How to photograph Rainbow Mountain from a quad bike

Vinicunca is one of the most photographed places in Peru and most of the photographs are the same photograph: the ridge, from the viewpoint, at about eleven in the morning, with forty people in the frame.

Arriving on a machine changes what is available to you, mostly because of energy and timing rather than because of access.

The advantage riders have

A trekker reaches the viewpoint after three hours of climbing at altitude. They are breathing hard, their hands are shaking slightly, and they have about thirty minutes before the group turns around. That is a difficult state in which to make a considered photograph.

You arrive having sat down. You have around two hours across Vinicunca and the Red Valley, and you have a vehicle that can move you between vantage points in minutes instead of in half an hour of walking.

Timing and light

The three shots only riders get

1. The line of machines on the track, with the coloured ridge behind. Shot from the back of a two-up quad while moving, which is the one frame nobody on the walking route can make.
2. The Red Valley from the saddle, twenty minutes after Vinicunca. On foot that is another hour of walking and most people do not do it.
3. The long empty plain on the way up, with one machine in it for scale. The walking route does not pass this, and it is the photograph our riders most often say they did not expect.

Kit, and what the cold does to it

• Batteries die fast. Below freezing, a phone can go from 60% to nothing in minutes. Keep spares and the phone itself inside a layer, against your body.
• A wide lens does most of the work. The ridge is big and close. Something around 16–35 mm equivalent covers almost everything.
• A short telephoto earns its place for compressing the bands and for the alpacas, which you should not approach.
• A polariser helps and also hurts. It deepens the sky and cuts haze; at this altitude it can also make the sky an unnatural navy. Dial it back.
• Leave the tripod. There is nowhere to carry it on a machine and nothing that needs it at ten in the morning.
• A lens cloth. Dust on the track, condensation at the top.

Settings worth knowing

• Underexpose slightly. Snow and pale rock fool meters; a third to two-thirds of a stop down protects the highlights in the white bands.
• Shoot raw if you can. The colour is the whole point and you will want the latitude.
• Resist the saturation slider. The mountain does not need it, and the images that look fake are the ones that got it.
• Include a person. Nothing in the frame gives scale otherwise, and the ridge is far bigger than photographs suggest.

Things that will get you stopped

1. Drones. Not permitted at the viewpoint without community authorisation. Ask us well in advance if it genuinely matters; the answer is usually no.
2. Photographing people without asking. The women with alpacas at the viewpoint are working. A few soles and a question first is the whole etiquette.
3. Walking off the marked path for an angle. The slopes are fragile, the community staff enforce it, and the photograph is not better from three metres further over.
4. Riding with a camera in one hand. We will stop you, every time.

Questions travelers ask us

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