Postcards from Magrathea
Magrathea built luxury planets to order, with hand-crafted coastlines. Some places are so well made they feel designed. Often they were.
Magrathea was the wealthiest planet of all time, in the business of building other planets: bespoke, luxury, made to order. Its finest designer, Slartibartfast, won an award for the coastline of Norway, and was rather put out when the Earth got demolished before anyone properly admired his fjords.
I think about Slartibartfast whenever I am somewhere genuinely beautiful with a camera. The best landscapes have the quality of having been made, of bearing the marks of patient, slightly obsessive craft. Often, of course, they were, just not by anyone you could send a complaint to.
What I look for in a frame
- Edges and coastlines, the places where one thing meets another.
- Light that does the work, so the photograph is about a moment rather than a megapixel.
- A sense of scale, ideally with something small and human for contrast.
You do not need a Magrathean budget to take a good photograph. You need attention, patience, and a willingness to wait for the fjord to be lit properly. Slartibartfast would approve, eventually, after a small sulk.