Landscape photography doesn't always end with a keeper. This video makes that case plainly, and it's one of the more honest looks at what a real shoot actually feels like from start to finish.
Coming to you from William Patino, this candid video follows Patino into a forested area, shooting with little more than a 16-35mm lens and his instincts. He spotted a section of forest from the road, felt pulled toward it, and started walking. No plan, no shot list. What unfolds is a genuine look at how a working landscape shooter actually moves through a scene, works a subject, and decides when to keep going. He finds a creek almost immediately, starts working an angle that combines a cascade on the left with a character-filled beech tree on the right, and spends real time just walking around asking himself what the photograph is actually about.
Patino leaves his bag behind at one point and pushes further into the forest with just the 16-35mm on his camera. What he finds deeper in is noticeably better than where he started. More water volume, richer greens, a totara tree draped in lichen that stops him cold. He works multiple angles on it, shoots ferns with overlapping fronds that draw the eye toward the center of the frame, and talks through exactly what he's seeing and why it's working compositionally. He mentions using a polarizer deliberately on ferns versus letting soft, silver light create depth in the greens instead.
Here's the part that makes this video worth your time even if you've been shooting landscapes for years: Patino goes home with nothing. After reviewing all the raw files weeks later, he decides there's nothing worth keeping. He made the video anyway. That choice is the whole point. The shoot produced no award-winning images, no portfolio additions, no dramatic payoff. What it produced was a genuine experience in the field, one where curiosity led the walk, the process was enjoyable, and the result was irrelevant. That framing cuts against a lot of what gets pushed in photography content, where every outing seems to end with a stunning final image. Patino's argument is straightforward: if you can come home empty-handed and still feel good about the time you spent, you'll keep shooting for a long time. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Patino.
2 Comments
I've visited some nature preserves when, well, not much to see. So I got, in the least, a nice walk through the woods or swamp. Not a successful shoot, or a shoot at all, but still a good take.
When it comes to your time with photography most of is learning as tests of capturing the light. We are all Mad Scientist of Light Capture and in all environments whiter day or night or in the between times. I have learned most unknowingly are introvert where enjoying alone time with just the sounds of quite nature is the best reward of any time and the camera takes you there not you taking the camera. When you get there it then is what you know and how to play with the camera to capture what you great gift of a "Photo Eye" sees that no other sees. A add is the knowledge of editing software, the many played with, as to what can be done with the capture.
Basically it is the joy of time in many places sometimes in a crowd of many but your eye and mind are in another place seeing! You never go anywhere fast for all the stops you make just to see, many images are in the mind not on paper forever.
Example I was on a highway in lower New York going to Olean at night with a full moon with a day of snow that now had stopped I look over to my left and way down is a farm lit by a lone farm light and the moon high is white as a LED light of today lighting up snow and all showing the colors of the house and red barn and a tractor. All this at a glance of a few seconds while driving alone on a four lane highway a highway I watched for years being built as i was young all the many years after. I return to my driving and think of the men and their families what the views they saw that I missed being away for years. All in my mind still at 73 years or while on the JFK above the artic circle during a very cold and icy deck and a Arora Borealis came to light up with aircraft with all their marker lights on and upper and lower flashing lights flying through it all, a night shot a film could not capture while I worked with the launching of the next batch to experience the ride of a lifetime I had to enjoy on the deck left behind.
This is how the your photo eye is trained and you figure a way to capture in the future with every new camera to come along with the many passing years you one day get the capture you are ready for being in the right place and a right time. The main word you have to be out there to see and capture you never come back with nothing for all is stored behind that photo eye helping to capture it when it will be good.
I keep all captures in files on many hard drives by year knowing software one day will let me make the images even with a bad lens or light, always go back and look with your new tools.
A 2015 images bracketed 3 at +/- 1EV with not only a lens unchipped no LC and with not only noise but dead and hot pixels that Lrc just a few years ago had a LC and a new denoise function and the new HDR selection. Two nights and 80 captures able to make new after many years, never a waste of time but dreams finally come to life!!!!!