Persistence is a factor I’ve often spoken about. It’s something I believe that every successful photographer needs. Building a good portfolio requires more than just meeting up and taking some photos.
Sure, sometimes we get lucky and return home from a trip with several portfolio images but more often than not, that isn’t the case.
An example I want to talk about today is a 2-week trip my wife and I made to the beautiful island of Madeira over Christmas 2021. This was a location we’ve both wanted to visit for a long time. It was mainly the Fanal forest that we wanted to photograph but after more research we were eager about exploring both the mountains and coastline as well.
The images we envisioned from the Fanal forest required thick fog. December should be a good month for this, which is partially why decided on Madeira. Surely, 12 days would be more than enough to get some good conditions in the forest.
Well, it didn’t quite turn out that way.
During our planning we expected to spend 3 or 4 days in the forest. We knew that one day with fog should be enough to come back with a small series of images but we added a couple extra ‘buffer’ days. The thought was to spend one visit exploring the area (as neither of us had been there before) and find compositions that we could work with. The other buffer days would be used to photograph or to be seen as “failed” attempts if the weather didn’t align.
Knowing that the weeks before our arrival had been almost non-stop fog, we were confident that we’d get our fair dose of it too. That’s why we made further plans to photograph sunrises and sunsets around the island, while doing some hiking during the day.
After spending the first day in Funchal enjoying some sun (which isn’t a thing in Norway that time of year) we moved to our AirBnb located just about 30 minutes from the forest.
The next 10 days didn’t turn out anything like we expected.
For was everywhere. Except for in the Fanal forest. It was like a wall of fog that stopped just a few hundred meters from where the forest began. It was next to impossible to get any photos that could make its way into my portfolio.
Now, we were there to get specific photos. We knew what we wanted. So we kept going back, multiple times a day, hoping to get lucky. It didn’t happen.
Our backup plan was to do some hikes in the mountains and photograph those areas too. Well, remember that fog? It surrounded the mountains. Giving us extremely limited visibility. On top of that, there were heavy winds and a fair bit of rain.
While we did a couple semi-successful sunrise and sunset missions around the islands, it was quite frustrating not to get what we’d come for. We visited the forest about a dozen times and only for a brief couple of hours did we have something that resembled fog. The thing was, it wasn’t as much fog as it was limited visibility due to extremely heavy rain and wind. The wind nearly knocked us over.
This made it very difficult to photograph (and impossible to keep camera gear and oneself dry!) but I was able to get a few images that I’m happy with.
Now, I’m not writing this to complain about our travel. It was a fantastic trip and it felt great to finally be out of Norway for a photography-specific adventure. We saw a lot of beautiful places, had great food, enjoyed the sun and got to photograph something else than the mountains around here in Lofoten for a change.
I’m writing this because it’s an important reminder that there’s a lot of work that goes into creating images. Not every trip or every session gives results. We can’t control nature. We can’t control the weather. We have to adapt as well as we can. Some trips don’t lead to several award-winning photos. But what we did gain was experience and knowledge about the region.
Do you know what that means? It means it’s an unfinished chapter. We’ll be back to try again. And if that doesn’t pay off either, we’ll be back again. This is not a short-term project.
Here are a couple more images shot during the trip that don’t fit into gallery, yet:
