Leading Lines

Hey there folks, how’s it going? It’s been quite a while since I updated the blog, so my apologies for that. There are a few reasons, not least the fact that I’ve been busy working on putting together a whole new site!

Leading Lines Photography is now up and running, so pop on over and take a look. In it I have a little information on my own photography (and how to book me if you’re having a wedding/event or need someone to sort out some extreme sports photography for you!). I also have the start of a series of free online tutorials that I will be adding to regularly. That’s part of an ongoing project, but I think it’s going to be fun working on it, along with the range of photography courses that I will be starting to offer soon.

I’m not sure how often I’m going to be updating the Solitude blog in the near future. I might keep it running for personal blogging from time to time, but I’m going to be pretty busy over the coming months trying to make a proper start with the Leading Lines site.

Thanks for all the support over the last year or so – it’s been great to see so many people reading so faithfully. Hopefully I’ll see you all over at Leading Lines too!

Dougie

an open invitation to you all…

Well, that’s that then. Game over. Finito.

I landed back in Glasgow last monday with a lot less of a bump than when reality came crashing back in sometime mid-week. It’s hard to describe how life feels when you get home after a long trip. It’s a little like everything’s the same but different. Glasgow’s not changed much since I left (almost two years ago given my time in Kendal before heading for Patagonia). Then again, a lot of friends have left, and a lot of familiar haunts have gone too.

The trip itself seems different in my mind than it did two weeks ago too. It was still real then, by the very fact that I was still on it. Now if it wasn’t for a hard drive full to bursting with photos I’m not sure I’d be convinced that it wasn’t all just a very long, rather strange dream. Thankfully, not only not only have I still got that drive full of photos I’ve also got the exhibition to work on for the next couple of weeks, easing the pain a little and softening the impact as Life tries to sneak up and shanghai me once more. After much indecision, processing and reprocessing I finally dropped off the final selection of prints at the framers this afternoon.

With that all in hand for the moment, I thought I’d take the chance to let you know what the script is for the exhibition over the next few weeks. A lot of you know what it’s all about already, but bear with me as we seem to have picked up a few more folks along the way since the blog started back in November!

The exhibition is not just my work, it’s a joint show that I’m part of along with Jaime Medina Jimenez, a painter from Chile. The concept that we’re working around is that I’ve travelled from the Lake District in Cumbria to photograph the area he grew up painting. Jaime in turn has spent some time in Cumbria painting the area I normally photograph. Everything on display will be new work produced specifically for this show. I’ve not seen what Jaime’s produced for the exhibition as yet, but have seen some of his other work. He has a wonderful style and a great talent for capturing the atmosphere of a place and I’m really looking forward to seeing him unveil his Cumbrian paintings on opening night.

Which is what this post is all about: we’re having a small opening event at 19:30 on the 19th of May in the Theatre by the Lake, Keswick. I’ve been quite astonished at the level of interest in the blog since I started it, so thanks folks. It’d be great if some of you guys could make it along to see what I’ve been rambling on about in person. Entry is free, so just turn up. It’s also woth pointing out again that the exhibition is being run as part of the Keswick Mountain Festival and that there’s a whole lot of great events in and around Keswick between the 19th nad 23rd of May.

With respect to the photographs themselves, in the end I’ve decided to produce only a limited edition run of 120 of each of the images that will be shown. Each print is numbered, signed and produced by myself using the best pigment based inks on acid free 100% cotton rag fine art paper. The first print of each of the images will be available at the Theatre by the Lake exhibition.

Now that they are all at the framers and out of my hands for the next week, I guess that I’ve got some time to sit back and think about life, the trip and what to do next. Thankfully, there’s also the Scottish Highlands to re-familiarise myself with! I’ve not checked everywhere just yet, but so far I still don’t think there’s anywhere more beautiful in the world than what we’ve got on our doorstep. Perhaps a wee trip north is in order…. Fancy hanging around for the ride?

the Falloch last weekend

Happy Honeymooners

Weddings are good fun, but there can be no doubt that it’s a whole lot of work. You spend months planning, stressing and working the family politics and it’s all over in a single afternoon of fun, photos and cake. Part of me’s always thought that it must be a bit of a come-down afterwards. I guess that I’d always thought that what the honeymoon was all about: getting away from the stress, the cameras and, well, everybody you know immediately after the circus of the big day itself.

It would seem that Gwen and Garth think otherwise. In total, 15 of us went on their honeymoon, spending two weeks camping and driving through Botswana and Zambia…. After all, why relax and spend some quality alone time when you can keep on organising a big group of people, face yet more cameras and bring the family and friends with you around the game reserves of southern Africa? A lot of folks I’ve talked to think they’re nuts, but having joined them for the trip I won’t hear a word of it!

It was a great trip: a great group of people, wonderful locations and a fantastic journey. For me, it was a perfect end to five months touring the southern hemisphere.

We travelled in a convoy of bakkies (pick-up trucks) kitted out with roof tents and an off-road trailer from the farm where the wedding was held, driving north into Botswana and the Kalahari national park on the first day. The weather at times was torrential but thankfully there was a respite from the rain to allow James to break his vehicle just 10km into the park. An hour later and the linkage rods for the tortion bar had been removed from both front wheels, we’d transferred the trailer to my car (the “Flying Haggis”) and we were back on the road. I say “road”, but we drove in mud and sand exclusively for the next four or five days.

In retrospect, we didn’t see that much game in the first couple of days as we drove into the heart of the Kalahari, but us un-initiated Scots were happy enough to see the likes of Impala or Oryx for a good while and soon enough we were getting to see a whole lot of pretty incredible wildlife (when we didn’t walk right past it on the way into the bushes to pee anyway – mind the lions!). As we continued, James’ bakkie continued to deteriorate to the point that the whole tortion bar was removed and the bearings left exposed: a bit of a problem when you’re two days off-road to the nearest place to buy some grease. Thankfully we had a farmer with us (the groom) who came up with the cunning plan of packing them with peanut butter, held in place with the plastic from a six pack of beer. It was good enough to get us through the next three or fours days driving in the desert. And so the “Peanut” was born.

From the Kalahari we moved north to Chobe where we actually went out with a guide for the day, allowing us to all travel in the same vehicle for a while. The game was incredible, including a couple of Impala that even the Saffers thought we should stop for….

After spending a little over a week constantly making and breaking camp and touring in the vehicles, either watching game or trying to get from A to B we were all glad of some chill-out time to round off the trip. Jungle Junction is a small island in the Zambezi river, a truley idyllic setting and the perfect place for Garth in particular to recover from the horrific level of inefficiency and corruption involved in getting the group across the border from Botswana to Zambia.

Honeymoon support team A

There are so many stories from the two weeks, there was so much banter and so many good times that it’s hard to write about it in a concise manner. Getting lost in the bush in Zambia, Silly Hats and slacklines, grumpy Germans and visiting Vic Falls are just a few that pop to mind…. If you really want to hear the stories, find me at the bar sometime. In the mean time, I’ll be hiding behind my computer working on the exhibition for next month.

Big thanks to Gwen and garth for sharing their honeymoon with us all. I’ll never forget it, and I hope that you two enjoyed it as much as we all did.

Too much of fun!

the Heart of Africa

It’s been a while since my last post… about two continents or four countries depending on how you want to count it. I had hoped to be able to update the blog after leaving Australia to tell you all about the great time I had up in Brisbane with Dave and Augustine. They put me up for a while, fed and watered me (or plied me with beer anyway!) and took me out to see some of the local sights. It was great to spend the day on the hill with Dave and his friends after a few weeks of lethargy.

I also really appreciated the opportunity to visit Blue Dog, the photography school that Augustine teaches at. If anyone out there happens to be reading this from the Brisbane area, they’re well worth looking up! I was very impressed with the range of workshops offered and the quality of teaching.

SS Dickie, Dickie Beach

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since leaving Oz. I flew to Africa at the start of the month and met up with some old friends from Scotland to attend a good friend’s wedding. I’ve spent enough time working at weddings to think that I’d seen most things, but I’ve got to say that Garth and Gwen got married in proper style. Through the day I spent more time catching up with old friends and inducting new friends than I did taking pics (so nice to be a guest rather than working!), but I tried to make the most of the opportunities that presented themselves.

The venue was Garth and Gwen’s farm around 500km west of Johannesburgh. The service itself was about 5km from the house in a specially erected wooden hut. The weather in the lead up to the weekend had been very wet so the normally dusty, arid landscape was particularly green and lush. Gwen arrived in a horse drawn carriage through the bushes and we all watched the service from pews of straw beneath the thatched roof.

The reception was held in a stunning marquee back at the ranch, where about 120 of us were camping for the weekend. It really couldn’t have been a better setting, but it’s always the people that make or break a wedding. Everyone we met was brilliant: open, friendly and having a great time. I’ve always thought that you can judge a man by the company he keeps, and by that measure Garth’s a great lad. Come to that, no matter how you cut it, you just can’t fault the man. Heck, how many people would volunteer to share their honeymoon with a bunch of strangers?

And that’s why I’ve not updated the blog for the last few weeks: I’ve been out on Gwen and Garth’s honeymoon with another dozen people, touring Botswana and Zambia in a convoy of 4x4s and getting to know the local wildlife. But more about that in a couple of days….

the Futaleufu

Easter Island was supposed to be the big finale of the South American part of the trip, as well as being a potential highlight in the exhibition come May. I was pretty gutted when I couldn’t make it out there last week and the difficulties in making alternative plans, or even just arranging transport to Santiago to catch my flight on the 12th made it all the more frustrating. It was almost desperation that drove me to head down to the Futaleufu river in Chile.

I couldn’t see how I was going to top Easter Island as a destination for taking photographs, so I didn’t even try: instead I opted to get back in a kayak. Other than a couple of hours on a grade three run in Pucon a few weeks ago, I’ve not been on moving water in almost three years. Not knowing much about the river had no idea if I’d even be able to tackle it when I got there, assuming that there was space and kit for me when (if!) I arrived. This is where I owe a huge debt of thanks to Mark and the folks at Bio Bio Expeditions.

Mark somehow managed to sort out my tangled travel issues and arrange a transfer across the border for me, and allowed me to join a group of clients that he had in for the week. It meant I was joining them a few days into their schedule and leaving early but they were a great crowd, both guides and punters, and I got to enjoy three excellent days on the water with them all.

And what a river! Beautiful big rapids, a perfect level, great weather and a magnificent setting. You really couldn’t ask for more, unless you wanted pampering with an open bar and a hot tub to enjoy a beer in at the campsite after your day’s paddling. Which you have! You can even get a massage if you want one. Bio Bio really do run a pretty slick operation down there.

The irony of it all is that the river valley was one of the most naturally beautiful places I’ve been in Patagonia: I could have spent weeks there with the camera, touring around and taking photos. I only had three days though, and with the river running right past the camp I’m afraid that the camera was seldom out. I hope you’ll forgive me for not being able to show you what the place was like properly, but perhaps the shots below will explain why I was concentrating on other things….

Any port in a storm….

I’ve go to admit that I’m not a huge fan of Puerto Montt. It just not that nice, though it has grown on me a little over he last week as I’ve tried to rearrange my travel plans around the terremoto….

I will not be sorry to get on the bus tomorrow morning but as they say: any Puerto in a storm.

interesting times

I guess it’s not going to be news to anyone, but there’s been a bit of an epic earthquake over here over the weekend. Thanks to everyone that got in touch to see if I was ok: I am, indeed, just fine and sitting drinking yet more coffee in a cafe several hundred miles from the area that has been worst hit by the quakes. The only real effect that we felt on Chiloe was a brief rumble and power and communications blackout for most of the day.

Getting up in the morning with no power isn’t (as far as I can tell) that unusual on Chiloe. Parts of the Island only have power at certain times of the day anyway, running to a schedule, so I didn’t even immediately assume that the lack of electricity was down to what had felt like a minor tremor through the night. I certainly wasn’t worried about anything and never even considered taking the SPOT with me, which as it happens would have saved a lot of worry for the family back home! It wasn’t until much later in the day when I got back from the tour I’d gone on that I learned how bad the earthquakes were. Given that a lot of the worry was about tsunamis it is perhaps slightly ironic that I spent a fairly dull hour sitting on the beach at the pacific coast mid-afternoon.

I’ve heard from most of the people that I’ve met travelling recently that could have been in the area of the quakes, with the exception of a couple that I spent some time with last week who were starting work in Conception on thursday. I’m sure that they’ll be fine, they’re probably just a bit too busy (or unable) to get in touch with a random lad they only met for a few days. I know that Jaime is waiting to hear from some of his family in Santiago – all the best lad! I’m sure that they’ll be fine, but it can’t be nice waiting for word.

That aside, the only immediate implications it has for me is that my travel plans have all just gone right out the window. I was meant to arrive in Santiago yesterdeay, which obviously isn’t happening since the roads are mostly rubble. I was meant to be flying out of Santiago tomorrow morning to Easter Island, but that’s not going to happen now either: even if the airport is open I still can’t get there. I’ve tried to change my flights to get to New Zealand a bit earlier, but that was always a bit optimistic and is definitely not going to happen, so I’ve got the best part of two weeks with no plans. I’m sure that I’ll think of something!

Given the chaos north of here I really can’t complain too much.

While I think about it, here’s a few pictures from Chiloe….

Cheers folks! Stay safe.

Banos De Caulle

Scotland is old. I mean, really old. Some of the oldest rocks in the world are in Scotland. You go for a walk in Scotland and you know that you are walking in a finely refined landscape that has gradually approached it’s current near-perfect beauty over the course of countless millenia: the rocks and mountains finely sculpted by brutal ice ages and delicate weathering, the rivers and streams coursing through hard-won gorges and valleys formed over aeons of relentless erosion by the force of the water. It’s a landscape comfortable with what it is, continuing to slowly change just to keep itself fresh, but ultimately secure in itself.

Not so the Lakes District in Chile, and certainly not the landscape I spent the last four days walking in. It’s so new it’s not even finished yet, and the processes of it’s creation are there laid out before you everywhere you look. That’s not to say that it’s not worth visiting, quite the opposite! I’ve got to admit that the four days I spent walking on the Banos De Caulle trail were some of the most interesting, beautiful days I’ve had since I got to South America – and that’s really saying something.

It a stark, and frankly sometimes even slightly surreal place to visit, particularly on your own. As you traverse around the upper slopes of Volcan Puyehue towards the Banos you are essentially crossing a desert. You might be walking across barren white sands and pumice in the blazing sunshine, but through the clouds beneath you there is a glorious view of the lakes and forests. It’s like it’s teasing you: water!

I have seen things over the last four days that I have only ever seen on the television before now: bubbling mud pools, steaming fumaroles, scorpions and almost as many lizards as there are stars in the sky. Oh, and a very confused walker trying to figure out why the large boulder he has just thrown in the river to use as a stepping stone is floating away downstream….

the stars in the sky

I’ve also decided that every trek should end at a hot spring!

As nice as that was though, I’ve got to admit that I found it quite a hard route. Perhaps it was the end of the cold taking it’s toll. Perhaps it was the simple fact that a Scotsman is not designed to traverse a desert environment at these temperatures. The third day in particular was hard work: With photo-taking time it was around a five hour round trip to the Geysers, then another four or so to get back to the area of the refugio. After over 9 hours carrying a load in the heat, walking on sand and loose rock, I was ready to quit for the night. I was reay to hang up my walking boots forever, come to that. I really, really didn’t want to have to go to visit the summit of the volcano.

But when else am I going to get the chance to peer in the crater of a volcano?

“Next week in Pucon.”

I’ll regret it if I don’t.

“No, I really won’t.”

You promised your sister a rock from the top of a volcano, and Villarica’s covered in snow.

“Ah, nuts” *

The 1.5 hour ascent of the last 550 meters of Volcan Puyehue, relentlessly upwards and exclusively through deep, loose sand and gravel was almost enough to break me both physically and mentally (though the 23 minute run back down was glorious!).

As I sat below the volcano this morning waiting for the bus back to town I opened a perfectly chilled Coke, looked up through the clouds to the volcano and thought to myself:

“up there somewhere, some poor sod is having the time of his life.”

*paraphrasing

Bit of a gamble….

It{s been a bit of a roller-coaster this week…. I decided to come back to Chalten to try and climb Cerro Electrico, a small mountain with excellent views over Fitz Roy. I’ve been here before, so I guess that in a way I’m covering ground for a second time, but I have time to kill before I catch the ferry north and the place easily merits more time. To keep things easy I left most of my luggage in Calafate, planning on walking off the bus and into the hills.

But I wasn’t in the mood to read my book on the bus and got to thinking…. As a result I’ve spent the last three days trying to find a guide and a partner to go for a wander on the Southern Ice Field. Plans have been made, changed, cancelled, re-planned and I’ve lost track of the number of routes that we’ve discussed. Indecision, as they say, is the key to flexibility.

The net result is that we’re going with the original plan of a 6 to 8 day trek. We’d abandoned it due to pretty uninspiring weather forecasts, and the fact that only 50% of groups get over the first pass if it’s windy. Most of the forecasts haven’t really changed much, but we took a group decision to be optimistic!

So tomorrow morning we depart, rucksacks loaded with food, crampons, snow shoes, and all the parifanalia that we’ll need. Wish us luck with the weather folks – this is not a cheap gamble, and we-ve no time to try again if it doesn’t pay off.

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the SPOT maps, there should be some pretty cool places coming up over the next week (top tip, click the satellite button on the map, much more interesting!). If it doesn’ move for a few days, or doubles back from the Marconi Glacier, it means that it’s not paid off.

Sometimes you’ve just got to suck it up and give it a go. The chances of success might not be great on paper, but if it comes good….

Take care folks. One way or another, I’ll try to have some good pictures for the next post!

Four days south of the end of the world….

It almost went horribly wrong, but in the end the Dientes Circuit trail was probably the most satisfying hiking trip I’ve ever done.

The American university contingent were glimpsed once from a suitably remote distance, and other than that I only bumped into a couple of people along the way, and then only very briefly. I shared a camping spot with a Belgian couple the first night but other than that and about ten minutes chatting to a couple from Alaska I had the place to myself, and what a place!

Certainly, the views of Fitz Roy or the Cuernos in Torres del Paine might stick in the mind as being more spectacular landscapes, but the experience as a whole in the Dientes de Navarino just all came together to be something very special. There is no sanitised trail, full of people carrying backpacks with wheels for the airport, and no ranger stations along the way. Indeed, it’s hard enough to find the marked circuit in some places. The trail itself is sometimes easy to follow, with an embryonic path forming in places, but at other times it’s near impossible to see any sign of the people that have gone before. Spotting way markers that are normally just three or four small stones against a background of, well, thousands of small stones can be very difficult at best.

The walking was continually varied and interesting to say the least. The descent from the final pass might even have been slightly spicier than that, starting with an exceptional scree run that led you directly into a steep snow traverse (big, deep cracks in the snow too) directly beneath a dangerously unstable cornice. The recent avalanche debris littering the traverse suggested that it might not be a place to linger for long….

As a personal experience, I loved every minute of it, even despite some very improvised, slightly epic navigation on day four. I admit that from a photography point of view, I don’t feel that I made the most of the area. The weather is a fickle beast down here: from a hiking point of view I can’t possibly complain, but the photographer in me felt very frustrated at times, never quite getting the right combination of location and conditions.

I’m not going to worry about it this time though – there was always one eye on the project but really, this one was just for me.