Pixiq

The Nikon 14-24mm ƒ2.8. A wonderful piece of glass, a triumph of optics and engineering. But I’d wondered ever since I bought it more than two years ago why on earth it went down as far as 14mm. In the old days — my old days, anyway — 20mm was very wide. There was an 18mm that seemed too specialised, too extreme, and for most people a 24mm lens did the job well enough. 

But now we have lenses like this one. The reason I have it at all is that it’s part of the range of zooms that Nikon have decided should fit together. 14-24, 24-70 and 70-200. If I want a continuous range of focal lengths, these are the three I have to buy. Not my idea to put the break-points where they are, at 24mm and 70mm, but there you are. Nikon decided that they would appeal to the largest number of photographers, and if I want anything wider than 24mm, this is what I have to have. 

Don’t get me wrong. It really is a fine lens. It’s just that I’m hardly ever in situations where I need the wider half of it’s capable range. And I hate waste.

But finally, shooting on my latest book, I unexpectedly found that I really did need it. The setting: the upper Salween River in the far west of China’s Yunnan province, a north-south gorge that connects to Tibet. The context: a book, my two-year project and a 340-page book going on press this week on one of the longest trade routes in the ancient world — the Tea Horse Road. From the 7th century, when Tibet suddenly emerged as a force to be reckoned with, a two-way trade began. Tea went from south-western China to Tibet, war horses for China’s Imperial Army went in the opposite direction. 

These were the final weeks of the shoot, a strange, largely forgotten area of deep gorges and high passes. Tea went up here on packtrains, several hundred kilometres from the Burmese border onto the Tibetan plateau. This is a deep, difficult gorge, with an un-navigable river. The Chinese name for it is the Nujiang, meaning ‘Angry River’, which is no exaggeration. Local ethnic minorities found a way to cross without the expense of a bridge. A rope was anchored on one side, sloping down to the other and stretched taut (a return rope did the opposite close by). Amazingly, these ‘rope slides’ still persist, except that they now use steel cables. Forget fancy zip slides for tourists in Hawaii or wherever, this is how kids get to and from school every day.....

In the old days, they even put the horses and their tea cargo across this way. An irresistible photo-opportunity, of course. You take a rope, hitch it under you, loop it into a hook below a pulley, and off you go. It’s marginally safer for beginners to do it in tandem with someone else, and in any case I needed someone in my shot. My travelling companion was local. We both hitched our rope ‘seats’ onto the same hook and kicked off. The first trip was a dry run for the photography. I held on to the pulley (as you would) and shot blind, holding the camera in my right hand up and to right. 14mm was de rigeur, definitely needed all the angle of view possible, as my companion was less than two feet from me. 

Problem was, as I reviewed my pictures on the other side, my own left hand was in shot. Worse, I could see that the knuckles were white from gripping the tackle as if my life depended on it. So, back again. And again. The only solution was to hold the camera with both hands, fully 14mm, above and behind my head to the right, aiming as well as I could.

And here we go, flying across the Nujiang gorge at a healthy 30 klicks. There was only one useable shot — this one — because for the rest, my companion was nervously looking at me flying this way, no hands, and leaning back. We landed at the other side, I checked the shot. He wasn’t convinced that this was a sensible way of doing it. And as I thought about it later, it wasn’t. But then, his judgement may have been slightly impaired, because although it was still morning, as I could tell from being so close to him, he was already drunk...