Finding the perfect landscape

I feel like a should have written a blog ages ago, but to be honest i have been so captivated by this small town called Cafayate, that it has been hard to do little else but sit back and admire.

The excitement started 10 days ago, when we travelled from Cordoba via Tucuman in an epic 20 hour journey that took us through some amazing countryside. We snaked our way up lush green mountain sides and across streams, and peered into the abyss's of valleys all at warp speed thanks to our 'ex-rally driving' bus driver who would have made even the most daunting of rides at Alton Towers look like the tea cups. The relief came when we reached the top....breaking through the grey wet clouds into crystal blue skies, and for about 20 minutes we bounced on top of them, passing llamas and donkeys, completely oblivious to what was below.

We arrived in Cafayate at 5pm. Its an amazing town, located in the central zone of the Valles Calchaquies in the province of Salta. Having been travelling between cities since being in Argentina, it has been great to slow the pace down, and what started as a four night stay, has become ten.

With its vast vineyards, and tree covered hill sides, it is beautifully picturesque, and if it werent for the mosquitoes and horse flies, eating us alive, it would be near perfect.

I have benefited from the extra time, not only to sample more of the local wines, but to do more studying. Landscape photography has always been an interest of mine and it has been great to photograph landscapes that are far more vast than any I have been used to.

What I am seeing, and what I am capturing are two very different things entirely, and I am realising how hard it can be to do justice to a perfect landscape. Mountains can look like molehills without something in the foreground to give some impression of size. Natural light has such an influence on whether or not you can reveal the depth of the landscape that, if you are not careful, on a cloudy day the scenery can look as flat as a pancake.

I have been reading that the only two times of the day to photograph landscape are dusk and dawn. Preferring to process my images into black & white, and with a tendency to go for a higher contrast image, I am not completely convinced just yet. Two of my favourite photographs were taken in the mid-day sun, but the mornings and evenings have been so grey and flat here that I have not been able to compare...and so I will have to keep experimenting further up the road.