On some days we can see one composition next to another, but on other days it is hard to find a single composition. What is the difference between those dates and how can we increase our chances of finding outstanding compositions every time?
In my latest YouTube video, I talk about why it’s sometimes difficult to find composition in landscape photography, where I share perhaps one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in over a decade. 30 years of photography.
I’ve always understood landscape photography to be the product of hiking in nature, visiting great places, thinking about composition, and coming home with photos I really like. The ability to hike has always been one of the most important requirements for me. But because of an accident last year, I temporarily lost that important requirement. I couldn’t walk for months, and today, I still struggle with walking on steeper terrain, even though that accident happened over a year ago. I can’t walk anywhere I want. But the point is: this past year has been one of the best photography years I’ve had in my life. How can that be?
Changing habits in photography
Plan, hike to a location, think about the possibilities, take some test shots, return home, plan the weather and come back with the right weather and lighting conditions. perfect for a masterpiece: this is how landscape photography has worked for me for years, and I get some really great photos doing it that way. But due to an accident and complicated knee injury, I couldn’t walk anymore. So I had two choices: give up my favorite landscape photography or change the way it was photographed. In the end, I decided on the second option.
Because of the changes in my photography over the past year, I have become more sensitive when it comes to seeing compositions. Nowadays, I find myself surrounded by more potential works than before the accident.
Here’s a photo I took last year, and I absolutely love it. There are many stories in it, which have a conveyed mood and have a high impact on the viewer. But honestly, I never thought of taking this photo without getting hurt, because here’s the thing: I took it straight from a dirty parking lot next to a noisy road.
There’s no problem with that. Lots of photographers take pictures from the straight line, but as a landscape photographer and nature lover, this was never an option for me. This is simply a far cry from my personal concept of landscape photography. Without my trauma, I would never have discovered this piece. You could say I had to break my knee to get this photo. So what is different?
Look the right way
Have you ever looked at a cup? I’m sure you have. But did you actually “look” at it, or did you just determine that it was a cup, right before you used it to drink your coffee?
Creativity is nothing that we have to learn. It was a basic skill given to every human being at birth. Whenever a baby looks at any item that he has never seen before, he will enjoy it. If a child looks at a larger cup, he can see all the damage on it, maybe he will find a crack, and maybe he will be interested in the color or texture on it. We did this too when we were kids. But the older we get, the more we learn that we need to sort things out by their names to be more efficient. Efficiency is an important requirement in our world for survival.
So when adults look at a cup, they rarely interact with it; they even stopped thinking about it as soon as they determined that it was a cup. The same goes for all objects in our world, also with beautiful elements in nature: mountains, lakes, trees, rocks, or whatever. We stop thinking about them after we’ve identified their names and don’t get deeply involved with them.
And I ask you: what could be worse if you want to find a composition in the field? You want to find something special, but you can’t find it because you stop thinking when you’ve determined that what’s in front of you is a tree.
The only way out of that is to pay attention to our environment and engage with things the way we see them for the first time in our lives. In my experience, photographers do it automatically and without thinking, but on days when everything seems too easy and we find composition after composition. I’ve been doing it for years too, but with my trauma I’ve learned to understand that it doesn’t matter if I do this only in places where I experience fresh nature or in a dirty parking lot. , where I could hear cars driving and honking their horns. .
So whenever you have trouble finding a composition, just pay attention to the environment and take in all the surrounding details. It also often helps to forget about obvious topics.
But don’t just think that way when you’re out looking for works. It’s a huge advantage when you can think that way and participate in everything automatically and without consciously thinking about it. You can try to do some of your daily tasks in an engaging way. This means that whenever you polish your shoes, don’t just do it to get them clean. Get in on what you’re doing: see how the fabric compresses when you rub it. Watch how the polish spreads across the shoe and see how the surface of the shoe changes with each stroke. Interact with things you normally overlook and get used to paying attention to them. And the next time you go out to take pictures, you automatically know what to do with mountains, lakes, trees; you will know what you have to do to get a good photo.
More tips on how to be more creative and you can even exercise your creative thinking abilities are revealed in the video linked above.
