Mountains, Monkeys and Minarets
Glyn Paton, a face well-known at SPC in his judging role, joined us this week to talk about and share photos from three photo tours he had undertaken. To the Dolomites (the "Mountains"), to Costa Rica (the "Monkeys") and to Turkey (the "Minarets"). Though he did confide he might have been better to go with "Humming Birds" instead of "Monkeys" in the title if only they had started with an M!
The Dolomites trip had clearly been a successful one, yielding not just many photographs, but also a fiancee! Glyn talked through his photos, describing his choices e.g. colour or mono, and also pointing out where he had made other artistic interventions e.g. deleting figures or intrusive buildings, or adding wisps of cloud or textured overlays.
His Turkey photographs were possibly most notable for the incredible shots captured of the hot air balloons going up over the mountains at dawn. And again Glyn was very precise in noting where things had been changed post-camera and where they had not, giving us a good appreciation of when and why this can be helpful.
The second half covered a wildlife photography tour in Costa Rica, and he wove an atmospheric and amusing account of the highs and lows of taking such a trip, of the obsessive nature of wildlife photographers, and the occasionally harsh and unpleasant conditions that come with the territory (the damp, the cold, the rain, the midnight flashgun-safari walks into the dark jungle, and the spiders and scorpions potentially sneaking in under their bedroom doors!). He described in fascinating detail the ways in which they used hand-held and static flash to e.g. capture humming birds in flight, and indeed capture photos of bats in flight using a combination of bulb mode with a bat-triggered flashgun.
Not for the faint-hearted or casual photographer perhaps, but he said the occasional crying to sleep at night was well repaid by the shots he came home with! Of humming birds and toucans; of equally colourful vultures; of collared aracari and Montezuma oropendolas; and, fortunately for the title, even of monkeys!
— Rachel Allcock
