What motivates you to travel, hike and camp for landscape photography? How do your emotions influence what you shoot and what the output looks like?
Landscape photographers have different stories behind why and how they chose to become landscape photographers. Not everyone wakes up one day thinking they will travel thousands of miles, walk for hours, and live their most passionate life outdoors. While a love of the outdoors and the process of creating stunning images connects us all, we all have different reasons that fuel our passion for photographing landscapes.
When I started photography, the general idea was refreshing. I was young and basically escaped to a completely different life where making music was my world. After a very gentle impulse, I tried photography and it felt like I had a whole new voice. Over the years I have experimented with different types of photography. Some people are full and full of energy, while others just feel completely exhausted. For about five years I thought I was just trying something, when in fact I was learning more about myself and what part of me would shape the creative work I would later put all my energy into.
After five years, I realize that it is landscape photography that makes me feel most comfortable and inspired. I find that the process of shooting allows me to witness the world changing before my eyes, and being able to capture this and share the images with people gives me a deeper sense of fulfillment. Just like shooting locations and being able to inject creativity and interpretation into the images becomes a more resonant voice for me. Nearly ten years of further study and experimentation with methods have made the creative process not only enjoyable, but more importantly expressive.
Actual Scene (Mount Tirapillon)
An unpleasant fact that any landscape photographer will realize is that the image you wish to create will almost never fully appear to you. As you progress in learning the technical skills of photography and enriching your artistic vision, you'll realize that the most important part of photography is seeing the potential. When we scout our locations and vantage points, we look for potential things that could be happening and potential techniques we can use to create unique and impactful interpretations of what we're shooting. By being able to identify these factors in location and context, we plan and execute how to transform an image from a simple snapshot into something we can call art.
Finding your goals
Landscape photography is no walk in the park. Some of the most rewarding viewing and photographing locations often require a lot of leg work, long hours of planning and forecasting, and countless logistical factors that impact the success of the endeavor. Through all of this, we still persist in spending time, money, and energy to continue exploring and photographing the world, most likely because everything we do finds purpose. Most landscape photographers would agree that the focus of all endeavors goes far beyond simply taking photos. Many would say that this process simply gives them the ultimate sense of satisfaction. Some photographers enjoy the experience of having to deal with uncertainty and overcome obstacles to still come up with compelling images. Some people, myself included, would say that photographing landscapes and perfecting images allows them to express and share a part of themselves with their audience.
Expression and storytelling
How do we express ourselves through photos of places? How do we tell stories with our images? The answer lies in the viewer’s experience of seeing our photos. How a photo captures someone's attention, what draws them to look deeper into the image as a whole, and the emotions this process elicits, is why they are able to create the story in their mind. The emotions they feel when they look at the photos are like subtle little seeds that grow into their own interpretations as they connect their feelings to something that applies to them. Storytelling in landscape photography is better described as tapping into a person's emotions and their relatable experiences rather than actually recounting what happened.
Photographing the night sky from this beach originally gave me the idea to combine two exposures where I would use the foreground shot when there was already a little light. However, much later in the process I came up with an idea to express something more important (see next photo below).
So, how do you inject emotion into your landscape photos? The easiest way is to tap into how you feel at the moment you capture the image. The limitations of what our cameras can record may prevent us from fully completing the button-pressing process, but being able to retain that emotion and translate it into something you imagine can help you express it better later. Render images in an emotional way. To be sure, most of us photograph landscapes for reasons other than taking pictures. Many landscape photographers enjoy the process of exploring new places, others enjoy the experience of watching things develop and the environment change. Whatever your favorite part about it, for you, being miles away from your comfort zone means there's something in the process that triggers strong emotions within you, enough to keep you seeking it out over and over again. Being able to share and convey this emotion can definitely make you an effective visual artist and storyteller.
This image of me using a balcony door as a frame for a landscape image is titled "Breaking Cabin Fever". It speaks to my desire for the outdoors during a time when travel and movement are restricted.
On the other hand, this sentiment can develop much later. Different photographers have different ways of approaching a collective set of images taken from a single shoot, and perhaps a common practice is to have different versions of similar photos. Landscape photographers are not always able to go out and shoot at all times, which is why in many cases a separate creative process takes place when we revisit our images. When we take these photos, we exploit the potential of the scene, and when we process and reprocess these images in different ways, we can use them to illustrate how we were feeling at the time. Every color and how they interact, the harmony of various textures and contrasts, the use of space and the context of scale all blend into a complex experience. How we design the audience's experience with the intention of transporting them to this place and exuding our own emotional response to the scene allows us to inspire similar feelings and convey emotion to them.
Storytelling in landscape photography is not as direct and direct as in other types of photography and other art forms. However, beyond the beauty of a place and the curiosity it inspires, an expressive landscape photo can transport viewers to a whole new perspective and convey to them a completely unique emotion.
