His images have saturated color and dynamic range, due in part to his use of his own set of graduated neutral density filters, which he developed himself and had produced by Singh-Ray.
The aspect of photographer as adventurer, molded by his extensive mountaineering experience, also inspires me. He carried equipment as light as possible, so he would be unencumbered by heavy equipment and get the shot in the moment of magic.
He embodied the archetype of the explorer-adventurer-photographer, that so many of us today aspire to be. His death was an unfathomable loss to the many worlds he walked in, and sometimes I wonder how landscape photography today would be different, had he lived. What would he think of us landscape photographers here in ? Regardless, we all owe him an immense debt of gratitude and respect for the paths he forged, and the artistic legacy he left.
The search for rare situations where light underscores meaning is a major part of why photography continues to hold my interest over the years. My first thought is always of light. By his late twenties, during the golden years of rock climbing in the US, he had many first climbs under his belt. It was during this period, at age 22, that he started to document his climbing with a Kodak Instamatic ; not his first camera, that was a Brownie, won for selling newspaper subscriptions when he was Interestingly most of his early climbing pictures were taken on this Instamatic.
For those first 10 years of his photographic life, Galen shot pictures of his climbing activities. It seems obvious in hindsight that the purchase of the Nikkormat coincided with an urge to make money out of photography.
Despite many rejections in the next four years, he decided to pursue a career as a full time photographer in The next six years were to be incredibly busy and productive for Galen, even for the workaholic that he was known to be.
The big break came when a photographer friend asked him to help with a National Geographic article on Yosemite valley by covering the climbing scene.
However, the Sierra Nevada was his soul, his anvil of creation. The photographs he produced there are those that show his approach to photography and his philosophy.
It was only in the last few years of his life that he really immersed himself in capturing the subtle side of the Sierras. These are the moments that Galen looked for and captured, moments that raise the pulse in a similar way to his climbing.
However he was well known for moving fast when he needed to, famously running for over a mile at 12, feet to line up a rainbow with the Dalai Lama's palace and, as joe has mentioned, repeatedly running uphill to get another sunset shot. The visual extremes were often questioned for veracity. An image of a rainbow ending in the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet was so extraordinary that people often walked past it, thinking it an obvious fake nothing changes.
Although his justification for the polariser is a bit much - saying it simulated how the eye saw things. He did, however, single handedly popularise the use of the graduated filter though, working with Singh Ray to develop a range of adjustable, neutral filters that became commonplace items in most photographers kits.
It was probably his writing that made Galen so many fans and it is still his compilation books that so many modern photographers refer to. Galen wrote about every aspect of photography from the business to the philosophy, from technical to moral. Although much of it has become dated Kodachrome officially died last week, for instance, although a 75 year lifetime is pretty damned good!
Galen and his wife, Barbara, died when he was 62 years old Returning from a trip by plane, their pilot crashed near to the runway, killing all on board.
Galen would have continued climbing and photographing in the Sierra Nevada he is still the oldest man to have climbed El Capitan, Yosemite at 57 years old and his photography was still getting better.
Galen had a passion for the outdoors that came first and gave him the appreciation for the outdoors. His fitness that came from his climbing and hiking allowed him to get further and take pictures of areas that photographers had not seen before. Live the landscape first, have a passion for that first and let it drive your photography.
In the early s, after publishing books about his years in Yosemite and the impact of tourism in Nepal and other Himalayan countries, Rowell was asked by Robert Redford to guide him on a trip to Nepal.
Their friendship led to an exhibition of Rowell's work on 5th Avenue in New York, a project which was published in his greatest book, Mountain Light, which captured the essence of his philosophy. Rowell turned his back on the large-format cameras of his landscape contemporaries, preferring the immediacy of the 35mm camera. He liked to have the latest equipment and was quick to take advantage of graduated filters, but he would toss his camera in a rucksack, wrapped in his bedding roll, rather than get too hung up on the technology.
For him, experiencing landscapes as close up as possible was at the centre of his work. He spent long periods in the field looking for the right combination of light and form.
This devotion reached its apotheosis just outside Lhasa in , when a rainbow touched the roof of the Dalai Lama's Potala Palace, Rowell's most famous image. Rowell had to race across the valley to align the shot correctly, quite literally chasing a rainbow. Galen was a founding contributor, columnist and mentor for Outdoor Photographer from the launch of the magazine in to the end of his life.
His contributions to photography and the scope of his published works are well documented. We take the opportunity to ponder some of the lessons of Galen in the most tangible sense. He was both an artist and a teacher, and the teacher was forthright and straightforward about the mundane secrets of creating lasting images. The operative word is mobile. The photograph factored into my life in a very offbeat way.
I had great hopes of photographing the Diskit Monastery and its treasures. I was instantly frustrated and tempted to be irate, but knew that would be unproductive, so I let my wife and our guide chat it up with the monk. It was mentioned that we were friends with the man who took the famous photo of the rainbow over Potala Palace and that Galen also was a friend of the Dalai Lama. Immediately, the monk knew the photo and his entire mood toward us changed.
This photo and the story behind it involving running a considerable distance at high altitude to line up the elements speak to the never-out-of-fashion need to recognize quality over quantity. When traveling, pick your best opportunity and focus on it. Give yourself the time to get it right.
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