Rhodes Old Town

Luck will get the majority of people the occasional good photo. This can be most obvious in places like the Lake District, where camera owning fell-walkers, who are up in the hills every day, will invariably end up with a better archive of pictures than occasionally visiting professional photographers, because nature will offer them something each time they go out, and modern technology is so good that it is harder to mess up a landscape than let the camera (or even phone) get it right for you.

But what separates photographers from technology owners is the ability to see like no one else – it is the point at which you develop a personal vision of your own.

In the majority of cases, this evolves over the years, as you learn from your mistakes: the more determinedly you look, the more you mess-up, the more clearly you see. In analogue days, this translated into narrowing down the number of times the picture you actually imagined, turned out to be nothing like the one captured on film (less-so with the immediacy of digital files and live-view).   

Another aspect of photography that eludes too many people, in the disposable insta-age of constantly feeding the beast, is that great pictures are often the product of good ideas: even in the most quick-fire situations, myriad possibilities present themselves for duty, and this image is the culmination of quite a few nights shooting multiple variations on an a solid idea.

By chance, I’d arrived in Rhodes for the Greek Orthodox Easter (I think I’d been to – or was heading towards – Mount Athos on the Halkidiki Peninsula) and was staying at a small pension at the top of this very atmospheric street, nestled in Rhodes Old Town.

The street had been decked out with the Stations of the Cross and the palms in one of these pictures were from Palm Sunday – as soon I saw these elements I knew there was something special, if I could only juggle the elements into a spectacular whole.

I spent a few nights playing with the light and different variations, using way too much film, when I stopped one of the scooters buzzing through the narrow streets. The driver agreed to set off just as I opened my shutter – his front light lit the cobbles, and his tail light provided the ghostlike trailer.

I’d tried this a few times, but some of the other drivers must have been on the ouzo because they were all over the cobbles in a frenzy of jagged light.
This guy, whoever he was, did a perfect run in one take.

Of course when shooting slide film (unlike the digit) you have no idea whether or not you’re ideas have worked. But, like I’ve said, you learn from mistakes (and mistakes on transparency film were expensive then and trebly-so now), until the day comes when you can master a given situation.

Ultimately, if you cast your eye ever-more long and wide (and yes, that lens-pun was intended), you’ll reach a point where you can conjure magic moments out of any bundle of elements, because you’ve been there, messed it up and finally mastered it!

That’s when you know you’re no longer a camera owner… you are a bona fide photographer.

Many weeks later, when I saw that this image had lived up to the idea (and more) I was over the moon – I still am – and it will stand the test of time.
However, if there’s one thing hindsight would improve, it would be the lens: I’d taken a relatively cheap and lightweight Sigma 400mm f5.6 APO telephoto. Most Canon ‘L’ zooms like the 100-400mm or 70-300mm didn’t exist when I shot this picture, as the EOS range was in its infancy (and I would’ve struggled to afford them back then), and of course a fast aperture prime would’ve been best. But back-packing on the cheap and 400mm f2.8’s really don’t go together!