Garras

Last Sunday after work I made a short walk with a friend to an old burned tree. A few years ago a careless tourist threw a cigarette butt at it and it caught fire. Luckily the damage was relatively small because the tree is only a few minutes from the town and the firefighters were able to put it out before it spread around the place. Still, it is a remainder of how fragile nature is.

Now the tree is still there, bleached white by the fire and the weather, and since it has no leaves it offers some very nice shapes in the night.

I had already made a few pictures there a year ago, but at the time some clouds appeared and I didn’t have a wide enough lens to do what I wanted. This time the weather was perfect, and with my new 11-16 mm f2.8 I was able to archive something much more interesting.

I decided to do a stack of several exposures (55 single shots) each 30 sec long at f2.8 and ISO 1600 to captures as many stars as possible. The long exposure time (27 minutes total) made some nice star trails and I decided to point the camera straight up to avoid capturing the ground.

Here is the result!

El Chalten, Patagonia Argentina

(55 imagenes, total 27 minutos)

I would have liked to have some more light for the tree but the moon wasn’t up yet. They ended looking like a silhouette, but it’s not too bad.

I went out again yesterday night with the idea of going to Laguna Torre and shooting Cerro Torre in a really long exposure (2 hs +) with a tele lens to get straight lines in the stars, but halfway there I realized I had forgotten my remote release and had to go back. Maybe next time!

Cheers!
Santiago

Crack

You probably heard and old saying that goes something like “No plan survives contact with the enemy”. Simple and pretty accurate, but it sounds as if it applies only to the army.

To make it more general, we could say that “No theory survives contact with reality”, or maybe I was a little to optimistic!

My last post was almost two months ago, when I had just arrived to El Chalten. Since then a lot of things have passed, some were bad but luckily most where pretty good. However, some didn’t allow me to go out as much as I wanted and as a result I had few pictures to post.

Now I am having more time, and it has allowed me to go out more frequently, and even go camping once a week (on my free day).

Hopefully I will keep having enough time (and energy!) to go out. The weather now is pretty nice. Not too cold and not too hot, though it is still as windy as ever.

To the pictures then. The first is from Laguna de los Tres (the same place from my last post).

Crack (Cerro Fitz Roy y Cerro Poincenot)

Laguna de los Tres, El Chalten, Patagonia Argentina

It was taken during sunrise a few weeks ago. To get there at sunrise, I slept in camp Poincenot, and then made a 2,5 km trek during the nigh. I arrived there 45 minutes before sunrise and spent a few minutes trying to find a nice composition.

This is what I choose in the end. I am pleased with the result. The cracked stone in the foreground creates a nice line across the bottom of the image, a few cloud formed at the top and the mountains took a nice color.

To make it even better I would have preferred to show more of the lake (you can see a little bit at the left of the image), but since I was on a slope leading up I was not able to raise the camera enough to show it.

Aside from that, I really like the result.

Bellow there are a few more images I like in no particular order.

Solo (Cerro Solo)
Laguna Torre, El Chalten, Patagonia Argentina

 

Rojo y Negro (Cerro Mojon Rojo, Cerro Techado Negro)

Laguna Torre, El Chalten, Patagonia Argentina

 

Ratona (Ratona Comun)

Laguna Torre, El Chalten, Patagonia Argentina

 

Cajon de las Sombras (Cajon del Rio de las Vueltas)

El Chalten, Patagonia Argentina

See you around!
Santiago

Laguna de los Tres

Just a quick update. It turns out that thins do (sometimes…) go according to plan! I am now living in El Chalten and I found a job 3 days after I arrived. Not only that, but I will work from 15:00 to 23:00 hs allowing me to photograph every sunrise until the end of the season. They also gave me a room so I will be able to save some money for the winter!

Of course I won’t be sleeping a lot, or at least not in my bed, but I do plan to sleep in the camps around the park to have better access to the best places.

Unfortunately, the weather here is still to dry for spring and most of the plants are dry. It has been incredibly windy, with gust of wind that can knock you to the ground if unprepared, sometimes it rains, now there is a little snow falling.

Hopefully in a couple of weeks the weather will have improved a little. I miss the green I saw when I last was here in march. I miss the flocks of birds that were all over the place flying from tree to tree.

For now I have been exploring the trails around the place. One in particular takes you to Laguna de los Tres, a small mountain lake at the foot of mount Fitz Roy. Getting there is no small feat, as you have to walk 12 km from the town just to get there, and the last 2 km are very steep and are still covered in snow.

Once you get there, you see one of the most beautiful places in the park, an emerald colored lake surrounded by glaciers and mountains. Usually. Now it is still completely frozen which makes it even more beautiful.

(click to see a bigger version) Laguna de los Tres. El Chalten, Santa Cruz, Argentina

I took a few quick shot and made a panorama of the place. I plan to return in a few day once the weather improves and hopefully capture a sunset from the top. It will include my first night camping and a night ascent to the top as the camp is 600 m bellow the lake, but it should be worth every step.

See you around!

Santiago

Introduction

Pinceladas. Bariloche, Rio Negro, Argentina

Hi, and welcome to my new photography blog. Let me try to explain what you and I are doing here in yet another photography blog.

First, what you will find in this blog. Images, lots and lots of images. I like photographing landscapes, both during the day and during the night, wildlife and a sometimes I do a little macro.

I will try to post at least once a week, but if time permits I will post as much as I can. With every picture I will write a short explanation about the way I composed the picture, the decisions I made, how I could have made it better. Hopefully you will take a few minutes to write your opinion, remember that part of the idea of creating a blog is the ability to interact with you.

Second, what you will not find in this blog. News about new cameras, lenses, filters, camera straps, memory cards, tripods, backpacks, etc. For that there are an infinite (and still growing!) number of sites that are way better than anything I could make.

Third, why is this in english? I am from Argentina, and my main language is spanish. Since keeping the blog in two versions would be too difficult, I decided to keep it in english. Hopefully that will allow me to access a bigger number of people.

If in the future, the number of spanish speaking readers is big enough, I might make a second version of the blog.

Fourth, why now? This one is a little bit trickier, but let me see what I can do.

Tomorrow I will be moving to El Chalten, a small town in Patagonia Argentina. The reason is that since I love landscape photography and being outdoors, it was easier for me to move there than to wait for my vacations every year. It will be hard, since I will be leaving my family and friends, but I will also be able to come back in six months at the end of the season.

If all goes according to the plan (right... because it always does!) I will be able to go out almost every day, allowing me to photograph the beautiful mountain range where it is located. Mountains, forest, lakes, rivers, waterfall, glaciers... El Chalten seems to have them all. It also has a terrible weather, know to drive people crazy, but bad weather tends to create spectacular light shows.

I also have a website at www.iniclof.com.ar, where you can find some old photos. So far most of it is from Buenos Aires, the city I live now, but with time I hope to add more content.

Fifth... that’s it I guess. You will have to wait a few days for my next post since my number one priority once I arrive is to find a job, but once I do I will do all I can keep this blog updated.

If you like, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or my newsletter to receive my updates. You can also send this to a friend to help me promoting the blog.

I will leave you one final image. See you around!
Santiago

Rayadito. El Chalten, Santa Cruz, Argentina