Photography is Exploration

Over ten years ago, I wrote a series of essays about what I thought photography was about. One of those essays is called Photography is Exploration, Discovery, and Reward. Over the years, I’ve returned to those essays and find that my thoughts are still somewhat the same, but I recently expanded the idea of Exploration.

In the other essay, I kept the idea of exploration centered upon exploring the physical world. I did so because I was much more focused upon that type of exploration in my life. A decade later and I’m not as focused on that style of adventure or photography. I’m more focused on visiting and photographing places that I’ve been in new ways to get a different type of experience or perspective. I feel like it’s turning my gaze inward more than looking at the distant horizon or wondering what’s around the next corner.

Then it occurred to me that what I was doing is still exploration.

As an example, I don’t know how many times I’ve shot this boat over the years, but it has been many. This time I decided to shoot it with a 14mm lens and give it crazy distortion. I also shot it handheld when in the past I would have used a tripod. The idea was that I wanted explore how that style of shooting would look, and I wanted to see if my camera was good enough to shoot handheld in the low light of sunset. It was.

Trying new techniques and then exploring those techniques to see how they work with my established techniques is exploration just as much as exploring the landscape is, but’s it’s an inward exploration. Satisfying the desire for wanderlust by not wandering physically but mentally.

It's similar to what I’ve been doing with infrared photography. I’ve always been interested in seeing what the world looks like through infrared photography. So, I’ve been exploring that concept at places that I’ve been before, such as in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Additionally, I’ve spent many hours on my computer figuring out how to process those images so that they feel more like I want them to feel.

I’ve also decided this year to start bringing back off-camera flash into my portraits. In order to master my new flash, I need to explore its features and capabilities before using it on a real job. I’m not sure that our cat was happy about that.

I also been exploring mixing techniques, such as panoramic photography with northern lights photography. Because I have plenty of both I don’t feel any pressure anymore when I get to see the northern lights. In the past, I felt like I had to maximize the locations and number of shots to take advantage of them, but now since I have those shots I can explore different ways to capture them.

I’ve also been exploring how to better create composite night sky images using one ground image and one sky image shot of the same composition. I’ve wanted to do this to be able to teach the techniques better to my photo workshop students. There’s been a lot of interest in this technique. This year, I’ve explored how to do it simply and effectively, and I’ve created tools to help my students.

I’ve also explored how I can change my Lightroom Night Sky presets to improve them and explored their new capabilities.

One thing that I’ve noticed during this years explorations is that my keeper rate has dropped. I’m now at about 1/3rd of my average photos kept in a year and I have less than a year to go. But the exploration of new techniques feels like it’s building towards something. I’m not sure what, but somewhere on the distance horizon or around the next bend there’s going to be a payoff for this style of exploration.

Even if there’s not any further payoff, there’s already been so much reward. It’s been fun and felt like rediscovering photography in all new ways.

If you can’t hit the road and get that itch to go exploring, trying a new photography technique might be the perfect way to satisfy wanderlust.

Until next time

I hope you enjoyed this issue and I’ll see you again in two weeks.