landscape

Jules at the Swiss border /  by Areito Echevarria

Jules at the Swiss border.

Jules at the Swiss border.

This is an image I made in Switzerland several years ago one summer when my fiend Julian and I went mountain biking in the French Alps for a few weeks. A few days prior to this I had been in a pretty nasty accident, I came off my bike after misjudging the height of a jump into some woods where I couldn't see the landing. I hit the ground pretty hard from about 3 meters in the air and had to be wheeled to the bottom of the hill. After an ambulance ride to the local hospital and several xrays and ultrasounds later, apparently nothing was broken or torn up and I was sent on my way. However my leg still hurt really badly and I couldn't walk properly for weeks afterwards. Determined not to spend the rest of my holiday recuperating in the pool, I went out into the mountains every day with Jules and we rode our bikes really slowly and just took in the amazing mountain life. I remember all the cows in France had giant bells around their necks that rang out whenever they moved. They all looked pretty stressed out by the sounds of the bells constantly ringing and didnt really seem very happy at all. One afternoon we crossed over the border into Switzerland where we were surprised to find none of the cows had bells. They seemed way more chilled out.

What is it with Sunset photos? /  by Areito Echevarria

Mazatlan, Mexico.

Mazatlan, Mexico.

Sunset photos, secondary only to cat photos in the collective unconsciousness of popular imagery. What is it about sunset photos that appeal to people so much? I remember going to a lecture a while ago by New Zealand landscape photographer Andris Apse. Adris is well know for his striking images of our back country and wilderness areas. In part of the presentation he showed a collection of his images from the last few years, the wilds of Fiordland, Antarctica and the Auckland Islands. The crowd was suitably impressed, murmuring in approval as his images passed by. Then came a sunset shot, no better or worse than the rest, which immediately elicited loud oohs aahs and wows from the audience. A noticeably stronger reaction than to any other image he had shown. There is a conventional wisdom in film making that it's all about the story and, the most important thing in a film is the script and the always popular the visual effects must serve the story. This is a notion that I really don't subscribe to at all. Humans have a need to give meaning to everything around them, to try to understand their world and to make sense of it, to give it a story. But I think we also have a subtle innocence, an ability to be captivated by something as simple as a sunset, to be inspired by simple beauty without any inherent meaning.