How becoming a portrait photographer has made me a better landscape photographer.
I’ve told the story before, but here’s a recap: Standing above Lower Lewis Falls in the Gifford Pinchot forest and holding my boyfriend’s Canon point-and-shoot, I took a picture that would change my life. The shutter dragged a bit because it was getting dark, and lo-and-behold, my first long exposure waterfall picture appeared on the LCD screen. My heart stopped for a moment. Wait, I can do that?
Years later, I’m shooting weddings, portraits and landscapes. As my portrait skills have grown and I ask my mentor for “hot salsa” reviews on my work, I’ve learned that what I steadily work on with improving my work in portraits directly applies in landscapes. It has changed a lot of what I see before I even set up my camera to take a picture of the world.
This week, for example, I sold my Canon 10-22mm lens. It broke my heart. The pictures I took with that lens, the love affair it created in me for ultra wide-angle shots… It revolutionized the way I approached landscapes. Still, in a year of owning my beautiful full-frame Nikon, I’ve missed the wide angle less than a handful of times. I’ve learned to focus a lot more on details, framing and what not to shoot (dirty foregrounds, too much information, loss of simplicity, the entire scene instead of the story I should be focused on). I realized my style has changed, and my reliance on shooting at 10mm to get everything simply isn’t there. One of these days I’ll replace that lens with a 14, 16 or 17, but right now, I’m doing just fine.
Portraits have also taught me a lot about watching my backgrounds, focusing on texture, watching the light, and telling a story. These are all photo fundamentals that take awhile to learn to consistently watch for. Now I hear those same whispers in my head for landscapes. I like these whispers. Sometimes they tell me that I simply don’t have the shot I thought I would, and to either put the camera away this time, or go look for something else. As I continue to clean out thousands of old pictures from years past (sometimes eliminating every shot from an outing), I’m happy to be able to filter what I shoot. I still shoot too much, but I probably shoot 30% of what I used to.
(Oh, and to those people who told me I didn’t need f/2.8 or 1.4 or a telephoto on landscapes? Hah. So not true. I use them all the time! There is no substitute for good glass.)
Now when I stare at a beautiful waterfall or a sunset or a flower, I think a lot more before I pull the camera out. I walk around, get low, get high, and look for those silly bitty sticks in the foreground–just like I’ve been training myself to do with portraits. And sometimes I’m just grateful to be out in the world experiencing the beauty, even if the shot I want just isn’t there. Photography is a very zen process. It’s spiritual, putting you in touch with something very special about your subject (whether alive and breathing or forged from geology).
Focusing on the story is always my best answer.
