ON PHOTOGRAPHY: Maximising the Odds of Photographic Expression – 2. A Farm Called Palmietpan

In the previous blog, I discussed very briefly how spending some time in the company of the same individual or small group of animals on separate occasions has allowed me to explore their lives more intimately and meaningfully through photography. This is one strategy that I relish whenever I stumble across such an infrequent and special instance. I indicated too that spending time repeatedly in the same small locality on separate trips has allowed me to maximise the odds of capturing the sense of place much more intensely. Repeated visits have not only allowed me to broaden my understanding, appreciation and feel for a locale; recurring outings to the same area also spur me on to work harder at capturing all features of a place photographically.

In a significant way, a locality brings to light its magnificence, beauty and meaning to me (as a photographer) only once I have taken several photographs during an initial visit, I have had time thereafter to reflect on these images, and then I have had an occasion to revisit the region once more. This allows me to compare my first photographic efforts to the actual place and to my experiences of it during this subsequent opportunity. Moreover, on succeeding visits, I inevitably discover new, previously unobserved features of the place, different conditions of lighting, my different moods will evoke different responses each time around, and the place itself too will have altered in many particulars. Never has a locality confronted me with congruent combinations of visual delights or photographic challenges as on any previous occasion. 

Any destination, no matter how often I have visited it, will always provide unique experiences if I remain receptive to its sense of place and I am willing to pursue it. At a very young age I learnt that having encountered a particular place and photographed it, does not equate with comprehension, appreciation and complete discovery of a locale.

I have written previously about Palmietpan, a small sheep and cattle farm in the south-western Free State Province of South Africa. As with all agricultural landscapes, fences, tracks and roads crisscross Palmietpan too, and the farm is peppered with cribs, windmills, kraals and outbuildings. Worse still, Palmietpan is situated on the outskirts of the town of Hertzogville/Malebogo – maize silos, electricity pylons and telephone lines dominate the skyline. The general landscape of Palmietpan is monotonous; flat grassland covers most of the farm, with an occasional clump of several Acacia thorn-tree species, Buffalo-Thorn Jujube, Karee and Wild Asparagus at watering-points. A small, shallow dam and a large pan are present as open expanses of cracked clay for most of the year – in summers with good rainfall, they do hold some shallow water. An isolated portion of the farm is covered by open bushveld, but I have had only very few opportunities to spend time there with a camera.

Family commitments have always determined the times of my visits, most often during the end of summer or in the middle of winter. In addition, many visits have coincided with times of severe drought. Of all the places I visit regularly, Palmietpan has set the greatest challenge photographically. Apart from a brief stopover of a sporadic vagrant (a Kudu or a Warthog, for example), the farm is devoid of large game. For a photographer interested in the environment and its inhabitants, first impressions of Palmietpan are that this farm is unphotogenic in extremis.

Over the past decade and a half, I have wrestled with Palmietpan. Initially I would gladly have swapped localities with almost any other environment; nevertheless, I had no choice and had to accept the challenge posed by this farm, an agrarian area that seemingly would not bring to light any fine photographs. Palmietpan is a place that humbles the photographer – every composition, every image has to be discovered through hard work. Here, photographs do not happen, compositions do not await disclosure by a photographer’s merely cursory glance.

Yet, as I have discovered (and I am still discovering fifteen years on), Palmietpan is a magical place of hidden beauty and exciting encounters. The most obvious photographic gems are the various patches of different grasses on the grassland expanses. The seasonal changes in the interaction between the light and the grasses – each species with its own specific inflorescence, height, thickness of culms and shape, length and arrangement of leaves – is astonishing. Hidden between the grasses are the numerous shrubs and herbs, each with different flowers in summer. These colourful gems are usually small – the tall grasses conceal them – so that only prolonged hikes through dense grassland can uncover them.

The bushes and trees also display beautiful flowers for a short while in summer, but they retain throughout the year their individual growth-forms and distinctive plant parts, including cladodes (instead of leaves), hooks, prickles or thorns, for example. Just as every part of a nude body can be photographed, so too every part of a plant reveals beauty.

While grasslands hide the splendour of the insect and spider life extremely well, especially in dryer months, the Harvester Ants are busy throughout the seasons. When water is present in the small dam, colourful dragonflies and damselflies zing through the air or wait patiently on grass stalks or branches of shrubs for passing prey. The seemingly abandoned grasslands also hide the small mammal inhabitants, the rodents and small carnivores. Very patiently, they have taught me their individual habits and they have revealed their favourite seasonal haunts.

After a long apprenticeship, I can now find and approach Four-striped Mice, South African Ground Squirrels and Yellow Mongooses whenever I feel the need for a good chuckle at their skittish and secretive behaviour. I have learnt, too, exactly where different species of grassland and bushveld birds will find a beak-full of water, even during droughts, and which water birds I can expect to encounter in the wetter summers.

By working away at first discovering, then learning about Palmietpan, over many visits to this one small place, I have been able to capture at least some of the essence of the grasslands, bushveld, dam, pan and the residents of this most wonderful domain. There is no need to rush from photogenic locality to the next – patience, observation and the ceaseless exploration of even the most unpromising environment over time will yield successful photographic compositions.

The sense of personal achievement as a photographer is boosted by having to work hard at the fundamentals of photography, searching for compositions rather than being confronted without effort by an obvious landscape that is then photographed but often left uncharted. I learned very early on in my photographic journey that restriction to access of a discernibly photogenic destination in no way diminishes my photographic passion or chances of capturing unique images. I simply need to work harder and become receptive to the sense of place that surrounds me, wherever I may find myself.

Moreover, Palmietpan even provides ‘landscape photography’ regularly. While the ground below baulks against composition as a dynamic, satisfactory landscape image, the high vaulted sky above provides cloudscapes, which, like all landscapes, challenge any photographer to find a composition – not of an actual place on Earth, but a haven for cloud princesses, giants, ogres, gremlins and imps who will show their residences and castles to any earthbound explorer of the endless vista of clouds, again-and-again, visit-after-visit.