P#3 Q#4b: Setting Up A Landscape Shot In Familiar Territory

Approaching a familiar landscape with a fresh eye

Lewis Kemper: Going to a place over and over again or somewhere you're familiar with makes you look at things in more detail.

You always start off doing the great big landscape or the big scene, but the more time you spend there the more you start looking for the unique and intimate details that that place has to offer.

That's a great exercise for any photographer to help improve your photography in general -- and it's an exercise that I took up about four or five years ago.

I realized that the only time I was taking pictures was when I was traveling. When I was home I was sitting in front of the computer.

I decided I wanted to change that a little bit and I was going to pick somewhere close by to photograph. And I got inspired by Jim Brandenburg, who had done an issue of "National Geographic" where he took only one picture a day for a month, and I realized that I didn't have the discipline just to take one picture a day.

I was going to try and pick a place and go to it on the same day of the month for a year. And then I looked at my calendar and I had no one single date that I was home for a whole year that would go month to month.

I decided the easiest thing for me is to just go photograph there once a month.

I picked a local 88-acre nature preserve not far from my home and started going there and photographing. It's not the most scenic or most beautiful place in the world. It's definitely not a major beautiful landscape like Yosemite.

It made me work quite hard and look at things a whole lot differently.

As the year went on and I got more and more familiar with the place, my pictures got better... and better... and better.

I think the whole exercise of going back to a place time and time again and start looking at it hard to make good images is a great exercise for any photographer.

You learn when the light is good. I learned that the Nature Center where I went is a morning place. The light in the evening goes behind the hill and it disappears too fast.

Nothing's all that photogenic, so I spent many, many sunrises there -- at different times of the year. I learned by the month where the sun's going to come up along the river, and what's the best location to go to first, and where the different animals are.

It definitely helps when you're trying to put a body of work together from a place that might not be the most beautiful.

In summary

Practice, practice, practice. Go to the same spot consistently, at different times of day and during the year. Look deeper. Your photographs will improve if you do this exercise.

This kind of redundancy is good for improving your landscape photography.