Nature Photography - Agony, Ecstasy, and Adventure

I’m not a nature photographer. I’m a nature boy. What I mean is that I just like going out in nature and I do it a lot. Always have. If I have a camera with me, I take pictures. If I don’t, it doesn’t matter. Still, I’ve taken a lot of nature photos over the years and sold a few so feel qualified to discuss it and perhaps provide a little advice.

Technically, nature photos are not difficult at all. For the most part, nature doesn’t move much and it doesn’t talk back to you, at least not in a verbal language we can understand. Of course if you want to take nature photos with a particular look you may need a specialized camera or lens, but mainly it’s all about where you stand to take the picture.

There is, however, a mind-set that can elevate your nature photography. That is to see things that no one else sees. That’s true in the usual sense of photographic “seeing,” but in this case I’m talking about something else. In nature, the way to see things that no one else sees is to go to places that no one else goes, or at least when no one else goes. That usually means risking your comfort and possibly your life by going to an extremely uncomfortable and likely dangerous environment.

About the above photo: It’s 15 degrees. The wind is steady at 20 mph and gusting up above 40. I’m about halfway into a stretch of ice covering a submerged road that goes on for nearly a mile. I was on it before I realized and it was too late, there was no turning back. Tapping the brakes doesn’t even slow the truck down. If I tried to turn nothing would happen. If I spun out there would be nothing I could do. Fortunately, I have quite a bit of experience in similar situations so I just accepted the reality and drove as carefully as I could.

This photo is from the same spot as the one above, only I’m turned slightly towards the right. I am standing on a brief patch of gravel that rose above the ice. You can see a little bit of the road. I was the only one who had traveled on it since it froze. It’s unfortunate I didn’t have my ice shoe attachments with me as I could have gotten some very cool photos had I been able to walk around some. But no, it was as slick as slick can be and I wasn’t going there.

So anyway, these are examples of seeing things that no one else has seen by going to places that no one else has gone. When it works out, you feel ecstatic. But that usually comes at a cost. To get to the loneliest places almost always requires suffering a great deal of discomfort, both physical and mental. In the above example, my hands got so cold that they hurt to a very painful extent. And it’s mentally taxing driving on solid ice with the very real possibility that you’ll get stuck out there and have to crawl a half mile on the ice in the howling wind, then walk a two or three miles after that. But I believe that the highs are higher, even sometime reaching the point of ecstasy, when suffering is involved in getting there. That’s been my experience.

That’s the photo I was going out take. I’ve been working on this for a long time now and someday I will get it. What I want is for snow that completely covers up the ground and a white sky. I have another photo it would work well with side by side. But who knows? With global warming it may never snow enough to cover that field again.

Here’s a sunrise. It’s hard not to take pictures of those things. Enjoy.