from the hut on its own- unsheltered and a miserable trudge through deep snow in a nighttime blizzard- there was a gap underneath the door through which wind whistled, depositing granular snow into your lap as you were taking care of business. A thoroughly unpleasant experience.
In a perfect world, hut life takes place at the beginning and end of a day. You spend most of the day playing in the mountains, only to return in the evening. Of course, as any mountain traveller knows, the mountains are rarely perfect, and any trip involves down-time when the outdoors simply isn’t a welcoming place. During the trip to the Arrowsmiths, for example, we spent the better part of five days sitting in our cramped mountainside shed, listening to the wind howl as snow flew horizontally past the window, and making the terrain far too dangerous and avalanche-prone for travel. On this trip we were far luckier, and while we had a few hours each day in the hut waiting for the wind to pick up or visibility to rise, we managed to find several hours a day when the wind was just right to get out and do some kiting.
Not that we didn’t get our fair share of feral weather. Most of it came through in the evenings, when howling gale-force winds whipped over the top of our rise, obscuring the ground with blowing snow and ice grains like a sand-blaster. Blizzard-like snow-storms kept us hutbound one morning while wet snow plastered the side of the buildings and we braced ourselves each time we had to step outside to top up the water pots or use the toilet. Eerily serene whiteouts wrapped around the mountains like thick scarves, dulling sound and making faint light scatter until all the texture in the snow vanished, making safe navigation impossible. During those times, we lounged around on bunks, lost in our own thoughts, listening to music, reading books, or making idle chatter, while checking on the weather every few minutes to see if it was changing. It sounds boring, but actually it’s a very simple way to exist, and if you’re prepared for it, it’s really very relaxing.
The weather signalled when it was time to leave, as well. Shifting wind patterns suggested we might be better off on another mountain range, so we prepared to head out on the fourth day. There was no kiting to be had, as the day started with a flat calm and soft, textureless light after a night of snow. The guide and I decided to skin out along a cross-country ski trail while the rest of the group waited to see if the wind would pick up. For the first hour or so we crossed the undulating landscape, trying not to lose the path where the wind and snow had covered old tracks. It’s good honest work that breaks a sweat, and I was down to rolled-up sleeves and bare arms, when we paused for a break and a few small flakes of snow started to drift from the sky. The wind gusted, a chill settled, and all of a sudden, the weather had changed. Within three or four minutes we were bracing ourselves against driving snow and powerful blasting wind. It wasn’t a big problem- we rugged up and slogged on- but it was a reminder of just how fierce the mountains can be- even in relatively safe, low terrain. I love it. Wouldn’t hang out anywhere else. 🙂
I loved Nepal. I loved the Annapurna Base Camp Trek. And I loved Annapurna I. The colourful prayer-flags that adorn sacred sites in Nepal are an unforgettable feature of that country. Photographically, they are such a gorgeous contrast with the white and blue theme of the peaks themselves that few travellers with an eye for images will forget this feature of the country in a hurry. It is one of the most vivid and colourful memories, and a cliche for photographers such as myself. Cliche, maybe, but one that works so well.
I took this shot of Annapurna through the flags hanging from the shrine to fallen mountaineers above Annapurna Base Camp. The framing just worked, and I liked the contrast of scales. Annapurna I is gargantuan- 8,091m and the 10th highest peak in the world (albeit the first 8,000m peak to be climbed, by Maurice Herzog in 1951). The location is breaktaking, and with the strong fall sunlight, the colours just shone. I want to go back here. To take more photos. And to stand in this beautiful location and enjoy the magnificence of creation once again.
One of my earliest attempts at digital photography, shot on my parents’ old Olympus 2.1MP clunker back in 2001/2. I went for a walk one cold winter’s night a few minutes from our house in France and found this image of the mist hanging beneath the streelights illuminating patches of rotten snow. The leading passage of the tunnel of trees and sickly yellow lights, coupled with the blur of the mist (and, admitedly, the camera-shake) gives the shot a particularly sinister mood which I find quite appealing at times. This isn’t masterful photography, but then again if I captured something of similar mood again today I reckon I’d be fairly pleased with myself. Beginner’s luck? Maybe…
Taken on a country lane in France, not too far from Geneva (Switzerland).
WanderLust 
