What’s the one skill every travel photographer needs to develop?

Iceland. Photo by Paul Sullivan

IT’S A DECEPTIVELY difficult question, since so many skills can be applied to so many situations. For example, the opportunity to take the image above, snapped during a recent trip to Iceland, came up very suddenly. I was driving with friends from the Westfjords region back to Reykjavik when the aurora borealis appeared in the sky – boom!

We were driving on a highway and had to find a place to pull over. At first I didn’t think I would be able to get a good shot since the lights were shimmering away beautifully on the other side of the road – the foreground would have been lots of nasty highway.

Then they began to appear above the farmhouse in front of us. I also thought this wasn’t such a great angle either, especially with the trucks and telegraph wires seemingly in the way. It was freezing cold outside (as it normally is when the lights appear) and I was tired after driving for several hours. We had also nearly crashed earlier on the drive after hitting some ice on the road, and a big part of me wanted to stay warm in the car and watch through the window!

But I dragged my camera and tripod out of the car and began sizing up the scene. As I did so, the lights formed a kind of halo around the truck, which suddenly seemed to create a quite nice thematic counterpoint – heavy and industrial compared to the celestial majesty of the lights – and the naked trees and farmhouse all looked suddenly quite interesting.

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