Blue Tajinaste By Tony North

Claire Gillo speaks to award-winning IGPOTY photographer Tony North about his stunning 'Blue Tajinaste' image

- Claire Gillo

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.’