Landscape Photography: The Real Secrets Behind the Lens

This is the critical message. What makes an effective image, in any category, is intimacy. A sense of unguarded honesty and simple beauty. No amount of photoshop can create that. You have to build your own relationship with the place to earn those intimate moments. You have to start from ignorance and gradually learn to see and to understand so that you don’t miss the special bits.

And like any relationship you have to give back too. Accept unlimited responsibility for your presence and actions. Try to leave it a better place than you found it.

If you want to take better pictures then you probably don’t need a ‘better’ camera. You need to get out more. Every amazing image is earned by thousands of failures. It’s mud on your boots, sweat down your back and blizzards endured that are the real story behind each picture. You don’t gain a right to great pictures by buying a new camera. You gain it by becoming a part of the landscape yourself.

I’m lucky to see all these things, but it’s luck through design.  It is worth going out with the camera every single time, no matter the weather, without exception. There is no such thing as a bad photography day – you always see something amazing. The absolute best moments only come when the weather is otherwise horrible. It’s that moment that the sun comes bursting through the rain that makes the rainbow. It’s the sudden golden sunlight that defines the subject in your picture. It’s when the cloud splits to reveal the vista from the mountain top. You never see these things if you don’t give yourself the chance by being there in the first place.

If cloud and rain is what you get then take an incredible picture of cloud and rain. That’s better than feeling disappointed because you can’t get the shot with the sun you thought you needed. I have never, ever come back in with the picture I intended when I went out. It’s the strength of your relationship that matters: your ability to love the landscape no matter what mood it is in, that counts here.

A certain level of technical knowledge is needed for good photography. But it’s not advanced knowledge by any means: it’s photography bread and butter. Exposure, focus and depth of field. What I will say is that your knowledge of this needs to be absolutely 100 percent. You should be able to control any of those settings immediately, without having to wonder what you are doing to your picture or which button it is. The camera is just a tool. Like any craftsman you need to know how to use it, but it’s knowing the material that makes the difference. If anyone tells you you’ll get better results with a more expensive lens they’re wrong. You’ll get better results from a better experience.

See more of David’s work here.