Don’t Let Landscape Photography Kill You
Ok, so maybe landscape photography won't actually kill you, but it might play a part in killing your photography dreams and aspirations if you’re not careful. Give me a minute and let me explain.
Doublehead Mountain in Jackson New Hampshire from April 2006 looking out towards the Presidential peaks.
UGH….The colors here are drab and the sky is washed out. The snow capped mountains blend in too much with the sky. At least the foreground framing with the trees is close to being on the right track.
High Hopes
I am not a landscape photographer. When I started in photography almost 20 years ago, I THOUGHT I was a landscape photographer. What was the point in shooting anything else? At that time in my life that’s all I knew, National Geographic and freaking Ansel Adams. I was going to be the landscape photographer of the White Mountains. I spent my hard-earned money on photo gear. All I thought about was getting out and using it. I was going to have my own images just like the ones in the magazines and on that new thing called the internet.
I was a hiker. I had access to the best mountains in New England. All the ingredients were there. So what if I had to cram a full sized DSLR and mid-sized lens into my backpack? What's a few extra pounds for having the gear to get the shot? I still had some room for the "10 Essentials" – the suggested items that would allow me to survive in the White Mountains in case of emergency.
Let me tell you something else that was going through my head. This was the seed that nearly decapitated my photography. I always had an interest in the outdoors. I read hiking magazines, looked up trail conditions on a then growing internet and kept a spreadsheet of all my hikes. I was inevitably drawn to the landscape and thus landscape photography. There was no point in shooting anything else. Nothing else needed to be photographed except for the scenic beauty of the mountains. With my new found photographic ‘expertise’, I was going to share with everyone how I enjoyed the mountains and bring back sweeping photos so that the experience could be re-lived time and time again.
Apparently I liked framing with trees but the sky is washed out again and I obviously hadn’t discovered the circular polarizer yet.
Falling Flat
Holy cow was I wrong. My images were flat. I took beautiful hikes, but the light was never right. I was a crap photographer. God, I must have been lazy as well because I don’t remember spending a lot of time researching, reading books, or watching videos about how to become better. I thought if I just shoot enough, things will line up and I’ll instantly get better. Google tells me that YouTube started in 2005, so there definitely weren’t the millions of YouTubers available to show me the way either. I didn’t get better. I produced the same kind of images over and over. Maybe I was insane, trying the same things and expecting different results. I loved the idea of photography and getting out in nature, but I wasn’t bringing any of that magic back in my images. I had no understanding of how we see a scene versus how a camera ‘sees’ the same scene and the limits of the camera technology. I didn’t know how to accommodate this through bracketing or exposure blending. Those were still professional skills if I was even aware of the techniques at all. And Photoshop had a $900 price tag that laughed at me.
Frustration set in. I looked everywhere else for blame. The light sucked. I felt pressure because there were too many people around. I didn’t want to carry a tripod. I’ll move my focus point somewhere else next time, maybe. Then the really big thoughts started coming in. I didn’t live anywhere exciting or exotic. I need to travel. If I were only in Iceland, California, Hawaii, or Switzerland. I don’t know…anywhere but New Hampshire. But I’ll never travel with a marriage, mortgage, job, and daughter. This is where landscape photography died, and it almost took all of photography with it. The passion dwindled to a tiny flame. I didn’t’ touch the camera much after that.
The famous Franconia Ridge from September 2006. Ouch! In the harsh and polarized light. The sky is killing me! I also hadn’t learned about sharpness yet either.
Photography Renewed
But photography kept wandering in and out of my mind once in a while. And eventually I started to feel like the Grinch up on Mount Crumpit. Just before I was about to take photography and dump it, my creative “heart grew three sizes” one day. (Well…maybe more like a few months.) I think that racking my brain through frustration, I realized that photography wasn’t just landscapes and sweeping vistas. It was black and white. It was macro details and textures. It was cool low light night shots. It was something I’d never heard of before called intentional camera movement. It could even have been…wait for it…people!
It took a little while, and I struggled with it, but I eventually learned that there was so much more to shoot. And it didn’t all occur in one ‘Ah-Ha’ moment, it took time. It wasn't by choice either, it was by necessity. If that little light of photographic hope was to be kept alive, then I needed to find a way to work photography into my current life. Around marriage, around parenting, around home ownership, around work. So, I did that. My lunch breaks were mini photo excursions. My daughter became a muse. I chased our dog around with the camera. I brought the camera on every little nature walk we did. I started to become more aware of the details. I became better at ‘seeing’ scenes around me no matter how big or small. You have to seize the moments people.
Eventually I became even more creative and flexible with my shooting and my compositions started getting cleaner and stronger. I found a new way to work being creative into my life. It’s true, you make time for what’s important to you. It may never be perfect, but it’s working and it’s keeping me going.
Lupines of Sugar Hill in June 2010. Beautiful day, but there’s just too much ‘Meh’ in this capture.
Grand Finale:
Here's my point. The life that got in the way of my grandiose photography plan is so rich in itself. Slow down and look around for God's sake. We all have dreams and places we'd rather be. We might even have a 'Bucket List' of items that we dream of checking off. But these things are destinations. They are endpoints. They take a whole lot more effort, time and money than most of us can afford. I'm not saying that they will never happen. I'm saying that the old adage is correct, don't spend all of the present wishing and hoping for something in the distant future. Every day there are so many things around all of us that are worth photographing. You just need to equip your photography toolbox, look, and discover this for yourself. GET OUT THERE. Expand your vision, try new things, go in different directions. The less you worry about getting to the dream location, the more you're going to learn and be that better photographer for when you do get there.
Mount Katahdin from August 2010. Definitely got more lucky with this one.
As you can see, I was actually there!
But…my photography just wasn’t quite yet.
