Meteora – in the heavens above

The Metéora (Greek: Μετέωρα, “suspended rocks”, “suspended in the air” or “in the heavens above” – etymologically similar to “Meteorite”) is one of the largest and most important complexes of Eastern Orthodox monasteries in Greece.

I was lucky to participate in the Meteora workshop of Emmanuel Coupe one of the finest landscape photographers of our time.

Meteora is a trully majestic place and when Emmanuel announced his workshop i could not have wished for a better opportunity. In fact I had one more wish before the workshop but more on that later.

Landscape photography is really my first love affair with photography. I had initially started with people’s photography in my earlier years but soon i was overwelmed by the beauty of nature.

Long before the workshop I had made the turn to black and white photography and my landscape endeavors were inspired by Michael Kenna, Michael Levin and others. In fact it was a little before the workshop that I was studying the amazing work of both Kenna and Hoflehner in China. That was a big inspiration for me.

Before I started my workshop I had my vision, I wanted this to be a very different and unique take of Meteora. More mystique and dramatic with a sense of flowing heaven around them. Maybe the most radical part of my vision in the post production was that I was not really aiming for texture, even though I did in some occasions  but instead i opted out for the shapes of the gigantic rocks with little or no detail hoping to let the eye of the viewer concetrate in the entire scene and the dramatic  play of the rocks and the clouds.

So my only wish was to have low clouds and fog to embrace the  rocks of Meteora. Oposite elements. Soft and hard. Black and white.

I said to Emmanuel before we leave about my wish. Emmwnuel was there one day before. He was doing the first morning shoot with the other participants as I was travelling to catch up with them for the afternoon one. On my way there he called me  to tell me that my wish was coming true. They had low clouds and fog.

The next 3 days were an amazing experiance as every morning the gigantic rocks seemed to play hide and seek with the floating fog. It was like a sea of clouds was moving in between the rocks creating an out of this world scenery.

The workshop itself was proved to be an amazingly en-lighting experiance.  For 10 hours every day we were bombarded by Emmanuel with all sorts of informations about light composition and technique. In every single place Coupe was able to pull out numerous compositions explaining why each one might work based on the light. He was not trying to put your imagination in a box, on the contrary he was pointing out key elements letting us take it from there.

Undoubtfully my best encounter with landscape photography. Highly recommnebded.

Following are some of my photos with my take on Meteora. I hope you enjoy them. You can see a bigger and still growing collection in my portfolio http://www.nicolaslotsos.com/