3 times I was scared while taking pictures pt.1

I am in Germany as I write these lines. I’ve just come back from a photographic outing that reminded me of an event I experienced a few years ago, and also of the promise I made in my previous article to write about the times when I was genuinely scared while photographing.

Over the past few days, as you may have noticed, rain and flooding have been widespread across Europe. Today I was in the forest and was struck by the way water was streaming down the embankments. Small streams were appearing everywhere, cutting across the forest, and in the clearings the water seemed to rise up from the ground by capillary action. I almost lost my boots more than once.

This outing naturally leads me to the first anecdote of this article, which took place in the Faroe Islands.

The sound of the water

A bit of context: the archipelago is made up of a few scattered islands between Iceland, Norway, and Scotland, inhabited by about 50,000 people, the vast majority of whom wisely chose to cluster in the capital, leaving the rest of the territory almost deserted. Positioned right on the path of the jet stream, with no protection to the west, the islands are hit by depressions one after another. The result: water all around, water above, waterfalls every ten meters ; basically, water everywhere, all the time.

For one hike, I had identified on the map a route that was supposed to form a passage through the mountains. A bus would drop me off in a small village, I would follow a road to what looked like a plateau, then descend on the other side via a hiking trail. A second bus would then take me back to my starting point. But once at the top, there was no road, just a large lake blocking the way. Crossing it was impossible. On my phone, a path clearly appeared on the map, but on the ground, it didn’t exist. Crossing the lake or going around it to reach the village on the other side was out of the question. I had to make a choice: turn back or improvise.

The only clearly viable option left for me was to follow the edge of the lake and return to the starting town via a different route. In the distance, I could make out a few silhouettes heading toward civilization, which gave me some reassurance.

So there I was, making my way along the shores of the lake, mud up to my ankles, weaving for nearly an hour between rocks made slippery by the moisture, until I FINALLY reached a drier area covered in peat.

Feeling a bit relieved, I picked up the pace. That’s when I started hearing, intermittently, the sound of water rushing with force. Yet around me, no stream was visible, and the sound wasn’t coming from the lake. Despite the unease, I kept moving forward.

A little further on, the ground dipped slightly. When I looked back, I noticed a cavity between large rocks and the peat. That was where the intermittent water sound was coming from. Curious, I cautiously approached, and that’s when I realized that the ground I had been walking on just seconds before was actually hollow. I had been walking on a carpet of vegetation held up only by roots, with nothing underneath ; the ceiling of a cavity through which a subterranean river flowed!

A river whose destination was completely unknown!

Realizing this, I started imagining myself falling through the ground, carried underground, then emerging somewhere far away, launched off a cliff into the North Sea by one of those waterfalls. And all of it happening in total anonymity.

Freedom or security

If I had to sum up my experience in the Faroe Islands, it would be exactly like this: an incredible sense of freedom, since there are no barriers anywhere. You can go absolutely everywhere your eyes can see, but with the risk, as I just described, of falling off a cliff or disappearing into a hole without anyone noticing.