PDN - August 2012

Traveling in Style

BO TH PHO TOS © MAR TIN MORRELL

Martin Morrell: the Multidiscipline approach

While on assignment in Burma in February, photographer Martin Morrell wanted to find a fresh way to pho-
tograph the beautiful temples at Bangan that have for generations been a beloved subject of tourists and
professional travel photographers alike. “I’d gone back to one of the temples when the sun was higher. You
know, everyone shoots them at dawn and dusk.” As he was working, he overheard two tourists speaking in
Italian. The woman asked her companion if he thought Morrell could be a professional photographer. The
man replied, “No, the real pros shoot in the good light, very early in the morning,” Morrell recalls. “I thought
that was fantastic.” Morrell says his strategy worked, producing images that were subtly different from “the
plastic images we’ve seen from Burma.”
On travel assignments, the Britain-born Morrell closely observes the quality of light in each location, not
only to find a way to create unexpected views but to convey what makes each place unique. “The type of
light that we find in a place is very much a part of the story.” He notes, “The quality of light in New York City
or New Delhi is completely different for a number of reasons.” Tel Aviv, for example, “had a quite odd, hazy,
smoky light which I always felt was warm. When I thought about the treatment of the pictures, that’s what
came to mind.” The sun-washed pastel tones he captured in his Tel Aviv street scenes are very different from
the bright colors and graphic compositions he created in the cool, glancing sunlight of Iceland, or the lush
aerial photos he took from a helicopter over the volcanic island of Reunion early in the morning. “If you shoot
too early, the shadows are too deep; too late, and the light becomes too flat.”
To Morrell, “traveling is an emotional experience.” Ideally, he says, he would spend the first day in a place
simply observing, but on assignments for clients like Condé Nast Traveller (UK), Travel+Leisure, Food & Wine
and British Airways’ High Life, he has to quickly decide both how he’ll cover everything on his shot list and
what he wants to communicate to faraway readers. “I always find it quite exciting the moment I get off the
plane. In the first taxi ride from the airport, I have to spend my time gazing out the window, trying to work
out what the hell is going on wherever I am,” he explains.

His versatility in matching his visual style to a location’s mood and atmosphere, whether he’s shooting a fast-paced city or a romantic landscape, is in part the result of his varied career. He got his start shooting portraits for a news feature for The Independent in 1996, and was soon shooting other assignments for the newspaper. When his long-time editor there moved to a travel publication, she offered him his first opportunities to shoot travel stories. He has, over time, also shot advertising, fashion and portraiture as well as interiors for magazines like Vogue Living, Côte Sud and Elle Decoration UK. As a travel photographer, “You

What’s in Your Bag?
Cameras: Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III; Canon
5D Mark II camera body
Lenses: Two Canon EF 24-70mm f2.8 L
USM; Canon EF 70-200mm f2.8 L IS USM;
Canon TS-E 17mm f4 L Tilt and Shift

Other equipment: Gitzo carbon
fiber tripod with geared center column and
Manfrotto 405 Pro Digital Geared Head (with
quick release plate); Manfrotto carbon fiber
tripod with Gitzo ball head (which Martin
Morrell uses when assignments call for
trekking); Lastolite/Flexfill; remote camera
release; hot shoe spirit levels
Morrell typically brings about 15 compact
flash cards, ranging in size from 2 gb to 16
gb, but these days, when he’s shooting more
video, he tends to use bigger cards like the
16-gb Sandisk Extreme Pro. Morrell says the
13-inch MacBook Air “has been a revelation
to me, because it’s so light. If you’re shooting
in Nepal or the Himalayas, where you’re
trekking for five days, it makes a difference.”