Can I Still Call Myself a Landscape Photographer?
One of the things you do when you move is change things that have your old address on them, whether it's bank accounts or business cards. And sometimes, when doing that it makes you sit back and consider other choices you've made -- or maybe need to make again.
If you look at my web site (please do! https://www.chuq.me ) it contains the tag line "Birds - Landscapes - Nature", as a way of very generally describing my photography. Which made me ponder the question: Am I still a landscape photographer? Which, of course, created the question on when the last time I did anything resembling Landscape Photography.
The answer, by the way, is November of 2011, with this image:
This was made on a birding trip when dawn cracked over the horizon and the convection fog went insanely beautiful for about five minutes of panicked "composition! I need a composition now!".
The last time I went out with a camera intending to take landscape images was fall of 2019 when I went to the Art Wolfe Photo Retreat in Olympic National Park (after which, I'll note I went back to Silicon Valley, looked at Laurie and said "I love that area", and that started us actively planning the move we've just accomplished, instead of talking about it as a someday possibility).
One goal of the Wolfe workshop was to use it as a boot camp into into a shift into more intimate landscapes rather than only seeing the more grand epic style imagery.
I've found myself on and off over the last couple of weeks pondering the question of whether I should still define myself as a landscape photographer, and I have thoughts that you might find interesting when you find yourself pondering thoughts of self identity.
The short answer to the question I asked to open this is: Yes, definitely.
I'm not going to change my tag line, and I'm certainly not going to expunge my landscape photography from my web site or my life. Even if I never take another landscape image I still have many I'm immensely proud of. I am and continue to be a landscape photographer.
The long version of the answer, of course, is a lot more nuanced.
Have you stopped and asked yourself why you pull out the camera and take it out to take photos recently? Could you answer that question if we were sitting in a bar somewhere chatting over a beer? Or more correctly, answer it with the real answer and not the easy one?
For me, the answer is to relax and have fun. When I do have time to grab the camera and go out, it's to get away from stress and deadlines and the day to day need to perform and show progress. It's about unplugging and relaxing.
When I realized I was taking my "relaxation time" and turning it into work time, because I thought I "should be working on these new skills", I stopped, because I wasn't enjoying it, I wasn't having fun, and I wasn't feeling like I wanted to pick up the camera. I was turning play into work, and I was souring on the whole thing. When I had that realization -- I stopped. For now.
Learning new skills requires time, and practice, and those early houses can be stress inducing as you struggle to get comfortable doing these new things. I simply have no interest in turning the activity I want to be my relaxation and fun time into yet another set of stresses and deadlines, even if they are self-imposed.
This is why I've never liked or encouraged things like the photo-a-day challenge. To be blunt about them, I don't think those challenges push your skills forward, they simply push you, and they turn photography into a grunt chore. That's why so many of them are dropped before the year is out, I think. Frankly, almost everyone I know who's started one has ended up hating it somewhere along the way, finding themselves at 10PM taking a picture of a doorknob or a stapler to keep the streak going. For... why again? How is making you dislike photography making you a better photographer?
When I was growing up, I was a decent golfer and an avid fisherman, mostly surf fishing off the beaches of Southern California. In both activities I met someone that later in my life provided me insight in what we now call work-life balance. My golf buddy would, once a week, grab his clubs, pay his green fees, and go play 9 rounds of golf: but he never used a golf ball. He lined up shots, and occasionally shanked one into the weeds, he putted, he kept a score. But he did it without a ball.
When I asked him about it, he simply noted that when he played with a ball, it stressed him out, so he stopped. Instead, he goes out, enjoys the mechanics of handling and swinging clubs, take a nice walk outside, get some sun and have fun. At the time, I thought he was insane -- but years later, the memory of him appeared while I was sorting some life issues up, and it suddenly made massive sense. The reality of the golf ball made golf work for him and stressed him out. Remove the ball, and enjoy the rest. Figure out what you're trying to accomplish and what you want out of an activity, and do those parts. The alternative, for him, would have been to give up golf completely. he found a way to enjoy it on his terms. He could -- and did every few rounds -- four putt a green and keep a smile, because being there was the point, not the score or competition.
The fisherman had a similar philosophy. He would wander out in the afternoon, set up his chair and his surfing rig, and toss a line out into the water. He had his fish cooler, his bait bucket, a couple of sodas, and a secret -- he didn't put hooks on his line.
He had found that if he told people he was going fishing, that was okay. If he said he was going to go sit on the beach in a chair and do nothing, some people asked why he was wasting his time doing nothing. He wasn't doing nothing, of course -- he was enjoying sitting on the beach, watching the sunset and the people around him and talking with fellow fisherfolk, and just being able to unplug and relax. But by adding in the fishing rig, he stopped having to explain or justify himself to anyone. Only he knew why he never caught anything... Although there were times he really did fish, and he was quite good at it, too. But for him, the fishing became an excuse to sit on the beach, and sitting on the beach was the reason, and the fishing the excuse. And if you really aren't worried about catching anything, why add hooks that might mean you'd have to deal with the fish you caught by accident?
I think, in essence, that's how I've been treating my camera and binoculars since I got home from my birding trip in January 2020 and ended up going into lockdown thanks to Covid. Life has been complicated and stressful enough in the last 18 months I see no reason why I should take one of the relaxation bits of life and turn it into work as well. I honestly admit that I have gone out a few times, grabbed my camp chair, sat on the beach at Point No Point with binoculars and/or camera and simply not worried very much about what birds might or might not be around.
Being out there and enjoying being is the reason. The binoculars and camera are the excuse.
In terms of my landscape work, when I was living in Silicon Valley, I have to admit I simply didn't find it interesting photographically. I sometimes found interesting compositions, but being able to figure out a composition, arrange the time to explore it and do so when the light is interesting -- is a lot of work. I used to be able to get out to Yosemite in the off-season, but the crowds are more or less year round now, and there really isn't an off-season; my last couple of trips there were struggles and stressful, although I'm pretty happy with some of the results. And to be honest, that's not even factoring in the challenges the last few years of wildfires have caused, from air quality and smoke/haze visibility problems to whether or not you can even visit at all. So my opportunities to make landscape photos have been very limited at best.
That said, with the hope that we finally will turn the corner on Covid and I've found myself starting to map out some ideas to start plugging back into my landscape photographer persona. I've chatted with Laurie about perhaps being able to go to Yellowstone next June for a week or so, specifically to focus on landscape and thermals, something I've wanted to do since I did my wildlife trip there in 2014.
Much of Olympic National Park is a day trip away. I was starting to consider a weekend off at the Sol Duc hot springs lodge, only to realize the fist week I could consider doing so was the last week of their season until spring -- so it'll have to wait. I'm mentally planning some day trips and some general exploration of this new region to see what I find that's interesting to me. I also plan to go explore some of the local cities and try some street photography, both to see what might interest me there as a new form, and as an excuse to go and explore the towns.
The fact is, it's been a crazy two years, including a major move to a new state and, oh, this Covid thing -- I think it's perfectly okay to decide to back off and coast for a while. It's only been in the last month that I've found myself considering ways to start rebooting things and getting them going again, which -- makes me hopeful we're through the worst. We'll see, but I think I've finally started thinking of coming out of the bunker.
If you are -- like I've been -- finding yourself unmotivated or uninterested in hauling out your camera, I wanted to write this and say that it's okay. Unless photography is paying your rent and buying you feed, it's perfectly okay to decide not to stress yourself over it.
I think we all have this tendency to take things we enjoy doing and pressure ourselves into turning them into work, and if we aren't careful, losing the aspects of fun involved that made them interesting to us in the first place. There's an important balance that I think we need to manage in our hobby activities. Learning new skills and improving ourselves is a key part of our long-term enjoyment of the activity, but not at the risk of losing any interest in doing it. If you feel un-motivated or not liking what you're doing at something that used to be fun -- that's something you should pay attention to, and think over to try to understand why.
And perhaps -- be willing to "take a vacation" from the parts of whatever you're doing that are making it feel stressful and a lot like work, and focus on the enjoyment parts instead.
Like, oh, doing a round of golf without a ball, or sitting on a beach in a chair with your camera but never bothering to turn it on.
I have a mental exercise I like to use to help me better understand these things. When I'm considering things to do, I ask myself which ones are "want to do" and which ones are in the "I should do this" camp. If the rest of your life is stressing you and what you really want is a break, you have my permission to consider all of that "I should do this" stuff as optional and put it in a drawer for a while. Your brain will tell you when it's ready to pick it up and start plugging away at it again. Just like mine has started poking at me and saying "hey, we can start planning for the landscape stuff again" recently.
Never be too busy to carve out time for the fun bits. Because if you don't, you run the risk of simply losing any interest in the activity at all. Be mindful and think about where your balance points are, and if you aren't sure, it's never a bad thing to opt for the fun first...
