You can search Google, watch Youtube, read books, read articles and go to workshops to improve your Landscape Photography. All of these avenues can and will help the photographer develop certain skills, in camera skills, post processing abilities, compositional vision etc. What none of these things does for the photographer is to teach patience. I think patience is one of the under appreciated abilities in creating interesting and dramatic landscapes and here is why.
When a photographer is patient they have time to soak in the scene, time to create the perfect composition and time to relax within their work. Everybody knows the saying, “Good things come to those who wait” and that is especially true when photographing landscapes. One of the things that my type of photography has done for me is to make me slow down. I probably can’t count the number of photographs I’ve made (most of them bad) that were created hastily without much thought going into them. Pull up to a scene get out of the car, spend ten minutes making a few images and move on. Repeat the process, etc. Once home, review hundreds of blah photos and if I was exceptionally lucky maybe a couple of keepers - maybe. So it took me many years to learn how to slow down and concentrate on making just a few great images while foregoing many images that in the past I would have been rushing to capture. If you are serious about making great images or maybe you are interested in improving your photography just a little then slowing down will serve you well.
The following image was created after waiting three hours for the light and atmosphere to present me with a great opportunity. If I had been rushing around playing with multiple compositions I very well could have missed this shot. I definitely would have missed this shot before I learned to slow down. To make this shot, I climbed onto a ridge over moderately steep snow. I couldn’t see very far onto the ridge from the parking lot but had scouted it a little on Google earth so I knew there might be a great vantage point by which to make some good photos. Once on the ridge I imediately picked out this image but the light was all wrong and I knew it would be hours until the sun was on the horizon. What I liked initially about the composition was the ridge leading from lower left all the way to the top of the peak in upper right. I was also aware that the sun would be setting about 90 degrees to my right and had a feeling that as the sun was setting it might pick off that ridge that I thought was a strong compositional element. Once I had this compostion set up I didn’t get too far from the camera as I waited. I did make a few other shots but never really took my eye or attention away from this shot. In the past I probably would have said to myself, “That’s a good shot, but the light is all wrong so I’ll have to find something else.” I might have made a couple of shots of it anyway that would have fallen flat because I didn’t wait for the right condition to present itself.
A late Spring sunset on Mount Baker.
This next photo was also taken after a pretty long wait. The night before I had taken some test shots while camped out at my truck in the parking lot. I noticed that the Milky Way was prominent just east of Little Tahoma at about 11pm. So, figured if I walked further west the next night and waited until a little later I could get a shot with the Milky Way directly over Little Tahoma and thought that would make a good composition. So, after photographing the sunset I found the composition I wanted and sat down to wait. Three hours later the Milky Way did in fact align with Little Tahoma and I made the shot. Slowing down is an aquired skill I think, as over the years I probably would have been satisfied with some other image of the stars in this situation. I wouldn’t have waited and probably would have come away with a much lesser photo if anything at all.
Milky Way over Mt Rainier and Little Tahoma
How did I finally learn to slow down? More like force myself to slow down? I simply stopped taking so many photographs and decided to just put the camera down and look. I trained myself almost through will power to just stop, take in the scene, and think about what would make a good and interesting photo. Often, for inspiration I will save photos to my phone from other photographers I admire and while in the field review those photos - something that can be done to kill time while waiting for the light to turn an average photo into a great photo. I proactively started planning my trips whenever possible so that I arrived at a scene early with time to spare. This resulted in me being able to slow down and not feel so rushed. It allowed me to see things I would have missed in the past.
The trip I took to make the Astro photo of Mt Rainier above was planned as an Astro Photography trip. In other words, I had no plan to photograph anything that night except the stars and Mount Rainier. Funny thing happened, by arriving early I was rewarded with this sunset. So slowing down in this case meant getting motivated to leave the truck earlier and I was able to take in a great evening. One of the practical things I did to remind myself to slow down was to laminate a little sign on the leg of my tripod that simply said “Slow Down”. Everytime I would take the tripod off my pack to set up for a shot I had to read that little note. Eventually, it became part of how I approach Landscape Photography. My brother Adam, a musician, once said in an interview that one of the most important parts of his success playing the guitar was to just listen and then play. I think photography is quite similar in that regard. Slow down long enough to see and then shoot.
Sunset on Mt Rainier