Landscape Photography

A tongue in cheek response to last week's newsletter.

Pano spread for another handmade book project. Yes, I actually enjoy the frustrating endeavor of landscape photography. I show up over and over and over to the same scenes. Eventually it works out…

That’s it! I draw the line, throw down my gloves and challenge Bob to... let me think on that (he’s younger than I am).

In his latest post, Bob, an accomplished studio photographer, had the audacity to say that he finds landscape photography “confusing, chaotic, and frustrating”. Oh, wait, dear fellow landscape photographers, that’s not all he said.

“Landscape photography is frustrating; there are a thousand things out of one’s control on any given day, in any given scene”

The nerve! Hold on. Then he got personal.

“I joke [Ha! Ha!] with Les constantly that many of his photos could be improved if he just brought a chainsaw with him, or maybe a crew to re-landscape the foreground. I suggest he might want to bring a Hollywood lighting and grip crew to light the landscape differently.”

How sad. Just because landscape photography is frustrating is beside the point. Sitting in his climate controlled studio, with more lighting than the Milky Way at his command, not to mention also controlling his models (well, it was worth a mention anyway), he has the chutzpah to comment on the chaos and confusion I face when out in the field.

Little does he know that his “jokes” weren’t actually funny. I never told him about my mini-chainsaw-in-my camera-luggage-incident at the airport. I hope one of those TSA agents is getting good use out of it.

Better yet, he never noticed that one of his precious mega-lights with an inflatable umbrella was missing for a few weeks when I did a Grand Canyon landscape photoshoot. That damned thing was useless!

And truth be known, Bob has never experienced the joys that a landscape photographer experiences. He knows nothing about shrinkage, for example. Like the winter night in Yukon Territory that I spent 5+ hours outside in -50F (literally!) photographing the Northern Lights. Thankfully I had an insulated jug of hot tea to keep me company. Until about 3 hours in I realized that nature was calling; screaming actually. Ha, the fool will never experience that!

So, the last thing I’ll say is that next month I’m going on a two week photo expedition. Do any of you want to come along to re-landscape the foreground?