I love the Cono de Artia. Ever since it peered back at me from the pages of a high-end travel magazine in my dentist’s office back in 2015, I’ve been mesmerised by it.

When I visited the Puna region (a high altitude region of Argentina’s Atacama desert) last April for my fourth time, I was feeling so glad to see the Cono de Arita for another time.

So many feelings and thoughts were running through my mind. The tour had been cancelled around twice at least during the whole pandemic response, and I had even wondered if I’d ever come back again. I’d even wondered if i’d ever travel again.

But here I was, staring at the Cone at sunset and enjoying the hues that were happening.

I did something I had not done on previous visits: I chose to shoot the cone with a telephoto up close. I think my reasons for doing this was purely because I had found there was not much of a chance to alter the composition. Despite one thinking that it would be a short journey to the cone from where we were positioned, I think the walk would have taken at least a couple of hours. Distances are vast here, and scale is lost. It is a deceptive landscape. So moving to make different compositions yields very little change.

So I chose to shoot the scene a few times at different focal lengths. But first I chose to shoot the cone from the surface of the ground. The first image above was shot this way. My cameras has a 45º viewfinder so I can place the camera literally on the ground and still compose. Shooting from the ground can add a certain dynamic to images. Tripod height is a vital component to composition that I sometimes feel is underutilised by some of my workshop participants: some never change height, or set up the camera at eye level and leave it there.

By shooting with the camera lying on the ground, It is an intentional side effect that the foreground becomes extremely blurred. So it’s perhaps best to not fight it, and run with it. I shot the scene with the aperture wide open at 2.8 to maximise the blurring of the foreground. I also made some alternative shots at different apertures to ensure that I didn’t ‘overdo’ or more worryingly ‘under-do’ the blur in the foreground. Get it right and it can feel very dynamic.

I love graphic subjects. The Cono de Arita is one of the most ‘otherworldly’ subjects I’ve ever made photographs of. When the sun starts to go down, depending on where you are situated, it can turn into a triangular silhouette. There is something abstract and ghostly to it.

I’m delighted and also relieved that I chose to make some telephoto images of it. They were kind of a ‘throw away’ effort on my behalf, and even whilst editing the work I passed over them several times before considering them for inclusion. I think my hesitancy to use them was because it is not my MO to make telephoto shots this close up. They have now turned out to be some of the more graphic shots of the shoot from last year and this has encouraged me to buy another telephoto for my Hasselblad 503CW camera.

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