Hidden in Plain Sight
Maybe this was the lull during Super Saturday. Remember Super Saturday? It was the day when the Snaefellsnes peninsula was our world and we explored it royally. From mid morning at Grundarfoss until after sunset under an enormous pink swirling cloud at the black church of Budir we stopped here there and everywhere on a day of maximum input and an output that will have me reaching into the archives for months, possibly years to come. I have no less than eighteen separate folders full of RAW files from that finest of days, some of which contain large numbers of images to pore over, while a few, such as the group I took from a layby on the road to Hellnar have just two or three files, little more than handheld snapshots.
By the time we arrived here, we’d already had a very agreeable few hours at the lesser known Svodufoss on the northwest corner of the peninsula, where we’d bathed in autumnal sunshine under the majestic white peak of Snaefellsjokull. We’d paused briefly to photograph the church of Ingjaldsholl in front of the glacier, before sauntering happily along the remote and empty Utnesvegur, passing a discarded landscape of twisted forms. A crater here, a lava field there. For now we were just driving through the landscape, enjoying the privilege of witnessing this extraordinary peninsula. We’d stop at Arnarstapi and photograph the white house again next, we decided. But for a moment we’d take that side road to Hellnar and pause in the layby for a snack, from where we could gaze down at the church we’d abandoned all intentions of photographing twenty-four hours earlier. I’d seen some very agreeable images of the subject in these pages, but from wherever you looked it was surrounded by clutter, and the most compelling pictures I’d found for reference had been simplified by a blanket of snow. Reluctantly we’d agreed that there probably wasn’t a shot here for this trip. I took a couple of snaps with the long lens and duly filed the results, instantly forgetting the episode as we moved on to the next stop where there was an already tried and tested composition to revisit. The lull was over, and the feeding frenzy of Super Saturday had resumed.
It was only much later, in one of those moments when I decided that while I wanted to play around with some shots in the editing suite, I wasn’t in the mood for sifting through a large number of candidates. I wanted simple, and simple didn’t come easier than a folder with only three RAW files, two of which appeared to be almost identical. The shortlisting would take approximately zero seconds. Maybe I could declutter the space around the church? Another monochrome conversion with a bit of contrast would help to simplify the scene, and perhaps there was an image hidden in plain sight that was worth persevering for. Just a quick half hour before I moved away from the computer and did something else with my Sunday afternoon, I thought to myself. And so I started to tinker, gradually removing one distraction after another with varying degrees of success, until the white church stood alone in its space against the quiet ocean. A dodge, a burn or several, a pair of levels and curves adjustments and the shapes of distant mountains somewhere closer to Reykjavik appeared across the water. Now an image that initially offered little promise began to take shape. It still wasn’t one I planned to share – at least not until the moment that I began to rather like what I was looking at. Somehow, an image had evolved from a messy starting point and I was happy.
It makes me wonder what else I’ve got lying around in my saved files; what images are hovering one step away from the dustbin of eternity that might have a hidden promise just waiting to be hatched from chaos. When there are so many fantastic moments still waiting to be captured, it may be a while before any more of the lesser lights appear, but anything is possible. “Never delete anything – just in case,” seems to be the lesson I’ve learned, not that I often do. You never know when you might see something in an unloved snapshot that you overlooked in the first place.
Hidden in Plain Sight
Maybe this was the lull during Super Saturday. Remember Super Saturday? It was the day when the Snaefellsnes peninsula was our world and we explored it royally. From mid morning at Grundarfoss until after sunset under an enormous pink swirling cloud at the black church of Budir we stopped here there and everywhere on a day of maximum input and an output that will have me reaching into the archives for months, possibly years to come. I have no less than eighteen separate folders full of RAW files from that finest of days, some of which contain large numbers of images to pore over, while a few, such as the group I took from a layby on the road to Hellnar have just two or three files, little more than handheld snapshots.
By the time we arrived here, we’d already had a very agreeable few hours at the lesser known Svodufoss on the northwest corner of the peninsula, where we’d bathed in autumnal sunshine under the majestic white peak of Snaefellsjokull. We’d paused briefly to photograph the church of Ingjaldsholl in front of the glacier, before sauntering happily along the remote and empty Utnesvegur, passing a discarded landscape of twisted forms. A crater here, a lava field there. For now we were just driving through the landscape, enjoying the privilege of witnessing this extraordinary peninsula. We’d stop at Arnarstapi and photograph the white house again next, we decided. But for a moment we’d take that side road to Hellnar and pause in the layby for a snack, from where we could gaze down at the church we’d abandoned all intentions of photographing twenty-four hours earlier. I’d seen some very agreeable images of the subject in these pages, but from wherever you looked it was surrounded by clutter, and the most compelling pictures I’d found for reference had been simplified by a blanket of snow. Reluctantly we’d agreed that there probably wasn’t a shot here for this trip. I took a couple of snaps with the long lens and duly filed the results, instantly forgetting the episode as we moved on to the next stop where there was an already tried and tested composition to revisit. The lull was over, and the feeding frenzy of Super Saturday had resumed.
It was only much later, in one of those moments when I decided that while I wanted to play around with some shots in the editing suite, I wasn’t in the mood for sifting through a large number of candidates. I wanted simple, and simple didn’t come easier than a folder with only three RAW files, two of which appeared to be almost identical. The shortlisting would take approximately zero seconds. Maybe I could declutter the space around the church? Another monochrome conversion with a bit of contrast would help to simplify the scene, and perhaps there was an image hidden in plain sight that was worth persevering for. Just a quick half hour before I moved away from the computer and did something else with my Sunday afternoon, I thought to myself. And so I started to tinker, gradually removing one distraction after another with varying degrees of success, until the white church stood alone in its space against the quiet ocean. A dodge, a burn or several, a pair of levels and curves adjustments and the shapes of distant mountains somewhere closer to Reykjavik appeared across the water. Now an image that initially offered little promise began to take shape. It still wasn’t one I planned to share – at least not until the moment that I began to rather like what I was looking at. Somehow, an image had evolved from a messy starting point and I was happy.
It makes me wonder what else I’ve got lying around in my saved files; what images are hovering one step away from the dustbin of eternity that might have a hidden promise just waiting to be hatched from chaos. When there are so many fantastic moments still waiting to be captured, it may be a while before any more of the lesser lights appear, but anything is possible. “Never delete anything – just in case,” seems to be the lesson I’ve learned, not that I often do. You never know when you might see something in an unloved snapshot that you overlooked in the first place.