Ten Advices To Enjoy Your Landscape Photography

I came up with the idea of writing this post by remembering a conversation I had with a friend five years ago, who is a professional landscape photographer specialized in panoramas as well. With twenty years of professional photography behind him, he was at a turning point of his career, when he slowly realized that it was harder and harder to impress people with photography. For months he browsed lots of websites and trained himself with new techniques, looking to « improve » his own photography. Though he’s a great and unique photographer, he started to get frustrated and maybe envious of other photographers’ pictures. Obviously, most of now « advanced landscape photography » has to do with in-the-field as much with post- processing techniques. So he learned them all and now masters them to create distinctive pictures.

But the reality is that advanced post-processing has become a very draining task for him today. Even if he has a rationalized workflow, he comes back from the field with hundreds of pictures to build only one panoramic image, because he knows so much the possibilities offered by digital. He uses the picture-blending technique a lot to get every detail he wants in a single final picture. So he spends countless hours or days on it.

Post-processing has finally cut him from his prevailing desires, that we all have inside us as landscape photographers, like the simple fact of being outside and breathing, being in movement, discovering, seeing colours, hearing the sounds of the birds, seeing the clouds passing over our head or reflecting in the puddle, etc. It sounds cheesy? Maybe, but think about it. Isn’t landscape photography a simple childlike activity in the end? Nothing wrong with it.

So for my part, here are ten major advices I’d like to give you to enjoy your photography. Of course you’ll have heard of some of them – I don’t pretend to be very original here – but if I decide to share them, it’s because they’re the result of my photographic journey and my experience of life in general.

They aren’t rules, you don’t have to follow them, it’s my modest contribution to this world.

• Look for simplicity.
• Be satisfied with what you have before moving on.

Our pictures are our idealized vision of Nature, because we’re usually disatisfied with what we have. So after making a good shot and getting what you want, be grateful first.

• Perfection doesn’t exist.
• Follow your instinct.

You can’t work everything out with your mind…

• Do you make photos to be original like others do, really ?
• Feel your photography in every aspect of it.
• Make photographs for yourself first.
• You won’t make better pictures by buying new stuff.
• Don’t carry your camera with you all the time and everywhere.

Paradoxically, for making pictures you need some gear, but what photography teachs us is to get detached from material things and enjoy the moment. So just sit quiet and watch the show.

• You can only be at one place at a time.

I am a mountain guide with a good sense of observation first. Most of my workshops focus more on how to build a picture and how to catch light than on post-processing. The whole philosophy behind is that if releasing the shutter is my goal, the reward is the whole experience around it.