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Coastal patterns near Atlantic City, Edwin B. Forsthye National Wildlife Reserve, New Jersey

“Success with Landscape Photography means creating images that celebrate the natural world, please you, and get better over time.  Having fun and scratching your creative itch are the prime motivators.”

With that in mind, here are some points to ponder.  Some of recommendations might contradict each other, I’ll admit that from the start.  It’s a complex subject and there many ways to approach a working strategy.  I find myself changing horses in mid-stream all the time.  I recently read that George Harrison said, " I don’t think we knew what we were doing.  We just made it up and hoped it worked. " Making it up as you go along is the  only possible way of proceeding when you are tasked with shrinking the great big mysterious beautiful world into a dorky  little image. 

These, then,  are some ideas for success with landscape photography that didn’t  fully make it into my book. They’re in no particular order. 

“Reconsider the View Camera and 4×5 Film. "  

In viewing some of my 75,000 4×5′s,  I became nostalgic for the format and the amazing detail it provides.    I don’t believe any digital configuration can match it, including the expensive digital backs for medium format cameras.  I gave up the  4×5 to save my knees and feet, so I won’t be returning to it soon, but for those of you who have mastered the digital camera,  and  are young and vigorous,   I suggest buying some used 4×5 equipment, which should be  widely and cheaply available.   Looking at the big images on a light table is an experience no photographer should miss, especially if landscape photography is in your blood.  Also, the 4×5 will slow you down,  improve your concentration, and make you more meticulous. Jack Dykinga’s book on 4×5 photography is still the best learning resource for 4×5 photography— besides help from someone who has experience with the craft, though people like that are becoming harder to find. 

“Explore Your Own Backyard”

“We shall not cease from exploration 

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started

And know that place for the first time"

T.S. Eliot

Most Landscape photographers have  been afflicted with wanderlust,  and I plead guilty as charged to this syndrome.  I still have a few places on my life list I want to see and photograph,  but in the last few years I find myself coming full circle, and wanting to spend more time shooting around the Moab area than anywhere else.   Great landscape images can be made anywhere, in anyone’s backyard.  These images for example, come from my new book New Jersey Impressions.  

“Live the Healthy Landscape Photographer Lifestyle.”

I don’t know many successful landscape photographers who drink a lot, smoke a lot , or who are obese.  To seriously pursue success with your images, you have to work hard to keep fit.  I exercise every day.  I walk, lift weights, and use a Wii when I’m not in the field.  Many of the best shots are miles from a trailhead.  Every image in this collection required at least a ten mile round trip hike. The further you go into the wilderness, the more chance you have of creating an image that is unique.  Also, chasing the light might require you to  run or move very quickly down even a short trail.   Even how fast you can do a hundred yard dash from your truck can be important.  Being ready to go before dawn is also a requirement for successful nature photography,  as is staying until the the day is complete.  So many times, I have stood with a group of photographers at a viewpoint and watched them all leave,  only to be alone when the great light burst through. 

“Think Like a  Landscape Photographer”

The first step in thinking like a landscape photographer is to begin to pay close attention to light and its qualities. Very few people have trained themselves to do this and it is a key to successful landscape photography.  How do you do this?  Part of it is mindfulness,  paying close attention to things most people ignore.  Even when other matters have my attention—driving, working in my office, reading a book, or doing the laundry—in the back of mind I’m accessing the light and what it’s doing.   After a lifetime of doing this, I  it has become totally habitual. Instead of being like a monk contemplating God, I’ve been a photographer  contemplating light.   

The payoff is  a sixth sense about how light operates and how its many qualities work to create pleasing images.  Also, since I’m often pursing light events that are short-lived and unusual, this innate understanding of light is something I can fall back on when I have to work quickly to capture special light.

Besides light,  I also spend a lot of time thinking about ideas for shots.   When I have spare time or when I’m forced to wait three hours for an airplane or ten minutes at the doctor’s office, I think about images I could have tried to get and failed,  new vantage points I could try,  what spots might work with a full moon,  or how a place I like to shoot will look at different times of the year. I also think about recent images I’ve taken and how they could be better.  Oftentimes, I take notes about these ideas, or I draw pictures of what I  want an image to look like. 

Finally,  in the field, thinking like a landscape photographer is where it all comes together.  You must learn to search for the best example of the subject  you are pursuing.  You will realize how far distant your thinking is from a normal person when you stand at a magnificent overlook ready to shoot with stunning light and a passer by asks “What are you photographing?”   

“Be Ready to Improvise”

Often we go into the field with expectations that don’t pan out.  In order to salvage something from our journey,  we have to improvise.   Making rainbows from rain is the constant quest for the landscape photographer. The first step is the readiness to give up the shot you have in mind and shift gears quickly.  Sometimes the light and landscape itself will lead you along.  The trick is being open and willing to follow.  Some of my best shots have come when I have abandoned my preconceived plans and prejudices and gone a completely different direction than what I’ve dreamed up beforehand.  As a musician, improvisation is second nature to me, and it is a skill, like all I’m mentioning today, that can be improved through practice.  

“Pick Your Battles”

One thing a professional landscape photographer learns is when not to shoot.  When the light is bad,  when the wildflowers are past their peak,  when the snow has lost its fresh look,  or when the wind threatens to blow over your $8000 camera, it’s time to admit defeat and give up.  I don’t think quitting is an option that should be used often,  but sometimes it’s the best strategy.  I’m often asked how many photographs I throw away, and the answer most people expect is 90 percent.  The truth is the opposite,  I delete probably less than ten percent.  Most of what I through away are failed experiments—risky shots than just don’t work.  I try to do a couple of those every day. For my normal shooting,  I have made so many mistakes and tried so many ways of coming at a image that I can predict  fairly accurately, especially with digital, when conditions are right and when my composition and light are good.  

“Learn From and Honor the Elders of Our Tribe”

I just helped with an Outdoor Photographer piece about the generation of landscape photographers that preceded mine.  I’m continually amazed  at the lack of knowledge many younger landscape photographers have about the people who invented our artform.  In my first few years of seriously pursuing landscape photography,  I studied  the work of people like Eliot Porter and Philip Hyde diligently.   Since workshops and symposiums and books about landscape and nature photography were nonexistent,  looking at the work of these great artists and seeing how they used light, composition,  and color was the only way for me  to learn besides my own trial and error. Now books  by these photographers and others like Ernest Haas,  David Muench,  and Ray Atkeson  are  available for pennies on Amazon.  Every aspiring landscape photographer should become familiar with the work of these giants—not to copy,  but to learn.  Almost everything you need to know about how to take successful landscape photographs can be gleaned by studying the work of these photographers. More people involved with the landscape and nature genre,  which is often deamed  photography’s most popular, need to be interested in our history and  our roots.   I  welcome my job as an unofficial historian for color landscape photography of the past part of the 20th century.  

Too many photographers are too interested in just their own work.  This would like be a young movie director never looking at a movie by Martin Scorcese or John Ford. 

“Luck Will Begin to Follow You”

I’ve often said that the key to lot of shooting success was luck. At every point throughout my career luck has been a major factor.   In recent years I began to notice that many times the light seemed to follow me. I would be shooting away in a zone of beautiful light, while  all around me the landscape was shrouded in nondescript darkness.  I’m not claiming any supernatural powers here,  but  this has happened to me so many times, that I have tried to analyze and understand the phenomenon.  I think several  things are happening,  One is an almost subconscious  reaction to weather and lighting conditions that comes from years of experience.  I  am making my own luck and I don’t even realize I’m doing it.  Part of it is rapid assessment of the potential of any given situation.   I probably had already accessed and rejected quickly areas with the least potential.   The rest I  mark up to experience, something I think there is just no substitute for.  Beware though—especially the younger people among us here.  You must preserve your body long enough to benefit from your mind’s experience.  For me, this has been a great sadness. I believe I am the best photographer now I’ve ever been, but I am now stuck with a body that just cannot do the things I could when I was 40, let alone 20.          

 “Be a Boy Scout”

I don’t remember if “perseverance”  is one of the boy scout motto attributes, but it should be, and it should be the touchstone for landscape photographers.  You need perseverance to wait for the light when it’s very cold, very hot, very humid, and when you are hungry and thirsty.  You need perseverance to believe in your work when no one else does. You need perseverance to keep coming back to a place with potential that has been unrealized. You need perseverance  to keep your cool when you’ve driven across a state to shoot sunset at a BLM site and the ranger tells you the trail closes at 5:00 and sunset is at 6:30.  You need perseverance when you have hiked 16 miles in one day and the gps does not seem to be guiding you to where you think the car is in the dark.  Finally,  you must be ready to wait hours, days, perhaps even years for that perfect moment. 

“Learn rapid assessment of a scene”

A number of years ago I was teaching a workshop and a participant told me that one of my  supposed talents amazed her.  She said, "Everywhere we go, you can find the best picture almost immediately. "    In another workshop, another student made  a similar observation,  “You are like an eagle, you see a shot and you pounce on it.”   I take both  comments with a large grain of salt,  but they did make me think that after shooting in the field for many thousands of days, I had cultivated this skill at least somewhat.  The idea is too arrive at new, unscouted location and quickly decide on a composition or an image idea and start shooting if the light is right.  Not much thinking or teeth-gnashing is invloved with this approach, and  I’m not sure if this particular trick can be taught. Some people may be able to do it without much practice, while I think everyone could do it if they simply followed the first rule of success with landscape photography: shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.

“Give the Place Enough Time”

Many photographers expect to spend a weekend shooting at a location and come away with great images.  This is unrealistic, and  the best photos may require more time and perhaps return visits—perhaps many return visits.  On my foreign trips, I schedule a minimum of five days at each location.  Besides hoping to capture a few moments of good light,  it’s important to learn and place and get the feel for its potential, and the lay of the land.   I don’t think it’s cheating to look at books and postcards of the area to get ideas about locations and possibilities.   Even with overseas places, I have returned to the same location, for example, Ayers Rock in Australia, over a dozen times. Each time I went I got decidedly different images.  All of the world’s scenic wonders  are many-faceted, so with one trip you can only expect to get one part of the whole beautiful package.  With a really great subject, like the world’s most scenic rice terraces in China,   even one visit can provide a kalidiscope of imagery.  

“Find Your Own Scenes and Learn About the Land”

After you’ve taken your obligatory image of the Snake Rive reflecting the Tetons, the Wave at Coyote Buttes, or Mesa Arch, it’s time to move on, and leave these places to the unimaginative among us.  Nothing bothers me more than the mindless pilgrimages photographers make to these places over and over, wasting time that would be better spent looking for  something new.  This would require more than a surgical strike attitude towards the landscape, and require more of an immersion in its magic.  The Colorado Plateau, a place that combines the world’s best light and subjects, for example, can and has swallowed the lives of many photographers,  but take it from one who knows, many of its secrets are left to be plumbed by future photographers.  

With Digital, Don’t Skimp on Post-Production"

If this hasn’t been obvious to you already,  digital photography requires a great deal of post-production work.  This includes but is not limited to noise reduction, chromatic aberration reduction, cleaning, work with HDR images, panoramic composites, digital depth of field, color and exposure correction,  adding of metadata and key words,  addition to the digital image library and published on the web and more.  Sometimes I revisit images many times in this process to get what I want. I don’t consider a digital reproduction, especially a RAW file to be in any way a finished product as I did film.  Of course, all this indoor work keeps us out of the field,  one of the major drawbacks of digital photography. 

“Success is Worth It All”

If you follow these guidelines, you will achieve success with landscape photography. Most of you have already experienced the high of being in the right place at the right time. At those moments, when you know you have special light and a special subject, time seems to stand still.  I can shoot for an hour and it seems like a minute.  My concentration is total and all the worries and cares of existence are gone.  I know it may sound somewhat  flaky, but it happens to me.  It may not be sex, it may not be a religious experience, but it is fun.  

What about the future of landscape photography?  One of my colleagues said he felt like a buggy whip manufacturer, but I am more hopeful.  Every night a landscape photograph is shown on a Salt Lake City tv weather report.  I’ve been envious of some of the images.  This is a great feature.  Thousands of people are exposed to landscape photography daily as a result of this, and hundreds of new photographers have joined our ranks in attempts to find success with landscape photography.  I see the future as bright.