65° 23' N 12° 06' E Plate 01 · Torghatten Blue hour, 21:40 Where
Plotted where they were taken
Every pin is a place I have stood at the blue hour. Touch one to find the frame; the title takes you to the whole series.
Lofoten
Red cabins under the wall, twenty minutes before the sun cleared it.
Stokksnes
No wind at 04:50, so the lagoon doubled the mountain.
Fog sitting on the cliffs and lifting for eleven minutes.
Kyoto
The pagoda street empties at dusk for about six minutes.
Wadi Rum
The last blue behind the rock, the sand already cold.
Erg Chebbi
The dunes go violet for a quarter of an hour after the sun.
Ha Long Bay
Karsts stacking back into the haze from the deck of a junk.
Sossusvlei
Dead trees on the pan, the dune behind still in shadow.
Cloud in the valley until the light burned it off at 07:10.
The towers catching a light the lake had not received yet.
The series
Stamped and filed
Six of the ten destinations on file. Each series is a week of dawns and dusks in one place, stamped with the country and the season the light belonged to.
About
The one holding the notebook
Who I am, how I work, and the last five lines of the log.
I photograph places at the two blue hours of every day, and I write down exactly where I was standing.
Since 2012 I have shot destination stories for magazines, tourism boards and hotel groups in sixty-one countries, most of them reached overland. I plan around the light, not the itinerary: the first frame is before sunrise, the last is after sunset, and the middle of the day is for finding the next vantage point and the person who can open the gate.
Every frame gets a line in a paper notebook - coordinates, the weather, what the light did. Editors like it because the captions arrive already true. I like it because it makes me stand still for a minute in a place I will probably never see again.
- 14 Feb Reine, Lofoten -6 C, clear First light on the wall at 08:40; the cabins stayed in shadow for another hour.
- 03 Apr Kyoto 12 C, drizzle The pagoda street empties for six minutes at dusk. Shot all six.
- 21 Jun Stokksnes 9 C, still No wind, so the lagoon doubled the mountain. Rare, and gone by five.
- 02 Aug Wadi Rum 34 C, dry Walked out past the camp lights. The rock held its colour longer than the sky.
- 09 Oct Sossusvlei 31 C, dry In before the gate opened. The dune caught the sun at 06:52 exactly.
Somewhere between two blue hours - T.
By the numbers
How far, so far
A few figures, each drawn against the whole it belongs to.
61
Countries photographed
212,000 km
Overland since 2012
188 nights
Away last year
3,900 blue hours
Shot and logged
Commissions
Four ways to send me somewhere
Every commission starts with a brief and ends with captioned, licensed frames. The stub says what it starts at.
Brief → Recce → Two blue hours a day → Edit
Destination story
A place told across a week: the arrivals, the light, the people who let me in, and the frame the editor did not know to ask for.
Brief → Site visit → Dawn and dusk sets → Edit
Hotel and lodge
Rooms, grounds and the view they are selling, photographed at the hours a guest actually remembers.
Brief → Route plan → Overland → Edit
Tourism board campaign
A region in one consistent set - coast, interior, towns and the roads between - built to hold a campaign for two seasons.
Brief → Kit list → The whole route → Edit
Expedition and overland
I travel with the team from the first day to the last and file from the road, so there is a story before anyone is home.
How a trip runs
Brief to delivery, leg by leg
The same route every time, whatever the destination.
The brief
One callWhat the story is for, who reads it, which season and how many frames. A shot list and a quote come back within 48 hours.
Recce
1-2 daysMaps, tide and sun tables, permits and the people who can open a door. The vantage points are chosen before I leave Lisbon.
On location
3-16 daysTwo blue hours a day, every day. Daily selects go to the editor from the road so the layout can start early.
The edit
5 daysA tight final set, captioned from the logbook, graded to one consistent look, delivered in the sizes the layout needs.
Delivery
Day 6Licensed files, captions and coordinates in one folder, plus the outtakes you can come back to next season.
Published
Where the stories ran
Titles, boards and rooms that have carried the work, one tag each.
Postcards back
What the editors wrote
Four cards from the people who sent me somewhere and got a story back.
We sent Tiago to the Faroes with a two-line brief and a bad forecast. The story that came back had captions we did not have to check and a cover frame we ran full bleed.
He filed selects from a lodge with no phone signal by driving to the gate every evening. Twelve days, one consistent look, and the campaign held for two seasons.
Our region had been photographed to death in midday sun. Tiago shot it before breakfast and after dinner and it looked like somewhere nobody had been.
The coordinates on every caption saved our fact-checkers a week. That alone would have been worth the commission. The pictures were the bonus.
Where next
Departures
The trips already on the calendar. An open row means a second story can ride along on the same flights, which halves the travel on your invoice.
- 06 Oct Sossusvlei Namibia Lodge group, 9 days Open for briefs · Join this trip
- 18 Nov Wadi Rum Jordan Tourism board, 12 days Confirmed
- 09 Jan Lofoten Norway Magazine story, 7 days Open for briefs · Join this trip
- 22 Feb Torres del Paine Chile Expedition, 16 days Full
- 14 Apr Kyoto Japan Hotel group, 5 days Open for briefs · Join this trip
- 21 Jun Stokksnes Iceland Magazine story, 6 days Departed
Licensing and delivery
Asked before booking
The five questions every editor asks, answered once.
Who owns the pictures, and what can we do with them?
I keep the copyright and you get a license written for the use you actually have - print and digital for a title, a campaign term for a board, all media for a property. Nothing is ever resold as stock, so the frames stay yours to run.
How fast do the pictures arrive?
Daily selects from the road, usually the same evening, so the layout can start before I am home. The final captioned set follows five working days after the last blue hour.
What does a caption come with?
The place, the coordinates, the date and time, the weather and one line on what the light was doing, all from the logbook. Fact-checkers tend to write back to say thank you.
Do you travel with a writer, or shoot for one?
Both. I have worked alongside writers for a week and I have shot to a finished draft. If you have neither, I can recommend three people who have slept in the same airports.
Can two commissions share one trip?
Yes, and the departures board above says where there is room. A second story on the same flights halves the travel line on both invoices, and I only take pairings that do not compete.
Anything not covered here: write, and say what you need in the first sentence. It gets a faster answer.
Book a trip
Send me somewhere
Where, when and roughly why. I answer from wherever I am, usually within a day.
Received. I answer within a day from wherever I am.