What motivates you to travel, hike and camp for landscape photography? How do your emotions affect what you shoot and the output?
Landscape photographers have different stories behind why and how they chose to become landscape photographers. Not everyone just wakes up one day thinking they’re going to walk thousands of miles, walk for hours, and live their wildest life outdoors. While our love of the outdoors and the process of creating breathtaking photos bind us all, we all have different reasons that fuel our passion for landscape photography.
When I started taking pictures, the general thought about it was refreshing. I was young and basically escaping a completely different life in which making music was my world. I tried taking pictures after a very gentle urge, and it felt like a whole new voice. Over the years, I have tried different types of photography. Some are finished and full of energy, while some just feel completely exhausted. For about half a decade, I think I was just trying things out as I really learned more about myself and what part of me would shape the creative work I would later put all my energy into.
Half a decade later, I realized that it was landscape photography that allowed me to feel the most relaxed and inspired. I find that the process of taking pictures allows me to witness the world change right before my eyes, and being able to capture and share images with people has given me a much deeper sense of fulfillment. It’s like photographing places, and being able to infuse creativity and interpretation into photos has become my much more resonant voice. Nearly a decade into doing that, learning more and experimenting with methods has made the creative process not only enjoyable but, more importantly, expressive.
An inconvenient truth that any landscape photographer will realize at one point is that the image you want to create is almost never fully visible to you. As you progress in learning technical skills in photography and enhancing your artistic vision, you will realize that the most important part of photography is seeing the potential. As we scout for locations and vantage points, we look for potential things that could happen and potential techniques that we can use to provide a unique and impactful interpretation of these events. what we are shooting. By being able to identify these elements in place and in the environment, we plan and execute how we turn an image from a simple snapshot into something we can call art. art.
Find purpose
Landscape photography is not about walking in the park. Some places worth seeing and photographing often require a lot of work, hours of planning and anticipation, and countless logistical factors that affect the success of the endeavor. Through all of that, we still insist on dedicating our time, money, and energy to continuing to explore and photograph the world, and that is most likely for the sake of the purpose we find for everything. we do. Most landscape photographers would agree that the point of all the effort goes beyond the act of simply taking pictures. Many people will say that this process completely gives them ultimate satisfaction. Some photographers enjoy the experience of facing uncertainty and overcoming obstacles to get a compelling image. Some people, myself included, will say that landscape photography and image refinement 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 our visual stories? The answer lies in the viewer’s experience when viewing our photos. The way a photograph captures someone’s attention, the factor that draws them to look deeper into the whole photo, and the emotions triggered by this process is what allows them to create stories in their heads. The emotions they feel when they look at the photos act like subtle little seeds that develop into their own interpretations as they relate their feelings to something that works for them. Storytelling in landscape photography is not really about recounting something that happened but can instead be better described as tapping into a person’s emotions and their associated experiences.
So, how to infuse emotion into a landscape photo? The simplest way is to tap into what you are feeling in the moment of your own photography. The limitations of what our cameras can record may prevent us from completing the process completely at the press of a button, but being able to sustain that emotion translates into something you envision can help. you later display the image in a way that better expresses that Emotion. It’s safe to assume that most of us take pictures of landscapes for reasons that go beyond just taking pictures. Many landscape photographers enjoy the process of discovering new places, others enjoy the experience of watching things unfold and the environment change. Whichever part you enjoy the most, the fact that you’re miles away from your comfort zone means that there’s something in the process that sparks a strong emotion within you enough to make you feel better. you search for it many times. To be able to share and convey that emotion can certainly be an effective visual artist and storyteller.
On the other hand, feelings can form much later. Many photographers have different ways of handling the set of images taken from a single shot, and it’s probably a common practice that there are different versions of the same photos. Landscape photographers don’t always get to go out and shoot whenever they feel like they want to get creative, which is why in many cases a separate creative process occurs as they unfold. We look at our pictures. When we take these pictures, we exploit the potential of the scene, and as we process and reprocess these images with different processing, we can use them as a way to illustrate illustrate how we felt at the time. Each color and how they interact with each other, the different textures and harmony of contrasts, the use of space and the scale context all merge into one complex experience. The way we design the viewer’s experience with the aim of getting them to the place and expressing our own emotional response to the scene allows us to evoke the same feeling and infuse them with emotion.
Storytelling in landscape photography is not as direct and straightforward as other genres of photography and other art forms. However, beyond the beauty of a place and the curiosity it causes, a well-executed landscape photograph can take the viewer to a whole new perspective and convey a sense of humor. Completely unique touch.
