Behind the lens: On the shoulders of giants

This photo is of the Owens River and the Sierra Nevada near the town of Bishop in California. I can trace the inspiration for it to the earliest days of my journey in photography.

In the 90s, my love of rock-climbing found me exploring the jagged peaks of this mountain range, known as the “range of light” as it was called by pioneering environmentalist John Muir.

At the time, I lugged a camera along to document the landscapes on my adventures with 35mm colour slide film. My choice, Fuji Velvia, meant that my ‘post processing’ was fixed ahead of time as a highly saturated, high contrast look. It didn’t handle a wide dynamic range well but wow, the transparencies leapt off the light table! When I got the exposure right, which wasn’t as often as I would have liked, the images transfixed me with their vibrant colour.

Many photographers have captured the Sierra Nevada over the years. Ansel Adams set the bar for monochrome enthusiasts, but it was Galen Rowell (1940 - 2002) who was incredibly influential for me. He wrote extensively about light and colour in the landscape, how to look for it and how to photograph it. I devoured his work and his book Mountain Light: In Search of the Dynamic Landscape holds pride of place on my bookshelf to this day.

Galen sold fine art prints at his Mountain Light Gallery in Bishop and with skills as a trail runner and climber, he was indefatigable in his pursuit of unique, colourful landscape compositions across the region. Mountain Light Gallery continued exhibiting and selling his work for 15 years after his death until it sadly closed in 2017.

I spent last Christmas in Bishop on a pilgrimage to reacquaint myself with Galen’s ethos. I naively didn’t know the gallery had closed, but by chance the walls of my hotel featured many beautiful prints of his work. I crosschecked phone location apps with viewpoints of his images, and on Christmas afternoon I found a spot by the Owens River that looked worthy of a visit on a freezing Boxing Day dawn. With the tripod set and dawn light filtering in, a glimpse of clouds toward the mountains gave me hope for a colourful cloudscape at sunrise. And it was just that - I got lucky.

The post processing of this image is very much a reflection of Galen’s influence over my early years in landscape photography. I like to think he would approve of my digital tribute.