Matt Brandon and I have just returned home from teaching our first ever photo workshop in Mongolia and boy what an unforgettable experience it has been! We're already scheming a second edition in the first half of 2019 (sign up for my newsletter if you want to be notified) but while we're finalising those details, here's a couple of my favourites from this first edition.
Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF23mmF4 R LM WR | 1/125 @ f/11 | ISO 100
Our tour kicked off in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's capital, and home to half of the country's population of 3 million. One of the must-sees is the Soviet Zaisan monument, situated on top of a hill overlooking the city. As luck (or rather our highly talented team of fixers) would have it, a couple of retired army colonels happened to drop by.
Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF23mmF4 R LM WR | 1/500 @ f/8 | ISO 100
From the capital of Ulaanbaatar (UB for friends), we took an early morning flight to the town of Ölgii, near the border with China and Russia. From there, it was another 3 hours in those highly photogenic ex-Russian military 4x4 Forgon minivans to our gher (tent) camp. We were now in the region of the impressive Altai mountains, home to one of the tour's highlights: the famous eagle hunters.
Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR @ 54.6 mm | 1/30 sec @ f/5.6 | ISO 200
The image above portrays eagle hunter Silou and his four year old eagle Tirnek, photographed inside a gher.
Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF110mmF2 R LM WR @ 110 mm | 1-125 at f/4 | ISO 400
To give our workshop participants as much shooting time and variation as possible, we will often try to arrange two subjects. Luckily for us, eagle hunting is a tradition that is passed on from father to son. In the image above, you can see Silou's son Ayu holding up his two year old eagle Ana. These birds can easily weigh up to 8 kilograms, something he only told us after patiently holding his arm up for minutes! I used my Fujifilm 110 mm GF f/2 portrait lens for this image. This lens roughly corresponds to an 85 mm f/1.4 on a full-frame camera system. By choosing a low shooting position, I made the eagle hunter and his eagle look even more impressive than they already are. Including some out-of-focus foreground helped to add extra depth to the photo. A Godox AD600 with an SMDV 110 softbox was used to reign in the harsh Mongolian midday sun. Postprocessing was done with one of the presets from my free Lightroom Freesets package (sign up for the newsletter to claim your copy).
In the image below, you see Silou's other son Berikjan with his eagle Tastulek putting up quite a show for us!
Eagle hunting may be a beautiful and photogenic tradition, it does not feed a large family. In his everyday life, Silou and his family are farmers. Below you see the same Berikjan with one of the family's camels. In the background, the other camels are taking advantage of the situation to quietly wander off. Luckily, our herder has a motorcycle to quickly bring order into chaos. Watching Mongolian herders herding their cattle while navigating their motorcycles through the rough terrain is an impressive sight!
Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF23mmF4 R LM WR @ 23 mm | 1/125 @ f /18 | ISO 100
Photographically speaking, this image was lit with my 'two lights for the price of one' technique. This consists of using the strong sunlight as a rim light and filling in the shadows with flash. This gives a dramatic, 3D feel to the image which can further be enhanced by putting the flash slightly behind the subject, pointing back at him or her. Combined with the right position of the subject's face, this lighting scheme will predominantly light the far away side of the face, leaving the larger part that is closest to camera in the shade, except for a small triangle under the closest eye. This lighting style is called short lighting and its one of my preferred lighting styles. If you want to learn all about off-camera flash, check out the just released second edition of my ebook Light It Up. You can save 10% with code light10.
That's it for now. I'm still working through dozens of more Mongolia images in Lightroom and I'll be back when I have some more to show you. Talk soon!
