One of the advantages of having a great place to photograph close to my home is that I can always quickly get there. Brooks Jensen – one of the photographers I highly regard – likes to say “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity”. Well, I’m always prepared. All my photo gear is in the car. As soon as I see a great sunset, I hop into my car and take off to those flower fields that I mentioned in the previous post.
Here is one of the lucky moments I think:
Chamomile at Sunset
Sometime all it takes to get a nice photo is to step out of your door.
I live in an area that had a lot of construction sites in hey days of housing bubble. When recession started a lot of them were abandoned. In just a couple of years nature reclaimed them and turned them into meadows with a beautiful display of wild flowers. There are lots and lots of different kinds of flowers. What’s interesting is that every year there is a predominant flower. This year is a year of lupines.
Now I don’t need to drive or fly far away – it takes only 5 minutes to get into a wild flower meadow. I guess there is something good about recession after all.
Not Like Others
Recently I got a link to a somewhat interesting article Preparation In Fine Art Landscape Photography. While I found it interesting (I do myself lots of the things listed in the article and find them useful), at the same time I thought it is too simplistic and pragmatic.
The most important thing I do in the field is missing from the article’s list: connecting with a landscape. Before I even take my camera out of a bag I spend time observing landscape that surround me – from tiny flowers to tall mountains to high sky up above. What’s interesting in it, how do I feel about it, is it a happy place or a sad place, is it powerful or weak? I spend as much time as I need to feel the things that surround me, walking around or simply sitting. I may even close my eyes and focus on scents or sounds of birds singing or waves crashing onto the shore. Can you imagine that – a photographer with his eyes closed?
Call me naïve and romantic – because quite frankly that who I am – but when I photograph I don’t follow any specific list of steps, I follow my emotions.
Two Trees on a Hill at Sunset
vitali prokopenko | fine art 