Chasing the Light - Discovering a Truth

On a recent National Geographic assignment in Switzerland, I heard about a farm family who lived in a remote place called Isola on Lake Sils near St. Moritz. They had left city life to raise goats and make organic cheese. This is the kind of story I love to shoot. I am always looking for hidden gems when on assignment. Rather than photographing the farmers market, I love going to the source: the farm itself. I want to get inside cultures, get close to people, and make intimate photographs.

Great light is essential for making beautiful photographs. Sometimes we can control this. To make a beautiful portrait of a farmer, I could ask her to stand at the entrance of the barn and get warm doorway light. I can place fresh cheeses in a ray of sunshine by the window. But when it comes to milking goats on a farm, you have to photograph on their schedule and where it happens.

I arrived at the farm and immediately fell in love with the place. The dramatic mountains and rustic barns, a warm and welcoming family, the quirky goats—all the elements were there, except for the light. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was the kind of day most people think is beautiful for photography. But I felt sick with worry. It was such a gentle situation, yet the light was so harsh. How was I going to convey what I saw and how I felt about this magical place?

The goats skipped in from the pasture and Bettina, the farmer, began to milk them one by one. I wanted my shot to include everything: mountains, lake, barns, goats, and farmer. I pointed my camera toward the majestic mountains while the sun raked in from the side. To the eye it was lovely, but through the camera all I could see was a crowd of goats in a mass of contrasting light. Meanwhile, Bettina seemed to be going very quickly from goat to goat. My shot wasn’t working. I was growing more anxious, and I knew I had to give up on trying to include the mountains in the photo. I turned to shoot the scene, backlit, facing the sun.

To prevent the sunlight from coming directly into the lens, I knelt on the ground by Bettina, to allow her face to block the sun. I felt a sense of calm as the tones evened out in my frame. The sun shone through wisps of her hair. Curious and friendly goats stayed close, and I used their heads to fill the vast white space of the sky. The low angle allowed me to get very close to Bettina and her goats. I felt together with her, inside her world.

Finding the Woman on the Train, Twenty-One Years Later

In 1990 I spent a few days on the Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi train, the Reunification Express. The train linked north and south Vietnam, symbolizing that this was one unified country, not the two parts it had been during and prior to the war.

The train had been moving at a snail’s pace in that July heat for days. For days, I walked up and down the train, meeting people and photographing them. I was sometimes with Lewis, my Vietnamese-Australian friend who helped translat. Finally on the third day, we approached the mountains in the central part of Vietnam. I knew as we climbed the Hai Van Pass that it would be a great shot when we came down the mountain if I could hurry and get to the front of the train, and shoot out the window. I knew you’d see the train curving around the bend as it came down the mountain.

I came upon a young woman and a couple of children. My translator friend was not with me, so I had to gesture my request for permission to photograph her. She nodded smiling. The train started to pick up speed as it descended the mountain, and we finally felt the first breeze in days. I leaned way out the window to get the right angle, and we were all laughing, feeling the joy of the free-fall. Afterwards I gave the children a box of crayons and promised to send photos to the woman. Somehow I lost her address and was never able to send her any of the photos.

Over the years this photo ended up being published a lot. It was on the cover of the Lonely Planet guide for years, (but a pirated version without a photo credit.) I was sad that I could never share the success of the photo with the woman on the train. Then in 2010, there was an article about me in Tuoi Tre, one of Vietnam’s leading newspapers and this photo was published. That same day I got a Facebook message from someone named Rosalyn Vu who wrote, “the woman on the train is my mother.” She said she and her mom, whose name was Trần Thị Điệp had seen the photo on the Lonely Planet guide and always wondered how to get in touch with the photographer.

And the following year, we met again after 21 years. I could finally thank her for being part of the success of the photograph. I told her that it was I who had made the photograph, but she had made the photograph beautiful.