Claire Gillo speaks to award-winning IGPOTY photographer Tony North about his stunning ‘Blue Tajinaste’ image
To access the location where photographer Tony North took his award-winning image titled Tajinaste Azul (Blue Tajinaste), you have to keep going up – about 2,300m up! The image was taken in La Palma (the Canary Islands) on the top of the northern edge of the Caldera in the Taburiente National Park, and it required a bit of effort to get there, as Tony explains. ‘You drive all the way up the mountain, including 20 minutes of hairpin and nail-biting bends. You’re almost constantly in second and first gear, then at the top of the road it takes you close to the rim of the Caldera and there are paths to follow with amazing views.’
It wasn’t by chance that Tony stumbled across this stunning location, and every aspect of the shoot was planned and scouted to a tee. ‘I initially wanted to include the most famous resident flora, the enormous Giant Viper’s Bugloss in the foreground,’ he tells me; however, he was unable to find a spot where he could frame these flowers in the foreground with the Milky Way view above. Eventually Tony found another rare local flower called the
Echium Gentianoides but known locally as Tajinaste Azul (hence the photo title). ‘It’s a member of the borage family (as is the bugloss) and has a very striking blue colour.’ Tony tells us that La Palma is recognised as the best place in Europe for astronomy and so it seemed like a no-brainer to do some astrophotography whilst he was there. ‘It has the clearest skies and there is an observatory on the island too,’ he explains. ‘The Milky Way is quite a sight to witness, and even more impressive when you photograph it. The camera enables you to capture a lot more light than can be seen by the naked eye, meaning the final result contains far more colour and detail.’
Taking images at night is a skilled undertaking and to capture his masterpiece Tony had to get around his fair share of technical obstacles. For example, he had to use a sky tracker to enable him to shoot using a longer shutter speed. ‘This is a device which fits on the tripod. It turns the camera at the same speed as the Earth is moving. This means you can do much longer exposures (mine were around 3 minutes) without getting star trails, and thereby capturing much more detail.’
TONY’S TOP TIPS
1 Plan ahead so you know the Milky Way will be in a good position with an interesting foreground at your chosen location. It’s important to include a powerful focal point too.
2 Use a sky t
