P#17 Q7A: Can You Suggest One or Two Landscape Photography Tips or Exercises That Can Help Improve Our Listeners' Landscape Photographs?

Take it Slow

Bill Neill: That is a great question and an important one too. I'm glad it was asked.

The first thing I can recommend is when you reach a location, slow down. Slow down in terms of how aggressively you might be looking for a photograph, and slow down also in your expectations.

I really believe that being receptive to things rather than programming things. I have a lot of people who ask me about planning. "How did you plan this shot?"

"Well, I didn't. I just went out."

A great exercise is to sit down and enjoy the moment. It's a simple thing and it almost sounds trite because it is so simple.

Set aside your preconceived expectations. After you have looked around for a little while and relaxed a bit, get up and look for something that inspires you with a sense of wonder.

Look for the Extraordinary

I see people who kind of get locked into what subjects are the norm. If you look at the world with a sense of wonder and you get revved up about something like a beautiful formation of a kelp on a beach that just had this beautiful s-curve to it, and you are just amazed by it and enraptured by it, that is when you are going to make your best photograph.

That connection that you have with the subject has to be there before you push yourself to the next level.

Another variation on that would be something I learned from some other photographers who were teaching at one of the Ansel Adams Gallery workshops. Ted Orland and David Bayles were instructors there.

They taught us to go out to where we want to photograph and sit down for at least five to ten minutes. Take a piece of paper and a pencil and jot down some adjectives, or any word that describes how you feel about where you are. You might say 'peaceful' or you might say 'energized' or you might say 'sleepy,' whatever it is, just make some notes.

That is kind of a good exercise to get you in tune with what your response is to a place. Now, if you left the city after a day of work and you ended the day sitting in a meadow in Yosemite, that adjective might be 'refreshed.'

If you take this exercise to the next level, it would be to go and try to photograph one of those adjectives and communicate that in an image. This is something that you can't really program in to yourself. It is just an exercise. It is not how it happens necessarily that you are so conscious of things that, "I'm going to go photograph 'happiness.'" It is just an exercise for helping you connect with where you are.

In Summary

Bill Neil says it's important to slow down so you can really appreciate the landscape you're photographing. Once you've relaxed and started to learn to take it slow, look around you for things outside of the norm -- things that excite you.

When you begin to really "see" the area around you, you can begin to photograph it better. While these landscape photography tips may seem simple, they can really go a long way toward improving your landscape photographs.