IMMERSION COURSE

COMMIT TO EXPLORING YOUR FAVORITE LOCATIONS IN DEPTH

One important goal for landscape photographers, or for any photographer, is to develop a body of images that shows both depth and creativity. Making images that are innovative is hard enough, but it is very difficult to sustain it. Especially if you aspire to market your images, showing a sustained level of excellence in your portfolio will draw attention to your work. There is so much generic imagery and so much competition that uniqueness is at a premium. One of the keys to developing depth in your work is to observe and photograph a chosen landscape for an extended period. The best opportunity is to explore a local nature preserve that you can return to often, during different seasons and times of day. Your sense of the place will grow. The choices you make when photographing will be informed by your knowledge of the local weather, light, and topography.

Less photographed landscapes, with little published imagery by which to be influenced, perhaps offer greater opportunity for creative development than far-flung and famous ones. Ideally, you can observe your local landscape daily in order to watch for those subtle changes such as the first trees budding out in spring, or freshly fallen autumn leaves on the forest floor. I have heard world-class photographers say they hesitate to photograph Yosemite when visiting due to its history of remarkable imagery, and it certainly is difficult to rise above the ordinary when photographing famous landscapes.

It took me three or four years of living in and photographing the park to take just a few unique images. I drove through Yosemite Valley on my way to and from work and had the great opportunity to observe a remarkable landscape closely and continually. There are certain compositions in the Valley that have intrigued me over the years, and so I checked them out often. One was of oaks in El Capitan Meadow silhouetted against Cathedral Rocks. Each winter, the timing of my return home from work was at sunset or twilight, and the meadow often became misty in the evening.

I made the image featured at the beginning of this essay, Black Oaks and Cathedral Rocks, after about five years of observation, and a few previous unsuccessful exposures. One evening on the way home, the conditions came together: the fog, the clouds illuminated by the evening glow. The interplay between the tree branches and the outline of the cliffs added strong graphic interest. The long exposure on film of about one minute and the blue sky shifted the colors to bluish purple, adding to the mysterious mood. Looking back, I feel like I studied hard and at last passed the final exam!

Shrouded Cliffs and Trees on Glacier Point was made as a winter storm cleared and parts of Glacier Point were revealed in spectacular morning light. With these conditions, one could have found amazing photographs all around Yosemite Valley.

I shot Autumn Snowstorm in 2015 during a fall snowstorm. When I have a delivery to make to The Ansel Adams Gallery, I will check the weather and time my drive into Yosemite for interesting conditions. Paying attention to timing allowed me to be in the perfect location to capture this recent favorite.

I don’t live quite as close to Yosemite Valley as I used to twenty years ago and don’t commute there. In an effort to give myself more local options, I have been landscaping my own property with photographic potential in mind. I spread native wildflower and grass seed, and planted native redbud and other shrubs, in part to restore the area where my house was built, but also to compliment the rest of my relatively wild acre of manzanita, ponderosa pine, and oak woodland. I also added a waterfall feature and designed it with photography in mind. After twenty years in my current home, these efforts have paid off with many new portfolio images.

Shrouded Cliffs and Trees on Glacier Point | Yosemite National Park, California | 1994

Autumn Snowstorm | Yosemite National Park, California | 2015

Concentrating on your own special landscape is like taking an “immersion” language course. You focus your attention on one subject so intensely that your skills improve quickly. You begin to see nuances of a landscape’s appearance that were previously not apparent to you and are not apparent to the casual observer. The knowledge developed with such immersion should help define your vision, for yourself and to others, and those skills you develop will improve your results when you travel to new locales.

Reeds and Reflections | Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, California | 2018