January 2009 Featured Member: Quang-Tuan Luong

Quang-Tuan Luong

Quang-Tuan Luong is one of photo.net’s longest standing members. He joined the site in 1996 and has watched it grow for over a decade. He has helped thousands of users here and on the largeformatphotography.info site that he founded, offering advice on the choice and operation of large format photography gear.

What has been overlooked by more than a few of us is the fact that QTL is an excellent photographer in his own right. With an excellent eye for color and composition, his ability to capture a the sense of a place through the view of his camera is truly impressive. He is full-time professional photographer with editorial credits including many National Geographic publications, Time, Life, US News and World Report, Outside, Discover, Scientific American, GEO. His images have been used by clients spanning more than 30 countries for uses ranging in size from a US stamp to a major motion picture backdrop, and in scope from individual computer screens to worldwide advertising campaigns. Plus, you have to be impressed by someone who has hoofed all over the world with a 5×7 camera.

How would you describe your photography and what drives you to create these images?

QTL: For the past twenty-five years, I have been privileged to travel, trek, and climb in some of the most remote and beautiful corners of the earth. Laying down in a colorful meadow dense with wildflowers, clinging precariously to a vertical icy mountain face, listening to the silence of desert sand dunes or to the calls of a bustling floating market might seem like very different experiences, however, I feel that they share the same life-affirming benefits. In a society where too many artificial sensory inputs are available, these simple experiences can make us feel more connected to the world, and understand its extraordinary variety. This variety is at the heart what inspires me. Those experiences give us a sense of beauty, chaotic order, and liveliness that enrich our lives. Through my photography, I have tried to convey these feelings of wonder and passion to the viewers. I seek to give a sense of place and time by letting the viewer see through the images as much as I saw them myself. I like to emphasize the beauty, as I feel that aesthetic appreciation will lift our soul and eventually lead to awareness and respect for the natural and cultural diversity of our planet.

Quang-Tuan Luong

Many people would like to call themselves “travel photographers” at some point, what advice would you give these people to reach that goal? What makes a good travel landscape versus a boring one?

QTL: I cannot discuss in a general way what makes a good versus boring image, because that depends on so many factors, including subject matter, aesthetic, emotional, and intellectual intent of the photographer, as well as context of the images.

However, in travel photography, the image is often about the emotion stirred into the photographer by a particular place. Images that that fail to convey this emotion can be boring. It helps to place yourself in physical locations where there is the possibility that you will be astonished. To connect with a place, it helps to understand what makes it place special, be it history or unique natural resources.

But even then, there can be many causes of failure, beyond the lack of emotion or understanding. One way to tackle those shortcomings is to look at a lot of images (I have personally seen millions), including some of the places you have been to. Try to decide for yourself which ones you find good and which ones you find boring. That’s a personal judgment that only you can make. Then try to understand the components and the thinking behind the good images.

Unlike so many DSLR gadget hounds these days, you primarily use a large format camera. What advantages do you feel that large format has for your photography? What disadvantages? Do you think your images would be different if you had a SLR in your hands?

QTL: I have used primarily the same camera, a 5×7, for “Treasured Lands”, the project to photograph each of the 58 US National Parks that has been my main focus for the last decade and half. However, I also use small cameras together with the 5×7, and for other travel photography projects, I use exclusively the small cameras.

Using the large format camera requires a slow(er) working method. You think more about each shot because of the time it takes to set it up.

On small format cameras, you can just move around while looking at the viewfinder, and once the composition is established, the only optical control is the focusing ring (that is, if you don’t autofocus). With the large format camera, just to be able to see the composition, you need to put the camera on tripod, and get under the dark cloth. Then besides the focusing knobs, there are several other controls (up to eight on some cameras) that can affect the perspective and sharpness distribution in the image. For instance you can focus at the same time on two objects that are at a different distance from the camera.

Everything is manual, and there are countless ways to ruin an image. You also are more deliberate about making each image just because of the cost of each exposure (there is also the time it takes to load and unload film holders), which, including processing, is close to $10. This leads to more conscious decision making, because you need to “edit” before shooting, rather than doing so after the shoot (an approach that digital promotes).

Quang-Tuan Luong

What makes the images extremely detailed is simply the sheer dimensions of the film. For instance, the surface area of a 5×7 transparency is about 25 times that of a 35mm frame. This has interesting consequences for the relationship of the viewer to the resulting picture that I’d like to discuss.

When I photograph a wide-angle scene (with an angle of view equivalent to that of a 24mm lens on 35mm camera) I am using a 110mm focal lens on my large format camera. So it means that a tree in the distant background is rendered as clearly as if I had focused on it with a telephoto, and framed it tight. I do not need to direct the viewer’s attention to it, but they can discover the tree when they explore the image for themselves.

Therefore, I can produce images that were complex, taking the whole scene in without a singular point of focus, because they have so much detail that the viewers would take time and read it, look at all the features, and discover highlights and inter-relationships for themselves. In that sense, those photographs give a sense of place and time by letting the viewers see through the images as much as I saw myself. They allow them to stand before the landscape.

At one point, I tried to photograph everything – including aerials - using the large format camera. It was often unproductive. It was just not the right tool. Since then, I’ve always carried 35mm as well. In some situations, 35mm let me get a photograph in quickly changing conditions that I may miss if using large format, or create alternative compositions while the large format camera is set-up and waiting. And of course, having 35mm let me photograph wildlife, people, as well as images that I may not want to print large (and therefore would not have photographed in large format) but that are useful to have as stock files.

With the exception of detail, I don’t think there is much difference between my landscape images from different cameras. However, it is precisely because of the practice of using the large format camera that I now have enough discipline to be able do very similar work with a smaller camera.

What is your typical “kit” when you go out to shoot? Do you have a “travel kit” that is lighter or smaller? After all, that large format gear isn’t light.

QTL: I have actually created a web page showing my typical LF/35mm kit that explains much more thoroughly than I could do here.

The travel kit consists of the 35mm component of the above, typically 1Ds mkIII, a standard zoom (in general 24-105/4), a wide zoom (17-40/4 or 12-24), and a tele zoom (70-300 or 100-400 or 70-200), plus a couple of other specialty lenses, depending on the destination, like 50/1.4, 24 TSE, 45 TSE, 100 macro. All Canon except for the 12-24 which is Sigma.

What aspect of creating landscape or landscape-travel photography do you think people misunderstand the most? This may tie into the “most difficult” question from above.

QTL: People often think about location, light, composition, and technique, but one crucial ingredient which is too often forgotten is the emotion. Without love, or at least a deep emotional involvement (for the subject, but also for the medium), there is little foundation for the need to create, and the pictures cannot be the best that the photographer is able to do.

Quang-Tuan Luong

So many landscape photographers are in love with digital post processing these days. HDR, saturated colors, etc. Do you use any of these techniques? If so, why and if not, why not? What adjustments do you make to your images?

QTL: To produce images that are faithful to the way I perceived the scene, I strive to eliminate the flaws introduced by the lens, film and scanning, or digital capture.

I try to make sincere and truthful images. To bring out the beauty in the scene, I limit the amount of interpretative modifications to the type of tonal and contrast adjustments that Ansel Adams used to create his prints. Those adjustments are subtle enough to never call attention to themselves and make the scene look unrealistic. Except for the rare removal of small distracting elements, I do not alter the content of images. I general, I think that in nature and travel photography, there is an implicit contract between the viewer and the photographer that the photographer will not depict something that does not exist.

And finally, the question we ask everyone: Your work primarily involves landscape/travel style photography. Do you enjoy other types of photography as well? What would be your ‘dream project’ if you could work on anything in the world?

QTL: Although I love nature as my primary source of renewal, I also feel at ease in cities or amongst other people. In this interview, I have mostly discussed my “Treasured Lands” project, but in fact I am a generalist, able to travel as deep into the backcountry as anyone, but at the same time interested in many other subjects, provided they are found in the world (as opposed to set-ups).

I will be kind of winding down the “Treasured Lands” project. Next, if I continued in the same line of work, I’d like to do something even bigger at a worldwide scale, that also involves culture. Something like photographing all the UNESCO world heritage sites would be great if I could get support.

So far, in my published photography, I have sought to emphasize the beauty of the world. I am also interested in my immediate suroundings, as well as in work that engage more directly the contemporary world.

Some Examples of Quang-Tuan’s Work

Quang-Tuan Luong	Minox, 35mm, Kodachrome 64, exposure unrecorded More than twenty years ago, my life, which so far had been largely urban, was transformed by the wilderness of mountains. Much like Galen Rowell before, as a climber and mountain guide, I was initially interested in photography as a means to communicate to people who weren’t there the wonders I had seen on the high peaks of the Alps, and subsequently other mountains of the world. This is one of my first memorable image (from the eighties), taken with a tiny camera that I always carried in the chest pocket of my climbing bibs. It captures a “Broken Spectre”, an apparition-like atmospheric condition of shadows thrown up clouds behind an object.
Quang-Tuan Luong	Nikon FM2, 24mm, Fuji Velvia, exposure unrecorded This photograph was from my last mountain climb in the Alps, in 1992 (I would move to California in 1993). I had been guiding a group up to the “Dent du Geant” (Giant’s Tooth), a peak with two distinct pinnacles at the top, which allowed me to frame that view of the other members of the group from the main one, as they stood from the secondary one. I always felt that although so close, the High Alps were a world apart. The small peak on the right of the image is the Aiguille du Midi (half an hour from Chamonix by cable-car) that appears in the previous image. This was one of the first climbs where I carried a SLR camera.
Quang-Tuan Luong	Tachihara 4×5 (5×7 back) Fuji Velvia, Schneider Super-Angulon 120mm, 1/30s @ f22 This is the second image I made with a large format camera, in 1993. The detail in the large transparency amazed me, as I felt I was able to see more detail in it than when I was at the actual scene. Growing up in France, my previous wilderness experiences were limited to the icy peaks of the Alps. This was the first time in my life I had seen a desert environment, and that’s when I began to realize how interesting the US National Parks were, in their diversity. I was traveling with a large outdoor club, so time for photography was very limited. My friends decided to go and check out the saltpan, which gave me some time to photograph the pond. This exposure was made mid-day, yet I felt the photograph wasn’t that bad thanks to the clouds. This taught me that with appropriate choice of subject matter, interesting images could be made at all times, and that generally speaking, there were no absolute rules. In fact, my most popular image so far turned out to be another mid-day landscape photograph.
Quang-Tuan Luong	Canham KBC 5×7, Fuji Velvia, Schneider Super-Symmar 110mm, 4s @ f 32 To me, the sequoias are about endurance and strength, qualities that would be best expressed in the harsh mountain environment of winter, rather than during the pleasant summer. On my first winter visit, which was on a clear day, I found that the absence of snow on the branches did not convey wintry atmosphere. I drove back home six hours without making a single large format photograph. I waited until after a snow storm to come back again. However, by the time I had arrived in the park, the sun was coming out and the snow had already started falling from the trees (this resulted in this image, different from what I had in mind). This third time, I came during the peak of the snow storm. Although I walked around the grove for hours (with snowshoes and in full winter mountaineering gear), evaluating numerous compositions that were all slightly differing, I made only three different large format photographs during brief lulls when the wind would not blow snowflakes into the camera lens. This is one of them, an image which is a product of persistence and observation.
Quang-Tuan Luong	Canham KBC 5×7, Fuji Velvia, Nikkor M 300mm, 1/8s @ f 22 1/3 In 2000, when I embarked on the trek to the Arrigetch Peaks, in the heart of one of the great wilderness areas of the world, the Northern Brooks range, it was the most remote place I had explored for the purpose of photography. I flew to Fairbanks, then onto tiny Bettles by commuter plane, then to Circle Lake by chartered floatplane, before backpacking for a couple of days in trail-less terrain (often full of tussocks) with more than 65lbs of gear. Yet, the Peaks were nowhere to be seen for the first day, hidden by dense low clouds. When I saw a possible clearing, I gave up breakfast and hurriedly set up the camera in excitement. Half an hour later, when the clouds lifted for maybe 5 minutes, I was ready and made the photograph above. I did not even have enough time for a second composition. For the rest of my stay there, they would not lift again.
Quang-Tuan Luong	Canham KBC 5×7, Fuji Astia, Schneider Super-Symmar 110mm, 15s @ f 32 We had paddled for a very full day, starting in a light drizzle, stopping only shortly to cook dinner on a beach (so that our final camp would not have bear-attracting smells). We arrived at our first destination, a grassy flat near the mounth of McBride Inlet, at 2am. By the time we had finished setting up camp, it was 3am. I retreated to my tent, but didn’t feel asleep. I felt excited by possibilities and energized by the clear sky and the lingering half-light of the Alaskan summer, that I could sense getting brighter. The world felt so beautiful and just invited exploration. I wandered around the tidal flats until I saw this translucent iceberg which was lying more than a hundred feet away in water. I knew that the water was very shallow, and that with the fast rate at which the tide was receding, if I waited, it would be totally out of the water. So I immediately waded into the water with the camera mounted on a tripod, the loupe and dark cloth around the neck, and a film holder in my pocket. This image reminds me of the curious state of heightened awareness I found myself in after being awake for almost 24 hours.

Links

• Quang-Tuan’s member page
• Quang-Tuan’s gallery page
• Photo.net’s Large Format forum
• Largeformatphotography.info