Attaching a mask at a festival, Bumthang, Bhutan
Fujifilm X-H2, 56mm lens, f1.2 @ 1/2700 second, ISO 125

Festivals and public gatherings have great potential for travel photography. It's an opportunity to photograph the locals when their guard is down and, let's face it, the locals are in there taking their own photos too. Yet what is commonplace for them maybe incredibly exotic and unusual for us. Bhutan is a great example of this type of travel photography.

When you visit Bhutan, the whole country is 'in' on the story. From school children to officials, traditional dress is worn daily and the presence of Tibetan Buddhism is embedded in every aspect of life. And most itineraries to Bhutan will try to include one of the special festivals that are held in different locations around the country. That's how I found myself in Bumthang shooting here.

At most festivals, the visitors (locals and tourists alike) are not invited behind the scenes to watch the dancers getting dressed. Fair enough - when we go to the theatre at home, we don't go into the dressing rooms to see the actors before the performance either. However, in Bhutan, there are one or two exceptions we've found where some limited access is available to the dancers' preparations. I have photographed this festival at least four times and it continues to deliver great material.

The yellow mask is certainly unusual, with four faces creating a complex portrait - must be very scary for the little kids! And I imagine the monks, who are also the main performers at the festivals, would be competing for this role.

The original capture was a tight crop, concentrating on the mask and the ribbons at the back being tied on by another monk. There was a third monk behind, helping proceedings, but I have cropped most of him out. I wanted to keep the composition simple.

However, as a straight image, it didn't have the same mood or atmosphere I felt while I was there. I can't adequately explain what it's like. On the one hand, you feel like you're on a movie set; on another, you know it's a genuine legacy from the past. 

I felt I needed to infuse the photograph with more atmosphere and while adding clouds is perhaps a bit literal, the resulting image disguises the surroundings, concentrating attention on what is important to my eye, limiting distractions. And, yes, the clouds create a great sense of atmosphere - they are more like incense smoke, perhaps.

So, the question I raise is, should we approach travel photography this way? Is it okay to interpret a travel experience with post-production, or should all travel photography be true to the scene? The history of great travel photography is based on an authentic capture, but is that really possible today? As soon as you become a tourist, the dynamic of the photography experience changes everything. It's far from authentic and yet I still pride myself from time to time on capturing something real. 

Let's put the ethics issue to one side: I present this as an impression of Bhutan, not a documentary record. And I present it this way because I want the image to stand out, to communicate something, to have its own presence. A straight photograph struggles to do that today. When we look back on the legacy of travel documentary work, this was in an era when people didn't travel as much and certainly didn't have access to the range of image we see today. Social media and automatic camera phones have completely changed the environment in which we share our images. 

If we want to be seen, we need something really remarkable or we need to present it in a remarkable way. And isn't that the art of being a photographer, rather than a camera operator?

Of course, it's a choice as well. I still choose to take a lot of 'straight' travel photos, especially in exotic places like Bhutan. It's not an 'either/or' situation, both approaches to photography can sit happily side by side.