Shooting landscapes forces you to get outside and find the beauty around you. Sometimes this means discovering places right in front of your eyes that you just never noticed were beautiful before. Other times this means exploring new places and getting out on a hike or nature walk. Even if I don’t come back with images that excite me, I’m always better for having gotten out in the fresh air. It also pushes me to explore new places that I might not have discovered otherwise. Students in my workshop, The World Around You frequently comment that they visit or discover places they had never been before in order to practice their landscapes during class.
Not only does landscape photography push me to explore new places, but it gives me a push to get out during those times of day that we are often holed up inside, such as sunrise, sunset and nighttime. Because it can be more challenging to get out at those times, we often don’t in our daily lives. But since these are the times when the most interesting light can be found, landscape photography pushes us to set an alarm in the morning rather than sleep in, or to stay out for (and even past) sunset. Or it leads us to find a dark place at night and observe the stars. I have seen more sunrises thanks to shooting landscapes than I ever had before.
Getting out to shoot landscapes clears my mind and soothes my worries and anxiety. When I get out and set up to shoot a landscape scene, I find that my mind is freed of my worries and distractions. I become completely focused on the scene around me and setting my camera to achieve my vision. Watching the sun come up over the horizon or dramatic clouds change as they move across the sky becomes entrancing and my mind and body are freed from the tension of anxiety as I focus on capturing the wonder of nature. For that time, all that matters is freezing those moments in front of me and in finding creative ways of capturing the beauty unfolding.
Sometimes it is really hard to get a special picture if you live in Germany in a small village, but sometimes its really good, because you can really find yourself how exactly a photographer you are, that you can get many different and beautiful pictures out of such a small place.
Ultimately, shooting landscapes allows me to capture the magic and awe that is our world. Not only does it get me out to see some of the more wondrous beauty of the world, like sunrise over the Tetons, or the most glorious fall colors in the forest, but it also has taught me to see the extraordinary in the more simple beauty of my local surroundings where a lone tree, curve of a path or simple reflection could make a stunning subject.