“To know a place, one must be more than simply familiar with it.”

Although landscapes are evolving moving things, with changeable weather, varying atmospheric conditions, and different seasons, there is a degree to which one gets to know a place if they keep returning.

But whether you can ever get to know a place entirely, to know all its moods, to experience all its seasonal faces is unlikely. There is always something kept back that you will most likely, never experience.

I say this with the understanding that I have been coming to Torres del Paine national park since 2003. Not every year, but certainly enough times now that I have lost count of my visits here. Although I would not say I know the place enough to fully understand it, I am at least familiar with many of its attractive view points. Familiarity is different in my view, from knowing a place. To know a place, one must be more than simply familiar with it.

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What I find most intriguing about returning to a familiar landscape is that it can act as a reference point for the changes in my photography over the years.

In the most obvious way, I look for different things now than I once did. But also, I recognise now, that some of the features I wished to capture back in 2003 and failed to do so, were simply never going to be possible. For instance, the mountain range faces north yet the sun for most of the day moves behind it. The mountain range is always backlit. The only way to make the mountains work for you is to hope for a cloudy day as cloud causes the light to scatter everywhere and come from all directions. Rather than from behind the mountain range.

I did not have the basic knowledge to understand this back in 2003 and I suppose in a way, I didn’t want to understand it either. I was more driven by an idealistic view of what I was hoping to shoot. The amateur in me hadn’t learned to submit to what the landscape offers. Instead I was very much driven by looking for a certain thing.

As the years have gone by, I am less in need of the sunset or sunrise light. These were elements of shooting Torres del Paine that were a big draw for me back in 2003. Not now. For me, I prefer to go with the natural nature of the park. In my view, I think Torres del Paine is a monocrhomatic landscape of greys and shades of turqoise.

I am more drawn to its natural muted palettes of it’s granite and gabbro-diorite rock. I love how the muted rock colour acts as a reference to show us how beautiful the many coloured lakes are: Nordensjkjold’s greenish turqoise, Pehoe’s radox blue, and lago Grey’s grey. Along with its black beaches, Torres del Paine is a monochromatic study for me, with just a dash of lake colour.

And yet that is not what I originally came for.

So, this is my 22nd year coming here and I am wondering if I will see anything new in the familiar vistas I have visited many times? I think the answer is that something new is always on offer. It’s up to me as to whether I will be receptive to it.

I suffered from thinking that when I saw something different in the landscape, it was because the landscape was offering me something new. Perhaps a change in weather or light had altered a familiar view? Although that can be true, it is not always a case that the landscape has changed. More often, I think, it is a sign that we have changed. We are now looking for something else, or we are now receptive to noticing things we did not care to notice previously.

And so, it is my view, that the more I keep returning to an old haunt, the more chance it has, to show me how much I am changing over the years.