This timeless photo of Spain's Mt. Adi captured our imagination and Photo of the Week award.Editor's note: Welcome to Yahoo! Travel Photo of the Week, chosen from the Flickr group created by our readers — you! Each week a professional photographer will select a photo that stands out from the crowd, and explain why they chose it. To have your own photo considered, join our Flickr group and start submitting your own photos!
The day after Christmas, 2010, photographer Iñaki Tejerina felt like climbing a mountain. Mr. Tejerina, who lives in Pamplona, Spain, was fortunate to have Mount Adi nearby. Braving strong winds that made the temperature feel even colder, he was near the summit (4,783 ft) when he stopped to make this Yahoo! Travel Photo of The Week.
Using the sophisticated Sony – a850 camera, fitted with a Minolta 100mm-400mm lens, he captured a moment so dramatic and timeless that it represents almost everything about mountaineering: human scale, endurance and adverse conditions, to name just three. The image is also mysterious. How far away is the climber? How strong is the wind he/she is leaning into? And those distant trees look like a team of sherpas, carrying supplies for mountain climbers.
Many photographers feel that images captured in black-and-white are more powerful, purer, than color images. It’s true that color can have an effect on the psychological power of a photograph. In a black-and-white image, we might see a dignified old man wearing a medium-gray shirt. When we see the same image in color and the man is wearing a bright yellow shirt, we might judge him as less dignified, perhaps even clownish.
So, would this Photo of The Week be more, or less, powerful if it were in color? Would we get same powerful information if the climber were wearing bright red…and yellow? What if the shadows were purple-black and the snow was reflecting a royal blue sky? Absent of distracting colors the image offers us the über-hiker: undaunted and determined.
Alabama-based Michael Clemmer has been a photojournalist/travel photographer, landscape and golf course photographer for over four decades. Once a Senior Travel Photographer for Southern Living Magazine, he has also worked as an assignment photographer for the National Geographic Society and his photographs have been used in fine publications around the world. He currently specializes in golf landscape photography — visit his web site at michaelclemmer.com.