The Sun
I have always been keen on skies. Dawn, sunrise, storm, sunsets - anything but the flat grey panoply that’s only good for portraits.
Of all of them, sunset and sunrise are the most universally attractive to the person with a camera. But they’re also far from easy to shoot. Because of the speed with which they develop and disappear you need to be a good sprinter if you’re any distance away from the right spot to shoot from. And a good pair of lungs, a sound heart and the mental serenity of a Cistercian monk.
(And, listen: do beware of the sun. I'm convinced that it's got a grudge of some sort against all photographers. Give it half a chance and it'll do the wrong thing.)
Last week’s slight unwell-ness included an interesting change in the pulse rate and a tendency for the room to start circling round me. It reminded me of one late afternoon in Greece when the photographer asked if I would be kind enough to carry his tripods while he ran ahead up to the top of the hill from which he was about to shoot a stunning sunset. By the time I reached him he would have found the right spot.
I started up the narrow track. It was dried mud, formed by thousands of years of rain torrents and goats. The next minutes of pounding from mud gully to grassy clump at roughly the angle of your average house roof was tiring. I don’t remember much of the climb except feeling my heart coming into my throat with a sort of salty taste and knowing that death was imminent. But I do remember reaching the final rock ledge, heaving the canvas bag of tripods towards him and seeing him run at me.
He got the picture, and at dinner that night he said my red face rising slowly above the surface of the flat rock had reminded him of the picture of a Mexican sunrise he had once shot for the National Geographic.
Ever been to the Taj Mahal? Taken snaps of it? And from which side of it, the East side or the West? I think it more likely that it was from the East side. If the sun was setting it was setting behind that magnificent central dome. Right?
So to shoot the rising rather than the setting sun you will have worked out that you have to go round to the West side.
One photographer did just that for me. I was not with him. When he flew back he came to see me and show me the results.
I was stunned to see the pictures.
‘It wasn’t easy, Paul,’ he said.
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘In what way?’
‘In the way that, in order to get the sun behind the central dome, the only possible spot to stand was, um, not very pleasant.’
‘No?
‘No. I had to stand knee-high in sewage.’
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Text and illustration ©Paul Wigmore 2010